Milice
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The Milice française (French Militia), generally called simply Milice (French pronunciation: [milis]), was a paramilitary force created on January 30, 1943 by the Vichy Regime, with German aid, to help fight the French Resistance. The Milice's formal leader was Prime Minister Pierre Laval, though its chief of operations, and operating leader, was Secretary General Joseph Darnand. It participated in summary executions and assassinations, and helped round up Jews and résistants in France for deportation. It was the successor to Joseph Darnand's Service d'ordre légionnaire (SOL) militia.
The Milice frequently resorted to torture to extract information or confessions from those whom they rounded up. They were often considered more dangerous to the French Resistance than the Gestapo and SS because they were Frenchmen who spoke the language fluently, had a much more extensive knowledge of the towns and land, and knew people and informers.
Milice troops, known as miliciens, wore a blue uniform coat, a brown shirt and a wide blue beret. (During active paramilitary-style operations, a pre-war French Army helmet was used.) Its newspaper was Combats. (This is not to be confused with the underground Resistance newspaper, Combat.) It employed both full-timers and part-timers, as well as a youth wing. The Milice's armed forces were officially known as the Franc-Garde. Contemporary photographs show the Milice armed with a variety of weapons captured from Allied forces.
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[edit] Membership
Early volunteers for the Milice included members of France's pre-war far right-wing parties, such as the Action Française, but also working-class men by then convinced of the benefits of Vichy's alliance with Nazi Germany. In addition to ideology, incentives for joining the Milice included employment, regular pay and rations. (The latter became particularly important as the war went on and civilian rations dwindled steadily to almost starvation levels.) Some also joined because members of their families had been killed or injured in Allied bombing raids or had been threatened, extorted or attacked by French Resistance groups. Still others joined for more mundane reasons: petty criminals were recruited by being told their crimes would be forgiven if they joined the organization, and Milice volunteers were exempt from being transported to Germany as forced labor.
It is estimated by several historians, including Julian Jackson, that the Milice's membership reached 25,000-30,000 by 1944, although official figures are hard to obtain.
[edit] History
The Resistance targeted individual miliciens for assassination, often in open areas such as cafés and public streets. On April 24, 1943, they shot and killed Paul de Gassovski, a milicien in Marseilles. By late November, Combats reported that 25 miliciens had been killed and 27 wounded in Resistance attacks (the number of casualties was likely higher).
By far the most prominent person killed by the Resistance was Philippe Henriot, the Vichy regime's Minister of Information and Propaganda, who was known as "the French Goebbels." He was killed in his apartment in the Ministry of Information in the rue Solferino in the pre-dawn hours of June 28, 1944 by résistants dressed as miliciens. His wife, who was in the same room, was spared. The Milice retaliated for this killing by killing several well-known anti-Nazi politicians and intellectuals, such as Victor Basch, as well as the prewar conservative leader Georges Mandel.
The Milice initially operated in the former zone libre of France under the control of the Vichy regime (which moderated its actions and forbade some of its more radical aspirations). In January 1944, the radicalized Milice moved into what had been the zone occupée of France, including Paris. They established their headquarters in the old Communist Party headquarters at 44 rue Le Peletier as well as 61 rue Monceau. (The house was formerly owned by the Menier family, makers of France's best-known chocolates.) The Lycée Louis-Le-Grand was occupied as a barracks. An officer candidate school was established in the Auteuil synagogue.
Perhaps the largest and best-known operation by the Milice was the Battle of Glières, its attempt in March 1944 to suppress the Resistance in the département of Haute-Savoie in the southeast of France near the Swiss border.[1] The Milice could not overcome the Resistance and had to call in German troops to complete the operation. On Bastille Day (14 July) 1944, miliciens brutally put down a revolt among the prisoners at Paris' notorious Santé prison.
The legal standing of the Milice was never formalized by the Vichy government. It operated parallel to, but separately from, the normal (Vichy) French police force. It was outside the contemporary laws, and its actions were never subject to judicial review or control.
In August 1944 as the tide of war was shifting, fearing he would be called to account for the operations of the Milice, Marshal Philippe Pétain made a clumsy effort to distance himself from the organization by writing a harsh letter rebuking Darnand for the organization's "excesses". Darnand responded suggesting that Pétain ought to have voiced his objections sooner.
Historians have debated the strength of the organization, but it was likely between 25,000-35,000 (including part-time members and non-combatants) by the time of the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. The membership began melting away rapidly thereafter. Following the Liberation of France, members who failed to escape to Germany (where they were impressed into the Charlemagne Division of the Waffen-SS) or elsewhere abroad generally faced being imprisoned for treason, executed following summary courts-martial, or simply shot and killed by vengeful résistants and enraged civilians.
An unknown number of miliciens managed to escape prison or execution, either by going underground or fleeing abroad. A few were later prosecuted. The most notable of these was Paul Touvier, the former commander of the Milice in Lyons. In 1994, he was convicted of ordering the retaliatory execution of seven Jews at Rillieux-la-Pape. He died in prison two years later.
[edit] In popular culture
- Since the Second World War, the term milice has acquired a derogatory meaning in France.
- The French hard rock ensemble Trust had a hit named "Police Milice", where its frontman Bernard Bonvoisin compared modern-day "cops" to them.
- Louis Malle's films Lacombe Lucien and Au revoir, les enfants include the Milice as part of the events.
- The 2003 drama The Statement, directed by Norman Jewison and starring Michael Caine, was adapted from the 1996 novel by the same name by Brian Moore. He had shaped it from the story of Paul Touvier, a Vichy French Milice official, who hid out for years, often sheltered by the Catholic Church, and was indicted in 1991 for war crimes.
- In the film Female Agents (French: Les Femmes de l'ombre) set during WW2 there is a scene where two of the female agents walk past a recruitment poster for the Milice. The text says "Against Communism / French Militia / Secretary-General Joseph Darnand".
[edit] See also
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: World War II France Milice |
- Lorenzen Group - Danish pro-German paramilitary group
- Security Battalions - Greek pro-German paramilitary group
- Maquis des Glières - resistance group that fought the Milice
- Maquis du Vercors - resistance group that fought the Milice
[edit] References
- ^ "Battle of Glieres", World at War
[edit] Further reading
- "Collaborationists in Arms: The uniforms and equipment of the Vichy Milice Francaise", The Armourer Militaria Magazine, Issue 100, July/August 2010, pp. 24–28.
- Stephen Cullen, Cohort of the Damned: Armed Collaboration in Wartime France – the Milice Francaise, 1943–45. Allotment Hut Booklets, Warwick, 2008.
- Stephen Cullen, "Legion of the Damned: The Milice Francaise, 1943-45", Military Illustrated magazine, March 2008
- David Pryce-Jones, Paris in the Third Reich: A History of the German Occupation, London: Collins 1981.
- "Resistance in France", After the Battle magazine, No. 105, 1999.
