thumb|Members of the Maquis in [[Hardinghen#Places of interest|La Tresorerie]]

The Maquis () were rural guerrilla bands of French and Belgian Resistance fighters, called maquisards, during World War II. Initially, they were composed of young, mostly working-class men who had escaped into the mountains and forests to resist conscription into Vichy France's (STO; 'Compulsory Work Service') which provided slave labor for Germany. To avoid capture and deportation to Germany, they became increasingly organized into active resistance groups.

They had an estimated to members in autumn of 1943 and approximately members in June 1944.

Meaning

The maquis made up one component of the mosaic of the resistance in France and Belgium. The maquis refers to the organization of bands of resistance guerrillas which emerged in rural France, mainly in the south. The maquis were emergent in 1943 and were also active in 1944.

Originally the word came from the kind of terrain in which the armed resistance groups hid, high ground in southeastern France covered with scrub growth called maquis (scrubland).

The term maquis signified both the group of fighters and their rural location. Members of those bands were called maquisards. Their image was that of a committed and voluntary fighter, a , as opposed to the previous (; 'unmanageable'). The term became an honorific meaning "armed resistance fighter". The Maquis came to symbolize the French Resistance and was used to describe resistance groups that fought in France before the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944. Once the Allies had secured a foothold in France, the government of Free France attempted to unite the separate groups of Maquis under the banner of the French Forces of the Interior (FFI).

The national denomination given to all Maquis forces during the war is , known as the "FFI"; in English, the French Forces of the Interior. This large corp of about 400,000 active members (in 1944) is divided in three major sections, corresponding to three political or professional inclinations:

  • The Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (FTP), a para-military body created and controlled by the , the French Communist Party.
  • The (the AS; ), mostly led by French army officers and with a right-wing tilt.
  • The (the ORA; 'Resistance organisation of the army'), formally created in January 1943 as a more "official" and apolitical body for the continuation of armed struggle by ex-French military personnel in the Zone libre (southern half of metropolitan France).

All three groups were deemed "terrorists" by the Vichy regime of the French State and by German authorities and other neighbouring fascist regimes. Other (rare) local groups did not affiliate with these organisations.

Operations

thumb|Maquisards (Resistance fighters) in the [[Hautes-Alpes département in August 1944. Third and fourth from the right are two SOE officers. Second from right is probably Christine Granville.]]

Most maquisards operated in the remote or mountainous areas of Brittany and southern France, especially in the Alps and in Limousin. They relied on guerrilla tactics to harass the (the Vichy militia) and German occupation troops. The Maquis also aided the escape of downed Allied airmen, Jews and others pursued by the Vichy and German authorities. Maquisards usually relied on some degree of sympathy or cooperation from the local populace. Most of the Maquis cells—like the Maquis du Limousin or the Maquis du Vercors—took names after the area they were operating in. The size of these cells varied from tens to thousands of men and women.

In March 1944, with the Allies gaining ascendancy, Maquis groups intensified their operations. In reaction to their weakening power, the occupiers and Vichy collaborationists began a terror campaign throughout France, enacted by German military units and the . This included reprisals by SS troops against civilians living in areas where the French resistance was active, such as the Oradour-sur-Glane, the Maillé and the Tulle massacres. The Maquisards exacted their revenge, both at the time with reactive atrocities and later in the (: 'savage' or 'wild' intended to indicate it was undertaken before the rule of law was reestablished) that took place after the war's end.

In French Indochina, the local resistance fighting the Japanese since 1941 was backed up by a special forces airborne commando unit created by de Gaulle in 1943, and known as the Corps Léger d'Intervention (CLI). They were supplied by airlifts of the British Force 136.

Politics

Politically, the Maquis included right-wing nationalists, liberals, socialists, communists, and anarchists. Some Maquis bands that operated in southwest France were composed entirely of left-wing Spanish veterans of the Spanish Civil War. Spanish Civil War veteran Carlos Romero Giménez was a centrist republican operating from Bordeaux.

According to Matthew Cobb, the Communist Maquis groups adopted more active and immediate guerrilla tactics to combat the Nazis, while the groups affiliated with De Gaulle were asked to wait for a larger attack later in the war. Thus, some maquis joined Communist groups simply to be part of a more active resistance movement and not because of their politics. Georges Guingouin was one of the most active Communist Maquis leaders.

The British Special Operations Executive (SOE) helped the Maquis who were affiliated with the Free French with supplies and agents, help which was not extended to the Communist Maquis groups. The American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) also began to send its own agents to France in cooperation with the SOE and the French BCRA agents, as part of Operation Jedburgh.

The Maquis had many different sub groups with their own objectives and political affiliations. In 1944, an OSS agent, Robert R. Kehoe, was embedded within a group of Maquis and described the organization as "fractured", observing that "the various components were quite independent, with members loyal to their own leaders and to the political forces behind them". People like Georges Loustaunau-Lacau and Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, leaders of the French Resistance group Alliance, were both questioned about their loyalty during and after the war. This came as no surprise as both were from far-right political backgrounds, that didn’t favor the dominant Gaullist narrative. Lacau suffered the most, all the way up to his death by being put in jail several times, and accused by communist colleagues of siding with the Germans, while Fourcade was able to suffer fewer accusations by switching to Gaullism.

Examples of the independence of separate Maquis groups can be found all throughout France during the Second World War. For example, Maquis groups in Brittany often did not speak French and were focused on the expulsion of German forces from their region and not from France as a whole. The SOE parachuted agents in with wireless sets (for radio communication) and dropped containers with various munitions including Sten guns, pencil detonators, plastic explosives, Welrod pistols (a silenced specialized assassination weapon favored by covert operatives) and assorted small arms such as pistols, rifles and sub-machine guns. The Maquis would listen to coded broadcasts by the BBC the night before each supply drop. The information they would receive included the amount of supply boxes that would be dropped and when to light the fire signals that mark the drop zones. The Maquis had to confirm through radio if they received the message in order to lessen the risk of the supplies getting into German hands.

The Maquis also used German weapons captured throughout the occupation; the Mauser 98k rifle and MP 40 submachine gun were very common. The Milice, which was well equipped by Vichy France, was also a target of Maquis actions wherever available.

Customs

The Maquis were clandestine groups which did not wear uniforms, so as to blend in the population. However, over time many started wearing the Basque beret because it was common enough not to arouse suspicion, but distinctive enough to be effective.

thumb|Members of the Maquis resistance group. Notice the berets they are wearing.

In leadership and the more technical aspects of leading a resistance group women were often more involved in the Maquis than men, helping the front line fighters. It was very common for young educated women to be used as couriers from one Maquis group to another. Young women were chosen because they were more inconspicuous than men and could often pass through German checkpoints without being stopped or questioned.