Underground media in German-occupied France
[8] Initially underground newspapers represented a wide range of political opinions but, by 1944, had generally converged in support of Gaullist Free French in the United Kingdom.
[9] The four major clandestine newspapers during the German occupation were Défense de la France, Résistance, Combat and Libération.
Le Médecin Français advised doctors to immediately approve known collaborators for Service du travail obligatoire while medically disqualifying everyone else.
The Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) began a project in 2012 to digitise surviving French underground newspapers.
However, two processes were useful for clandestine production: the "roneo" Gestetner and the spirit duplicator, which was small in size and therefore easy to transport and hide.
Other means were also used to distribute newspapers, allowing the anonymity of the distributors to be maintained: slipping the issues into letterboxes, under doors, or in a pocket, or dropping them on a bench or table.
In spite of strong repression and censorship nearly 1200 titles totaling over ten million copies of underground newspapers were printed between 1940 and 1944.
The radio was able to reach the entirety of the French population, while the press had the mission of fighting directly on the home front until it was able to spread more and more to the territory as a whole.
"We will take part in the crushing of Germany, even at the risk of our own lives," [c] wrote the August 1941 issue of Les Petites Ailes.
[fr][17] The clandestine press worked to counter the ideas of the Vichy regime and Nazis by taking up the key themes of the official propaganda.
By 1943, the watchwords of the counterpropaganda struggle taken up by all of the underground press, were opposing the Service du travail obligatoire, the Nazi-imposed obligatory work program, and calling for demonstrations, strikes and sabotage of French-made goods destined for Germany.
[clarification needed] In the south, during the merger of the National Liberation Movement (1940-41) [fr] (MLN) with the Liberty [fr] Resistance group, Vérités became Combat, a new newspaper common to all three zones; its title was adopted by the MLN group, thenceforth known as Combat,[18] whose first issue came out in December 1941[19] under the influence of Bertie Albrecht and Henri Frenay.
[23] Jean-Paul Sartre, André Malraux, Paul Gordeaux [fr] and Emmanuel Mounier also contributed, and later Raymond Aron and Pierre Herbart.
Benefiting from the support of industrialists and printers, the young Resistance fighters managed to produce an increasingly professional newspaper which ended up having the highest circulation of any underground paper as of January 1944.
The first issues were printed on a Rotaprint offset press hidden in the cellar of the Sorbonne, to which Hélène Viannay held the key as a volunteer fire fighter, with the following sentence from Blaise Pascal: "I only believe stories whose witnesses would have their throats cut".
Despite setbacks dealt by the German and French police, Défense de la France managed to print both its newspaper and those of other movements until the Liberation.
Distributed by the networks Combat and Témoignage chrétien in Grenoble, Clermont-Ferrand, Lyon and Bretagne, Défense de la France became the underground paper with the highest circulation, with 450,000 copies per day as of January 1944.
[25] In March 1944, after multiple moves, the newspaper was housed in a three-story industrial building on rue Jean-Dolent, behind La Santé Prison in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, with "Big Margot", a six-ton "double-jesus" machine,[26] a linotype, a paper cutter, and a supply of paper, gasoline, food, water and two tons of coal for the foundry.
Under the aegis of Jean Moulin, the movement merged with Libération-sud and Combat to create the new Mouvements Unis de la Résistance (MUR).
Founded in 1941 by a group of men from various backgrounds, it is a movement of personalities with the same political sensitivity, opposition to the armistice and, from the outset, to the Marshal Pétain himself.
[30] They and a few others got together at the end of November 1940 and founded a movement they called "France-Liberté" whose mission was to fight against government propaganda and to mobilize against defeat and the authoritarian order which was taking hold.
The group began by writing leaflets against the Nazis and Pétain, which were limited to small numbers of hand-typed copies due to lack of funds.
[30] The group had its first wave of success with the arrival of Jean-Pierre Lévy, an Alsatian refugee who brought a ronéo in the spring of 1941 and launched the idea of expanding its influence by publishing a real newspaper.
The title "Franc-Tireur" is an allusion to the groups of volunteers who formed outside the normal military framework to defend their country and the Republic in the Franco-Prussian War.
Many of its journalists and manufacturing staff perished in the struggle against the Nazi occupier, such as Gabriel Péri (responsible for an international column, shot on 15 December 1941 at the Fort Mont-Valérien, and Lucien Sampaix.
In autumn 1942, Jules Meurillon was named in charge of the propaganda and distribution service of the organization and successfully increased the annual circulation of Libération to over 200,000 copies by August 1944.
[41] On 16 November 1941 in Lyon, Jesuit priest Father Pierre Chaillet secretly published the first Cahier du Témoignage chrétien ("Christian Testimony Notes").
Two hundred twenty-three issues were published throughout the occupation, focusing on daily life: cost of living, food shortages, supply problems, low salaries, and so on.
[citation needed] Others include Arc [fr], which published 20 issues of two- to three hundred copies, the first eight of which were under the name Libre France.
In issue number one, on 13 August, they ran an editorial about their goals:[44] This little open flyer shouldn't be called "Hope", but rather, "Liaison agent".
