The term Affiche Rouge also refers more broadly to the circumstances surrounding the poster's creation and distribution, the capture, trial and execution of these members of the Manouchian Group.

The group was part of a network of about 100 fighters, who committed nearly all acts of armed resistance in the Paris metropolitan region between March and November 1943.

22 of them were Poles, five Italians, three Hungarians, two Armenians, three Spaniards, 1 French man and a Romanian woman; eleven members were Jewish.

To discredit the Resistance, the authorities invited French celebrities (from the world of the cinema and other arts) to attend the trial and encourage the media to give it the widest coverage possible.

In the spring of 1944, the Vichy authorities launched a propaganda campaign, designed to discredit the Manouchian Group and defuse public anger over their execution.

It featured ten men of the group, with nationality, surnames, photos and descriptions of their crimes; the Germans distributed an estimated 15,000 copies of the poster.

—Affiche rougeAlthough the poster attempted to depict the group as "terrorists", the campaign seems to have had the effect of highlighting the feats of people whom the general public considered to be freedom fighters.

The sculptor Pascal Convert was commissioned to create the monument and Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin dedicated it on 20 September 2003.

A film documentary by Stéphane Courtois and Mosco Boucault, Des terroristes à la retraite, shot in 1983 and broadcast by Antenne 2 in 1985, included interviews of surviving FTP-MOI members and families of the victims.

Boucault accused the French Communist Party (PCF) of having deliberately sacrificed the fighters in the power struggle with the Gaullists for control over the National Council of Resistance (CNR).

The two newly created branches of the Renseignements généraux (RG) intelligence agency—the Brigades spéciales 1 and 2—had trailed the Résistance fighters for months.

In September 2009, the dramatic film L'Armée du crime opened in France, featuring the story of the Manouchian Group.

Directed by Robert Guédiguian, a Marseille-based filmmaker of German and Armenian parentage, it was adapted from a story by Serge Le Péron.