Combat (French Resistance)
Combat was a large movement in the French Resistance created in the non-occupied zone of France during the World War II (1939–1945).
Combat, also known under its former name National Liberation Movement [fr] (MLN),[1] was active both in the unoccupied zone in southern France and in the occupied north.
Little by little, the MLN (subsequently renamed the Mouvement de Libération Française), merged with other smaller networks in the regions where it took root.
Messages were encrypted, rendezvous locations were specified by letters and generally were moved to outside Lyon, which became by degrees the capital of the French resistance.
In January, the idea of amalgamating the three big resistance movements of the south (Combat, Libération and Franc-tireurs) gradually gained ground, culminating between February and March in Mouvements Unis de la Résistance (MUR).
Combat's structure was unchanged by its affiliation to the MUR; it retained a steering committee, and branches for political and military affairs among others.
The network was split into four branches: Initially Combat was mainly financed through gifts coming from all over France, solicited by Frenay from high-ranking members of society.
Moulin tried to separate the different activities of the network, particularly the information and the Choc (shock, heavy military operations), following directions given to him in London.
These journals, particularly the important ones, contained propaganda articles against the Vichy regime, which revealed and criticised the actions of the government and state apparatus, as well as substantive pieces dealing with e.g. Nazism or collaboration.
He distributed the printing across 14 presses in the free zone, thus reducing the need for transporting papers from Lyon, and allowing the run to be increased.
However, the NAP gradually changed direction and allowing itself necessary cooperation with public services and the ability to obtain basic information about German army movements.
Another branch, the NAP-fer led by René Hardy, provided the Groupes Francs with schedules of German supply trains from 1943.
From 1942 onwards the GC gradually merged into the Armée secrète which was assimilating by degrees the various paramilitary groups of Combat, Libération and Franc-Tireur.
This merging was encouraged by Frenay and Moulin, who wanted the operations of the GC remained separate from any intelligence and propaganda activities.
For this reason, the leadership of the Armée Secrète was not conferred upon Frenay as he had initially wanted (his movement being more significant than the other two members of the MUR) but rather upon the division general Charles Delestraint, who was recruited by the chef de Combat.
Frenay put Jacques Renouvin in charge of mounting Groupes Francs, mobile armed squads, in each of the six regions covered by the network.
They were ordered to attack trains containing German soldiers or going to Germany, to sabotage railway lines, to destroy arms factories and dumps and to assassinate Gestapo agents.
The GF were supplied and armed by Britain through parachute dumps which provided them with Sten guns, pistols, ammunition, explosives, grenades and other equipment.
In 1943 the steering committee of Combat learned that refugees from the Service du travail obligatoire forced labour had fled to Haute-Savoie and the Maquis had been created in the mountainous massifs.
[4] The Montpellier leaders of Combat, Courtin and Teitgen, were involved in organising the Comité Général d'Etudes,[5] which acted as an underground Conseil d'État.
[7] The MRP became the main party of the right, linked with the international social Catholic movement and opposed in its pursuit of European integration to the influence of both the Soviet Union and the United States.
[8] It pursued hardline colonial policies in Vietnam and Algeria on the basis of French national interests, and refused to invite international military assistance.
