 | irishgit (160)
07/24/2007 | No, but it was no where near as effective as memories, Hollywood and fiction would have us believe.
The same is also true of most of the schemes cooked up by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and OSS during the war.
The overall effectiveness and military value of all of this stuff was questionable to negligible, despite the money spent on it, the people involved, and the perceived value at the time (at least in some quarters)
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 | GenghisTheHun (184)
04/22/2007 |  This is a half truth. Most Frenchmen were collaboraters or neutral. The French Government, previous to the German conquest, the Third Republic, was tired, worn out, rotten and was quite hated.
Paul Johnson, in "Modern Times" does an excellent job explaining the work of the Vichy Regime vis a vis the old corrupt Third Republic, and how it started France on the road to recovery.
The Resistance was mainly Communists and some Catholics. As I stated just about everyone else in France collaborated or stayed out of it.
About 170,000 people were in the Resistance. At least 190,000 after the war were ACCUSED of being collaboraters and there were many more.
It was the genius of De Gaulle, after the end of the war, to start the myth that EVERYONE was in the Resistance. It was officially overlooked that the opposite was true.
What is ironic about the Communists is this. You will recall, oh ye learned members of the RIA, that when the Germans invaded France, in 1940, Hitler and Stalin were ALLIES. Stalin ordered the Commies not to resist the Germans, although some defied Stalin and fought the Germans, for old times sake I suppose.
Then after Hitler stabbed Stalin in the back and attacked the Soviet Union in June, 1941, Stalin ordered a flip-flop and the "Resistance" was born. By this trick of fate, the Communists were the greatest benefactors of the war and Resistance in France.
As a coda, Stalin never forgave the Communists who defied him and fought the Germans in 1940. These poor souls were all "liquidated" by the Official Communists after the Allied re-conquest of France. Maurice Thorez, the head of the French Communist Party was the chief political chameleon of that period of time. What ever Stalin wanted Maurice did. One day Thorez was praising Hitler and the next day, he was damning him.
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 | Drummond (60)
04/22/2007 | It was certainly no "second front" for D-Day, but German officers did live in terror of their lives, particularly in Paris.
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