The Maquis were rural guerrilla bands of French Resistance fighters, called
maquisards, during the Occupation of France in World War II. Initially, they
were composed of men who had escaped into the mountains to avoid conscription
into Vichy France's Service du travail obligatoire to provide forced labor for
Germany. To avert capture and deportation to Germany, they became
increasingly organized into non-active resistance groups.
Meaning Originally the word came from the kind
of terrain in which the armed resistance groups hid, the type of high ground in
southeastern France covered with scrub growth. Although strictly meaning
thicket, maquis could be roughly translated as "the bush". Historians
have not yet established how the Corsican term arrived in the mainland of
France; nevertheless, “the Italian-derived word ‘maquis’, used as a
common description of woods and scrubland on the island, evoked an
all-encompassing image of woods and mountains, whereas the more limited word
‘garrigue’ used in the south of France indicated [...] an inhospitable terrain,
and the words ‘bois’, ‘foret’. and ‘montagne’ were too bland.” The term
maquis signified both the bands of fighters and their rural location. The
term established the image of a ‘maquisard’ as a “committed and
voluntary fighter, a combattant, as distinct than the previous
‘réfractaire’." Members of those bands were called maquisards. The term became
an honorific that meant "armed resistance fighter". The Maquis have
come to symbolize the French Resistance. Operations
Most maquisards operated in the remote or mountainous areas of Brittany and
southern France, especially in the Alps and in Limousin. They relied on
guerrilla tactics to harass the Milice and German occupation troops. The Maquis
also aided the escape of downed Allied airmen, Jews and others pursued by the
Vichy and German authorities. Maquisards usually relied on some degree of
sympathy or cooperation from the local populace. In March 1944, the German Army
began a terror campaign throughout France. This included reprisals against
civilians living in areas where the French Resistance was active. The
Maquisards were later to take their revenge in the épuration sauvage that
took place after the war's end. Most of the Maquis cells — like the
Maquis du Limousin or the Maquis du Vercors - took names after the area they
were operating in. The size of these cells varied from tens to thousands of
men and women. In French Indochina, the local
resistance fighting the Japanese since 1941 was backed up by a special forces
airborne commando unit created by de Gaulle in 1943, and known as the Corps
Léger d'Intervention. They were supplied by airlifts of the British Force 136.
Politics Politically, the Maquis were very
diverse — including right-wing nationalists, socialists, communists,
and anarchists. Some Maquis bands that operated in southwest France, were
composed entirely of left-wing Spanish veterans of the Spanish Civil War.
Spanish Civil War veteran Colonel Romero Giménez was a center-democratic liberal,
operating from Bordeaux. When Germany began a forced labor draft
in France at the beginning of 1943, thousands of young men fled and joined
the Maquis. The British Special Operations Executive helped the Maquis
with supplies and agents. The American Office of Strategic Services also began
to send its own agents to France in cooperation with the SOE and the French
BCRA agents, as part of Operation Jedburgh.
The British government provided supplies and support to assist Charles de Gaulle
to unify the Free French resistance movement.
History Prior to the inception of the maquis,
small resistance groups were created in both the occupied and unoccupied zones
of France. in northern and western France, where the Germans devastated the
French, movements like ‘Organisation Civile et Militaire’, ‘Libération-Nord’,
‘Ceux de la Libération’, ‘Ceux de la Résistance’ survived through
“clandestine pamphlets or newspapers,” in order to “build up a solidarity of
attitudes and disparate actions” to taunt the Germans. Some of these
movements also took the first steps at hiding weapons and plotting sabotage. In
the unoccupied zone, movements were created as early as in the north and
west, but did not face “decimating raids by authorities,” which allowed
movements like ‘Combat’, ‘Libération-Sud’, and ‘Franc-Tireur’ to
have a more expansive character." Resistance groups in the occupied zone
had specific goals, and eventually became linked to the Free French in
London, or the Special Operations Executive set up by Britain “to
undermine Nazi-occupied Europe with specially trained agents.” By May 1941,
the northern movements, who specialized in sabotage and espionage, and the
southern movements, who focused on planning escape routes, developed the
only major movement common to both, the ‘Front National’. Resistance, however,
became closely linked with the effects of the occupation and Vichy legislation,
and as the working classes and poorer sections of society became alienated
“resisters and people on the run could be harbored with a degree of safety” in
the rural areas of France. “From the start, resistance had a role and
justification in the lives of many people who had no ambition to hold a
gun, or memorize a coded message, though as the occupation grew in its violence
the pressure on the French people to defend themselves by force intensified,
and the military nature of resistance came to predominate." The connection
between the Vichy government and armed resistance paved the way for the
eventual formation of the maquis. The Service du Travail Obligatoire was
enacted on 16 February 1943, but underwent various refinements and
classifications. It required young men born between 1920 and 1922 to register
at their mairies, whereupon the authorities “listed several categories
of workers, divided them into those who were exempt, those who would be liable
for compulsory service in Germany, and those who would have to work for German
industries in France”. In the first few months, reports suggest that there were
many who refused STO, and those who did avoided being caught by going into
hiding, mostly in areas where people hid Jews and Resisters. These first few
months of refusal of S.T.O., and the “embryonic camps and groupings that
resulted” contributed to the eventual emergence of the mystique and discourse
of ‘le maquis’. There was no single event or individual
who developed this resistance movement, but politically-motivated anti-fascists,
immigrant workers on the run, the réfractaires, and Spanish Civil War
veterans, along with the leniency of the Vichy administration’s pursuit of
réfractaires, contributed to the emergence of an aggressive movement,
with a combative discourse, and a romantic mystique of rural revolt. The
speed with which the term ‘maquis’ spread was astonishing, since the
concept did not exist in January 1943. By June of that same year, maquis
discourse made its way from south-eastern France to the plains of
northern France. The Maquis eventually became the national service, due to the
large influx of young people in revolt against the S.T.O. This unification was
due, in part, to Michel Brault, a Parisian lawyer, who headed the
organization of the resisters in April 1943, and to the drafted circulars
establishing the Maquis’s charter. “Within one month, 20 000 copies of the
text-which did not exceed the size of a playing card- were distributed
throughout the southern zone.” Michel Brault, in a report sent to London on 14
February 1944, listed the various elements available for action to the
allies, and described the Maquis as "youths who have rebelled against the
S.T.O. as well as men of all ages who have given up trying to live a normal
life[...]. They totaled about 48 000.” Role
A popular maquis band, the 'Maquis de l'Ain', was captained by Henri Petit,
who organized a network of camps in the dense forests in the mountainous regions
of le Bugey and the lower regions of la Bresse, without creating a fixed camp.
This gave “primacy to isolation from all habitation, but also to sites which
permitted hasty retreats.”. The enemy would not be able to surprise the maquis
because the views from the hills were extensive, but some enjoyed this
advantage and stayed in the same sites for months, defying their own rules of
mobility. Guerrilla warfare practiced by the Maquis “created a psychosis of fear
within the enemy [...], giving an impression of numbers and strength which
was more illusory than real." The Maquis de l’Ain’s effectiveness was due to the
training school opened at Gorges above Mongriffon in June 1943. Captain Romans
described the situation like so: "The watchwords were explicit: no large
concentrations of men. No pitched battles. Guerrilla warfare only! We had
a few revolvers and some hunting rifles and were reduced to making sketches in
order to teach the use of modern weapons. Early in July we received our
first Sten machine gun. We kept taking it apart and putting it together until
we could do it in record time, Then the gun was passed from one camp to
another." In the control for rural areas, the
maquisards, in their role as the hunted, “gradually made the terrain of the hunt
unpredictable for the hunters,” and eventually dangerous. The maquis’s goal
was to destabilize Vichy authority, and they did this by simultaneously making
themselves, as well as Vichy authorities, the ‘hunters’ and the
‘hunted’. During the Allied invasion of Normandy,
the Maquis and other groups played some role in delaying the German
mobilization. The French Resistance blew up railroad tracks and repeatedly
attacked German Army equipment and garrison trains on their way to the
Atlantic coast. Thanks to coded messages transmitted over the BBC radio, each
Maquis group was alerted of the impending D-Day by listening for
seemingly meaningless messages such as "the crow will sing three times in the
morning" or any other pre-arranged messages read in a continuous flow over
the British airwaves. As Allied troops advanced, the French Resistance rose
against the Nazi occupation forces and their garrisons en masse. For example,
Nancy Wake's group of 7,000 maquisards was involved in a pitched battle with
22,000 Germans on June 20, 1944. Some Maquis groups took no prisoners so some
German soldiers preferred to surrender to Allied soldiers instead of facing
maquisards. The Allied offensive was slowed and the
Germans were able to counterattack in southeast France. On the Vercors
plateau, the Maquis du Vercors rose up with some 4,000 soldiers against the
German occupiers, but was defeated with 600 casualties.
When General De Gaulle dismissed resistance organizations after the
liberation of Paris, many maquisards returned to their homes. Many also
joined the new French army to continue the fight.
Equipment Although the Maquis used whatever arms
they could get, they relied heavily on airdrops of weapons and explosives from
the British SOE. SOE parachuted agents in with wireless sets and dropped
containers with various munitions including Sten guns, Pencil detonators,
plastic explosives, Welrod pistols and assorted small arms. The Maquis also
used German weapons captured throughout the occupation, the Mauser 98k rifle and
MP 40 submachine gun being very common. A French Resistance Fighter is quoted
saying, "They are as common as hookers on the streets of Paris, and they get
about as much action." Customs
It was standard practice among the Maquis to identify members by wearing a
Basque beret because it was common enough not to arouse suspicion but
distinctive enough to be effective. Notable maquis
Maquis de l'Ain et du Haut-Jura Maquis de Corrèze
Maquis de Fontjun in the Hérault Maquis des Glières in the French Alps
Maquis du Grésivaudan in the French Alps Maquis du Limousin in the Massif Central
Maquis de Lozère directed by the German antifascist Otto Kühne
Maquis du Mont Mouchet in the Auvergne Maquis de Saffré
Maquis de Saint-Marcel in Brittany Corps Franc du Sidobre
Maquis La Tourette in the Hérault created by Jean Bène
Maquis de Vabre Maquis Vallier
Maquis du Vercors in the French Alps Maquis des Vosges
Maquis de Rieumes in the Haute-Garonne Corps Franc de la Montagne Noire in the
Montagne Noire Meo Maquis
See also Francs-Tireurs et Partisans
Chant des Partisans Spanish Maquis
Maquis a group of colonists in the Star Trek franchise that named themselves
after the WWII fighters. References
Kedward, H.R., In Search of the Maquis, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1993, ISBN
0-19-821931-8