Réseau Alliance

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Memorial plaque in the crematorium of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp for 107 members of the Alliance who were executed there

The Réseau Alliance (literally, "the alliance network," even L'Alliance , according to the designation by the defense and Noah's Ark ) was a group of French Resistance , in cooperation with the British Secret Intelligence Service in occupied France espionage operation. The founders and leading members of the alliance came from ultra-nationalist circles around the Cagoule group and were initially closer to the Vichy regime under Pétain than the FFL under de Gaulle . In 1944 the alliance became part of the Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'Action and thus the FFL. Between 1940 and 1944 up to 3,000 people belonged to the alliance, of which around 1,000 were arrested by the Gestapo and other German agencies. More than 400 members were executed by the Germans.

history

The network was founded after the defeat of France in November 1940 under the name "Croisade" (crusade) in the unoccupied Vichy zone in southern France. The alliance consisted of members of the upper and middle classes of the French military and business who cultivated nationalist and ultra-conservative views. The founder and first leader of the alliance was the officer George Loustaunau-Lacau (1894–1955). After his arrest, the network was led by Marie-Madeleine Fourcade , who was nicknamed "Hérisson" (hedgehog).

The organization had up to 3000 members, more than a quarter women. Main activities were the exploration of secret armaments factories in Germany as well as the transmission of messages about troop movements of the Wehrmacht, about trips of supply ships and submarines to the allies. Members of the Réseau Alliance produced false papers for the politically persecuted or Jews to help them escape or go into illegality, helped those at risk across borders and supported families of those who were persecuted or imprisoned.

12 members of the organization were executed on April 1, 1944 in Karlsruhe. Because of their membership in the Réseau Alliance, they were arrested in Marseille , Béziers and the Toulouse area at the beginning of 1943 and transferred to the Fresnes Wehrmacht prison near Paris. From there, they were brought before a military court in Freiburg on December 17, 1943 and sentenced to death. On the night of September 1 and 2, 1944, on the orders of Helmut Schlierbach, 106 members of the Alliance and 33 members of the "Groupe mobile Alsace-Vosges" were executed in the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp . Their bodies were burned in the concentration camp's crematorium. The more than sixty members of the Réseau Alliance, who were held in seven different prisons in Baden, were murdered by the Gestapo in November 1944 during the so-called Black Forest Blood Week .

Memorial plaque in Kehl for the nine resistance fighters shot there

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Konrad Pflug: Réseau Alliance at the Europabrücke / Pont de l'Europe ( Memento from March 21, 2014 in the web archive archive.today ) on the website of the State Center for Civic Education Baden-Württemberg (accessed in January 2014)
  2. ↑ a b Brigitte and Gerhard Brändle: NS series of murders in the German south-west began in Karlsruhe. In: Blick in die Geschichte No. 100. September 20, 2013, accessed on March 14, 2016 (Karlsruhe: Stadtgeschichte.).
  3. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento from March 14, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Manuel Maris: Les arrivées des membres du réseau Alliance (mars-septembre 1944) (I.198.). Retrieved February 27, 2020 (French).