If French made a mass resistance after the fall of their nation in WWII

Griffith

Banned
Inspired from the thread about Imperial Japan and Hearts and Minds

https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...n-it-attempted-pre-sino-war-into-wwii.398082/

Read my follow up responses to comments in my thread to get an idea of what I will talk about here.

As I stated, initially the Japanese weren't brutal to the Chinese when they were running their captured colonies in China and Mongolia in the 1920s and 30s.

However when it became apparent that the Chinese were too nationalistic and proud to abandon their culture and idea of a the "nation of China" and as Chinese began to up their efforts in insurgency and later declared full out war on Japan in 1937, the Japanese gradually became more brutal. Once they suffered heavy casualties as they conquered Shanghai, Beiping, and especially Nanking in the early eyars of the second Sino War, the Japanese decided to go out on an all-out extermination ROI on the Chinese comparable to Nazi genocide in Eastern Europe and Russia a few years later.

So I wonder, what if after the French government surrenders but the French people refuse to be subjugated, how does this affect German interaction?

Scenarios:

1)Immediately after surrender in 1940, French civilians start getting their rifles and forming a militia to stop German soldiers from entering into France. In addition the entire French military continues fighting. To the point French civilians even quickly put on uniforms and ride taxis to quickly attempt to block the German military advance a la Miracle of Marne.

2)Same scenario as 1) but instead of awaiting for surrender, French men quickly mobilize and ride taxis as soon as news spread German soldiers got past Ardennes and are defeating the French army

3)Mass Guerrilla much like the Chinese against Japan OTL.
 
With a harder occupation of France Germany will have fewer men to the Eastern and African fronts. Even if Germany decides to mobilize older age groups for the occupation of France and sends as many men to those fronts as in OTL, the occupiers of France will still have to be supplied and armed, and their absence in Germany will cause a drop in productivity. A long-term consequence will be greater French hostility towards Germany.
 
i think its a bit different for France to start a "big guerrilla war" like in China. China was never fully conquered and was huge, really huge. The population outnumbered the Japanese by a very high amount.. In France, the Germans had the country pretty much fully occupied and the rest was under the Vichy regime. Where are they gonna go to fight these guerrilla tactics? Where are they going to gather for their supplies and attacks? They have no room to conduct a "mass guerrilla war". Next to that they won't have enough manpower to do more than the impressive resistance France actually had.
 
The question should be 'What if France was 1/4th of Sein'? :cool:






For explanation, after hearing De gaulle 18 June Call, ALL of the adult men of the island of Sein (all 128 of them) set sail for England, to join the Free French. When De Gaulle went through the first Free French troops in August, he asked everyone where they were coming from. After finishing the review, De Gaulle asked 'Is Sein 1/4th of France? '

So what if 25% of adult Frenchmen tried to join England or the Resistance in 1940 (as opposed as in late 44)?
 

Archibald

Banned
...are you serious ?!

... It would be a big bloodbath. Lots of Maillé, Oradour and Tulle everywhere. The nazis would burn towns and villages, and hang survivors until corpse rote.

Look at what happened in Tulle on June 10, 1944 and Vercors. Then multiply it twelve fold.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulle_massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oradour-sur-Glane_massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillé_massacre

Not enough heavy weapons to try anything against Panzers. Alpes and Pyrénnées are on the frontiers with Spain and Italy. The Massif Central mountains are old, it wouldn't be possible to sustain a guerrilla by hidding there. Everything else is flat lands.
 
This could be done by having Petain dead of old age in 1939, or better yet, have him be in England with De Gaulle by the time the country falls. Petain, as the victor of Verdun, was a very respected and well-known figure, much more than the recently-promoted General de Gaulle, and he largely contributed to the legitimacy of Vichy. I can't think of any good alternative that the Germans could use as a puppet. Having him support the resistance is likely to boost the resistance tenfold. In particular many (far)right-wing figures such as La Rocque and Maurras supported Petain and Vichy for the sake of ideology and national unity but opposed collaboration with Germany, and it's not unlikely that they would fully endorse the resistance if Petain also does.

In that case any surrender announced is likely to be brushed off by certain commanders. They're hopeless in 1940, but this means a much longer campaign to mop up the resistance. The colonies are likely to fall in the Resistance too, perhaps even Corsica, which means Italy is defeated swiftly in North Africa and a complete occupation of mainland France. OTL while the resistance played a part, it and the German repression were joke compared to what the Balkans or occupied USSR parts could have experienced. There with an much emboldened resistance comes harsher repression, and more likely than not an even more organized and determined movement. Expect medium scale insurgency in the remote parts of the massif central and alps. Assuming Hitler still goes after the USSR, the extra drain on German resources may well mean an end of the conflict by 1944.

Then, depending on how successful the Soviets are in that scenario, we may get a Petainist France through the cold war...
 
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