The Female French Resistance: Truth Or Fiction?

Simone Segouin, a woman combatant in the French Resistance, near Chartres, August 23, 1944.

“The Nightingale,” by Kristin Hannah, is about how ordinary French women summoned up extraordinary courage during the German occupation of their country in WWII. I wasn't expecting much from this New York Times best-selling author, but about half-way into the novel, I was hooked. How could things become worse? They did.

The story is about how two rivalrous sisters of Carriveau, a fictional town somewhere in the Loire Valley, play out their roles during the war. Courageous Isabelle becomes a member of the resistance. She's a runner, leading fallen British aviators out of France across the Pyrenees mountains into Spain and out of danger. Her sister Vianne seems more like the typical woman of her time. A mother. A teacher. And dependent on her husband, who is forced to enlist and leave. We fear she will betray all and become a collaborator--in order to survive.

Through this book, I learned much about how women coped in wartime France, thanks to the author's research. Women queuing for hours to buy very little with their ration coupons. Wearing shoes with wooden soles when the leather ran out. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time when a bomb hit, or a when German soldier decided it was time to maintain order at a border crossing. Or being rounded up as a Jew, a spy, or for breaking curfew. It left me in tears.

In this book, you'll find only heroines, however, no female “collabos.” As if to say that all French women faced ambiguous situations where it may have “looked like” they helped the enemy in some small degree or other, but, in the end, they all slayed their occupiers. I'm not underestimating how difficult it must have been for French women to survive under occupation. But there were certainly other women, like Coco Chanel, who found it convenient and lucrative to become very close to the enemy (read Hal Vaughan’s “Sleeping With the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War”).

Ms. Hannah gives us the happy ending we all want. And the version of history that France desperately reaches for. In May 2015, France interred Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz and Germaine Tillion, two female heroes of the resistance in the Panthéon, the resting place of the nation’s great, in addition to two male members. It's no doubt that these women were brave. But was there a French Resistance, or more or less acts of resistance? The latest book about the WWII resistance, "Fighters in the Shadows," by Robert Gildea, sets out to answer that question.

(More resistance reading: “The Secret Ministry of AG. & Fish: My Life in Churchill's School for Spies,” by the British author Noreen Riols, who helped support French Resistance fighters.)

Mighty Joe: Faketale or Folktale?

Ever since I spent a summer working at J&L Steel Co. in Pittsburgh, I've wanted to find out more about steelworker Joe Magarac. He's to Pittsburgh what Paul Bunyan was to the American West. Faketale or folktale, the story of Mighty Joe tells you a lot about my native city's pride, work ethic, and ethos. Here's my take on the tall tale:

Now Joe was a real saint, the saint of all steelworkers in Pittsburgh, born in the old country, deep in the mountains of Croatia. Well, he wasn't an official saint, because he never went to mass on Sunday. He worked all the time, triple shifts--morning, afternoon, and night turn--didn't even stop to sleep.

He did stop to eat, though. Mrs. Horkey's daughter, who still has the boarding house in the South Side, says he ate 6 meals a day there, but never laid his head down to rest! He had to eat that much, especially because he was about 7 feet tall, and biceps as big as my waist. Yes you believe me, he was the strongest, fastest, kindest of them all.

From Croatia.org

He was so strong because he was made of steel! But he wasn't cold to the touch, no sir. You know why? Because his heart was made of the finest molten steel, it never cooled, and kept him warm day and night. During the worst Pittsburgh winters with the deepest snow. He didn't even have to wear a coat that Joe! He was so strong he could bend steel into pretzels, and squeeze molten steel through his fingers to make train tracks. 

Now I never met Mighty Joe, but I met a foreman whose dad knew him when he started at the mill. Joe saved his life! Let me tell you what happened. It is about 4 o'clock in the open hearth, that's where they cook the steel. One of the furnaces is ready to tap. Everyone is in their places, ready to add this or that to keep the molten metal flowing into the ladle. 

The ladle is starting to fill up. But something groans and creaks. The iron stops flowing. Then all of a sudden the furnace splits open and the white-hot steel comes pouring out like a waterfall onto the ladle. It's just too much, the ladle jams and starts to overflow.

The men scream and turn to run, and but in that second, there comes a huge black shadow over everyone--Mighty Joe. He takes the split seam of the furnace like it was a piece of cloth he was sewing, and seals up the crack with his bare hands.

And then he's gone just as fast as he came. If he hadn't come, in another second the whole heat would have been lost, and all the men too. They check themselves to see if they are all there, and watch the ladle move on, as if nothing happened. There wasn't even a spill on the ground, just a faint mist rising up from the floor where Joe had stood. Yes, you could always count on Joe.

Poor Joe Magarac. He came to a bad end. You see he worked so hard, so fast, that one day the boss says they're shutting down the mill early Saturday for a nice long weekend. They're way ahead on production because of Joe! Everyone was happy, but not Joe—he liked to work all the time.

Now when they came back on Monday, they can't find Joe. The melter boss looks all around. He finally finds him in the ladle, with boiling hot steel up to his neck! The boss is so scared. He says Joe, better git outta there! But Joe says, the only way I can work all the time is to make myself into the best steel there is. To make the best mill there ever was. And with that he says goodbye and dunks his head under. And that's the last time anybody saw Mighty Joe. And that's why in Pittsburgh we had the best steel mills anywhere, and the best steel in the world. And that's the story of Mighty Joe Magarac!

(Adapted from Carver, George, “Legend in Steel,” The Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, Vol. 27, Nos.3-4, pp. 129-136, 1944.)