16-344 Garand Picture of the Day

[Mark in Rochester]

French Forces of the Interior (French: Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur) march captured German soldiers, who had been some of the last holdouts in the liberation of Paris, through the city streets. Paris, Île-de-France, France. 25 August 1944.

Information

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[browningautorifle]

What's the man on the right carrying across his back? VZ 33?

[frankderrico]

Jim, that's what I wondered too. Man on left has a M1A1 (maybe part of a dropped before the invasion). They also look like they have on G.I. web gear.
That does not look like a friendly bunch.

Best Regards.....Frank

[browningautorifle]

These guys would have been armed after the capitulation of the Vichy in...Algeria? US gear and supply lines...They'd have started fighting from outside in. We outfitted the Free French...

[Paul S.]

Notice that all the prisoners are in their stocking feet - no boots. Notice also that the prisoner in the front looks to have been 'done over' (bashed). I suspect none of the prisoners survived to see sunrise the next day. I would not be surprised if the next stop involved a wall, no blindfold and shots fired.

[browningautorifle]

I suspect none of the prisoners survived to see sunrise the next day.

That would be my guess too.

[Mark in Rochester]

That would be my guess too.

I remember reading that the French killed as many Frenchmen as the Nazis did


Immediately following the liberation, France was swept by a wave of executions, public humiliations, assaults and detentions of suspected collaborators, known as the épuration sauvage (savage purge).This period succeeded the German occupational administration but preceded the authority of the French Provisional Government, and consequently lacked any form of institutional justice.[205] Approximately 9,000 were executed, mostly without trial as summary executions, notably including members and leaders of the pro-Nazi milices. In one case, as many as 77 milices members were summarily executed at once.An inquest into the issue of summary executions launched by Jules Moch, the Minister of the Interior, came to the conclusion that there were 9,673 summary executions. A second inquest in 1952 separated out 8,867 executions of suspected collaborators and 1,955 summary executions for which the motive of killing was not known, giving a total of 10,822 executions. Head-shaving as a form of humiliation and shaming was a common feature of the purges,and between 10,000 and 30,000 women accused of having collaborated with the Germans or having had relationships with German soldiers or officers were subjected to the practice, becoming known as les tondues (the shorn).





Women accused of collaboration with their heads shaved.
The official épuration légale ("legal purge") began following a June 1944 decree that established a three-tier system of judicial courts: a High Court of Justice which dealt with Vichy ministers and officials; Courts of Justice for other serious cases of alleged collaboration; and regular Civic Courts for lesser cases of alleged collaboration.Over 700 collaborators were executed following proper legal trials. This initial phase of the purge trials ended with a series of amnesty laws passed between 1951 & 1953 which reduced the number of imprisoned collaborators from 40,000 to 62, and was followed by a period of official "repression" that lasted between 1954 & 1971

[browningautorifle]

Immediately following the liberation, France was swept by a wave of executions

And this I was aware of, hardly a secret. I think lots of personal reprisals for done-me-wrongs were also settled at that time.

[Flying10uk]

There were many "scores to settle" amongst the French people after the defeat of German forces in France during WW2. An acquaintance of mine was telling me last year that her family moved to the U.K. shortly after the end of WW2 and although she was born in England much of her family is French. She then went onto tell me that some of her relatives had helped the Resistance, if I remember correctly, mainly passing messages and in logistical/supporting roles. Eventually the unfortunate happened, her relatives were "grassed up" by other French people to the Germans and they spent the rest of the war in Concentration Camps. I did ask if they survived the Concentration Camps and fortunately they did. This is one example of thousands and thousands of similar cases that there must have been during the occupation, of Frenchman "shopping" Frenchman to the Germans; come the liberation there was bound to be reprisals.


I believe that there were some who defined the practice of female inhabitants of countries that had been occupied by Germany that chose to sleep with it's troops as "horizontal collaboration".