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Communists and Gaullists
In the period following the war, the Communists and Gaullists both attempted to monopolize the memory of the Resistance. The French Communist Party branded itself as “Le Parti des 75,000 Fusillés” (Party of the 75,000 martyrs), while in reality there were no more than 30,000 resisters from all of the different political parties shot by the Nazis. The communists “probably lost only a few thousand men to German firing squads”, but the figure of 75000 became an accepted truth and contributed to the legacy of the resistance remaining central to the Party’s identity.

The Gaullist party was also keen to take ownership of the legacy of the resistance. Uniting the Nation under De Gaulle’s leadership required “the construction of the myth that, despite a few traitors, the French nation, united behind de Gaulle, had liberated itself”. When he returned to power as a result of the political crisis of 1958, De Gaulle reinforced the mythology of the Resistance, notably though the panthenoization ceremony of Jean Moulin.

While both factions shared differences with each other, there was consensus between both on that “the Resistance had represented the real France and incarnated the true feelings of the French people throughout the Occupation”. This helped foster and spread the myth of a highly-resistant France during the Occupation period.

Dissenting memories
The myth of the resistance became so overpowering that it for a long period of time, it squeezed out alternative memories of the Occupation period. For instance, many resisters were critical of the idea that a majority of the french population had taken part in the Resistance. The resistance fighter Alban Vistel expressed this frustration, stating that ‘it is time to unmask a pious myth which has not really deceived anyone. The great majority of the people of this country played only a small and fleeting part in the events. Their activity was passive, except at the last moments.”

While traditional conservatism and the extreme-right in France had been discredited due to its role in the Vichy government, many rehabilitated former collaborators challenged the prevailing Resistance narrative. Rather than attack the Resistance as a whole, they created the term 'resistentialism' to criticise those who they saw as pseudo-resisters while also attempting to rehabilitate the memory of Pétain and his collaborationist government.

Silenced memories
With the myth of the resistance requiring heroes, the memories of victims of the Nazi regime not involved in the resistance were often buried within the collective memory. This is visible in the way different groups of deportees were recognised as victims by the Government. While political and resistant deportees were recognised as victims of the Vichy and Nazi regime, Service du travail obligatoire (STO) workers, French workers who had been sent to Germany to work as forced labour, were not. During the post-war period, there was an enduring suspicion that these men could have avoided the STO and joined the Resistance instead.