In January 1943, the French Militia (known simply as the “Milice”), the Vichy regime’s formidable political police force, was established.
In February, the Occupying Forces imposed the Compulsory Labor Service ( STO) on young French people in Germany. They were expected to boost German agriculture and industry, which were facing labor shortages. Many men, fleeing the STO, went underground and joined the maquis.
The FTP-M.O.I. continued and stepped up their armed actions (throwing grenades, planting bombs in hotels frequented by Germans, setting military trucks on fire, etc.) despite increased surveillance by the occupying authorities.
For Vichy, the Resistance was nothing more than a conspiracy by “anti-France.” This was the terminology used by Hitler’s propaganda machine to frighten the French population and turn it away from the Resistance. In 1943, freedom fighters were labeled “terrorists” by the Nazis and by Pétain’s collaborationist French government.
The goal, according to the Nazis and their collaborators, was to portray resistance groups as criminal gangs organized to subject France to “cosmopolitan Judeo-Communist terror.”
