RESISTANCE- 1942 Official Trailer (2022)
The French Resistance (French: La Résistance) was a collection of organisations who fought the Nazi occupation of France and the collaborationist Vichy régime during the Second World War. Resistance cells were small groups of armed men and women (called the Maquis in rural areas)[2][3] who, in addition to their guerrilla warfare activities, were also publishers of underground newspapers, providers of first-hand intelligence information, and maintainers of escape networks that helped Allied soldiers and airmen trapped behind enemy lines. The Resistance's men and women came from all economic levels and political leanings of French society, including émigrés, academics, students, aristocrats, conservative Roman Catholics (including priests and nuns), Protestants, Jews, Muslims, liberals, anarchists, and communists.
French ResistancePart of Resistance during World War II
An American officer taking cover with a pistol and a French partisan with a Sten in a street fight in 1944DateJune 1940 – October 1944Location
Occupied France
Belligerents Germany
 Vichy France
Supported by:
 Italy Resistance Groups
(formalised as French Forces of the Interior after June 1944)
Supported by:
 United Kingdom
 United StatesUnits involved Wehrmacht Heer
 Waffen-SS
 Geheime Feldpolizei
 Gestapo
 Milice
• Franc-Garde
 GMR BCRA
 CNR
 FTPF
 Brutus Network
 Dutch-Paris
 Maquis
 Spanish Maquis

The Cross of Lorraine, chosen by General Charles de Gaulle as the symbol of the Resistance[1]
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The French Resistance played a significant role in facilitating the Allies' rapid advance through France following the invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944. The French Resistance provided military intelligence on the German defences known as the Atlantic Wall and on Wehrmacht deployments and orders of battle for the lesser-known invasion of Provence on 15 August. The Resistance also planned, coordinated, and executed sabotage acts on the Nazi electrical power grid, transport facilities, and telecommunications networks.[4][5] The Resistance's work was politically and morally important to France both during the German occupation and decades that followed. It provided the country with an inspiring example of the patriotic fulfilment of a national imperative countering an existential threat to French nationhood. The actions of the Resistance stood in marked contrast to the collaborationism of the Vichy régime.[6][7]
After the Allied landings in Normandy and Provence, the paramilitary components of the Resistance were organized more formally, into a hierarchy of operational units known, collectively, as the French Forces of the Interior (FFI). Estimated at 100,000 fighters in June 1944, the FFI grew rapidly and reached approximately 400,000 by October.[8] Although the amalgamation of the FFI was, in some cases, fraught with political difficulties, it was ultimately successful, and it allowed France to rebuild the fourth-largest army in the European theatre (1.2 million men) by VE Day in May 1945.[9]
Nazi occupation
Chronology
Elements
Terminology
Networks and movements
Activities
Role in the liberation of France and casualties
Legacy
Cultural personalities
Popular culture
See also
References