Comité d'action socialiste
The Comité d'action socialiste (CAS) ( Socialist Action Committee ) was a movement of the French Resistance , which was founded in 1940 by Daniel Mayer on the instructions of Léon Blum to form the Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière (SFIO), the German- French section the Workers International , to revive and to organize a socialist resistance against the German occupation of France.
The CAS disbanded in March 1943 when the underground SFIO was founded.
The founding of the CAS (1940–1941)
resistance
As a result of the French collapse, Léon Blum held discussions with leaders of the SFIO throughout the summer of 1940 and until his arrest on September 15, and urged them to resist. Blum wanted to revive political activity in France. He told Daniel Mayer and his wife Cletta, who informed him of her intention to go to London:
"Vous serez la-bas deux bouches de plus à nourrir et sans compétences militaires. Ici, il y aura du travail à faire. il faut poursuivre la guerre, reconstruire le Parti, l'orienter dans la lutte contre l'occupant et contre Vichy. Vous serez plus utiles ici. »
“There you will only be two mouths left to be fed and without military skills. But there is work to be done here. The war must be continued, the party rebuilt, it must be waged in the fight against the occupier and against Vichy. You are much more useful here. "
First signs of socialist resistance
The first groups formed during the autumn of 1940.
In the occupied zone
Jean Texcier wrote and circulated his "Conseils à l'occupé" ( Advice to the Occupied ) - an underground magazine - from September 1940. From this gradually the Liberation Nord developed and structured itself into a resistance movement of the non-communist trade union CGT, the CFTC and the underground SFIO around Christian Pineau and the group des Manifeste des douze ( Manifesto of the Twelve ), under the hegemony of the socialists.
Jean-Baptiste Lebas , former SFIO MP and mayor of Roubaix and deposed by the Vichy regime , founded one of the first Resistance groups, L'homme libre ( The Free Man ), with an underground magazine of the same at the end of the summer of 1940 Called. L'homme libre brought together around 300 resistance fighters.
In January 1941, the distribution of L'homme libre was extended to Lille and Douai . Also in January Lebas founded a Comité d'action socialiste (CAS) to bring together the socialist resistance fighters. This committee then integrated itself into the CAS of the occupied zone, which in turn integrated into the much larger CAS (founded in September 1940) of the entire north zone.
In the free zone
CAS Süd is founded on March 30, 1941 in Nîmes . Founding members are Daniel Mayer , his wife Cletta, Félix Gouin , Edouard Froment, Lucien Hussel, Pierre Lambert, Suzanne Buisson and two other SFIO activists without voting rights and without an administrative function.
Foundation of the SFIO underground (1943)
In March 1943 the CAS was transformed into SFIO in the underground (SFIO clandestine). Le Populaire wrote on the occasion:
Le Comité d'action socialiste a vécu. Le Parti socialiste continue sa tâche. [...] Pour affirmer la continuité de notre doctrine, le Parti socialiste reprend son drapeau intact. Nouvelles méthodes, nouveau mode d'action, nouvelle tonalité de sa propagande, ancienne doctrine sortie confirmée et même rajeunie des événements, tel apparaît le Parti socialiste.
“ The Comité d'action socialiste has ceased to exist. The Socialist Party continues its task. [...] New methods, new ways of acting, a new tone in its propaganda, confirming the previous doctrine, albeit rejuvenated by events, this is how the Socialist Party appears. "
Two months later, on the occasion of a secret meeting in Paris on June 17th and 18th, 1943 , the CAS of the North Zone integrated into the underground SFIO.
At the beginning of 1944 the underground SFIO had 50,000 members. Because of the difficulties of underground activities, this is less than the total number of socialist-minded resistance fighters in the Resistance.
bibliography
- Pierre Guidoni, Robert Verdier (ed.): Les Socialistes en Résistance. 1940-1944. Combats and Debats. Éditions Séli Arslan, Paris 1999, ISBN 2-84276-031-X .
- Daniel Mayer : Les Socialistes dans la Résistance. Souvenirs and documents. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1968.
- Martine Pradoux : Daniel Mayer. Un socialist in the Resistance. Les Éditions de l'Atelier et al., Paris 2002, ISBN 2-7082-3630-X .
- Marc Sadoun : Les Socialistes sous l'Occupation. Resistance et collaboration. Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, Paris 1982, ISBN 2-7246-0460-1 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Jean-Pierre Azéma : De Munich à la Liberation. 1938–1944 (= Nouvelle Histoire de la France Contemporaine. 14 = Points. Histoire. 114). Edition revue et mise à jour. Éditions du Seuil, Paris 1979, ISBN 2-02-005215-6 , p. 120.
- ^ D. Mayer: Les Socialistes dans la Résistance. 1968, p. 12.