The Untold Story of French Soldiers in World War II: From Surrender to Resistance 🇫🇷

The Fall of France 🇩🇪

In the summer of 1940, the German war machine was unleashed on France. While German armies crashed into the Low Countries, additional Panzer divisions emerged from the forests of the Arden, bypassing France's meticulously planned defenses and outflanking the best of the French army. Within two weeks, the battle was effectively lost, and within six weeks, France waved the white flag. Today, it's often this act of surrender that defines the French wartime experience, but for the millions of French in uniform, it was only the beginning.

The Composition of the French Army 💂

At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, France's soldiers weren't always as one might imagine. Due to its horrific losses in the First World War, French soldiers were often older than other combatants; some were already in their late 40s. Additionally, French soldiers weren't always from Europe. Complementing the Frenchmen in the military were large numbers of colonial troops from North and West Africa. Despite mobilizing over 4.5 million soldiers, only 3.1 million were actually available for combat in Mainland France. Most of these soldiers were stationed on the country's northern border, with many garrisoning the Maginot Line, which fortified France's Frontier with Germany.

Life on the Maginot Line 🏰

Conditions on the Maginot Line were mixed. While many of the larger underground forts were well stocked and equipped, boredom and claustrophobia soon set in among the garrisons. However, any boredom that these soldiers may have felt was soon shattered by the thunder of panzers and the screams of Stukas.

The Battle of France: A Catastrophic Failure ⚔️

The Battle of France was a disaster for the French military. While the Allied forces in France fielded a similar number of troops to the Germans, and the most modern tanks in the French arsenal actually outclassed their German counterparts, allied strategy had failed to embrace the evolution of warfare since 1918. French soldiers had been trained for an infantry-based defensive war and were poorly prepared for the German onslaught. While many French soldiers fought bravely, effective military resistance soon collapsed. Defeated and scattered, many French soldiers could only wonder what would come next.

Life as Prisoners of War 🚶‍☠️

By the time the smoke cleared over the battlefields of France, up to 1.9 million French soldiers became prisoners of war. Some of these soldiers had been captured during the German offensive, but most were surrendered by the French state after its June 22nd armistice with Germany. These soldiers, many of whom had never fired a shot, were marched into German captivity under the command of their own officers and quickly funneled into hastily prepared holding camps across France.

Conditions in POW Camps 🏚️

The German military was paralyzed by this massive influx of POWs and were not prepared to process or care for their new captives. In addition to the lack of food and care, the strain of taking in close to 2 million POWs meant that these initial camps were very poorly guarded by the Germans. Hundreds of thousands of French soldiers took advantage of this fact to quietly slip away into the French countryside. Most, however, made no such escape attempts—a choice many would regret for the next five years.

The Separation of Soldiers 🎭

After an initial period of disorganization, captured soldiers were separated into groups based on status. Colonial POWs stayed in France, while native French soldiers were transported by train to Germany with their heads freshly shaven. These men were then assigned to non-war related work details in keeping with the Geneva Convention. These labor assignments typically involved farm work but also included a variety of other industries with substantially differing conditions. Some work was backbreaking, while some work was not, and death rates among French POWs were comparatively low.

Life in Captivity: Loneliness and Reflection 💔

Regardless of conditions, French POWs often experienced profound loneliness and sometimes shame. Half of the POWs were married, and 39% had children. Five years in captivity meant that many French soldiers never saw their children take their first steps. Five years of captivity meant that many French soldiers had abundant time to reflect on their military defeat. And five years of captivity meant that it would fall on other French soldiers to avenge them.

The Heroic Stand at Dunkirk and Beyond 🛡️

As German guns and bombs pummeled their positions, French soldiers on the beaches of Dunkirk fought desperately to allow their comrades to escape across the English Channel. Shortly after, a French officer by the name of Charles de Gaulle arrived in Britain, where he would make a spirited radio appearance announcing to the world that France would fight on and rallying his countrymen to join him in the UK. His plea was mostly met with silence. Of the French soldiers evacuated at Dunkirk, many had already been redeployed to France, where they would be surrendered to the Germans. While 130,000 French soldiers remained in Britain at the time of De Gaulle's address, less than 3,000 chose to continue the fight. The vast majority chose to drift back to France.

Free French Forces: The African Contribution 🌍

Making up for this shortfall, several colonies heeded De Gaulle’s call to arms and provided valuable military bases and soldiers. Until at least 1942, the vast majority of soldiers fighting for a free France would, in fact, be African. Free French military operations got off to a rocky start with a failed naval assault on the strategic port of Dakar. French soldiers were then sent to assist the British in their campaign in East Africa against the Italians.

Heroism in North Africa 🌟

Free French soldiers cemented their fighting reputation in 1942 with their heroism in North Africa. At this time, Allied forces in North Africa were facing an overwhelming assault by German and Italian forces under the command of Erwin Rommel. Manning a section of the rapidly collapsing defensive line in Libya were 3,700 Free French soldiers near Bir Hakeim. During several weeks of intense fighting, French forces were able to temporarily stall the German and Italian advance before leading a breakout from their own defensive positions. The heroism of the French soldiers was a massive morale boost for the disheartened Allied forces. From that point forward, the Free French would be known by another name: the Fighting French.

Vichy France and Collaboration with Germany 🤝

Despite these accolades, a key fact must not be overlooked: there were other French who were fighting. After France’s defeat in June 1940, the Germans allowed a French rump state to be formed in the south of the country under the leadership of World War I hero Marshal Philippe Pétain. To maintain its alleged independence, Vichy France was allowed to retain a small army of no more than 100,000 men. Some of these men, often drawn from the former French military, believed that they were forming the vanguard of the force that would retake France. However, this was not to be, as Vichy France's military was given explicit orders to not resist any German incursion into the country.

Milice Française: Suppressing Resistance 👮🏽‍♂️

When Germany finally occupied southern France in late 1942, French soldiers were once again ordered to lay down their arms. Amid this environment of collaboration and enforced compliance, the Milice Française was established in 1943 as a fervent pro-Vichy militia. They engaged in direct actions against the French Resistance and worked closely with German forces to enforce the policies of the Nazi occupiers.

French Volunteers on the Eastern Front ❄️

After Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, French far-right activists began to raise an expeditionary force to aid their fascist allies. While initially promising to raise 15,000 soldiers for Hitler’s anti-communist crusade, less than 3,000 were ready by the fall of 1941. Ironically, some of these men had fought the Germans barely a year prior. After an extremely brief training period, the so-called Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism set off for the Eastern Front. Here, the Legion was thrown into the rapidly deteriorating Battle for Moscow in the winter of 1941. Suffering through frostbite, artillery barrages, and constant Soviet attacks, the French suffered horrendous casualties and were soon withdrawn from frontline combat. They lasted less than a month.

The Fate of the Legion: Charlemagne Division 🔚

By 1944, the Legion was disbanded, and its troops were folded into the French Waffen-SS Charlemagne Division. They were thrust into combat on the German home front and were nearly annihilated facing a relentless Soviet offensive in Pomerania. Approximately 300 of the surviving troops were later redeployed to defend Berlin in the war's final days. Some of these men stood among the last to surrender.

Alsace-Lorraine: A Tragic Fate 😢

Most tragically of all was the fate of the 130,000 men from Alsace-Lorraine, a German-speaking region of France considered ethnically German by Hitler. French soldiers from Alsace-Lorraine were released from German captivity only to be drafted into the Wehrmacht and sent to the Eastern Front, where up to 40,000 would be killed. In order to escape this fate, some French soldiers began to make their way into the French interior, where a new force was rising.

The Rise of the French Resistance 🕵️‍♂️

On June 20, 1940, a French farmer cut the telephone wires to a German field headquarters. Two weeks later, he was arrested and shot, making him the first martyr of the French Resistance. He would be joined by many more. While relatively few French citizens participated in any organized resistance, many parts of French society resisted in more subtle ways. These small actions, or even just the appearance of resistance, could be punished brutally, which only served to spread the fire of rebellion across the country.

Military Officers and Disorganization Early On 📉

While a small number of French soldiers trickled to De Gaulle in the UK, others chose to stay in France to continue the fight closer to home. French military officers led some of the many resistance groups that took root in France early in the war. At first, armed resistance in France was sporadic and disorganized. Members of resistance movements tended to be dissident soldiers or foreign nationals who often vehemently disagreed on matters of strategy and politics.

Uniting the Resistance 🛠️

In 1943, two events would alter this situation. De Gaulle sent a representative, Jean Moulin, to France to unite the divided resistance groups. Against all odds, Moulin successfully united the resistance movement in France and brought it under the control of De Gaulle. However, shortly after this success, he was betrayed by a fellow resistance member and executed by the Germans.

The Impact of Forced Labor Conscription 💪

The newly united French Resistance received another windfall in 1943 when German-occupied Vichy France began to aggressively conscript young men to work in Germany. Many of these men, some of them former soldiers, fled to the resistance, swelling their ranks. With increased coordination and numbers, the French Resistance finally began to play a role in Allied planning for the liberation of France.

Operation Overlord: Aided by the Resistance 🪖

When Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of France, commenced on June 6, 1944, the Resistance assisted by disrupting supply lines, hampering communications, and ambushing German reinforcements. The Allied landings in Southern France, Operation Dragoon, were also aided by resistance activities. As the summer of 1944 came to an end, French Resistance fighters fought pitched battles in the scrublands of Southern France, liberating large parts of the country from the retreating Germans. It was here that the resistance also linked up with the Free French forces, who formed a large portion of Operation Dragoon's strength. French soldiers, reunited at last, marched onward to the liberation of their homeland.

The Varied Fates of French Soldiers 🎭

During the Second World War, French soldiers met a variety of fates. A large number would spend the war in German captivity, only being released as Allied armies swept through Hitler's empire. Of those who avoided capture in 1940, a few chose to join De Gaulle's forces in Britain, but most simply returned to France, viewing the war as lost. Many continued to serve the Vichy regime, while a far smaller number enlisted directly to fight for the Third Reich. Some chose the path of resistance, but many more simply blended back into civilian life. There is no single heroic or cowardly narrative that can be applied to these millions of lives. History, like war, is a messy business.

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