7 - A Civil Society against Two States

Summary

Drawing upon a field analysis – that of the concrete spatial framework in which evasion-assistance actions arose – we have seen how, despite many setbacks, a collective local dynamic rapidly expanded, gradually giving rise to a national-level resistance network. The study of the repression has shed light on the warlike and thus political dimension of these actions of inter-Allied clandestine solidarity. Another way to bring out the political commitment underlying these apparently humanitarian acts is to change scale and take into account the moral, material and national context that accompanied these collective behaviors and that on the face of it should have hampered their development. Evasion assistance did not develop in a peaceful and neutral universe but rather against a backdrop of destruction and mourning caused by Allied bombings and in opposition to a media sphere fully committed to the anti-Allied cause. A paradoxical situation, in short, one that reveals the helpers’ social autonomy vis-à-vis the French and German authorities.