On the Western Front of World War II, French resistance fighters captured near Amiens in 1941 while attempting to destroy telephone lines leading to German headquarters were prepared to be shot to death.

　　On the Western Front of World War II, in 1941, French resistance fighters captured near Amiens in an attempt to destroy telephone lines leading to German headquarters were prepared to be shot. Such was the end that awaited many of the maquis captured by the German occupying forces. by the Germans who occupied France at a firing range in Vincennes, France. One of the 30,000 Frenchmen executed as hostages of the resistance was executed by firing squad.

　The Maquis were a rural guerrilla group of French and Belgian resistance fighters. During World War II, the Maquis were referred to as the Marquises by the German military government in occupied France. Initially they were captured by the Forced Labor Service, which provided forced labor to Germany by Vichy France, and organized into increasingly active resistance groups to avoid deportation to Germany. in March 1944, as the Allies gained the upper hand, the Maquis intensified their activities. in the fall of 1943, an estimated 25,000 to 40,000 members; in June 1944 there were approximately 10,000 members.

  The French Resistance, an organization that fought the Nazi occupation and the communist Vichy regime from its inception on June 22, 1940, when France was occupied, operated in France during World War II. Charles de Gaulle appealed to the French people from his London-based government-in-exile, Free France, on June 18, 1940, to resist the German occupation of Free France. The resistance was a small group of armed men and women, known in rural areas as the Maquis. They waged guerrilla warfare, published underground newspapers, and provided intelligence information and means of escape to the Allied forces. The men and women of the resistance were assembled from many parts of French society, including immigrants, scholars, students, aristocrats, and conservative Roman Catholics and clergy. The percentage of Frenchmen who joined the organized resistance was estimated to be between 1 percent and 3 percent of the total population.

　 By the summer of 1944, informal purges of Vichy cadres and supporters had already begun, and summary executions against resistance organizations exceeded 10,000. Special courts trying citizens accused of conspiracy held 125,000 hearings over the next two years. Some 50,000 offenders were punished by loss of citizenship for several years, some 40,000 were imprisoned, and 700 to 800 were executed. Partisan operations against the Germans resulted in the deaths of approximately 13,000 to 16,000 French citizens, including 4,000 to 5,000 innocent French civilians.