[6] Rather than limit armed action to Communists, it was decided to create a non-Communist organization, the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (FTP), under the Front national.

Another special issue in March 1942 urged people to form such groups to conduct guerrilla war and help the population defend itself against the "boches".

[7] On 3 April 1942 L'Humanité used the expression "Francs-Tireurs et Partisans" for the first time, and in following weeks reported acts of sabotage of war production and attacks against German soldiers and French collaborators.

[11] The FTP unified three Communist organizations, the Bataillons de la Jeunesse, the Organisation Spéciale and the Main-d'œuvre immigrée (MOI).

He wrote some of the manuals on tactics and armament, but his main role was to act as liaison between the FTP and the Gaullist resistance groups.

[12] The inter-regional and departmental military committees reported to the central organization in groups of three, a basic principle in the communist Resistance.

He also drew up guidelines for urban warfare in which FTP units could attack greatly superior German forces and be protected while they withdrew.

[5] Tillon called this a strategy of "drops of mercury", through which the group could use surprise and mobility to achieve transient superiority before disappearing.

[12] The FTP-MOI (Francs-tireurs et partisans – main-d'œuvre immigrée) was created in the spring of 1942 with four detachments made up of communists of "immigrant" origin.

[10] The FTP-MOI were aroused to violent reprisals against the Germans by the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup in July 1942 in which Jews in Paris and other parts of France were arrested, detained and then deported to be killed in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

[14] The FTP-MOI were the target of the notorious Affiche Rouge poster campaign, which emphasised the composition of the group's membership in an attempt to discredit the Resistance as not "French" enough.

During the Allied Normandy Campaign the FTP conducted delaying actions in the center and southwest of France against the German troops who had been recalled to the battle zone.

By the end of the day, about 50 Germans and 150 résistants had been killed and not wanting the Communists to have the credit for liberating Paris, the Gaullist Parodi sanctioned the uprising.

These included 19 year-old Madeleine Riffaud who on 23 August led the FTP operation that trapped a train carrying loot and munitions from the city in the Buttes-Chaumont tunnel and secured the surrender of the 80 German soldiers aboard.

[23] On the 25 August, after an advance unit of General Leclerc's 2nd Armored Division, "La Nueve" (160 men, most of whom were Spanish Republicans) had broken into the city and reached the Hotel de Ville,[24] von Choltitz capitulated.

The last FTP operation in the city (in which Riffaud also participated) was on the 26th, an attack on the barracks on Place de la République, whose garrison who refused to accept von Choltitz's order to surrender.

[3] In 2019, a surviving member of FTP, Edmond Réveil, revealed details of the June 1944 execution of up to 40 Nazi occupiers, taken during the Tulle uprising, along with a woman collaborator, at Le Vert, near Meymac.