All language subtitles for Elles Étaient En Guerre 1939-1945 (2015)

Louise Coste, died for France.

Marie-Louise Manderini,
died for France.

Agn�s Di Pietro,
died for France.

Jeanine Fabreguon,
died for France.

Alberte G�nin,
died for France.

Paulette Morisi,
died for France.

Marguerite Roux,

died for France.

Aline Sicard,
died for France.

Anne-Marie Loude,
died for France.

Women at War
1939 - 1945

Jeanne Avril, died for France.

Charlotte Aunique,
died for France.

Antoinette Degas,
died for France.

Andr�e Bolotel,
died for France.

Marinette Benabide,

died for France.

War is not
just for men.

And yet,
men always forget,

when the wars end,

the essential role
women play in conflicts.

After
the Second World War,

women in the resistance
asked for nothing.

They returned home,
trained in modesty

by centuries
of male morality.

Of the Resistance Medalists,
only 10% were women.

In 1945,

6 women received
the Order of Liberation

compared to 1,030 men.

The 1st French women
in the military

were thought to be English,

as the French couldn't imagine
women in uniform.

Soon,
in our collective imagination,

images of women shaved
for collaboration

would outweigh all others.

Ideal scapegoats
for a country

that was on the brink of destruction.

Kraut tarts

Women,
eternal victims of war,

always forgotten by history,

as if the pains

and heroism of women were
eclipsed by those of men.

Women were also at war,

and to tell their experience

is to look war in the face.

Women will narrate
this war

at its most painful

and bravest moments.

Moments in life of bravery,

long forgotten,

that will tell us
what WWII was like,

for all of Europe,

and for our country.

In 1939,

the 21.4 million women
in France

do not have the right to vote.

Despite their critical involvement
in World War I,

women remained, in France,

political and social minorities
their whole life.

Married women were under
their husbands' supervision,

and the Napoleonic Code
on family granted men alone

the right to have
a bank account.

Women had no rights
over their own body,

and any method of contraception
was illegal.

A 1920 law even punished those
who simply dared to learn

about birth control methods.

French women must vote!

More and more women

dared to fight
against these inequalities,

especially the greatest injustice:

the right to vote.

A major demand
of the 1930s.

The New Woman
French Women Want to Vote

Berthe Wild was an activist
fighting

for the rights of women
to progress.

Called "Berty,"
she was middle class,

born in a Protestant family.

In London,
with her husband,

a Dutch banker,

Berty Wild, now
Mrs. Berty Albrecht,

discovered activism
through English feminists.

When she returned to Paris,
separated from Mr. Albrecht,

Berty became a militant,

far from a man
who had forbidden

any political commitment.

Berty gradually overcame
the middle class rules

she was supposed
to abide by.

To ensure her independence,

which was unthinkable
for a woman of her rank,

Berty chose to work.

She becomes manager
of female staff in factories.

Berty published a magazine

defending the right to abortion
and birth control.

Bourgeoisie wouldn't forgive her.

Sexual Problems

In the fight
for women's rights

she had
surprising, loving support

from an officer
of the colonial infantry,

a conservative,

from
the Catholic bourgeoisie of Lyon:

Henri Frenay.

Frenay, her junior by 12 years,
was enthralled

by this woman who questioned
the world and life so freely.

"None
of what would happen

"would have been possible
without Berty," Frenay later said.

Lucie Bernard was 27.

From a modest family,

she succeeded brilliantly at school,
through work and sacrifice.

The historian,
member of the Communist Party,

was drawn to activism
and combat in the 30s,

as Hitler's rise gradually
progressed.

The annex of Austria in March 1938

and the annexation
of Sudetenland by Hitler

at the Munich conference,
in September,

convinced her
that war would soon arrive

and she had to prepare.

The woman who fought

in the Latin Quarter
against far right militants

met her match in Strasbourg.

Raymond Samuel, a civil engineer,

had also studied

at the Communist Party's
workers' university.

Lucie and Raymond,

whom France would one day know
by the name of Aubrac,

made a promise
to never be apart.

A promise swept aside
on September 1, 1939

when Hitler's Germany
attacked Poland

and triggered
a new world conflict.

When France,
Great Britain

and their Polish allies,
declared war on Germany,

Raymond was called up,

like the other 4.5 million men
immediately mobilized.

Lucie,
like all French women,

experienced the pain of separation.

A father, a brother, a husband.

Women's first painful moment,

heralding many others.

Intensive bombing of Poland
by Germany

was a foretaste
of the surge

of violence that would befall
the world's civilian populations,

first women and children.

A deadly lightning war
allowed Hitler to annihilate

the Polish Republic
in a few weeks.

In Paris, in early 1940,
a strange atmosphere reigned,

in a country at war,
not yet fighting.

A virtual war
with no visible enemy,

people believed
that the Maginot Line

was protecting them,
defending France's east border.

The French government,
in chaos, chose to start

by attacking those who
became enemies from within:

the Communists.

Joseph Stalin, the Russian leader,
had created disorder

by signing a non-aggression pact
with Germany

and occupying
part of Poland.

Young Mai Politzer was stunned
by the USSR's choice.

Why say black today

when you said white
a few days previously?

Mai had, some years before,
dazzled philosopher George Politzer,

whom she followed
in his political commitment.

Young Girls of France Union

Mai became an activist with

the Young Girls of France,

headed
by her friend Danielle Casanova.

Casanova

and her comrades,
pacifists and anti-fascists,

launched a newspaper:

Young Girls of France.

Danielle and Mai's newspaper
was banned,

as well as L'Humanit� and dozens
of Communist newspapers.

Repression
of the French Communist Party

was very severe,
in early 1940.

35 deputies were incarcerated
in the Sant� Prison.

2,778 communist officials
were removed from office.

3,400 activists were arrested.

Thousands of civil servants
were sanctioned.

Mai Politzer and Danielle Casanova
kept their heads.

The two women didn't yet know,

but a hellish time awaited them.

Paul Reynaud's regime,
saying "the country in danger,"

in spring 1940, took
radical, xenophobic measures.

Already,
Spanish Republican refugees

fleeing
Franco's advance

had been interned;

foreigners were considered
communists.

Therefore, dangerous.

After Spaniards and communists,

the government's
new undesirables

in the Republic
were Germans.

Especially the thousands of women
who'd fled Hitler's Germany,

seeking refuge in France.

In just a few days,

over 5,000 German women
from around Paris

were gathered
at the V�lodrome and were interned

hundreds of kilometers
from Paris,

in camps at Gurs
or Rieucros.

Only a few photos remain
of the German women

imprisoned
throughout the war,

as if someone wanted to erase
from our collective memory

traces of what happened
in those camps,

in catastrophic hygienic
conditions,

to 4,500 women and 350 children.

In 1940, Virginia Hall arrived

in a troubled and divided Paris.

Virginia,
a young 34-year-old American

was a brilliant secretary
at the US State Department,

who dreamt of becoming a diplomat.

But after
a hunting accident

and the amputation
of her left leg,

Virginia saw her career hopes
destroyed.

Disillusioned and with a taste
for an adventurous life,

Virginia quit, went to Paris,

and joined the war
against Germany.

Virginia wanted to help.

She knew the only military body
that would recruit women

was the army's health service.

This time, her handicap,
a prosthetic leg,

was not a barrier.

The French army made
Virginia Hall

an ambulance driver
and sent her

east to the forts
of the Maginot Line.

Arriving near Metz,

Virginia found idle soldiers,

weapons down, awaiting

a German attack
that wasn't forthcoming.

On May 10, 1940,

the German attack came:
far from the Maginot Line.

The "phony war" gave way to
the "lightning war":

the Blitzkrieg.

Panzer divisions rapidly invaded
northeast France

to the general staff's surprise.

The German onslaught
rushed past Sedan,

swept through Reims,
crushed Abbeville,

and in just weeks threatened Paris.

Virginia Hall, assigned
to the 9th artillery regiment,

saw the first weeks of fighting
near Metz.

Virginia constantly moved
the wounded to hospitals.

92,000 French soldiers were killed.

A violent situation,

brutal and deadly.

The military rout
mixed with the exodus of civilians

taking to the roads
to escape fighting.

In a few weeks,
25% of the country's population,

over 6 million French,
abandoned their homes.

Virginia Hall saw
the endless flood of refugees

trying to flee
in overcrowded carriages.

On top of these heaps,

were children,

stupefied.

90,000 children were lost
during the exodus.

History was repeating itself,

women and the elderly
who remembered

the suffering
of World War I,

called
"the war to end all wars"

were experiencing it once more.

10,000 civilians were killed
in the German offensive.

"I can't understand

"that people's lives are under
constant threat from others.

"I will never understand,

"and I find it terrible.

"Don't say
it's for the fatherland."

The girl who wrote these words,
at the start of the war,

was an 18-year-old German:

Sophie Scholl.

Sophie Scholl,
like her brother Hans,

was excited
by the values supported by Hitler

during his rise to power:

fatherland, fellowship, community.

Bread and work
for every German.

Hans and Sophie intensely felt
the mysterious power

of youths
marching in close ranks,

banners waving,

to the sound
of songs and drums.

They were enthusiastic
about the Hitlerjugend,

the Hitler Youth,

the youth organization proposed
by the F�hrer.

For the 1st time, an organization
allowed girls

to play sports or travel,

without
parents present,

to meet other youths,
and to shape a community.

For the 1st time, children
felt they were listened to,

taken seriously.

They were told they were
participating in a great cause.

For young Germans,
it was a revolution.

The 2 teens brushed aside
their father's warnings.

He compared Hitler
to a fairytale,

a Pied Piper of Hamelin,

charming children
with his flute

to lead them to their deaths.

All seemed perfect
for the Scholl children

except for
the Jewish question,

which kept coming to the fore.

The Nazi racial discourse
was disturbing for Sophie Scholl,

because it soon permeated
all government policy.

The "people's community"
proposed by Hitler

was first and foremost
an ethnic group

that had to be preserved
from racial degeneration.

The people were threatened,
Nazis said,

by inferior minorities.

Jews, accused
of everything, of being both

capitalists
and Bolsheviks,

but also Gypsies,

Blacks, Slavs.

Only the nation's mothers,
ethnic Germans,

must procreate and participate
in populating Germany.

In their eugenic, racial madness,

Nazis even imagined
ideal nurseries, the Lebensborn,

where Aryan women would
raise the world's future elites.

Propaganda films
multiplied

to make the people see

that radical measures
had to be taken

against the degeneration
of Germany.

To avoid interbreeding,

to protect against
hereditary and mental diseases,

to stop the spread
"of a weak, inferior population,"

as propaganda said,

a widespread sterilization plan
was launched.

The objective:

protect Germany from those
whose life was valueless.

400,000 people were sterilized,

including 200,000 women.

This prevention of
"valueless life" was transformed,

in the early war,

into "annihilation
of valueless life,"

meaning euthanasia,

which the German government
called Aktion T4.

From 1939,
200,000 elderly,

ill, or handicapped people,

psychiatric patients,
were put to death

because considered incurable.

Slowly, in the hearts
of Sophie and Hans Scholl,

the little spark of doubt
that had been kindled

became a flame of revolt
and indignation.

Sophie and Hans' opposition
to Nazi power was just beginning.

Shelter

On June 10,
Paris was heavily bombed.

Like all mothers,

Berty Albrecht worried
about her child

who she wanted to send to safety,
far from Paris.

At the Gare de Lyon,

it was pandemonium.

Lost children
called for their parents,

running every which way.

These buses and trains
were the last

to leave the capital.

Berty, her heart heavy,
watched the train leave.

Amid this chaos
a young ethnologist,

Germaine Tillion,
arrived in the capital.

Germaine was 33.
A brilliant student,

she had been to the
Aures several times,

where she studied
the Berber tribes for the CNRS.

On June 14
Paris was declared an "open city."

The government, which had fallen
at Tours, reached Bordeaux.

Germaine Tillion
set off

with her mother and grandmother.

On June 17, Tillion
and her exodus comrades

stopped along the way.

The radio aired
a speech by P�tain,

who had been
appointed Premier.

French men, I make France
the gift of my person

to ease her misfortune.

With a heavy heart,
I tell you today

we must cease combat.

Tonight I addressed myself
to the opponent

to ask him

if he is ready to seek with me,
as soldiers,

after the fight and with honor,
the means

to end hostilities.

For Germaine, the armistice request
was a staggering blow.

The shock was so great
she vomited along the road.

Genevi�ve de Gaulle
was also decimated

by the Premier's speech.

For Genevieve,
the Marshal's proposal

was unacceptable.

The girl, not yet 20, felt she'd
been burned with a hot iron.

That day, Genevieve did not know

that her uncle Charles de Gaulle,

a young general
with Paul Reynaud's government,

had left Bordeaux

when the government fell

and secretly entered
Great Britain.

A general with no army
launching from London,

like a bottle in the sea,

a call for resistance,

which almost no one heard,

but whose echo would soon
spread all over France.

Lucie had just received
a short note from Raymond,

sent by mail.

Raymond, like thousands of others,

was a German prisoner.

When he was captured,

he had time to drop
into the trench a note

folded in 4 to tell Lucie
he had been taken prisoner.

A note that would be,
like many others, sent

by anonymous passersby
to their destination.

Lucie realized
that if her husband wanted to escape,

he would have to do it
while still in Alsace.

If he was moved to Germany,

it would be too late.

Lucie was experienced.

In her activist youth
she learned

underground fighting
from communist Joseph Epstein.

Lucie retained
its main lesson:

the best way to hide,

is in open view,
to show yourself.

Lucie immediately devised
a plan of action.

She would save Raymond
at any cost.

The strategy:
slip her husband a drug

to make him sick so he'd be
transferred to the hospital.

He would have to hide
in the garden and jump over a gate.

German sentries
could easily shoot him.

He was extremely scared.

But Raymond
jumped over the gate

and met Lucie in the street.

Lucie and Raymond Aubrac
became a legend.

France was living
a nightmare.

Like a dark tunnel

with no light at the end.

German troops
paraded in Paris.

The new Premier,
Marshal P�tain,

agreed to divide the country
into two zones,

marked by a line
nearly 1,000 km long.

To the north, west,
and along the coast,

the occupied zone,
under German control.

The South is the "free" zone,

under French administration.

Many men and women
rejoiced in silence.

The French were relieved
the war was ending.

Women now hoped

their mobilized husbands would
return home.

The armistice,
for many,

was the horror of war
and the perception

of death departing.

France Touring Club
Vichy

The French government
had moved to Vichy,

a spa town chosen
for its location

and for its many hotels.

Here,
in the strange setting of a casino,

the Third Republic ended.

The Republic was dead.

Here was the French state
defending work,

family, and homeland,

values elevated
to a political system.

Long live P�tain!

Long live P�tain!

The national revolution
was underway.

An unprecedented cultural revolution
that made the French

no longer
free and equal in the law

but subordinate
to intermediaries

under the supreme leader.

The exact opposite of the ideals
of the French Revolution of 1789.

If France collapsed,
it is due to

the pleasure instilled
in the country by the Popular Front.

Not enough effort,
too much laxity.

The French are responsible
for their fate.

They must atone.

Suddenly, women, too,

were responsible
for the country's decline.

For Vichy ideologues,
women had failed in their moral duty,

especially those
who wore makeup

and had abandoned their homes
to work.

Now,
with the new government,

women were no longer individuals
like others, with rights.

Female identity was reduced
to motherhood.

"The French women must
get back on track,"

the mission
of the French state.

Mothers of French families,

your task is the hardest
and the most beautiful.

You are, to the State,

cultivators.

You alone can give to all

that taste for work,
that sense of discipline,

modesty and respect,
that makes men healthy

and people strong.

You inspire
our Christian civilization.

The national revolution

was large-scale propaganda campaign

that indicted the flaws

of the modern woman.

The government mass-distributed
guides to social workers

to help them
"straighten out" girls.

Mission
for social workers

The text of these manuals
was brutal.

"A woman
who betrays her mission,

"is a home adrift.

"Young girls who do not
care for purity

"or dignity.

"Young wives
who do not love their home

"and cannot manage it
or make it pleasant."

"When streets and cafes

"are not
the only meeting places,

"the real girl,
in her true place,

"growing with siblings
in the kitchen and garden,

"will be seen with the power
of her real charm."

- It's important.
- Yes, Mama.

Fold your napkin in 3,
very neatly.

These girls
are not seamstresses.

They work to become
perfect homemakers.

Repairing a plug

or making their own way
must not embarrass them.

Of course,

the primary task:
preparing a meal.

One, two, three, four,

five, six, seven...

Work,

family,

fatherland.

The new mantra to replace
the Republic's motto.

Its first victims were,
in particular, French women.

"Work," but for whom?

By the law of October 11, 1940,

it was illegal
to hire a married woman

in the civil service.

A woman could slave away
for her husband,

but it was unthinkable for her to be
employed, a sign of independence.

"Family," at what cost?

Divorce was now prohibited
during the first 3 years of marriage.

If a woman left her husband,
she was severely punished.

Abortion became a crime
against state security.

Families were torn apart
by men's absence.

1,500,000 soldiers
were German prisoners.

They wouldn't return
before the end of the war.

Worse, women would be subjected
to constant moral pressure.

They were even targeted
by a law

severely punishing adultery
by a prisoner's wife.

"Fatherland," yes, but not for all.

Long live P�tain!

It was bad
to be foreign or different

in Vichy's France.

On October 3,
the Vichy government,

of its own initiative,

passed a statute on Jews,

applicable
on all national territory.

Jews were excluded
from many trades,

especially civil service,

the arts, the press, radio,

and subjected
to numerus clausus at college.

On October 4,
a Vichy law stipulated

that Jewish foreigners
could be jailed.

It was just the first step.

Lucie and Raymond,
in their small Lyon apartment,

became aware
of anti-Semitism

winning over
Vichy's France.

Raymond thought

he was safe, a bright student
from an American college,

but was fired because
his name was "too Jewish."

His company chose

to work with
the new masters of Europe.

Blacklisted
as a communist sympathizer,

set apart because Raymond is Jewish,

Lucie and her husband fiercely
opposed the Vichy regime.

Their choice was clear:

join the resistance.

London.

The British capital
was living a nightmare,

in late 1940.

A steel storm
that lasted for months,

which History called the Blitz.

Each night, waves of 150

to 200 German planes dropped
thousands of bombs

on major English cities.

Each night, sirens sounded,

and Londoners dashed
to basements, cellars,

subway entrances,

while fires ravaged
the city.

Each morning,

hundreds of corpses
were found in the ruins.

In this daily chaos

Virginia Hall,
the US ambulance driver,

reached London.

Virginia managed to leave France
after the armistice

thanks to her US passport.

The homeland of
Winston Churchill

bended, but did not break.

The Blitz mobilized the country,

and British women first.

Their commitment was welcomed
by the government.

In Great Britain,
unlike Vichy's France

women's involvement
was supported everywhere.

Rural women
hosted city children

fleeing intense bombings
by the Luftwaffe.

They formed
an army of rural women

to replace mobilized men
in the fields.

Even in the military,
women signed up,

drove ambulances,
flew planes,

took care
of vehicle maintenance.

Factories ran non-stop
thanks to women workers.

In the civil service
for population defense

or in military
aerial surveillance units

and coastal batteries,

women were on the front line.

As in 1914,

the UK's women
quickly became

the essential cogs
in a country at war.

Virginia Hall
wanted to keep fighting.

Soon, her passionate nature,

knowledge of the land,
her desire to help,

intrigued then interested
the British secret service.

A very secret department in
particular, that remained so:

the SOE,
Special Operations Executive,

founded by Churchill himself.

To the SOE leaders

Churchill gave
one instruction:

"Set Europe on fire."

The method:

sabotage and subversion

in all territory
occupied by the German army.

Virginia Hall was a choice recruit
for Section F,

the France section of SOE.

It was the 1st time
intelligence had recruited

and sent women
on field operations.

Nearly 40 women,

the best women agents
in Section F,

parachuted into France.

Most of them
would pay with their lives,

in one of
the biggest failures

of the English secret service.

Paris' rhythm was that of
the occupying army

that flew its swastika
from the National Assembly.

Germans filmed themselves
in the capital's streets

to show,
after returning to Germany,

that, yes, really,
Paris belonged to them.

But behind
the conquerors' postcard pictures

was the reality
of life under the Occupation.

Life was increasingly difficult
for the French,

especially for women,

for mothers who were
left alone in adversity.

Rationing was the rule
throughout the country.

Tickets limiting the amount
of food per person

did not suffice.

Often women,
mothers,

sacrificed themselves to feed
children or parents.

Shortage of coal for heating,

shortage of leather, cloth,

fuel...

The first two winters of occupation
were very harsh.

Berty Albrecht,
the communist activist,

was overwhelmed by women

who faced the trials
of an unbearable daily life.

How could you not empathize
with mothers

overcome by hardships
devouring them?

Vichy
recruited Berty

to take care of female unemployment
in the Lyon region.

Departmental Employment Office

Next.

Seeing thousands of women
without work or resources,

Berty opened places

where hundreds of women found
some work or a roof.

For Berty, it wasn't enough.

She complained
to her Vichy superiors

who forbid her
to open "hospices

"for women
who can bear no more."

With empty shops,

Berty Albrecht,
the seasoned activist, realized

Vichy was losing
French support.

French people,
I have serious things to tell you.

In many regions of France,

I have felt a bad wind blowing

for many weeks.

Worry wins minds,
doubt seizes souls,

my government's authority
is debated,

orders are often poorly executed.

In an atmosphere
of false rumors and intrigue,

recovery forces
are discouraged.

A real unease
has fallen upon the French people.

The Marshal was worried,

because reports from prefects
informed Vichy

of opposition from many
French men and women.

D. Casanova and M. Politzer,

communist activists in
the Young Girls of France,

wanted to fight for women
suffering from high prices

and shortages.

Vengeance
Punish traitors

Brave women
gathered outside town halls

to demand
milk or coal.

The Young Girls of France
organized protests

that were repressed.

Milk for our kids

Housewives' protests
often ended with:

"Down with Krauts!"

and
"Down with the Vichy government!"

Vichy
could not tolerate this mobilization

and tried, by all means,
to promote

the happy harmony
of French families.

Show her your appreciation.

Participate in Mothers' Day.

We don't ask
for a large gift, no.

A small bouquet.

A little attention.

An embrace.

Remember Mothers' Day:

next May 31.

The day celebrating
the loveliest words

in the world:

"my child,"

and "mom."

What did "resist" mean,
in the France of 1941,

occupied in the north,
"marshaled" in the south?

You are not born a Resister.

Women
rebelling in obscurity

who comprised the majority
of the underground

often joined,
like men,

because of their past,

education they received
at home,

union or political battles
they fought before the war.

These men and women changed
individual anger

into rejection of the occupation,
rejection of Vichy,

in a collective movement.

In pairs, then dozens, then hundreds.

The Vichy officials
did not imagine

they had offered Berty Albrecht
the ideal cover.

In Lyon,

Berty found Henri Frenay,
a prison camp escapee,

who chose to go underground.

The two lovers created
a vast network of intelligence

and propaganda
called Combat,

which aimed to fight
the German occupiers.

The fate of Lucie and Raymond
also changed the same year, 1941.

With Jean Cavaill�s
and Emmanuel d'Astier,

Lucie and Raymond Aubrac
founded the Liberation group.

Their goal: to fight
by any means the Nazi occupation

and the Vichy regime,

by distributing
a counter-propaganda newspaper

printed in 10,000 copies.

French Liberation
Forces

Germaine Tillion, the young
ethnologist who had tried to leave,

felt,
when returning to Paris,

that was suddenly
faced with a huge void,

an absence of France.

Germaine had
to do something.

Soon she learned that
her friends at the Mus�e de l'Homme,

near the Trocad�ro,
had decided to group together

with Yvonne Oddon

and ethnologists
Boris Vild� and Anatole Lewitsky.

It was the the Mus�e de l'Homme
Network,

the 1st resistance network
in the occupied zone.

In this network

Genevi�ve de Gaulle
discovered the Resistance.

She was living with her aunt,
Madeleine de Gaulle,

an active Mus�e de l'Homme
member.

The network printed
Resistance

and collected information
for London.

In early 1941, it became

the main target of the Abwehr,

the intelligence unit
of the German army.

Leaders
of the network were denounced.

Yvonne Oddon, Boris Vild� and
Anatole Lewitsky were arrested.

Genevi�ve de Gaulle and her aunt
Madeleine escaped, like

Germaine Tillion,

who became the new leader
of the Mus�e de l'Homme.

Germaine was spared
for only a few months.

Mai and Georges Politzer,
with H�l�ne and Jacques Solomon,

and Jacques Decour,
founded, in autumn 1940,

a communist network
for university resistance,

the Free University.

Mai was devoted to its cause.

With Danielle Casanova,

she distributed
the movement's journal.

June 1941 N - 21
Free University

Berty, Lucie, Germaine,

Genevi�ve, Ma�, Danielle,

women in the Resistance,

like thousands more who would join,
risking their lives.

These women quickly became
essential,

without whom the Resistance
could not exist.

Harboring resisters,
hiding escaped soldiers,

carrying messages,

gathering information.

These women would enable networks
to organize and function.

A major event would
change the course of the war.

Adolf Hitler,
in his expansionist madness,

triggered Operation Barbarossa
in June 1941

and attacked
Joseph Stalin's USSR.

The Wehrmacht crushed, destroyed and

killed everything in its path.

The F�hrer's plan was
to conquer the mythical Lebensraum,

living space,

that Germany would need
to the east

to feed its population and ensure

its dominance
on the European continent.

On arriving in Ukraine,
in summer 1941,

German officers
were welcomed

by some of the population,

who immediately joined
the conquerors.

Women and men

who couldn't bear
Russia's grip on Ukraine.

Thousands of Ukrainians
sold their souls to the Nazis

and became accomplices
of the process

that had just begun.

Hitler's instructions
were to ethnically cleanse

the Lebensraum,

meaning to eliminate
inferior populations

who were, in the eyes of the Nazis,
Jews and gypsies.

The extermination
of Jews in conquered territories

involved the Einsatzgruppen.

These Nazi groups
were joined

by local militias
recruited for anti-Semitism.

A murder
of nearly 1.5 million,

men, women, children,

of whom
few traces remain today.

Like these photographs of
the Mizolch murders in Ukraine,

of Liepaja, Latvia,

or Kalevi-Liiva, Estonia.

After being rounded up,

women were forced
to undress completely.

Greater vileness,

humiliating nudity
before their executioners.

Heinrich Himmler,
all-powerful head of the SS,

said to his troops:

"What to do with women
and children?

"I have decided
on a clear solution.

"I have, first, given the order
to kill women and children.

"We must remember
we are engaged

"in a racial struggle,
primitive and primordial."

Soon, the "Holocaust by bullets",

the execution
of Jews one by one,

was not enough
for Nazi leaders.

Early in 1942,

an industrial extermination system
was planned and put in place

to implement a final solution
to the Jewish question.

Concentration camps
at Auschwitz-Birkenau,

Treblinka, Sobibor,

became death camps
where gas chambers were installed

to murder those
arriving by train

from all territories
occupied by the Nazis.

Exiting the train,

when some men
were sent to forced labor,

women with children

were directly sent
to the gas chambers.

Being a mother
meant immediate death.

An unprecedented crime
in human history,

that would exterminate nearly
6 million European Jews.

In France,

German occupiers obsessed
over ending

as fast as possible
a structured resistance.

Especially that
of young communist activists

who took up arms and lead
many acts of sabotage.

Examples were made.

Condemnations
must be remembered.

Simone Schloss was 22 years old.

The young lady,
filmed here at her trial,

was a member
of youth battalions,

the Special Organization.

Simone and her comrades
were tried for 34 attacks

and sabotage acts in Paris.

30 young men
were sentenced to death

and shot at Mont-Val�rien.

Sentenced women
were not executed in France,

for fear of public opinion.

Olga Bancic, of the Manouchian group
of FTP-MOI,

or Simone Schloss,
of the SO,

would be beheaded
out of view

in a German prison.

Germaine Tillion would remember
all her life that day in 1942

when
Mus�e de l'Homme resisters

were shot at dawn
by Germans, at Mont-Val�rien.

Betrayed in turn,
Germaine was arrested,

like her mother, Emilia Tillion,
also a network resister.

The two women were locked up

for almost a year
in Fresnes prison,

before being deported
to Ravensbruck camp.

Series of arrests
would destroy

Mai and Georges Politzer's network.

Mai Politzer lost
the two men

who mattered most in her life,

Georges, her husband,

and Jacques Decour,
her resistance companion,

both shot by the Germans
at Mont-Val�rien, in May 1942.

Mai had learned to love
these men passionately.

Their simultaneous death
was like an endless plunge,

an unending leap
into the void.

M. Politzer and D. Casanova,

two resisters in
the Young Girls of France,

were moved
to Romainville fort,

from where they would be deported
weeks later

in a convoy of resisters
to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

They both died
of typhus in Auschwitz in 1943.

Thousands of women
in France

would in turn become mass
victims of German barbarity

and its Vichy accomplices.

After being forced,
in 1940, to be counted,

Jews from the occupied zone
had to wear a yellow star

from May 29, 1942 onwards.

It is not a question at all
of vexation

or deliberate vexation.

It is a simple defense
of the French

against strangers to their race

who silently invaded
our land,

but very tenaciously.

They came to profit

and not
to actually work.

Now, evil comes

because the French,
on the whole,

cannot recognize the Jews.

If they could,
they would be on guard.

Some are recognizable, but not all.

Maybe 50%.

The issue would not arise
if the Jews had blue skin,

but that is not the case.

So we must
be able to recognize them.

H�l�ne Berr was 21 in 1942.

The Parisian, who loved
to stroll through the park,

like all students her age,

described in her diary
her first hours with the star.

"My God, I didn't think
it would be so hard.

"I held my head high

"and looked
people in the face till

"they hid their eyes,

"but it's hard.

"The most painful is to meet
others wearing it.

"My face is tense from
trying to hold back tears

"gushing.
I don't know why.

"I suffered in that sunny court
in the Sorbonne,

"among all my comrades.

"I felt I was no longer myself,
that everything had changed.

"I had become a stranger,
like I was in a nightmare.

"I saw around me
faces I knew,

"and I felt all their pain
and stupefaction.

"As if I'd been branded
with an iron on my forehead."

In a few months,
internment camps were created

in the occupied and free zones:

Pithiviers, Beaune-la-Rolande,

Drancy, and Rivesaltes.

In Paris, rumors
of mass roundups swelled.

H�l�ne Berr noted in her diary,

July 15 at 11 pm:

"Something is brewing,
something that will be a tragedy,

"the tragedy, perhaps.

"Mr. Simon arrived tonight at 10 pm,

"to warn us that he'd heard
of a raid 2 days from now."

On July 16 and 17, 1942,

French police, at the request
of the Kommandantur, arrested

and took to
the V�lodrome d'Hiver,

12,884 foreign Jews
living in Paris.

3,030 men, 5,802 women,

and 4,051 children:

the youngest were
barely 2.

Who could imagine for a moment,

that women would be arrested
in masses?

Much less children.

Vichy allowed

French police to organize
the raids the occupier wanted.

The same French government
asked the Germans

to also deport children
under 6, not knowing what to do

with thousands of orphans
detained in internment camps.

H�l�ne Berr wrote in her diary

that she saw trains of children
arrive from Bordeaux, Belfort.

She said French gendarmes
arrested babies age 2

at their nurse's house,

as their parents
had already been deported.

Dozens of other children
were arrested

by police officers in
orphanages and interned at Drancy.

"Because those are orders,"
they said,

"And because we must fill
departing trains,

"fill trains at all costs."

Between 1942 and 1944,

nearly all foreign Jews
were arrested,

as well as 24,000
French Jews.

In total,
76,000 Jews living in France

would be deported
to death camps.

2,500 would survive.

If many Jews managed
to escape the raids,

it was because they were hidden
by anonymous French.

Righteous among the righteous.

H�l�ne Berr worked
with the UGlF at Drancy,

and in Parisian hospitals,

until her arrest in 1944.

Deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau,
then Bergen-Belsen,

H�l�ne Berr would be beaten to death
by a camp guard.

Suzanne Spaak, a Belgian refugee,

founded the Movement
Against Racism

and fought to find host families
for Jewish children

she wanted to snatch
from sure death.

Suzanne Spaak would be arrested,

then shot
in Fresnes prison.

Young Marianne Cohn,
barely 20, a German refugee,

joined
the Israelite Scouts of France,

and multiplied
convoys of children

who escaped to Switzerland.

Arrested without talking,

Marianne from her cell,
wrote a poem:

"I will betray tomorrow, not today

"Today,
tear out my nails

"I will not betray

"You don't know
my courage's depth

"But I know

"I will betray tomorrow, not today

"The file is not for the executioner

"The file is not for the bar

"The file is for my wrist

"Today, I have nothing to say
I will betray tomorrow"

Marianne was taken
from prison by the Gestapo,

raped and beaten to death,

before being thrown
in a mass grave.

In the Soviet winter snow,
ran the largest theater

of military operations
in history,

a total war.

Until one
of 2 enemies,

the USSR or Nazi Germany,

was destroyed.

Both armies lost
millions of soldiers,

killed on the battlefield.

Russian arms factories
worked at full steam,

permanently,
thanks to mass labor.

In 6 months, they made
over 5,000 tanks.

30,000 tanks were built
between 1942 and 1945.

The USSR was the only nation at war
to send women to the front.

Nearly one million
Soviet women

would fight,
weapon in hand,

in the Red Army
or among the Partisans,

the civilian militias
harassing German soldiers.

Aviators,

machine-gunners, snipers, gunners,

Russian women
at war were

equal
to their male comrades.

In the terrible winter of 42-43,

in apocalyptic conditions,
Red Army women soldiers,

fought
at the Battle of Stalingrad.

The Red Army finally freed
Stalingrad in early 1943,

sacrificing hundreds
of thousands of men and women.

A dramatic, symbolic failure
for the humiliated Wehrmacht.

Every German family was hit

by this slaughter
on the Russian front.

German newspapers
were like graveyards filled

with the long litany of the dead
and their iron cross.

Sophie SchoIl saw her brother Hans
go to fight in Russia.

Hans returned changed
by the eastern front,

mature, more determined than ever
to fight the Nazi power

that only sowed terror,
hatred, and death.

The SchoIl children
and some friends wrote leaflets

and printed thousands.

They signed their texts
with the name

of their group called:
The White Rose.

Sophie and her brother
went to the university

and threw down the stairs
a text

that spread in the Munich winter.

"Students, the defeat
at Stalingrad threw our people

"into a stupor.

"The dead of Stalingrad
beg us:

"Rise up
against the enslavement of Europe

"by National Socialism

"and for freedom and honor."

The university custodian,
who saw Sophie and Hans,

blocked all exits
before calling the Gestapo.

After weeks of interrogations
in Munich prison,

the German Gestapo
soon posted its own

posters at the university.

"Sentenced to death
for high treason:

"Sophie Scholl, 22,

"Hans Scholl, 25.

"The sentence was executed."

Sophie, the soul of The White Rose,

and her brother Hans
were beheaded.

While Germans
were encircled at Stalingrad,

the Americans, who entered
the world conflict,

as English allies,
landed in North Africa

and freed Algiers.

Surprised, the Wehrmacht
invaded the free zone

and occupied France
from north to south.

The German army,
present everywhere,

brought its Gestapo bloodhounds

who settled in Lyon
around Klaus Barbie.

Barbie's first target
was a woman

he'd placed at the top of his list.

The woman Barbie called
"the limping woman"

had become a centerpiece
of the English SOE network in France.

Through her, London received

information
collected in the country,

valuable insights

that were coded
and sent by radio.

"The limping woman"
was Virginia Hall,

the American Francophile
sent by the SOE to the free zone

and who, from Lyon, wove
a major spy network.

Klaus Barbie considered Virginia
the most important

and most dangerous agent.

Klaus Barbie
arrived in Lyon too late.

Virginia managed,
in the free zone invasion,

to flee and reach
the US embassy in Madrid.

Virginia Hall,
not a woman to quit,

would return
to France in 1944,

sent
by the US secret services,

before joining the CIA.

France
was now entirely German.

The Government of Marshal P�tain,

choosing
to remain with the occupier,

did not join
the Allies in Algiers,

thus signaling its preferences
in war.

The masks fell.

Long live the Marshal

Pierre Laval,
government head,

said he'd prefer
Germans to win the war

rather than Russian Bolsheviks.

Marshal P�tain
tried to look good

and chose to incarnate more than ever
the role of Nation's Father:

fathers can't betray kids.

So to hide the dark reality
of collaboration with the Nazis,

Vichy propaganda
showed

the old marshal with children,
young women,

in schools.

When the Laval government,
at German request,

created the Forced
Labor Service, the STO,

once again, women
were used for propaganda.

Men had to go to work in Germany

for the good of their family.

Women must accept
a husband or son's departure.

A woman or child's emotion,

what better tool
for a policy of collaboration?

Papa makes money
in Germany!

But propaganda didn't work.

Women saw men leave,
not for Germany,

but for maquis
with the Resistance,

and would be the first
to refuel,

foster mothers
who made Resistance possible.

To Pierre Laval,

it became urgent to hunt
these STO renegades,

resistants.

He had to strengthen the police,

reinforce control
of the population.

Laval created,
in P�tain's name,

the French Militia

to hunt
these inside enemies

of both the German and French.

No bourgeois greed

Of 15,000 militiamen, women
represented over one third.

Thousands of women
engaged in an anti-Republic,

anti-Semite,
and nationalist movement.

A deadly darkness
engulfed the country and its honor.

In Parisian nightlife,
in German time,

women called
"the Gestapo's countesses"

whirled
in a festive bacchanal

in the arms of German officers.

At Maxim's or the Lido,

French women,
downgraded aristocrats,

movie actresses
or Vichy companions chose

collaboration.

A collaboration
ironically called horizontal

but primarily
a matter of interest:

food, money, luxury.

Some French wanted
to participate in the Reich's feast,

the generalized grasp
of French wealth.

The feast included
looted property of Jews

denounced
in hopes of getting apartments,

fur coats, jewelry.

The Nazis' first goal

was works of art
stored at the Louvre,

then at Jeu de Paume.

Thanks to Rose Valland,
a Jeu de Paume employee,

we know the masterpieces
that were sent to Germany.

For many months,

every day, Rose Valland made,
secretly and risking her life,

the list of artworks
stolen from Jews or museums.

To German predators,
everything was up for grabs.

The Nazis even exhibited
the homes of looted Jews

so German dignitaries,
officers,

collaborators, and mistresses,

could make their choice.

A living room,
full of ghosts,

which would long haunt
our collective memory.

In a few months,

the German Gestapo
and the French Militia

would annihilate
the Resistance

which was unifying
around Jean Moulin,

sent to France
by General de Gaulle.

This photograph was
the last by Berty Albrecht,

head of the Combat movement,
with Henri Frenay.

Berty, who escaped
a few weeks earlier,

was again betrayed at M�con in 1943.

Unable to stand
further incarceration,

and unwilling
to risk betraying,

Berty hung herself

in her cell
in Fresnes prison.

Her body was thrown
into a mass grave.

Genevi�ve de Gaulle joined
the Defense of France

founded by
Sorbonne students,

Philippe and H�l�ne Viannay.

Genevieve increased
intelligence actions

then fell into a trap

set in a bookstore by
French working for the Gestapo.

68 resisters were arrested

along
with Genevi�ve de Gaulle.

The life of Lucie Aubrac
took a dramatic turn

when Raymond was arrested
with J. Moulin at Caluire

in June 1943.

Jean Moulin finally managed
to negotiate

with all the
Resistance movements.

Combat, Liberation, Mavericks,
Communist National Front,

had accepted to merge
into 1 movement,

with a secret army common
to all combatants.

At Caluire,

and in the weeks that followed,
everywhere,

the Gestapo dealt a terrible blow
to the Resistance.

Lucie Aubrac couldn't stand

her man being in the hands
of Klaus Barbie.

She had a specialty:

helping imprisoned resisters escape.

She directed
the group in her network,

entrusted with
the hardest missions.

Lucie, pregnant with her 2nd child,

managed, 4 months later,
to free Raymond,

in a commando attack.

Lucie and Raymond Aubrac
were safe

and could join
General de Gaulle in London,

then in Algiers.

But for the few saved,

how many died in the Resistance
in 1943 and 1944?

Networks fell
one after another,

especially
British networks in France.

"Set each occupied territory
on fire",

Churchill had told the SOE.

It was, for France,

the mission
of hundreds of male agents

and also 39 very special
female agents.

Trained in handling weapons,
sabotage,

and prepared to endure torture
before being sent to the field.

Each had the mission of founding

or helping a network
in France.

Virginia Hall, Lightning network,

Lise de Baissac, Artist network,

Noor Inayat Khan, Phono network,

Violette Szabo, Salesman network,

and Andr�e Borrel, Prosper network.

German intelligence
overturned agents

and rapidly toppled
the Prosper network.

Dozens were arrested.

The drama
of SOE volunteers was

that English services knew
the network was toppled,

but they continued
to send agents to France.

For the English hope
was a sinister double deal

to poison the enemy

by giving
false information to agents

who would inevitably be arrested
and tortured.

An intelligence war
that cost the lives

of these spies
sacrificed

on the altar of state reason.

Andr�e Borrel
was arrested in June 1943.

She would die
in the German Natzweiler camp.

Indian princess
Noor Inayat Khan

was arrested in October 1943.

She would die in the Dachau camp.

Denise Bloch and Violette Szabo
would die in Ravensbruck.

The fate of resistants
arrested by Gestapo

or French Militia
was that of NN,

Nacht und Nebel, Night and fog,

the code name for opponents
the Nazis got rid of,

in absolute secrecy,

by sending them
to concentration camps

in Germany or Poland.

The final destination of these women,
who wore the red triangle,

was the women's camp
of Ravensbruck, north of Berlin,

or women's quarters
at Bergen-Belsen,

Mauthausen,
or Auschwitz-Birkenau camps.

Genevi�ve de Gaulle was deported
to Ravensbruck in January 1944.

Concentration camp life
was a horrible discovery.

We had not imagined that it was

a system to destroy man.

I saw the faces
of some of these women,

and that absolutely shocked me.

I began to grasp
they were going to destroy

something within us
more precious than life -

our inner value,
our inner dignity.

We still had something
very precious,

we women who were arrested
for resistance.

We knew why.

It had a meaning.

Think about these men or women

put
in those atrocious conditions,

because they were Jews, gypsies,

or for anything...

In Ravensbruck, Genevieve
met Germaine Tillion,

deported a few months earlier.

Right away,
we were quarantined.

In the quarantine block
where we were,

there were Czechs
arriving from Auschwitz

who told us about Auschwitz
right away.

So within 8 days
of my arrival,

I knew what
the concentration camp system

and extermination were.

On many occasions
I almost died.

I weighed 30 kg,
at one point.

I was saved
by a lot of help around me.

I was helped.

I helped comrades,
and many comrades helped me.

Because I must say
I met and rubbed elbows

with admirable women.

Germain Tillion was released
with a group

by the Swedish Red Cross,
on April 23, 1945.

Her mother, Emilie Tillion, deported
to Ravensbruck,

was killed
on March 2, 1945.

G. de Gaulle was freed
by the Red Army

that surrounded Ravensbruck
on April 25, 1945.

Of 10,000 French women
deported to this camp,

only 2,000 would come back alive.

France was gradually liberated

after the
American and British landing

in June 1944.

Smiles attempted
to drown the suffering

and bravery of women

over whom a veil would soon
be placed.

While these black years
forced women

to face daily life alone,

the return of prisoners of war

would accentuate
marital difficulties.

How do you resume family life
after many years of separation?

How does either understand
the other's suffering?

Many divorced.

Worse. In a purge
seeking to punish those

who collaborated with the enemy,

women would become
scapegoats

of indispensable
public revenge

led by men.

It is almost only
for having been lovers

that women would be charged
with collaboration.

Humiliation flung
with unprecedented violence

on these women often
of low social status

was very unjust.

Those who expressed
favorable opinions of Germans

or profited
from occupation

were often spared.

Women,
eternal victims of war,

in defeat
as in victory.

Thousands of French women
were raped

by American liberators,

thousands of German women

were raped
by Red Army soldiers,

as if ruthlessness to women
allowed men

to overcome their own anguish.

We must never forget
that in the occupation,

many women,
in France, chose the path

of the
underground Resistance:

liaison agents,
radio operators, typists,

maquis fighters or network heads
leading hundreds of men.

Many, many
resistant women

whose action
was underestimated

by men
who glorified an exclusively

military and masculine view
of the Resistance.

Women would not seek to

have their names
on Resistance records

or Liberation,

wanting to turn a page
that for them still

smelled of death.

Yet thanks to the courage
of these women suffrage

was granted
for all French women,

enacted by an order of
General de Gaulle in October 1954.

How many girls today
know

they owe their right to vote
to Resistance women?

How many of us know
a woman wrote the song

that was a symbol
of the French Resistance?

The
Chant des Partisans

Do not forget Anna Marly,

who wrote one
of the most famous tunes

for a text
adapted by Joseph Kessel.

Le Chant des Partisans
is also the song of women.

Women were also at war.