Maquis du Vercors

Battle of Vercors

The route over Col de Tourniol.
DateJune–July 1944
LocationVercors Plateau, France
Result German victory
Belligerents
Free France French Resistance  Germany
 Vichy France
Commanders and leaders
Free France François Huet Nazi Germany Karl Pflaum
Vichy France Jacques de Bernonville
Vichy France Raoul Dagostini
Strength
4,000 maquisards 20,000 German soldiers, 500 Milice Franc-Gardes
Casualties and losses
639 killed (+ 201 civilians killed) 350 killed
Free French military campaigns of World War II

The Maquis du Vercors was a rural French Forces of the Interior resistance ("maquis") group who fought the 1940–1944 German occupation of France in World War II. The Maquis du Vercors used the prominent scenic plateau known as the massif du Vercors (Vercors Plateau) as a refuge. Many members of the maquis, called "maquisards" died fighting in 1944 in the Vercors Plateau.

Events of 1944

Cemetery and memorial in Vassieux-en-Vercors, where German forces composed of Russians and Ukrainians, killed partisans and inhabitants

From 16 to 24 April 1944, the Milice (a Vichy government paramilitary militia) attacked the village of Vassieux, burning several farms and shooting or deporting some of the inhabitants. Nevertheless, the local population continued to support the Resistance movement.

On 5 June 1944, the Free French government in London called upon the Vercors people to take up arms and tie down the German army prior to the Allied invasion of Normandy as part of a wider series of resistance uprisings. In his BBC speech, de Gaulle pronounced the famous line "the chamois of the Alps leaps forth" (le chamois des Alpes bondit) which signalled the 4,000 maquisards to begin the uprising.

To overcome the centre of resistance around Vassieux-en-Vercors, Luftlandgeschwader 1 landed two companies of Russian/Ukrainian troops of Fallschirm-Battalion "Jungwirth" of the Brandenburg Lehr Battalion by DFS 230 and Gotha Go 242 gliders on July 23.[1]

The bloody suppression of the Vercors insurrection further inflamed the Maquis in the region but also served as a warning that they were not well enough armed or organized to directly confront the Wehrmacht until the arrival of the Allies. The Maquis returned to the more traditional style of petite guerre (little war), engaging in harassment and ambush of Wehrmacht units rather than large-scale tactical operations.[2]

Order of battle

According to the order of battle of the 8th of July 1944 from General Niehoff, Kommandant des Heeresgebietes Südfrankreich (military region of southern France), about operation Bettina against Maquis du Vercors,[3] it appears that the Germans deployed nearly 10.000 soldiers and policemen under General Karl Pflaum:

1. Almost all the 157. Reserve-Division of the Wehrmacht:[4]

2. Other units:

According to the daily reports of OB West on the 23rd and the 24th of July 1944, forwarded by the Militärbefehlshaber in Frankreich,[6] the following troops landed on Vassieux-en-Vercors the 21st and the 23rd of July 1944:

Peter Lieb[8] spécifies that the Kommandeur der Sipo-SD of Lyon (KDS), SS-Obersturmbannführer (SS Lieutenant Colonel) Werner Knab, was also airborne on Vassieux the 21st of July. Shot and wounded, he was evacuated in a Fieseler Fi 156 Storch on the 24th of July. He would have played an important part in the torture and the slaughter of the Maquisards of Vercors and the inhabitants of Vassieux.

Thomas et Ketley[5] wrote that the Fallschirm-Kampfgruppe « Schäfer » was detached from Kampfgeschwader 200 on the 8th of June 1944. It was made up of volunteers out of Fallschirmjäger-Bewährungstruppe (probationary troops) mustered at Tangerhütte and trained for three months at Dedelstorf in order to launch an attack from gliders. Günther Gellermann[9] says that the Fallschirm-Kampfgruppe « Schäfer » was under Luftflotte 3 command and not any more under Kampfgeschwader 200 command.

Republic of Vercors

This followed the declaration of freedom from the German occupation in some towns and villages on the plateau. On 3 July 1944 the Free Republic of Vercors was proclaimed, the first democratic territory in France since the beginning of the German occupation in 1940. The Free Republic had its own flag, i.e., the French Republic tricolour featuring the Cross of Lorraine and the "V" for Vercors and Victory (both used as a signature by General Charles de Gaulle's Free French Forces), and its coat of arms, the French Alpine Chamois. It was a short lived regime as it ceased to exist before the end of the month.[10]

Maquisards appealed to Free French agencies based in London and Algiers to supply them with more arms and heavier weaponry to counter the German action, but none were forthcoming. "We shall not forget the bitterness of having been abandoned alone and without support in time of battle," wired theFrench Forces of the Interior (FFI) commander to London.[11]

It has been suggested that political motives of General Charles de Gaulle among others were the reason behind this failure to support the Vercors uprising, although the logistical difficulties for the Allies in sending supplies when the war effort was concentrated on D-Day probably had more influence.

In fiction

The maquis du Vercors is depicted and veterans act in Pierre Schoendoerffer's Above the Clouds (Là-Haut) 2002 feature film, and in the third season of the British TV programme Wish Me Luck, which first aired in 1990. The battle and the maquisards of Vercors also prominently feature in Frank Yerby's 1974 novel The Voyage Unplanned.

Documentary film

In 1948, French director Jean-Paul Le Chanoi made Au Coeur de l'Orage (In the Heart of the Thunderstorm), a documentary about the French Resistance during the Second World War. The movie, composed of Allied clandestine film recordings and German newsreel, focuses on the Battle of the Vercors plateau during July 1944.

In 2011, the Belgian TV channels RTBF and VRT broadcast a documentary film by André Bossuroy addressing the memory of the victims of Nazism and of Stalinism ICH BIN, with the support from the Fondation Hippocrène and from the EACEA Agency of the European Commission (Programme Europe for citizens – An active European remembrance), RTBF, VRT. Four young Europeans meet with historians and witnesses of our past… They investigate the events of the Second World War in Germany (the student movement of the White Rose in Munich), in France (the Vel d’Hiv Roundup in Paris, the resistance in Vercors) and in Russia (Katyn Forest massacre).

See also

References

  1. ↑ Operation Dragoon 1944 by Stepehn J. Zaloga, page 28 ISBN 978 1 84603 367 4
  2. ↑ Operation Dragoon 1944 by Stepehn J. Zaloga, page 31 ISBN 978 1 84603 367 4
  3. ↑ Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv RW 35/47
  4. ↑ Georg Tessin, "Verbände und Truppen der deutschen Wehrmacht und Waffen-SS im Zweiten Weltkrieg 1939 - 1945"
  5. 1 2 3 Geoffrey J. Thomas and Barry Ketley, KG 200: The Luftwaffe’s Most Secret Unit, Hikoki Publications Ltd, Crowborough (East Sussex), 2003
  6. 1 2 NARA T78 Roll 313
  7. 1 2 Georg Schlaug, “Die deutschen Lastensegler-Verbände 1937-1945”, Motorbuch Verlag, 1985
  8. 1 2 3 Peter Lieb, Vercors 1944. Resistance in the French Alps, Osprey, Oxford, 2012
  9. ↑ Günther W. Gellermann, "Moskau ruft Heeresgruppe Mitte: Was nicht im Wehrmachtbericht stand - Die Einsätze des geheimen Kampfgeschwaders 200 im Zweiten Weltkrieg", Bernard & Graefe, Koblenz, 1988
  10. ↑ The Vercors in History through a few dates – Vercors Memorial website
  11. ↑ Richard Harris Smith (1972). OSS: The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency. University of California Press. p. 187. ISBN 978-0-520-02023-8.

Coordinates: 44°53′46″N 5°22′15″E / 44.8961°N 5.3708°E / 44.8961; 5.3708

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