Forces French de l'intérieur

Flag of the FFI

A fighter of the FFI (1944)

The Forces françaises de l'intérieur ( FFI ; German: French Armed Forces inside ) were the institutional framework for the French resistance groups in World War II (the Resistance ) from 1944 .

history

After persistent preparatory work by Jacques Bingen , who stood in for him after Jean Moulin's arrest by the Gestapo in June 1943, on February 1, 1944 , all previously rival Resistance groups in occupied France were united under the umbrella of the FFI founded for this purpose:

the Gaullist Armée Secrète ,
the communist Francs-tireurs et partisans and
the giraudist organization de resistance de l'armée .

The FFI was commanded by General Marie-Pierre Kœnig from March 1944 and played a not insignificant role in the preparation of the Allied invasion ( Operation Overlord ) of June 1944 and in the liberation of France.

Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy commanded the local forces of the FFI during the liberation of Paris in 1944. The Gaullist General Jacques Chaban-Delmas also played an important role in the FFI .

The German Reich had announced after the ceasefire in 1940 with France, further fighting French as volunteers to treat and be shot. In November 1943, however, the FFL succeeded in being recognized by the German Reich as a negotiating partner, and the Red Cross, ICRC , largely assumed the role of protecting power against Germany. After the surrender of the German units in North Africa, the FFL held around 20,000 German soldiers prisoner and thus had a means of pressure to achieve this recognition. On June 9, 1944, they also declared the FFI to be combatants under Western Allied command. However, the German side did not recognize this status.

When it became known that French prisoners had been murdered in Lyon, the FFI shot and killed 80 Germans, mostly members of the Security Police and SD , as well as the 19 SS Police Regiment , as reprisals on August 28 and September 2, 1944 were involved in the brutal persecution of French resistance members. However, captured soldiers of the Wehrmacht were usually treated fairly and protected from the angry civilian population - not least because unnecessary cruelty would have increased the resistance of Wehrmacht soldiers who were prepared to give up.

The leadership of the FFL in Algiers supported these shootings. In September 1944 the government finally had to give in. She assured the FFI of combatant status. The first prisoner of war exchange took place on November 1, 1944. At the beginning of 1945 it even recognized the FFL as a "warring party" to the ICRC.

literature

Walther Flekl: Article Liberation (Liberation). In: Bernhard Schmidt u. a .: France Lexicon. Key terms for economy, society, politics, history, culture, press and education . 2nd edition Erich Schmidt, Berlin 2005, pp. 560-565 (lit.), ISBN 3-503-06184-3 .

Remarks

↑ Peter Lieb : Conventional war or Nazi ideological war? Warfare and the fight against partisans in France 1943/44 (sources and representations on contemporary history; vol. 69). Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 3-486-57992-4 , page 467f (also dissertation, University of Munich 2005).
^ Rüdiger Overmans : The prisoner-of-war policy of the German Empire . In: Jörg Echternkamp (ed.): The German Reich and the Second World War, Vol. 9: The German War Society 1939 to 1945, 2nd half-volume: Exploitation, Interpretations, Exclusion . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 978-3-421-06528-5 , pp. 769f. (on behalf of the MGFA )
^ International Committee of the Red Cross : Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross on its activities during the Second World War. No. 1-2 (1948), p. 522.

[1] Peter Lieb : Conventional war or Nazi ideological war? Warfare and the fight against partisans in France 1943/44 (sources and representations on contemporary history; vol. 69). Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 3-486-57992-4 , page 467f (also dissertation, University of Munich 2005).

[2] Rüdiger Overmans : The prisoner-of-war policy of the German Empire . In: Jörg Echternkamp (ed.): The German Reich and the Second World War, Vol. 9: The German War Society 1939 to 1945, 2nd half-volume: Exploitation, Interpretations, Exclusion . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 978-3-421-06528-5 , pp. 769f. (on behalf of the MGFA )

[3] International Committee of the Red Cross : Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross on its activities during the Second World War. No. 1-2 (1948), p. 522.