The Humanity of Resistance: French Assistance to Downed Allied Aircrews

In 1944, an interallied commission was charged with recognizing the bravery of some 20,000 French civilians who had assisted downed Allied aircrew. These same civilians, however, did not fit within the official parameters of resistance in France, which were largely focused on the military contributions of various resistance organizations. This paper will focus on the human-ness of resistance, found in the day-to-day encounters between French civilians and British and American aircrews, but will argue that such acts of humanity cannot (and should not) be stripped of a political ethos. It was an act of politics to care for an injured airman or to tend to the grave of a dead Allied flyer. These civilians were resisting oppression, resisting ideologies, resisting a conquering power, resisting dehumanization, resisting unjust laws, and resisting the forces that would have stripped them of their humanity.