Blood in the Snow, Blood on the Grass (41 page)

Standing with Pétain, his devious prime minister Pierre Laval pursued a policy of collaboration.

Signed on 23 August 1939 in Moscow, the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact made the French Communist Party pro-German before and after the invasion.

Unarmed German occupation troops relaxing. When Hitler invaded the USSR in June 1941, Stalin ordered French communists to assassinate these soft targets, causing reprisals costing thousands of French lives.

The Maquis: young Frenchmen hiding in the forests and mountains after Laval introduced compulsory conscription for labour service in German factories.

General Charles de Gaulle, commanding the Free French forces, fighting on the Allied side.

De Gaulle’s military representative in France, General Charles Delestraint was caught and shot at Dachau.

De Gaulle’s political representative in occupied France, Jean Moulin, was betrayed to the Gestapo.

Fort Montluc, the prison in Lyon where Resistance prisoners including Moulin were interrogated under torture.

Klaus Barbie, who tortured Moulin to death.

Maquisards
in the mountains. In the winter, finding food was their main problem.

The murderous paramilitary troops of the Vichy Milice.

Milice commander Joseph Darnand was a decorated war hero who ordered his men to eliminate the Maquis.

Elite Bavarian mountain warfare troops, brought in to do the job when the Milice failed.