An history spanning more than eleven centuries

Among France’s historical heritages, that of the French Resistance bears the weight of the most painful moments of the country’s 20th-century history.

The French Resistance to Nazism and the Vichy regime was impregnated with the values of the French Revolution and the republican ideals contained in the Declaration of Human and Citizen’s Rights. General de Gaulle, Jean Moulin and Lucie Aubrac appealed to these ideas, each in their own way, to establish the spirit of resistance to the occupier.

Many texts, documents and speeches against collaboration with the enemy drew their inspiration from the Marseillaise, the victory of the Revolutionary armies at Valmy. The political programme of the French Resistance drafted by the various representatives of underground movements to establish a fairer society makes frequent reference to it. It had immediate effects on the form of government set up in France after the Liberation (social security, State intervention in the economy, independent foreign policy). The ideas of the French Resistance, patriotic, social and seeking a State above partisan interests long inspired the “French social model” and much of the Gaullist movement, years after the presidency of de Gaulle, who had taken the lead among the first resisters in London in the summer of 1940 and had adopted the principles of the Republic.

Source: France 2008, La Documentation Française