Did more Frenchmen serve with the Allies or against the Allies

I know that Free French forces served alongside the British and American armies, air forces and navies and I believe a Squadron or two of fighter pilots flew with the Soviet Air Force.

I have read that French Vichy forces actively fought against the Allies in Africa, at home French Milice collaborated to a significant extent and along with French Police and Railways were complicit in the Holocaust and enough Frenchmen volunteered to fight against the Allies that a Legion and later a French Waffen-SS division could be formed.

Please can anybody tell me what sort of numbers formed the Free French forces and what sort of numbers formed the Vichy and other collaborationist forces.
thanks

 

It depends whether you want the respective numbers at one given date (which one?), or during a given period (which one?).

Do you count all armed forces under the Vichy state as "serving against the Allies"?

You mention collaborators and accessories to the Holocaust. Do you also consider them as serving against the Allies? But you fail to mention the French Resistance.

If you consider WW2, the answer is obviously the first one, with a few million soldiers serving in the French armed forces from 1939.

Also, do you count inhabitants of the French provinces incorporated into the Reich who were forcibly mobilised in the Wehrmacht as French or as Germans?

I suggest that you read a few books, or if it is too much to ask, to read wiki articles, on these subjects, and then come back if you have more precise and documented questions.

 

Details of Free French divisions here
http://books.stonebooks.com/history/freefrench.shtml

 

Thank you Ewen, your Stone & Stone source offers some interesting information

 

Ultimately the Vichy troops in North-Africa also joined the Allies. They fought side by side with the Allies against the Germans in Tunisia and later in the Italian Campaign (Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica & Elba as well as on the Italian mainland): A winter in the Abruzzo Mountains - French Expeditionary Corps - Italy (21 Nov 1943 - 3 Feb 1944)

 

To save members chasing down research alleys you have already visited, perhaps you could tell us what research you have already done on the topic: what sources you have looked at, what numbers and data you have already accumulated and so on.

Thank you.

 

Initially I read Littlejohn, Trigg and Forbes and it seems likely that on the Axis side from July 1941 to May 1943 a total of 10,738 volunteers came forward but of those 6,429 were engaged, others were already serving with LVF, more joined later and apparently 8,000 to 10,000 survivors of the French Legion of the Wehrmacht Heer were incorporated into the Waffen SS. I have seen various figures quoted for French/Brittany men in the Kriegsmarine with 2,500 being one total, I dont know how many served in the Luftwaffe, Organization Todt or NSKK (driving supply trucks in Russia) but I have a figure of 27,800 for uniformed Milice serving in France.

On the Allied side apparently political issues within the French military resulted in ex Vichy soldiers who wished to fight mainly joining the Allies rather than the Free French units.

I should have been clearer in that its is pre D-Day totals which interest me. Thanks

 

I forgot to mention that I'm waiting a chance to read a copy of Andrea Vezza's "French Volunteers in Mussolini's Army" a group usually over looked. I'm told that Grégory Bouysse « Encyclopédie de l'Ordre Nouveau - Hors-série – Français sous l'uniforme allemand Partie II : Sous-officiers & hommes du rang de la Waffen-SS» is authoritative but will be beyond my knowledge of the language and more detailed than I was looking for - I'm just after some reasonably believable totals based on material available now rather than the guesstimates of the 1970's to 80's

Felix Steiner claimed numbers of European Volunteers fighting on the Eastern Front - but who is to be believed ?

Dutch: 55.000
Flemish: 23.000
French: 20.000
Walloon: 20.000
Norwegian: 6.000
Danish: 6.000
Swiss: 800
Swedish: 300

 

The totals below were collated by French researcher Daniel Laurrent.

LVF (41-44) 6,000 Franzosischer Infantry-Regiment 638
Brigade (43-44) 2,500 Freiwilligen Waffen SS Sturmbrigade
Division Charlemagne (45) 7,000 33 Waffen SS Division Charlemagne
Bezzen Perrot, 43-45 80 Bretonische Waffenverband der SS
21 Panzer Division 230 2nd Werkstattkompanie (logistics, reparation)
Brandenburg Division (43) 180 8th company of the 3rd Regiment
Kriegsmarine (44) 3,200 Mainly in French ports and coastal batteries
Todt organization 2,500 Armed Schutzkommandos
Legion Speer. 500 Drivers for the Arbeitsamt
NSKK (44) 2,500 NSKK Rgt 4, then NSKK Transport Brigade der Luftwaffe
Phalange Africaine (42-43) 200 Company Frankonia, 2nd Battalion, 754. PzG Rgt,
2 – Collaborationists
Milice (44) 30,000 Fought in France, then in Italy or within the SS
Legion tricolore (42) 800 No active military campaign
Flak 6,800 All based in France


I understand that "Les Français sous le casque allemand" (Grancher) by PP Lambert and G Le Marec) reports that approaching 20,000 French volunteers served on the Russian Front.

 

Are there similar number for Free French Forces ?

 

Wikipedia may be your friend.

By 1945 the French claimed to haveb one army, two army detachments and about 20 divisions organised into four army corps.
Military history of France during World War II - Wikipedia
That's probably a million under arms.

 

As regards the Resistance, participants were put at 5% of the population, some were active as irregular units, others were passive. These irregulars were dovetailed into the SOE for intelligence, supply of arms and equipment and coordination of operations. FTP units had to toe the line in order to be recipients of arms and equipment, a difficult task for at times, these units had their own agenda.

Postwar, CDG put a figure of the "Secret Army" as equivalent to two army divisions. On the invasion of France the Resistant donned the arm bands as FFI to be recognised as French regular contingents according to the Geneva Convention. Many continued to serve as FFI and join the Free French units in their thrust into southern Germany and were the first Allied force to reach Berchtesgaden.

Regarding French citizens forcibly pressed into the German war machine, there is a memorial on the Heights above Obernai in Alsace Lorraine to over 200000 Alsatians who so served. By 1944 with the quest for manpower undiminished, the Germans called up the Alsace Class of 1928.

 

True for 1945 after the invasion of southern France but prior to that in 1944, and I quote from WiKi:
"In Autumn 1944, First Army comprised about 250,000 men, half of them Indigenes (Mahgrebian and Black African) and half Europeans from North Africa."

Going by the thread title, how are you counting the French who served 'against the Allies' and then served 'with the Allies'?

Then there's the French in Indo-China, which remained under Vichy control and were complicit with the Japanese.

Tim

 

Thank you for describing the research you have already done.

At best, just about every figure you come across will be a guess. Some will be educated guesses and have an element of accuracy, others will probably be complete thumb sucks and of severely questionnable accuracy. Whatever totals you them accumulate will be based upon multiple-compound inaccuracies.

I wonder what real value this will deliver.

Circling back to your original post to highlight the difficulty in generating genuinely worthwhile data. You wrote:

Taking the first point, forces aligned with Vichy but outside metropolitan France. In 1941, Wavell launched Operation EXPORTER against the French mandated territories of Syria and Lebanon who had aligned with Vichy. Do you now count every single trooper under French arms in the Axis column? The vast majority were Colonial troops rather than white European Frenchmen. Are you counting only white European Frenchmen or are you counting every citizen of the French Empire?

Then there is what you have termed the "collaborationist" and mention the French railways. It is historically true that people of the jewish faith and others deemed so deserving by the nazis were in part transported off to their fates by elements of the French railways. Does that mean you are now placing the entire French railways workforce into the Axis column? That would seem somewhat inappropriate. But how do you sift from the entire workforce those that were genuine willing collaborators?

The same applies to the police. Where do you draw the line between continuing with a pre-war occupation (good) and willing collaboration with a foreign occupier (bad)? For me, it would be irresponsibly harsh to draw the line at the extreme.

In the round, from an academic point of view, you seem to have an impossible task before you in obtaining genuinely useful data.

If you are just seeking a bit of evidence to win an argument elsewhere, then the (lack of) clarity of data is such that both sides will always be able to throw up a number to claim victory.

 

I have take issue with the terms "vichy and other collaborationist forces". These are loaded terms which do not reflect the subtleties of the situation.

Vichy was the legitimate government of France. Britain's former allies had sued for peace and signed an armistice. They defended French territory against attacks by the British and Free French forces, but the Vichy French state had not joined the axis.

Like many countries , including Britain, French society was split with a significant minority fellow travellers with the Nazis, sharing their anti-semitic and anti-communist ideals. These are the people who volunteered to fight for Hitler in German or French fascist uniforms.

It is true that the railways and French police were complicit in the holocaust - as was the police force in the Channel Islands who rounded up the Jews. But there is a spectrum of complicity, and the man in the signal box on the French railway is a long way from Heinrich Himmler.

This theme has been explored at some length in several exhibitions - there is an excellent one in the war museum in Brussels and is a theme explored by Liberation Route Europe. There is an excellent outdoor installation in IRRC North Brabant with a series of Crosses marking tjhe point where someone had to make a decision that wouold change their lives. If someone knocks at the door asking for help - do you let them in?

 

The easiest dividing lines would be to just look at Free French vs those who volunteered for active service with Germany or Italy.

 

Following on from my previous.

The presentation of this data makes it rather difficult to follow so much so that I gave up trying to see if it told us anything really worthwhile.

How many of these are double counted? The range of dates provide the possibility of significant double counting and further distortion of already estimated approximations.

How many of these are French citizens from parts of France with a greater pull to Germany than France? There were many in Alsace and Lorraine who saw themselves more German than French. How academically sound would it be to count this group in a good/bad Frenchman comparison?

There were undoubtably French citizens travelling the same path as their nazi brethren. A group who proactively joined forces with the German occupier and carried out the very same acts with a gleeful smile on their face: joining the Wehrmacht or ss, overtly seeking out undesireables for deportation and so on.

There were undoubtably French citizens who felt more German than French and, to them, joining the Wehrnacht was an obvious and natural duty not an act of treason.

On the otherside of the coin there were undoubtably French citizens who overtly joined others in fighting against the occupier - whether for political reasons or simple patriotism.

In between these groups will reside the vast mass of French citizenry. A mass who chose neither to overtly fight the occupier or join the occupiers fight. A mass who just wanted to survive the occupation in the best way they could.

Where do you draw the line in this group to fill up your columns?

Do you take an extreme and say that anybody not actively fighting and going about their lives under occupation is, by default, collaborating with the occupying Germans? To me, that would be absurd, but an academic argument could be easily made for it. Perhaps it is the easiest and least disputable argument to make. The basic 'with us or against us- flows from it and we know how often that is trotted out in America to justify X, Y or Z.

 

It all depends on precisely what ResearchingResearching is trying to establish.

If it is a genuine unbiased academic endeavor, your suggestion may be quickest and easiest to develop, but will be far from definitive.

If ResearchingResearching's is trying to argue a particular point, then he/she will be looking for numbers that support that arguement. Does your suggestion help or hinder that endeavor?

From the posts he/she has made here, there seems to be a bias towards getting the maximum into the Axis column. To what end or purpose remains opaque.

 

Building on your point, Alsace and northern Lorraine were incorporated into the Reich and 130,000 "Germanic" young men were conscripted into the German armed forces. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malgré-nous

 

I was simply trying to establish the facts, others appeared to have already done a large amount of research towards the Axis side with numbers and dates (specific units even) and I apparently made the mistake of trying to establish the other side of the story, ie: how many Frenchmen fought with the Free French (pre-D-Day) in the FFAir Forces, FFArmy and FFNavy.

Presumably the conscription of "Germanic" lads into the regular German Wehrmacht units will be near impossible to count, as distinct from the more voluntary enlistments into the LVF "French Legion" type units.

I have now written to various archives, potentially duplicating work already done by others, hence my question here, to establish the numbers of men in the FFAF, FF Army and FF Navy.

thanks.