Eighty Years Ago this Week de Gaulle Rebrands the French Resistance

 

 

Churchill enlivened what had been a soporific campaign in the Brighton by-election by describing the platform of the anti-government candidate as a "swindle." His claim to be standing as the "National Independent" candidate in favour of the "National Government" rang entirely hollow, but he was a Brighton man and the brother of the mayor of Brighton which hinted at discontent with how the local Conservative machine was operating. Coming after  a series of government by-election losses, Churchill's intervention signaled arrogance and weakness, not statesmanship.

General de Gaulle unilaterally baptized all resistance groups in France as "Forces Francaises de l'Interieur." This asserted his supposed authority over them and implied that they were part of his own military arm; resistance fighters were duly embodied in the regular French army after the Liberation. In the case of the Communist "Franc Tireurs Partisans" this authority was wholly imaginary. After the invasion it was convenient to paint FFI onto vehicles seized from collaborators or simply looted.

Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden denounced widespread Japanese maltreatment of prisoners of war, held in near starvation conditions with little access to medical care who were suffering appalling death rates. This was no secret but the government had entertained faint hopes of securing some improvement through pressure from neutrals which it did not want to compromise by open complaint. The hope  was vain and Eden described the Japanese attitude to interventions made by the Swiss government as cynical.