Milice

 

Early Milice volunteers included members of France's pre-war far-right parties, such as the Action Française, and working-class men convinced of the benefits of the Vichy government's politics. In addition to ideology, incentives for joining the Milice included employment, regular pay and rations, the latter of which became particularly important as the war continued and civilian rations dwindled to near-starvation levels. Some joined because members of their families had been killed or injured in Allied bombing raids or had been threatened, extorted or attacked by French Resistance groups. Still others joined for more mundane reasons: petty criminals were recruited by being told their sentences would be commuted if they joined the organization, and Milice volunteers were exempt from transportation to Germany as forced labour.^[6] Official figures are difficult to obtain, but several historians including Julian T. Jackson estimate that the Milice's membership reached 25,000–30,000 by 1944. The majority of members were not full-time militiamen, but devoted only a few hours per week to their Milice activities.^[7] The Milice had a section for full-time members, the Franc-Garde, who were permanently mobilized and lived in barracks.^[7]

The Milice also had youth sections for boys and girls, called the Avant-Garde.^[7]

 

The chosen emblem for the Milice carried the Greek letter γ (gamma), the symbol of the Aries astrological sign in the Zodiac, ostensibly representing rejuvenation, and replenishment of energy. The color scheme chosen was silver in blue background within a red circle for ordinary miliciens, white in black background for the arm-carrying militants, and white in red background for the active combatants.

Their march was Le Chant des Cohortes.^[8]

 

Milice troops (known as miliciens) wore a blue uniform jacket and trousers, a brown shirt and a wide blue beret. (During active paramilitary-style operations, an Adrian helmet was used, which commonly featured the emblem, either painted on or as a badge) Its newspaper was Combats (not to be confused with the underground Resistance newspaper, Combat). The Milice's armed forces were officially known as the Franc-Garde. Contemporary photographs show the Milice armed with a variety of weapons captured from Allied forces.

Insignia	Rank	Translation
No insignia	Sécretaire général (Joseph Darnand)	Secretary general
No insignia	Sécretaire général adjoint (Francis Bout de l'An [fr])	Assistant secretary general
	Délégué général de la milice en Zone nord (Max Knipping [fr])	General delegate in the Northern Zone
	Chef régional	Regional commander
	Chef régional adjoint	Assistant regional commander
	Chef départemental	Department commander
	Chef départemental adjoint	Assistant department commander
	Chef de centre	Commander of a center (regiment)
	Chef de centre adjoint	Assistant commander of a center
	Chef de cohorte	Battalion commander
	Chef de cohorte adjoint	Assistant battalion commander
	Chef de centaine	Company commander
	Chef de centaine adjoint	Assistant company commander
	Chef de trentaine	Platoon leader
	Chef de trentaine adjoint	Assistant platoon leader
	Chef de groupe (cohorte)	Section leader (battalion)
	Chef de groupe (centaine)	Section leader (company)
	Chef de dizaine	Squad leader
	Chef de dizaine adjoint	Assistant squad leader
	Chef de main	Team leader
	Chef de main adjoint	Assistant team leader
	Franc-garde	Free guard
Sources:[10][11]

The Resistance targeted individual miliciens for assassination, often in public areas such as cafés and streets. On 24 April 1943 they shot and killed Paul de Gassovski, a milicien in Marseille. By late November, Combat reported that 25 miliciens had been killed and 27 wounded in Resistance attacks.

The most prominent person killed by the Resistance was Philippe Henriot, the Vichy regime's Minister of Information and Propaganda, who was known as "the French Goebbels". He was killed in his apartment in the Ministry of Information on the rue Solferino in the predawn hours of 28 June 1944 by résistants dressed as miliciens. His wife, who was in the same room, was spared. The Milice retaliated for this by killing several well-known anti-Nazi politicians and intellectuals (such as Victor Basch) and prewar conservative leader Georges Mandel.

The Milice initially operated in the former Zone libre of France under the control of the Vichy regime. In January 1944, the radicalized Milice moved into what had been the zone occupée of France (including Paris). They established their headquarters in the old Communist Party headquarters at 44 rue Le Peletier and at 61 rue Monceau. (The house was formerly owned by the Menier family, makers of France's best-known chocolates.) The Lycée Louis-Le-Grand was occupied as a barracks, and an officer candidate school was established in the Auteuil synagogue.

Perhaps the largest and best-known operation undertaken by the Milice was the Battle of Glières, its attempt in March 1944 to suppress the Resistance in the département of Haute-Savoie (in southeastern France, near the Swiss border).^[12] The Milice could not overcome the Resistance, and called in German troops to complete the operation. On Bastille Day, 14 July 1944, the Franc-Garde suppressed a revolt started by prisoners at Paris prison La Santé, killing 34 prisoners.^[13]

The legal standing of the Milice was never clarified by the Vichy government; it operated parallel to (but separate from) the Groupe mobile de réserve and other Vichy French police forces. The Milice operated outside civilian law, and its actions were not subject to judicial review or control.^{[citation needed]}

In August 1944, as the tide of war was shifting and fearing he would be held accountable for the operations of the Milice, Marshal Philippe Pétain sought to distance himself from the organization by writing a harsh letter rebuking Darnand for the organization's "excesses."^{[citation needed]} Darnand's response suggested that Pétain ought to have voiced his objections sooner.^{[citation needed]}

After the Allied Liberation of France, French collaborators began fleeing the Allied advance in the west.^[14] During a period of unofficial reprisals immediately following on the German retreat, large numbers of miliciens were executed, either individually or in groups.^{[citation needed]} Milice offices throughout France were ransacked, with agents often being brutally beaten and then thrown from office windows or into rivers before being taken to prison.^{[citation needed]} At Le Grand-Bornand, French Forces of the Interior executed 76 captured members of the Milice on 24 August 1944.^[15]

Those Frenchmen who managed to escape to Germany and were serving in the German Navy, the National Socialist Motor Corps (NSKK), the Organisation Todt and the Milice security police became part of a new unit known as the Waffen Grenadier Brigade of the SS Charlemagne (Waffen-Grenadier-Brigade der SS Charlemagne).^[14] The unit also included some remaining personnel from the disbanded Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism (LVF) and the SS-Volunteer Sturmbrigade France (SS-Freiwilligen Sturmbrigade "Frankreich").^[14] Later in February 1945, the unit was renamed the Charlemagne Division of the Waffen-SS. At this time it had a strength of 7,340 men: 1,200 men from the LVF, 1,000 from the Sturmbrigade, 2,500 from the Milice, 2,000 from the NSKK, and 640 who were former Kriegsmarine and naval police.^[16] Some of its surviving members were among the last defenders of Hitler's bunker, fighting suicidally to the end in the ruins of Berlin.

An unknown number of miliciens managed to escape prison or execution, either by going underground or fleeing abroad. A few were later prosecuted. The most notable of these was Paul Touvier, the former commander of the Milice in Lyon. In 1994, he was convicted of ordering the retaliatory execution of seven Jews at Rillieux-la-Pape. He died in prison two years later.

• Since the war, the term milice has acquired a derogatory meaning in France.
• The French hard rock ensemble Trust had a hit named "Police Milice", where its frontman Bernard Bonvoisin compared modern-day police officers to the Milice.
• Louis Malle's films Lacombe, Lucien and Au revoir les enfants include the Milice as part of the plot.
• The 2003 drama The Statement, directed by Norman Jewison and starring Michael Caine, was adapted from the 1996 novel by the same name by Brian Moore. He shaped it from the story of Paul Touvier, a Vichy French Milice official who hid for years (often sheltered by the Catholic Church) and was indicted in 1991 for war crimes. Both he and the film character had supervised a mass murder of Jews.
• The film Female Agents (French: Les Femmes de l'ombre), set during World War II, has a scene where two of the female agents walk past a recruitment poster for the Milice which says "Against Communism / French Militia / Secretary-General Joseph Darnand".
• In the Doctor Who audio story Resistance, the Doctor and Polly have to evade the Milice in 1944.
• They feature prominently in the popular French TV series Un Village Français which covers the whole period of the occupation and liberation and was broadcast in France and extensively internationally.[1]
• They are enemies in Medal of Honor: Underground.
• The Catholic priest Father Fehily from the Ross O'Carroll-Kelly series of novels is revealed to have served in the Milice as a young man, in the novel Should Have Got Off at Sydney Parade (2007).^[17]

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to World War II France Milice.

Axis

• Lorenzen Group – Danish pro-German paramilitary group
• Security Battalions – Greek pro-German paramilitary group
• Carlingue – the French version of the Gestapo.
• Special Brigades – Paramilitary sections of the Vichy Police service.
• Geheime Feldpolizei – the secret military police of the Wehrmacht that worked alongside the Milice

Allies

• Maquis des Glières – resistance group
• Maquis du Vercors – resistance group

• Cullen, Stephen M., Stacey, Mark, (2018) World War II Vichy French Security Troops, Osprey Publishing. ISBN 978-1472827753
• "Cullen, Stephen (2010) "Collaborationists in Arms: The Uniforms and Equipment of the Vichy Milice Francaise". The Armourer Militaria Magazine (100): 24–28. July–August 2010.
• Cullen, Stephen (2008). Cohort of the Damned: Armed Collaboration in Wartime France – the Milice Francaise, 1943–45. Warwick: Allotment Hut Booklets.
• Cullen, Stephen (March 2008). "Legion of the Damned: The Milice Francaise, 1943–45". Military Illustrated.
• Pryce-Jones, David (1981). Paris in the Third Reich: A History of the German Occupation. London: Collins.
• "Resistance in France". After the Battle (105). 1999.