"Today it's no longer black and white. Certainly there were collaborators, but many Resistance members in everyday life fought back often with small gestures,"


I saw it on Tv and liked it , it was a good quality fiction with some great historical documents, but no surprise here. There were no major changes in the approach if you ask me. The role of the French police has once more been minmalized, even though you could see sequences with cops guarding camps which I assure you don't see often.
There were 200.000 active resistants, 200.000 active collaborators, the others were passive. When you see the documentary you would thing many more would be ready to risk their lives, which was not always true. There were some great heroes but their actions are drowned in the daily actions of the average civilian. This was true for some, but then why did nobody mention the denunciation letters to the Gestapo , the neigbours who showed the police where jews were hidden? Yes the large majority of French jews were saved by great people, but the fact of pointing out that some other bastards collaborated makes the Resistance even greater. This point is not made if you ask me. The resistance is depicted as bunch of idealists who love freedom and are anti racists. This was not true: many were Communists and hated De Gaulle, other adored him , when they mentionned native troops many used racists terms: many just hated the Germans even more.

The main message got through although it was abit too politically correc tin my opinion. There were also some historical mistakes I saw the city of Orleans which was showed after the 1944 bombings whereas this area was devastated in 1940. That doesn't matter.

1)100.000 resisitants died (kia, mia, torture, deportation , illness etc...) Draw the parallel witht he Battle of France = 100.000 French casualties
2)more french resistants were deported than Jews (80.000 vs 75.000)
3)for every allied soldier saved 10 resistants would die (average) if one single got busted
4) in 1942 there was an anti nazi bombing every day
5) in 1943-44 there was one every hour. (Draw a parallel with the middle and imagine how the Germans felt)
6)for every German killed 20 hostages would be shot, yet it did not stop them form sacrificing themselves.

These are very honorable deeds, by not occulting the less honorable deeds the real heroes would be honnored all the more. Yes there were heroes, there were bastards too, we should mention both of them.

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