On September 3, 1944, Lyon was liberated (video)

The full transcript of the show:

Hello everyone, welcome to the show 6 minutes chrono, the daily meeting of the Lyon Capitale editorial team. Today, we are going to talk about the liberation of Lyon and to talk about it, we welcome Isabelle Rivé who is the director of the Center for the History of Resistance and Deportation (CHRD) in Lyon. Hello Isabelle Rivé. Thank you for coming to our set. We are going to get to the heart of the matter. First of all, can you explain to us the context of the liberation of Lyon which took place on September 3, 1944, that is the official date. What was the context of the last few months before this liberation?

The summer of 44 in Lyon was particularly deadly and cruel for contemporaries. The Normandy landings took place on June 6. However, liberation seemed very far away for the people of the south of France, of which Lyon was a part, because the fighting was not progressing in Normandy. Lyon suffered the full force of the occupier’s repression. The Jewish populations were hunted down until the last days of August. The last convoy left Lyon on August 11, but the persecutions continued. Massacres took place in Lyon, in Bron, on August 17 and 18 and on August 20 as well. On August 20 in Saint-Genis-Laval, each time around a hundred people were taken from the Montluc prison and summarily shot. Daily life was extremely complicated due to the restrictions, there was a shortage of everything, especially bread, which was the staple food of the time. And then the fear of everything that could happen: the people of Lyon remember the bombing of May 26, 1944, which was also deadly, about 1,000 dead, a lot of destruction. So we know that the liberation could be accompanied by the return of war in fact on the territory of Lyon and there was both a lot of hope and immense fear among the people of Lyon at the beginning of September 1944.

And then there are also a lot of prisoners, people who have been deported too. There is not much news reaching the people of Lyon, has that also perhaps increased this fear?

So for many families, indeed, we have no news of people who are either prisoners of war, or deported to Germany, or left as part of the STO. The few letters that managed to get through are getting less and less well and there will be no more at all after the liberation. So we have no news of thousands of people, men and women, whom we will see again in the best case in the spring of 1945 and unfortunately often never.

How did the days of liberation go? How did the liberation of Lyon go? Who liberated Lyon? Was it the Allies? Was it the French? The resistance? Who allowed the liberation of the city?

The synergy of all these forces. We must remember that on August 15th, an allied landing took place in Provence, but in which many French people were included. So when I say French, I also mean people who came from the colonies, who therefore had French nationality, therefore all the duties of a French citizen but not the rights since they were subject to the code of the natives. So these were Algerians, Moroccans, men from sub-Saharan Africa too, and it was mainly them who landed on August 15th in Provence. The climb up the Rhone Valley was ultimately quite rapid and in the last days of August the liberators, therefore both the American allies but also the French forces in the first French army, were at the gates of Lyon. The Germans left the city from the end of August and on September 1st and 2nd, but as they left the city they blew up all the bridges in Lyon except two to guarantee their retreat. It is a city in which it is almost impossible to move around that will be liberated in particular by Diego Brosset who is the liberator of Lyon on the morning of September 3, 1944 which is a Sunday morning.

So is there fighting in the city like we saw during the liberation of Paris? Is there shooting in the streets? Is there that kind of thing?
There is no insurrection in Lyon. There is an insurrection that is very cruelly repressed in Villeurbanne. No insurrection in Lyon. The leaders of the resistance did everything to prevent it from happening to avoid a bloodbath. We remember all the massacres of the summer of 44 too well. On the other hand, there is obviously a lot of friction with the Germans who remain, a few militiamen sometimes and then we have to imagine all these resistance fighters who will arrive in Lyon in the first days of September. There is still a lot of tension in the city so indeed there is still shooting on September 3, 4 and 5.

Okay, and I think General de Gaulle then came to the city and talked about Lyon as the capital of the resistance. Can you tell us a word about it?

Of course. On September 14, de Gaulle, who was doing a bit of a tour of France of the liberated cities, came to Lyon and in a speech described Lyon as the “capital of the resistance”, which is historically quite true, but quite true for the first part of the war. Indeed, it was in Lyon that the major movements found favorable ground to set up their headquarters, especially throughout the year 41-42 since Lyon was not yet occupied before November 11, 42. It was in Lyon that Jean Moulin set up everything that would unite the French resistance. From the spring of 43, things would rather happen in Paris because the city was occupied and the repression there was just as fierce, perhaps even more so than in Paris. Indeed, Lyon was for a time the capital and in any case the cradle of the resistance.

I think it is important to remind people of this, especially in Lyon Capitale. In a few words, what can we find at the CHRD, at the center of the history of resistance and deportation, on the occasion of this date of September 3 and all this week?

So all this week and still we have this permanent journey that presents a bit of the historical context at the end of which we will find a film of about fifteen minutes to have a somewhat synthetic vision of all the issues of the liberation and the events. We can also find on our site an immersive podcast that we designed with Marine Beccarelli who is a doctor in history from Lyon 2 which retraces the liberation from a fairly broad angle where we put things in context. Many resources also on our site and then in particular a popularization video on Jean Moulin and his action. So these are things that are accessible on the CHRD site.

Thank you for coming to our set. As for you, I thank you for following this show. You can find more details on the Lyon Capitale website as well and in the summer issue with four pages transcribing and explaining the liberation of Lyon. Thank you for following this show, see you soon.