Guerrillas of the Resistance. The Spaniards who liberated Paris

[Menydh]

Guerrillas of the Resistance
The Spaniards who liberated Paris

Le Monde diplomatique
August 2004

The German governor of Paris surrendered to a Spanish soldier two hours before he signed the capitulation of his forces in August 1944. Will this year's celebrations remember the foreign Resistance fighters?

France has not done much to acknowledge its debt to the many foreigners who helped free the nation in 1944. No significant monuments pay tribute to the thousands of Spaniards who fought the German occupation forces. As France prepares to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Paris, it should gratefully honour the men and women who fought beside the French and died for freedom.

After the 1936-39 civil war many Spaniards fled to France and later joined the Resistance or the Free French forces. In the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, just next to Picasso's Guernica, there is another Picasso, Monument to the Spaniards who died for France, a reminder of
their sacrifice. Spanish Republicans contributed substantially to liberating France. In the south they have had some recognition; in all more than 10,000 fought all over France, in Brittany and the Cévennes(1) and around towns such as Poitiers, Bordeaux, Angoulême,
Avignon, Montélimar, Valence or Anneçy(2). An all-Spanish force liberated Foix, joined at the last moment by one Maurice Bigeard(3), a token French contribution to the victory.

Near the end of summer 1940 Charles Tillon, founder of the French Irregulars and Partisans (FTP-F) group, contacted local members of the Spanish Communist party (PCE) in Bordeaux. Foreign nationals were a ready source of volunteers, since unlike French citizens they had not
been mobilised and the Germano-Soviet pact had not discouraged them(4). Spanish communists also remembered French support for the International Brigades. Meanwhile the PCE's underground leadership was trying to meet its French opposite number and contacted Lise London in December. She and her husband, Artur London, were plausible go-betweens, having fought in Spain in the International Brigades(5).

>From then on, the resistance by communists and sympathisers started to take shape. The Spanish community had arrived in two waves, first because of poverty after 1918, then because of defeat by Franco's army in 1939, and settled all over France. The French Communist party (PCF) started the Immigrant Workers (MOI) movement in the 1930s. The MOI played an important part in the Resistance, integrating most Spanish communists. The others formed armed detachments under PCE command, coordinating their attacks with the Special Organisation (OS) and then with the FTP-F.

In and around Paris Conrado Miret-Must, under the name of Lucien, took charge of MOI combatants from 1942 on. The liberation of France was a long way off, but preparations were already underway, despite a massive raid that decimated the Spanish activists that year. The trial of what the authorities claimed were terrorists from the Spanish National Union was a foretaste of the trial of the members of the Manouchian group(6). In the Little Spain neighbourhood of Plaine Saint Denis(7) arrests became frequent, much as in Paris, Brittany and the suburbs of other cities. In all, 135 Spaniards, including six women,
appeared in court. In their buttonholes they wore tiny espadrilles with the colours of the French and Spanish republics. When their sentences were read out they sang the Marseillaise and the Himno de Riego(8). The sentences seemed relatively light, but meant torture, deportation and, for many, death.

After the raids, which dislocated his unit and led to the disappearance of his comrades, Celestino Alfonso, a former tank commander, joined the Manouchian group and met Michel Rajman. With the other members of the Manouchian group Celestino was executed on 16
February 1944, only months before the liberation of Paris. In his farewell letter he wrote: "I lay down my life for France." For many Spaniards the Resistance was the continuation of the civil war by other means. For the communists it was a way of repaying their debt to the International Brigades, originally set up by the Komintern(9).

Spanish activists from Paris took refuge in neighbouring departéments till the storm passed, returning to the capital under the command of Rogelio Puerto. On 6 June 1944, when Allied forces landed on the Normandy beaches, José Baron, known as Robert, mobilised all available
combatants and they formed the battalions that took part in the Paris insurrection in August. They were determined and ready for anything, convinced that once France regained its freedom the fascist regime in Spain would soon collapse.

History does not always work out as planned, but there are fortunate coincidences. The overall commander of the Paris insurrection was Henri Rol-Tanguy, who had been a political commissar in the 14th International Brigade in Spain. This eased contacts between insurgents
from the two countries. Military experience from 1936-39 combined well with the invention of guerrilla tactics both in the maquis and in cities.

With the prospect of Paris being liberated the Spanish anarchists came to the fore. In 1939 the French authorities had interned the defeated Republican army in camps in southeast France. Every morning gendarmes visited the barracks encouraging internees to join the Foreign Legion. Several thousand accepted the offer, seeing it as a way of continuing the fight against fascism. They were sent to French dependencies in North Africa or further south to Chad or Cameroon. Those who went south joined the Free French in 1940, linking with the
force formed by General Leclerc(10). The others had to wait till the Allied landings in Algeria in November 1942. But all - at least those who survived - were among the first Allied troops to enter Paris on 24 August 1944.

Paris was fighting, but it needed help. A truce had been signed on 20 August by representatives of General de Gaulle and Choltitz (the commander of the German garrison) providing for the peaceful withdrawal of occupation forces. But the next day the Resistance
decided to break the truce, afraid that the Germans would use it to their strategic advantage. Rol-Tanguy sent Commander Gallois to meet the approaching Allied forces. Gallois convinced Leclerc to speed up his 2nd armoured division's advance on Paris. Leclerc sent the 9th armoured company, led by Captain Raymond Dronne, ahead of the main force: all its men were Spanish anarchists who spoke Castilian. In his memoirs(11) Dronne writes of their courage; Leclerc thought highly of them.

The first detachments of the 9th company entered the south of Paris at 8.41pm though the Porte d'Italie. A tank called Guadalajara after a Republican victory in 1937(12) led the way. Forty minutes later, the tanks and half-tracks halted on Place de l'Hôtel de Ville in the centre. A crowd surrounded the 120 Spaniards and their 22 vehicles, greeting them as liberators. "Were they American?" people asked, surprised to hear them speaking Spanish. Their tanks were named after civil war battles - Ebro, Teruel, Belchite, Madrid - and also called Don Quijote, and Durruti, after the anarchist leader.

Their arrival ended the siege of the town hall, where Resistance forces had been holding out against German attacks for five days. Inside the building the Spanish troops set up a gun, El abuelo (grandfather). As night fell everyone waited for reinforcements. Amado Granelli, a lieutenant in the 9th company, met members of the National Resistance Council, led by Georges Bidault. Meanwhile Leclerc, with the rest of the 2nd armoured division, raced towards Paris, reaching it the following morning.

In the days after, fighting increased in intensity. According to Tillon, the Spaniards - the partisans who joined the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) - were excellent street fighters. But he exaggerated their contribution to the liberation of Paris. In the preface to a book on the Manouchian group in 1946, he estimated their number at 4,000 and used the same figure in Les FTP(13). Manuel Tunon de Lara, a Spanish historian, is more cautious.

Once the fighting in Paris was over Rogelio Puerto led his Spanish detachments - from the FTP, UNE and PCE - to the Reuilly barracks. There Boris Holban, the MOI leader, merged a motley force of combatants into a single battalion called Liberté. They included Italians, Poles, Armenians and even escaped Russian prisoners of war. The Spanish contingent, about 500, was the largest. They had fought all over Paris, on Place de la Concorde, outside the National Assembly, around the Arc de Triomphe, inside the Hotel Majestic that housed the Gestapo headquarters, on Place Saint Michel and Place de la République. Several dozen were killed, including José Baron, who had supervised the regrouping of the guerrillas earlier that year.

The 9th company carried on with the 2nd armoured division towards Germany. It took part in the liberation of Strasbourg, where Lieutenant- Colonel Putz, a former International Brigade volunteer, fell fighting alongside Spanish Republicans. The company ended the war at Berchtesgaden, Hitler's residence in the Bavarian Alps. Sadly only a few Spaniards survived to scale the dictator's mountain retreat.

In 1941 thousands of Spanish volunteers had set out from Chad determined to help overthrow the Nazi regime, which had supported the fascist forces that had conquered Spain. They had a single objective: to carry the fight against fascism back into Spain, but this time with the support of the Allies. Their hopes were betrayed and Franco stayed in power until 1975. France, for which they laid down their lives, forgot them.


Denis Fernandez Recatala is a journalist and writer, author of Matière
(Le Temps des Cerises, Paris, 2002)

NOTES

(1) See Hervé Mauran, Un Maquis de républicains espagnols en Cévennes, Lacour, Nimes, 1995.

(2) See Eduardo Pons Prades, Los Republicanos españoles en la segunda guerra mundial, La Esfera de los libros, Madrid, 2003; and Memoria del olvido. La Contribucion de los Republicanos españoles a la Resistencia y a la Libération de Francia, 1939-1945, FACEEF, Paris, 1996.

(3) General Bigeard made his name in Vietnam and in Algeria, where he was accused of torturing National Liberation Front militants.

(4) The non-aggression pact of 23 August 1939 between Germany and the Soviet Union drove a wedge between the communists and the rest of the left in Britain and France.

(5) London's activism made him a target for Nazi repression (he was deported to Buchenwald), then persecution under Stalin. He narrowly escaped a death sentence during the 1952 show trials in Prague, alongside Rudolf Slansky and other former members of the government.

(6) An FTP-MOI group led by the Armenian activist, Missak Manouchian, was executed on 16 February 1944 with 21 comrades. Louis Aragon dedicated a poem to them, L'Affiche rouge. The title refers to the bill Nazi authorities posted all over occupied France denouncing attacks by an army of criminals.

(7) A working-class district north of Paris. See also Natacha Lillo, La petite Espagne de la Plaine-Saint-Denis, 1900-1980, Autrement, Paris, 2004.

(8) The national anthem of the Spanish Republic, proclaimed on 14 April 1931.

(9) Russian name for the Communist International, founded in 1919, disbanded in 1943.

(10) Philippe Leclerc (1902-1947) was military governor of Cameroon. He assembled a column of Free French forces which set out from Chad to join British forces under General Montgomery at Tripoli in January 1943. He took part in the Normandy landings with the 2nd
armoured division and entered Paris on 24 August 1944.

(11) Carnets de Route, two volumes, Editions France-Empire, Paris, 1984 and 1985.

(12) The battle of Guadalajara was the only major Republican victory during the civil war. Italian units fought on both sides, the Garibaldi battalion on the Republican side and regular army units and fascist militia on the other. A popular song, Guadalajara no es Abisinia, celebrated the event, contrasting it to Italy's invasion of Abyssinia in 1935-36.

(13) Les FTP, Julliard, Paris, 1966.


by Denis Fernández Recatalà
translated by Harry Foster
from the original text (in French): Histoire d\'un oublie. Ces Espagnols qui ont libéré Paris
German translation: Die Befreirung vom Paris im August 1944. Ein Panzer namens Don Quichote.

[Carnyx]

Red plague and freedom? It's an oxymoron. They were not even in their country and are still not. Terrorists, murderers, overall trouble makers; that's what they were. Nothing to be proud of, really.

Ah, le Monde Diplomatique. OK... A fair view on history. How France was liberated by leftwing aliens.

France, for which they laid down their lives, forgot them.

One knows the song : as always France uses foreigners then forget and betray them. Bloody Republican rhetoric.

[Menydh]

I know what you will probably think, that I searched for that article. Not really. I came across it while searching for something altogether different.

Agreed that they were Communists, and a number of them later joined the maquis guerrillas who delivered crimes and terror in Franco's Spain. They will often tell how villagers helped him, as if in solidarity. Far from the truth. I've heard enough first hand stories in villages, and villagers would sometimes give them food for fear to them, and other times the maquis would take it and kill the people.

However, I often wonder how French Nationalists feel about the "liberation". From a political point of view I suppose that they must be against. But from a national point of view.. would they be happy with the country being divided into two, perhaps more than two? The truth is that the Spanish Communists were the fiercest fighters against the Germans in France. The political connotations are a completely different matter.

[Carnyx]

Originally Posted by Mynydd

I know what you will probably think, that I searched for that article. Not really. I came across it while searching for something altogether different.

I was wondering why you posted an article from that specific newspaper (a self declared "jewish tribune"), that's true. It's clearer now that you've explained it.

Agreed that they were Communists, and a number of them later joined the maquis guerrillas who delivered crimes and terror in Franco's Spain. They will often tell how villagers helped him, as if in solidarity. Far from the truth. I've heard enough first hand stories in villages, and villagers would sometimes give them food for fear to them, and other times the maquis would take it and kill the people.

Certainly. It's even said Maquisards were implied in some war crimes. Hard to tell... Delicate topic.

I won't speak in the name of the French Nationalism nor for Nationalists here.

However, I often wonder how French Nationalists feel about the "liberation".

From a political point of view I suppose that they must be against.

Of course, many are staunch Vichy supporters (in late, though...), others are more criticals but still sympathizers. Very few buy the Allies liberation thing, mainstream food for idiots (more of a patriotic tendance). The rest don't give a damn and have other preoccupations (the present time).

For my part, I just feel that France was a shamefull defeated nation with a governement of pusillanimous puppets at the order of Berlin. A softy governement that never took the decision to fully rally the Axis camp.

However, I've more sympathy for Vichy than for de Gaulle and the Allieds, that's for sure.

But from a national point of view.. would they be happy with the country being divided into two, perhaps more than two?

Two or three? You mean the Reserved Zone attached to the Reich? The Burgundy that Degrelle spoke about? As well as a free Brittany and Occitania I assume. In a word : your dream.

No, they would not. But I would tell them what I just said before : France was a shamefull defeated nation, a loser, not in position to revendicate anything. Germans may have made what it pleased to them. I would not be here today, but it could not be worst than the current situation, it would be better. No doubt.

The truth is that the Spanish Communists were the fiercest fighters against the Germans in France.

And what about French themselves? P*ssy fighters? Today, the only allowed revisionism consists in dismissing the authentic French blood spilt for France (in both camps). The few men who gave their life for the "Free" France were fooled but they deserve some respect; but no, what we have in our mouths and hearths today are only senegalese, moroccans and Foreigners. All the celebrations now turn around foreigners soldiers, our only heroes who fit to be seen...

I'd tend to say that the Nationalist Maquis had a predominant position in the beginning of the resistance. They took more importance at the end of war and after it, in history books writen by themselves. Anyways, they [Nationalists] were the first to act and go underground. Not all pre-war Nationalist turned "Vichysts", some even fled to London.

The very first acts of Resistance were the fact of French Traditionalist Nationalists. Some young French students, members of the Action Française, distributed some pro-French tracts in 1940, in Paris under the German occupation. It was not the Bolsheviks, the allies of NS at that time who were neutrals till Barbarossa. So much for the leftwing resistance... Leftwing resistance being the only organised network for the French resistance is a complete myth, a Republican myth.

The French Resistance is much discussed topic, not always clear. Who were the resistants? And overall when? Become a resistant in 43-44, I don't call that resistance...

The only who genuinely fought for France were the French Nationalists. Communists fought for Moskow.

The political connotations are a completely different matter.

Indeed. France just "won" the war by procuration. I'm really ashamed of what happened. Nothing to be proud of.

[Menydh]

Originally Posted by Duchemin

I was wondering why you posted an article from that specific newspaper (a self declared "jewish tribune"), that's true. It's clearer now that you've explained it.

I had no idea about what that paper is.

Of course, many are staunch Vichy supporters (in late, though...), others are more criticals but still sympathizers. Very few buy the Allies liberation thing, mainstream food for idiots (more of a patriotic tendance). The rest don't give a damn and have other preoccupations (the present time).

For my part, I just feel that France was a shamefull defeated nation with a governement of pusillanimous puppets at the order of Berlin. A softy governement that never took the decision to fully rally the Axis camp.

For a change I'll play the devil's (France ) advocate. It is not as if Petain, like Franco, fit in the National Socialist-Fascist axis. What he (Petain) did should be examined carefully before jumping to any conclusion.

Two or three? You mean the Reserved Zone attached to the Reich? The Burgundy that Degrelle spoke about? As well as a free Brittany and Occitania I assume. In a word : your dream.

Favourite Poem

And what about French themselves? P*ssy fighters?

Sorry. That should have read "were among the fiercest".

The few men who gave their life for the "Free" France were fooled but they deserve some respect;

Well, there. So you will understand that despite them being bloody Communists, they were brave and I can have a feeling of ethnic pride for that. Anything else, I do not defend nor condone.

[Carnyx]

Originally Posted by Duchemin

They took more importance at the end of war and after it, in history books writen by themselves.

They took... read Communists took...

Originally Posted by Mynydd

I had no idea about what that paper is.

I'd have known it was not so popular abroad.

Originally Posted by Mynydd

Well, there. So you will understand that despite them being bloody Communists, they were brave and I can have a feeling of ethnic pride for that. Anything else, I do not defend nor condone.

OK, I understand. I was rather speaking about the Resistance tendance Nationalist. But the deads deserve respect, anywhow.

Originally Posted by Mynydd

For a change I'll play the devil's (France ) advocate. It is not as if Petain, like Franco, fit in the National Socialist-Fascist axis.

That's the problem.

Originally Posted by Mynydd

Favourite Poem

To each life, there's a beginning and an end. So dream little boy.