Battle of Vercors: History and Controversy over Responsibility

This article examines the history of the “Battle of Vercors,” in which the Vercors Maquis, one of the major guerrilla groups in France during the German occupation, fought against the German army in June and July 1944. It also explores the postwar debate over the responsibility for the defeat in this battle.Vercors was both a key site of memory for the domestic Resistance, often referred to as the “Bir Hakeim of the domestic Resistance,” and a place of controversy where allegations arose that the Vercors Maquis had been abandoned by General de Gaulle’s provisional government in Algiers. The so-called “betrayal hypothesis” originated from a telegram sent by Eugene Chavant on July 22, 1944, in the midst of the battle, in which he denounced the French leaders in Algiers as “criminals and cowards.” This hypothesis was later reinforced by the Communists from 1947 and became widely popularized in 1956 through Alain Prevost’s novel Le peuple impopulaire. It persisted for a long time as the “black legend” of Vercors.However, since the Vercors Maquis was not affiliated with the FTP (Francs-Tireurs et Partisans), the Communist-led armed resistance organization, the hypothesis that de Gaulle and his provisional government deliberately abandoned Vercors out of fear of a Communist revolution after the liberation is difficult to accept. Rather, it seems more plausible that Vercors was not considered strategically significant by either de Gaulle’s provisional government or the Allied forces. Even if the provisional government in Algiers had been willing to support the Vercors Maquis in June and July 1944, it was unable to persuade the Allied command to provide substantial reinforcements of troops and weapons. This lack of support ultimately led to the collapse of the Vercors Maquis.