1939-1945: Anarchist activity in France during World War II


This is summary of material from the C.I.R.A., Marseille, Bulletin No. 21/22 (Summer, 1984), which had the theme Anarchists and the Resistance.


In an article entitled "Reflections on Some Tall Tales," written in the late 1970s and published in issue 21/22 of the C.I.R.A. Marseille Bulletin, Sauliere noted that the history of the French anarchist movement between 1939 and 1945 has been almost completely neglected, and when dealt with at all, has most often been distorted.



Before the war Sauliere was actively involved in the Bordeaux anarchist group. A number of other members in the group held the same anti-war, anti-military position as he did, and a number of the other young men had also decided to avoid the draft if war came. But Sauliere was the only one in the group who followed through when the general mobilisation was announced. He went into hiding for five months in Bordeaux, until he was able to get papers that identified him as a person medically unfit for military service. With these, in February 1940, he went to Marseille, where he was less well known by the authorities.

Adopting the name on his papers, Andre Arru, he contacted French, Italian and Spanish anarchists living in the area. Later he was joined by a Bordeaux anarchist comrade named Armand, who had been discharged from the military. They formed a libertarian group and began writing leaflets and pamphlets which they printed themselves. In the centre of the city, during the night-time curfew, they put up posters and distributed the leaflets in mailboxes and other places. In the beginning there were only two activists regularly involved; but their numbers grew to twelve as the war went on. At first, they were only able to print a few dozen small leaflets using very simple techniques, but later, with the help of activists in other cities, they were able to do professional printing of one to five thousand copies. From early 1940 on, they produced literature attacking the Fascists and all those responsible for the war, including capitalists and the Stalinist dictatorship. The Marseille group put out at least five different publications of one thousand or more copies each: a leaflet titled "Too All Intellectual and Manual Workers", a poster headed "Against Fascism and Dictatorship," a poster headed "Death to The Brutes", a 45-page pamphlet titled The Guilty Ones, and a 12-page bulletin named REASON.

The Marseille anarchists also made and maintained regular contact with anarchist groups in other cities and individuals in the area who worked with them. They were in touch with people in Paris, Nimes, Lyon, Montpellier, Toulouse, Foix, Var and elsewhere. They made contact with the anarchist printers Henri and Raoul Lion in Toulouse, who were actively involved in the French Resistance movement. The brothers printed posters, leaflets, the first issue of Reason, and the pamphlet The Guilty Ones for the Marseille group, as well as books and other anarchist literature. They were eventually arrested and sent to a concentration camp, where both died. The Marseille group's literature was distributed locally and in the other cities where anarchists were active.

The bulletin Reason: Organ Of The International Revolutionary Syndicalist Federation, issue No. 1, June, 1943, contained discussions of the Katyn Forest massacre, the Spanish Revolution and current events in France from a libertarian perspective.

The Russian anarchist Voline was living in the Marseille area. Even though he was under police surveillance, he was able to evade the authorities in order to participate in the work of the group. He helped to put together and distribute the pamphlet The Guilty Ones, among other things. Sauliere/Arru also received assistance from Pierre Besnard, former secretary- general of the Revolutionary Syndicalist General Confederation of Labour (C.G.T.S.R.), in working on this project.



In 1943 there was a clandestine anarchist conference in Toulouse. It was organised and attended by delegates from Marseille and the other cities mentioned above, plus a representative from the underground movement of Spanish libertarians living in the departments of Ariege and Haute-Garronne. The group formed at the conference published literature under the name International Revolutionary Syndicalist Federation, F.I.S.R. was the French acronym. It advocated revolution by means of the general strike, which would be a prelude to a new social order founded on universal human solidarity in the place of exploitation of human being by human being.

One of the posters the Marseille group wrote and published was "Death to The Brutes". The title was intended to catch the eye of passer-by. The "brutes" referred to were the heads of the Nazi, Fascist, Francoist, Stalinist, Vichy, British and American states, the generals and their accomplices. The poster argued that they were all responsible for the war and the horrors that resulted from it.



Sauliere insisted that anti-Semitism never existed among the anarchists involved in the Marseille group, and to imply that it did was a gross falsification. When challenged by Sauliere, Rabaut, in a letter, admitted that he had not checked the facts relating to his charge, apologised for his misstatement and promised to correct it in future editions of his book.


The arrested anarchists were interrogated for five days, but luckily were not tortured. The men were sent to the Chave prison in Marseille and Vinas to a prison hospital.

In prison Sauliere/Arru and Chauvet met Communists, socialists and Gaullists, who had also been arrested for resistance activities. The two anarchists openly criticised the Petain regime and refused to go along with the celebration led by the Communists to mark the October Bolshevik revolution, or to sing the patriotic songs the Communists sang to impress the Gaullists with their loyalty to the French nation-state.

In March of 1944 some of the Communists, led by one Charles Poli, organised an escape, and invited the Gaullist prisoners to join them. The escape was a success; but seven of the political prisoners were left behind, five, including the two anarchists, for purely ideological reasons. In her book History Of The Partisan Groups (M.U.R.) Of Bouches-Du-Rhone From September 1943 To The Liberation (published in 1962) Madeleine Baudoin included an interview she had with the Communist Poli. He confirmed to Baudoin that the Communists purposely left the anarchists behind in prison because of their anti-patriotic attitudes. He was aware that the two had participated in the resistance in various ways, including forging papers to help people fleeing the Nazi and Vichy authorities. But, he asserted that, as Communists, he and his comrades loved France and were true patriots. They could tolerate differences of opinion and would have been willing even to help monarchists who shared their love of France, but not anti-patriotic anarchists.

After the escape, the political prisoners left behind were transferred to the prison at Aix, from which they escaped, at the end of April 1944, with help from the local resistance organisation. Many years later, Sauliere learned that he and Chauvet had been scheduled to be sent to a concentration camp from the prison at Aix.




After the war Sauliere continued his anarchist activities, settling in Marseille again. In 1948, because of his wartime draft resistance, he was sentenced to a five-year prison term. But this was suspended because he was able to produce twenty- eight affidavits from people who had known him in the resistance.

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Dec 22 2005 11:17


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