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Parti Communiste français - 1939-1945 - Underground

After the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact in July, 1939, the Communist Party was banned by the French government. At that point, when France went to war, along with Great Britain in September 1939; Thorez deserted from the French Army and announced that this was a bourgeois, capitalistic war that the people should have no part of. Thorez now went to live in the Soviet Union and left Jacques Duclos, to become leader of the underground party in France.

The Communist Party in France before World War II had cells of 15 to 20 and even 30 members. After the party was declared illegal in September 1939, until the armistice in June 1940, call size was reduced to three men in order to maintain a high degree of security. Later, to increase the party's effectiveness and size, eight-man cells were set up, but between October and December of 1940 the size was reduced to five men. During the German occupation, the party returned to three-man cells in order to insure maximum, security.

The Communist Party of France laid down certain rules and habits that members were expected to acquire and some habits that they were expected to rid themselves of. They were instructed that legal activities provide excellent cover for underground work. Members were warned against disclosing their identity to strangers and to beware of such shortcomings as vanity and curiosity. They were warned about complete secrecy to outsiders, and even coworkers and subordinates were only to know what they needed to know to perform their tasks. Members were to refrain from asking unnecessary and indiscreet questions of anyone within the organization. Anyone who violated this rule was to be regarded with suspicion. No meeting was to be held in which more than three members were present. No meeting was to last more than 60 minutes and the participants were expected to arrive precisely on time. Places which were likely to be under suspicion-homes of members, for example-were to be avoided in favor of such places as theater lobbies, spots in the country, or the seashore. No group was to meet at the same place twice. The plans for the meetings were never to be discussed in the mails or in the presence of third parties.

The telephone was to be used only in case of emergencies. Every member who attended the meeting was to be sure that he was not followed. A member must never reveal his address, even to other members of the group. They were warned that printing and duplicating materials were not to be stored at an address known to more than two members of the group. Lists of individuals or locations were forbidden, unless in code. Members were to avoid routinized behavior, but told not to surround themselves with an atmosphere of mystery. The individual was warned that all these precautions were not easy to adopt; it would be a matter of gradually developing them over a period of time into a set of reflexes.

In January, 1940, a law which was passed almost unanimously, imposed forfeiture of their seats on Communist Deputies and Senators who had not repudiated their affiliation with CP or the Third International. About sixteen recanted. Some went into hiding. Others were put under police observation or were in the army. Thirty-five were sent before military courts and, after conviction and sentence to five years imprisonment, were shipped to African camps. In contrast, the majority of all other prewar parliamentary figures were under a cloud because of their continued participation in government. In Vichy, at the time of the fateful vote for Petain's full powers, only eighty of all the 649 senators and deputies who had participated had voted against Petain.

Needless to say, on 22 June 1941, when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, Thorez changed his tune immediately. But there's no doubt that once the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, the French Communists became the most militant elements in the Resistance. They were willing to do anything to kill a handful of Germans, even if it meant the destruction of whole French villages and everything else. They went all out, which made them attractive in some ways to people around them who planned operations against the Germans. But the French, the bourgeois middle class French, were basically suspicious of the Communists, and with good reason. But it would be hard to deny that among the forces fighting in the Resistance, the Communists were the most all-out and militant - of late date, of course, after the invasion of Russia.

In the newly formed provisional government in 1944, Communist ministers served as a spearhead for Communist Party disagreements with government policy. Thorez, the Communist Party leader, was then able to emerge as the arbiter between DeGaulle and the ministers, thereby heighteninghis own image in the eyes of both De Gaulle and the Communist Party.

For some time during the Occupation and during the first stages of the post-liberation period, it looked as if the old political parties would altogether give way to the new Resistance formations. The latter had emerged from the era of liberation as powerful factors. Through their official representative, the National Council of Resistance, as well as through their numerous national associations and departmental committees, they played a considerable political role in the latter half of 1944 and the first half of 1945. Moreover, the temporary withdrawal of political parties in favor of the Resistance formations was in line with the tactics of the Communist Party, which planned that the Resistance forces with their vague programs of reform should be the device by which the other political parties received their coup de grace. In December, 1944, the National Assembly of departmental liberation committees, which at that time was a powerful force in the regional administration and in the regional purge committees, approved single Resistance slates for the regional elections of April, 1945, thus marking a definite victory for the strategy of the Communist-sponsored National Front Resistance movement.