Executions, Torture, Recriminations

Categories: Maquis



We live in a little village called Cherves Chatelars. It has a cafe, a bakery and a hairdressing salon. There is a Salle de Fetes, a church, a school, a Marie, a square for playing boules. It is in the Charente Limousine, middle of nowhere, on one side of a green valley. It is pastoral and quiet.

But during the Second World War France was divided into 2 parts: German-occupied France and Vichy France. The occupied portion was the North half of the country and the Atlantic coast. The frontier split the Charente in half and Cherves found itself in Vichy France only 12 kilometres (8 miles) from the border.

It was an ideal base for resistance fighters (maquis) to strike tagets on the German side and then retire and hide in the woods and farms. In the summer of 1943 Andre Chabanne formed the Maquis "Bir Hacheim".

Resistance was a bloody nasty business with people being denounced to the Germans, tortured, executed or deported.

After the Normandy landings, with the Germans in retreat across France the reprisals began. People were accused of collaboration and punished. This was a vicious few months which France would rather forget.

There is some evidence that up to 50 people were executed by the maquis Bir Hacheim between July and August 1944 and over the next few days I'll post some of this history, with links and photos

Bear in mind that in war, the first casualty is Truth. Revisionist historians are keen to dig up this sort of thing because by showing that Allied countries executed people they can add weight to their denial of the Holocaust. Personally I don't see how showing that the French behaved poorly in the war puts the Nazis in a good light.