L'Affiche RougeAntisemite and anticommunist propaganda leaflet[with] L'Armée du crime
1944 ◇ 20,5 x 26,5 cm & 22 x 30 cm ◇ one leaflet and one brochure
Rare example of this propaganda leaflet published by Nazi Occupation Forces, which became the most iconic image of the French Resistance. This smaller version of the famous Affiche rouge features the poster on the recto and a paragraph on the verso castigating “the Army of Crime against France”. It opens with accusations against “the global dream of the Jewish conspiracy” and claims “if Frenchmen sabotage, loot, and kill […] it is always under the influence of Jews”. A discreet horizontal crease, otherwise superb condition for an ephemeral document.
With the rare brochure entitled “L'Armée du crime” [“The Army of Crime”] in newspaper format illustrated with 14 pages of photographs. A trace of horizontal fold. A fine copy.
***
“Over the years, the image of the Affiche rouge has gradually become engraved in the memory of the French. We never tire of looking at it and seeing it again, from time to time, in a newspaper or on television… It evokes the same emotion as listening to Aragon's poem sung by Léo Ferré. This poster possesses a power its creators never anticipated.” (Adam Rayski)
Through a remarkable reversal of its intended purpose, the Affiche rouge became, upon its appearance on “the walls of our cities”, a symbol of the courage, the achievements and international solidarity of Resistance fighters.
As wrote Aragon in his famous poem, everything about the poster was designed to “sow fear in the passersby”: the color of “the poster, that seemed like a bloodstain”, the portraits of Manouchian and his men, “black with beard and night, disheveled and threatening”, the strange names that were “hard to pronounce”, the tally of each man's “crimes", and the photographic evidence, funneling into a grim procession of gray faces.
Yet, when poet Louis Aragon wrote eleven years later “But at time of curfew, wandering fingers / Wrote under your pictures 'Fallen for France'”, it was not mere poetic license. As the French national Immigration Museum points out on its website: “It is certain that here and there anonymous hands laid flowers at the foot of these posters or stuck banners on them that read ‘Martyrs' or ‘Yes, the army of the Resistance'”.
This is corroborated by the clandestine journal Les Lettres françaises, who published the following month a text also issued in a leaflet distributed by the Mouvement national contre le racisme (National Movement Against Racism), a Resistance organization stemming from the Jewish section of the Main-d'OEuvre Immigrée (Immigrant Labor) led by Adam Rayski:
“Very tall and dramatic with its ten medallions on a blood-red background, this is the 'Liberators?' poster, representing 'Jewish terrorists': a Hungarian, a Spaniard, an Armenian, an Italian, and Poles. The crowd gathers silently. Above each of their portraits — meant, no doubt, to horrify us — their exploits are listed. One of them carried out 56 derailments, causing 150 deaths and 600 injuries.‘Quite the tally,' someone says.A woman confides to her companion: 'They didn't manage to make them look ugly.'And it was true. Despite beatings, imprisonment, and hunger, the passersby gaze at these energetic faces with their broad foreheads. They look long and solemn, as one salutes fallen friends. In their eyes, there is no morbid curiosity, only admiration and sympathy, as if these men were our own. And indeed, they were ours, for they fought among thousands of us for our homeland, which is also the homeland of liberty.
On one of the posters, someone had written at night, in charcoal and capital letters, a single word: martyrs. It was Paris's tribute to those who fought for freedom.”
This failure of Nazi and collaborationist propaganda was confirmed by an internal report from the Renseignements Généraux (French intelligence services), which quickly acknowledged the unexpected reaction of the population.
15,000 copies of the poster were printed and displayed across towns and villages in France between February 22 and 24, 1944. It was originally meant to be the grand finale of a violent media campaign to discredit the increasingly effective Resistance groups, which were soon to unite as the French Forces of the Interior (FFI).
The Centre d'Étude Antibolchévique (Anti-Bolshevik Study Center), responsible for designing the poster, reused the style and slogans of earlier propaganda posters but attempted to innovate by using photography for the first time. By replacing the usual stigmatizing caricatures with actual portraits of the protagonists, the poster inadvertently put a face to the Resistance and offered the public heroic icons. The fighter's diverse nationalities emphasized the universal nature of the struggle for Freedom.
It is this Freedom that dominates the visual space of the poster, crushing the “crime” with its dual presence in white and red through the majestic characters used for the words “libérateurs” ('liberators') and “libération”.
Even the words “Army of Crime” become eminently positive in this composition. Ten young men, with luminous faces and determined gazes, facing what appears to be their execution wall, earned the title of an “army” capable of “liberating” France from the supposedly invincible Nazi force.
The poster's red background, chosen to evoke both crime and Communism to provoke rejection, is slashed with thick black strokes that align it more with the Nazi flag than with the Soviet hammer and sickle. The large “V” drawn in the center, meant to mock the Resistance's rallying symbol, manages instead to resembles an inverted swastika transformed into a proclamation of Victory.
What was intended as a bloody funnel closing in on the “terrorists” became a chalice consecrating these unsung heroes occupying the top of the poster. Meanwhile, at the bottom, the black arrowhead seems to stigmatize the crumbling Occupation.
It is difficult to imagine a more counterproductive piece of propaganda paired with such evocative power. The Affiche rouge was immediately perceived by the population as the symbol of the reversal of forces and, above all, of a real French contribution to the advance of the Allied troops. The poster its accompanying leaflets and brochures, plastered across France, presented the image of an ever-present Resistance. It helped establish the narrative of a France that was predominantly resistant, Gaullist, and united against collaborationism and the Vichy government.
The majority of Affiche rouge posters were redacted, leaflets abandoned, brochures destroyed. Very few copies of these documents remain today, even though they marked a major turning point in the Second World War. Like Zola's J'accuse, the poor quality of the paper and the ephemeral nature despite being printed in large quantities, meant that they were not destined to be preserved for generations to come. The handful remaining copies were passed down by “patriotic bibliophiles”, as Resistant writer Vercors called them.
More than just major historical documents, these are above all one of the rare sources of information on this Nazi crime. The trial of the 23 members of the Manouchian Group was rushed through in a single day by the German military tribunal at the Paris Hôtel Continental on February 19, 1944. On February, 21, there were in fact only 22 of them “when the riffles flowered” on Mont-Valérien, while the only female Resistant fighter of the group Golda (Olga) Bancic was beheaded on May, 10 in Stuttgart.
Strangely, unlike earlier cases, little else is known about the trial of the Manouchian Group. Only the verdict and the famous letters from the condemned to their families remain. These letters have shaped the collective memory of the Resistance:
◇ “There is nothing more beautiful than to die for France.” (Georges Cloarec, age 20) ;
◇ “You have always been paradise to me, which is why I sacrificed my life.” (Rino Della Negra, age 20);
◇ “You shouldn't be sad but, on the contrary, gay, since for you there will be singing tomorrows.” (Thomas Elek, age 19);
◇ “I'm not afraid to die. I just think it's a bit too soon. Quite a terrific birthday present, don't you think?” (Léon Goldberg, age 20);
◇ “I die for freedom.” (Stanislas Kubacki, age 35);
◇ “I wish for happiness for all those who will survive and taste the sweetness of the freedom and peace of tomorrow.” (Missak Manouchian, age 37);
◇ “I love everyone, and long live life.” (Marcel Rayman, age 20);
◇ “Soon life will be beautiful.” (Robert Witchitz, age 19)
Paradoxically, it is only thanks to the Affiche rouge, and even more so to the leaflet and brochure L'Armée du Crime, that some elements of this secret trial have been preserved. Collaborationist newspapers only published the “notes” released by the Vichy-controlled French Information Office, which itself seemed poorly informed: “Information about the trial of the terrorists currently taking place in Paris will be published following dispatches on the repression of banditry and terrorism” (
Consigne n° 1460, February, 20).
As such, the poster — a veritable death notice in disguise which sought to desecrate the memory of the dead with xenophobic and antisemitic rhetoric — has become
the final and indelible trace of the heroic lives of “twenty-three foreigners and yet our brothers”, the young faces of these “twenty-three lovers of living to the point of dying for it” and the now-pantheonised names of the 23 fighters of the Manouchian Group “who cried out France as they fell”.
The Red Poster by Louis Aragon
You didn't beg for glory nor tears
Nor the organ music, nor the last rites
Eleven years already, how quickly eleven years go by
You simply made use of your weapons
Death does not dazzle the eyes of partisans.
You had your pictures on the walls of our cities
Black with beard and night, disheveled, threatening
The poster, that seemed like a bloodstain,
Because your names are hard to pronounce,
Sought to sow fear in the passers-by.
No one seemed to be enclined to see you French
People went without eyes for you the whole day,
But at time of curfew, wandering fingers
Wrote under your pictures “Fallen for France"
And it made the gloomy mornings different.
Everything had the unvarying color of frost
In late February for your last moments
And that's when one of you said calmly:
"Happiness to all, happiness to those who will survive,
I die without hate in me for the German people.
"Farewell to sorrow, farewell to pleasure.
Farewell the roses,
Farewell life, the light and the wind.
Get married, be happy and think of me often
You who will remain in the beauty of things
When all will be over later in Erevan.
"A broad winter sun lights up the hill
How beautiful nature is and how my heart breaks
Justice will come over our triumphant footsteps,
My Mélinée, oh my love, my orphan girl,
And I tell you to live and to bear a child."
There were twenty-three of them when the rifles flowered
Twenty-three who gave their hearts before it was time,
Twenty-three foreigners and yet our brothers
Twenty-three lovers of living to the point of dieing for it
Twenty-three who shouted “France!” as they fell.
Louis Aragon
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