Chapter 77:
Chapter 77
Although Western Europe had become one under the Nazi Third Reich, not everyone accepted their rule without resistance.
The left-wing resistance led by the French Communist Party carried out several terrorist attacks with the support of the Soviet Union.
Francois Darlan, the naval minister of Vichy, was assassinated by a secret society of college students.
Marshal Petain, the leader of the Vichy government, also had to survive a bomb attack at a public ceremony.
Fortunately, the German resident commissioner kicked away the grenade and the incident ended with only a few generals of the Vichy government being seriously injured.
However, this event tarnished the reputation of the Vichy government.
Moreover, many people began to support the communist resistance that fought against the Nazis.
“What if they are reds? As long as they can give those damn German pigs a hard time, I would even kiss Satan’s ass.”
“You said it well. Those bastards who claim to be patriots are worse than the communists who have no homeland.”
The Vichy government integrated the national police, the national gendarmerie, and the pro-German militia Milice, which was ‘organized by citizens to protect their country’, into the French Gendarmerie.
The thugs who used to hang around in the neighborhood and somehow collaborated with Germany became officers of the gendarmerie.
They brutally suppressed the resistance and their candidates, who were mostly intellectuals, to vent their inferiority complex.
The local college students, teachers, doctors and lawyers who had strong patriotism or anti-German tendencies were often dragged to the gendarmerie headquarters for interrogation.
The gendarmerie made up all kinds of excuses to crack down on any activity that showed signs of anti-German protests.
The resistance fought back more fiercely.
The communist resistance cells in Paris seemed to be running underground factories, producing all kinds of explosives and supplying them to other organizations.
Among these organizations, the youngest and most passionate college students frequently attacked the gendarmerie.
It was almost as if there was a resistance circle in every block and every department in Paris.
The gendarmerie headquarters that managed them were terrorized almost every day.
“Get him! Get him!”
“Huff, huff, huff…”
In the dark evening, a young man threw a makeshift bomb over the high fence of the headquarters and ran away.
A few gendarmes chased him after seeing him.
The gendarmes shouted loudly to catch him, but the passing citizens ignored them.
They even moved aside to let the young man pass and subtly bumped into the gendarmes to hinder their pursuit.
The citizens hated the gendarmes.
“You are all arrested for obstructing public affairs! Arrested!”
“Hmm… Did that young man do anything wrong?”
A middle-aged man who was drinking coffee at a cafe and holding a book under his arm asked calmly as if he had no idea what was going on.
“That guy is a terrorist! Old man! Didn’t you hear me say catch him?”
“Huh? Huh? I’m a bit deaf…”
The middle-aged man made a mocking expression and put his hand on his ear as if he couldn’t hear well.
“Pfft, look at these lackeys!”
“Whistle whistle~ Wake up, children of the motherland! The day of glory has arrived!”
The people passing by laughed and some even whistled La Marseillaise loudly.
The gendarmes should have beaten up and dragged away the middle-aged man with their batons, but they felt like they were surrounded by people coming out of the alleys.
They clenched their batons and guns more tightly as they saw some burly young men with fists ready to fight.
The middle-aged man taunted them more exaggeratedly with his gestures and voice.
“So what? Speak louder! Did you young fellows skip your meals… I can’t understand your barking sounds very well.”
“What?”
“Huh? Huh? Say it again if you have something to say. I can’t hear you!”
The middle-aged man lowered his tone slightly when he said barking sounds, making it barely audible. But it seemed like everyone else heard it.
They laughed louder and created a menacing atmosphere. The gendarmes had to back away while threatening them with their weapons.
“Damn… Spit! Hey, let’s go. Let’s go.”
“Hahaha! Go! Go!”
No matter how armed they were, they could end up as corpses in a sewer tomorrow morning if they only had a few pistols.
The communist resistance had thousands of guns at their disposal, and even the kids playing in the alleys had some bullets or shells to play with.
Paris was practically lawless now.
The German SS security bureau and the French gendarmerie tried all kinds of methods to find out where these weapons came from, but they only reached one conclusion and ended their investigation inconclusively.
“They are not just one or two bastards.”
“That… that’s right.”
The factories in various parts of France were producing military supplies again to send the French army to the eastern front, and these supplies were being stolen.
The investigation revealed this.
They tried to track down the resistance by putting serial numbers on the guns and ammunition for production verification, but they only found out that the supplies were stolen from almost all the factories.
“Damn… How can they all be in collusion with the resistance, even though they are supposed to go through identity checks and ideological screening before working in the factories that handle dangerous goods? “
Joseph Darnand, the minister of the interior and the commander-in-chief of the gendarmerie, banged his desk angrily, but he couldn’t change the reality.
There were certainly people in France who supported German rule, and it was because of them that the Vichy French government could exist.
They did their best to place pro-German factions in places where they handled dangerous goods and ordinary workers in ‘harmless’ fields such as light industry. But this was the result, and the high-ranking officials of the Vichy government were all hysterical.
“Sir… Your Excellency?”
“What? What is it?”
“This is… It seems that there are not only colluders, but also… um… bribed ones.”
Ha… Darnand held his forehead.
“Bribed? Bribed? Do you think the resistance has money to bribe? Do they have a source of funds?”
Most of the major French companies were under the control of German advisers and directors.
The Jewish tycoons were all confiscated and taken away somewhere.
But they were not the only ones who had money.
Of course, there would be some money collected from the pennies of the citizens, and there would be some cases where some wealthy people donated their entire fortune.
But how much money did they spend to bribe the managers of the munitions factories and arsenals all over the country, and to steal all kinds of supplies by sabotaging them?
Where did all that money come from?
It would have cost at least millions of marks.
‘Is it the labor union? The resistance doing this…?’
Darnand suspected that.
“There is something that was revealed during the investigation… We have detected that the income of some of the people we suspect of being colluders has increased significantly. They may have sold weapons to the resistance and received money.”
“Those bastards! Then find all those who have increased their income and torture them!”
“Yes, Your Excellency!”
The resistance had the support of the people.
The citizens blocked the streets and hid the criminals when the gendarmerie tried to catch them, and they secretly helped the resistance.
There was a joke that in Paris, college students who walked with books under their arms didn’t have to worry about their meals.
The citizens guessed that they hid bombs in their books and gave them small things like apples or milk.
This was only true for some naive old ladies who were caught.
“And what about the informers?”
“…It seems that most of them have been exposed. We haven’t heard from ‘that big fish’ who used to report to us regularly for three weeks.”
Darnand slammed his desk again.
“Damn! We could have crushed those reds and Bolsheviks with just him. How did we lose him?”
There must have been some spies in the gendarmerie as well.
Everyone had that suspicion. But they didn’t know who they were.
Many people, such as Pierre-Georges Fabien, a French colonel who assassinated a German officer in the subway last August, or day laborers who cleaned alleys or buildings, could be investigated.
Some wanted to replace all the civilian staff for security reasons.
“Those boys who sort out documents or those women who make coffee or take notes. We have to investigate them all! How do we know how those French bastards leak information?”
“Do you mean to fire them all?”
“Um… That’s a bit…”
Of course, this claim was desperately rejected by many German officers who enjoyed sweet affairs with them.
They preferred the soft and slender French women over the blunt and bulky German women.
Surely, there could be spies.
Everyone thought so.
“But realistically, if we replace all the staff, our work will be paralyzed! And if we bring people from Germany, there will be a lot of communication problems.”
“That’s right. There are not many people who can speak French, and they are not guaranteed to not spy either.”
If they replaced everyone, all the work of the gendarmerie would stop. But there was no guarantee that there would be no resistance spies among the new ones.
There were always loopholes in identity checks unless they brought all the staff from Germany.
And the resistance had the option of bribing new employees.
“Hmm… It’s a dilemma.”
They couldn’t stop all the information leaks even if they added surveillance on surveillance on surveillance.
Was it like fighting water in the sea…?
The resistance mocked the gendarmerie by hanging placards with their slogans on buildings.
<You will drown in the sea of people>
They were everywhere and nowhere.
“Can’t you find their source of money? They would come out for money at least, but you can’t find it? What can you do besides eating?”
In fact, they had succeeded in confiscating a pile of money donated by labor unions a while ago and arresting some traitors. But soon after, the resistance seemed to have found a new source of money and went around shooting with new weapons.
“We apologize, Your Excellency…”
“Damn it, sorry, sorry, shameless, regrettable! What’s next!”
“We have nothing to say, Your Excellency…”
“Ugh… You damn idiots.”
No one could answer Darnand’s rant.
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