Contenu du sommaire : La réalité face aux mythes

On 15 October 1914, a quite particular brigade was sent to the front line to cover the retreat of the Belgian army. Commanded by a naval officer, Admiral Ronarc'h, it consisted of two regiments of naval conscripts who had, for the most part, no experience of combat on land. They were quickly sent into action in the swamps of Yser and their losses were very high. The press at once seized upon the action, and with the encouragement of the Ministry of the Navy it became known as the “Battle of Dixmude.”. Journalists and propagandists, while overstepping certain points, built the action of these sailors into a legend. Once again truth fell casualty to war. The purpose here is to introduce some elements of truth.

To serve the Nazi regime and its expansionist policy, the power of the German army was rapidly shown and celebrated in many an impressive parade. At the beginning of the war and up to 1941, the number of easy and stunning victories served only to reinforce the image of an Army endowed with an irresistible and crushing superiority. This reputation even outlasted the war. Nevertheless, German rearmament was not as efficient as some people claimed, and it would be a mistake to consider the German army endowed by nature with superiority. In order to better understand the role of myth in the reconstruction of the German army in the 1930s, one must take into account the impact and extent of the transformations it had to go through in so short a time. It is then possible to reach a much more balanced viewpoint about an army formed in a hurry and not without elements of weakness.

One of the aspects of the Second World War was the struggle for rubber. By dint of its technical superiority, Germany came out with its artificial rubber known as buna, and to cover its costs Germany demanded access, with some success, to the markets controlled by Dunlop, Bergougnou and Michelin. Face to face with America, and in the name of European solidarity, Germany envisaged the construction of a buna factory in France in the department of Ain, but without success.

Operations in Upper Tonkin in the autumn of 1947: strategic uncertainties. The operation launched in Tonkin in the autumn of 1947, with the aim of capturing Ho Chi Minh and his staff, had been planned by the French authorities for over a year. It failed because the tactical plans did not correspond to the nature of the war in Indo-China.

The conditions under which the French Army began its repression of the Algerian uprising in November 1954 are directly related to the outcome of the decolonization conflict. In the first place, France's main concern until this moment was Indochina. Then, in denying the Algerians a national identity, the French authorities downplayed the threat of insurrection and interpreted this guerrilla warfare as a simple tribal uprising, such as Algeria had already known in the past. Unprepared in matériel and human resources, the French armed forces had difficulty in regaining the initiative over the Army of National Liberation formed by the National Liberation Front (fln), a political movement which had meanwhile legitimized its action on the international scene.

The conflict over Nagorno-Krabakh, between Azerbaijan and Armenia, is commonly called frozen, but in fact it is far from frozen. Indeed, despite the ceasefire in force, gunfire at the border continues, resulting in several deaths each month on both sides. The inhabitants of the two sides in conflict continue to live in a state of war, which has a negative impact upon their life. The current situation is in no way to the advantage of the region, and war threatens to break out at any moment.

In the period 1939-1940, the Communist Youth Movement made contact with Fernand Laporte, who then served the organization until the summer of 1942. After losing contact with the movement, he decided to join the Free French by way of Spain. He was arrested by Franco's police and found himself detained in the concentration camp at Miranda de Ebro. When released in the summer of 1943, he was placed in the care of the Red Cross. He then made his way to Setubal in Portugal and from there took ship to North Africa. There he joined the Free French Forces and took part in the liberation of Corsica in September 1943. Returning to Algeria, he underwent commando training and as a result was sent in July 1944 to the Maquis in the Drôme area. He found himself at the head of a corps franc, and then of a company of ftp (Francs-tireurs et partisans). In September 1944, he was appointed an instructor at the officers' school at Uriage (Isère) whose task was to meld into a single structure the ffi (Forces françaises de l'intérieur) and the regular army. Within this framework, he took part in the Alsace campaign. In 1945 he joined the regular army but in April 1947 resigned his commission.

In May 1943, Pierre Deconde, then twenty-one years old, was enrolled in the Forced Labour Service and sent to the base at Peenemünde, where the German “retaliation” weapon V2 was under study, construction and trial. By being present at such a secret site, it allowed him to see the project's importance to science and technology and, no less, to witness the brutality shown to the prisoner-labourers. He could observe the firing of the V2 and was witness also to a raid on the base by the Royal Air Force.