Resistance Movements: The French Resistance

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The French Resistance was a collaboration of individual movements against the German occupation of France and the Vichy regime. Starting in 1940 and ending with the liberation of France, French people from all ends of the economic and political spectrum united in different Résistance groups to undermine the German occupying power.

On June 18th, 1940, Charles de Gaulle addressed the people of France from London. He called on the French people to continue the fight against the Germans. He declared that the war for France was not yet over, and rallied the country in support of the Resistance.

The first action of many Résistance movements was the publication and distribution of clandestine press material, most of which often consisted of only a single sheet. By 1942, however, about 300,000 copies of underground publications reached around two million readers. The underground press brought out books as well as newspapers through publishing houses, such as Les Editions de Minuit, which had been set up to circumvent Vichy and German censorship.
Sabotage
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On mainland France itself, in the wake of the D-Day landings in Normandy in June 1944, the FFI and the FTP fought alongside the Allies to free the rest of France. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill wrote in his memoirs praising the role the Résistance played in the liberation of Brittany, "The French Resistance Movement, which here numbered 30,000 men, played a notable part, and the peninsula was quickly overrun." The intelligence networks were by far the most numerous and substantial contributors to Résistance activities. They collected information of military value, such as coastal fortifications of the Atlantic Wall or Wehrmacht