Breton Nationalism and World War II - Actions By The Resistance

Actions By The Resistance

Several Breton nationalists were assassinated by the Resistance in 1943. The best known was Abbé Perrot, killed on 12 December 1943 by Jean Thépaut, a member of the Communist Resistance. Earlier, on the 3 September, Yann Bricler had been shot in his office by three FTP members, and similarly Yves Kerhoas was killed by the Resistance when leaving a fete in the village of Plouvenez. Jeanne Coroller was kidnapped and stabbed to death on July 13, 1944. When American troops arrived in 1944, communist maquis members began their repressive actions. Jeanne Coroller-Danio, the Breton historian who worked under the name Danio, was beaten to death along with her brother-in-law, Commander Le Minthier ; the Tastevint brothers were castrated, and the Maubré sisters and their brother were savagely murdered in Morbihan.

The BNP, dissolved along with the French Communist Party in 1939, no longer legally existed. Its activists were hunted down and not distinguished from the Breton militants who wore the symbol of the dukes of Brittany ("ermine-trimmed berets"). Many were deported to detention camps; notably at the Camp Marguerite in Rennes where 150 nationalists were detained for alleged collaborationism. The Breton nationalists sought to defend the fact that their widespread image as an overtly fascist, even Nazi, movement had nothing to do with the actual political backgrounds of their activists, as varied as the Action française (royalist), the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO, socialist), the separatist Breton National Party (PAB), or the French Communist Party. Moreover, Yann Goulet received financial and public backing from several communist militants at the time of the Liberation. Other militants accused of collaboration demonstrated to the courts that they had protected Jewish families during the occupation (Alan Eon–Yann Goulet).