Season 1

The liberation of France in 1944 was a major military objective in the Allies' first major offensive. But in order to reduce Germany to the point of surrender, the Allied strategy would probably have proved to be insufficient without the will of the French people to free themselves of the occupiers through clandestine resistance movements. Due to the blend of a historian's respect for facts and human warmth, the film, made up of archive footage, puts us in the middle of the last battles for liberation.

The French colonial empire (the French Overseas Territories) seems to have been forgotten at the start of WWII, before playing an important role from June 1940 to the end of 1944: Paris being occupied, the Vichy government being disputed, Brazzaville and Algiers were for a time the capitals of France. General De Gaulle, from London, launched his first broadcast to France on June 18, 1940, decided to set out to reconquer France with the Empire as a base. This film traces the situation between 1940 and 1945 in the Pacific (New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna, Polynesia) ...

The invasion of June 6, 1944 was followed in Normandy by wave upon wave of destruction and fierce resistance on the part of the Germans: the liberation was long in coming as battles raged and terror reigned. The titanic confrontation of the two armies serves as the backdrop for the people of Normandy recounting events they still hear and feel.

"Meet at the beach," announces the BBC. On June 6, 1944, the Allied paratroopers found a region ravaged by the Occupation. All summer, the 150,000 German soldiers present in Brittany are engaged against the armed F.F.I. (French Forces of the Interior). But this guerrilla army could not have lasted long without the arrival of American troops. In mid-August, Allied General Patton, astonished by the efficiency of these mysterious F.F.I., turned his back on the Atlantic and headed for the Seine. With nearly 12,000 killed, the siege of Brest was the most important battle ...

In 1944 the Southwest underwent its own separate liberation; there were several partisan movements and many organizations - the FTP, the Spanish republicans, the "armée secrète", the Jewish partisans - all carrying out periodic operations against the Germans. They were different from one another, but they all had the same, twofold hope: expelling the occupying government and changing the world. They came together in the FFI. Jean-Pierre Vernant, Serge Ravanel, René Andrieu, and Pierre Lefranc, participants and witnesses of the period, tell the story.

"We knew why we were fighting. This fight was first for Freedom. Let's never lose sight of that." On the basis of testimonies, and focusing on the history of a department at war, Dordogne, this film questions the memory of the years 1940-1944; inquiries expressed as pretexts for a debate on the commitment and struggles for freedom and democracy. Beyond the story of the liberation of this region, it is a reflection on resistance. What remains of the Resistance? Do the testimonies of its lost witnesses, its mark in national life persist?

In the Vercors, beginning in 1942, a growing number of people who were opposed to the German hard labor brigades took refuge in the forest, and those known as the "maquisards" quickly became the spearhead of the Resistance. Paradoxically, while the German occupiers often overestimated the mobilization of the interior resistance, the Resistance movement outside France seems often to have failed to recognize it. This film tells the real story of the "maquis".

During the Second World War, few regions suffered as much as the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, which was looted and pressured by the occupying regime more than any other. Nowhere else did hatred of the enemy, hostility to the Vichy regime, and patriotic feelings become so widespread. And yet, nowhere at the time of the Liberation were so many errors committed, nor so much confusion.

"Nancy has a stiff neck": on August 14, 1944, at 7.15 pm, a coded message broadcast by the BBC in London warns the French Resistance of the imminent landing in Provence. This operation, called Dragoon (initially Operation Anvil), begins the next day, 70 days after the landing in Normandy. Operation Dragoon will consist for the allies (450,000 men, including about 250,000 Frenchmen) to grip the German occupier to force it to retreat. Faced with the French, American, Canadian and British troops, General Wiese's 19th German army had only 250,000 men, dispersed on the ...

In June 1940, the Wehrmacht entered Paris, which for four years became the Germans' military and political center for the occupation of France. Beginning with the Normandy invasion, the military situation was reshuffled and the liberation of the capital was the subject of many negotiations among the Allies. This film retraces the high points of the Battle for Paris, from August 19-25, 1944.

Alsace is the last of the liberated French territories. De facto annexed by the Third Reich in June 1940, it was placed under Nazi administration and brutally Germanized. From August 1942, the Alsatians were forcibly incorporated into the Wehrmacht and sent to the Russian front. The memory of this difficult moment is not easy; memory of the "malgré nous", many of whom perished in the Russian steppes. The Liberation of Strasbourg and Mulhouse took place at the end of November 1944. But that of the whole of Alsace was long. It was not until February 2, 1945, that Colmar...

Joyful parades, spontaneous dancing parties, etc., after four years of fighting, suffering, deprivation, death, and despite its cities and its economy in ruins, France of 1944 is celebrating its rediscovered freedom. But these happy images should not obscure the harsh reality of the retaliation against the collaborators and the reconstruction to come. This film powerfully relates the political and economic history of France from 1940 to 1945. Let us remember: on May 12, 1940, the German air force attacked France via Belgium, from the 13th, the Germans defeated the ...