Verification of a Story? (WWII Resistance)

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GunXpatriot

New member
So I guess this is kind of indirectly firearm related, but not really... Even still, this has been bothering me. You may know of Donze52, a kind of "everything" guy on youtube, who often tells stories about firearm related things.

In this video, he talks about the "Best Cheap Weapon For the Public". A single shot .22 rifle.

Going into it's usefulness, he talks about how it's not a great self defense weapon, HOWEVER,

"At the beginning of WWII, the Germans were invading France. They came to a military academy. There were 300 young men in that school. They wouldn't surrender, and they fought them for 3 weeks. Not until the Germans brought in tanks and leveled the place, killing all 300... It wasn't over. What were they armed with? Single shot .22 rifles."

Can anyone verified that this actually happened? I'd like to believe his word, and it certainly sounds like something that could've happened... But in the research I've done, I've not found anything on it.

Here is the link to the Youtube video in question. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoZvRLFWkvk


By the way, I thought these were kind of cool as well. I do enjoy his stories, but it was just that one story that I really wanted to verify.

"$300 Dollar Bullet"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJqvBBgVQbY



"How to Get Free Guns and Ammo in Nebraska"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlPKkipCZgA




Anyway, yeah, hoping someone can verify this WWII story for me... Thanks... Also, I think this may be off topic, but I still thought it was worth a post. Not much other place to put it, I suppose.
 
If true, it might make a decent movie plot... Kinda like The Alamo.

The movie, "THE COWBOYS", about teenagers showing what they're made of when the going gets tough (with the help of a few guns) is one of my all-time favorite westerns... John Wayne is the mentor in that one. Bruce Dern plays the heavy.
 
I can't verify it, but in my library of WWII history, about 400 volumes, I do not recall seeing any references to an event like the one related.

One would think the French would have spread this tale far and wide since 1945, if it occurred.
 
Agreed Kilimanjaro, this would have to have been famous. It really is too epic a tale to have not spread. Donze52 probably just got some bad information from some guy, who himself, probably heard it from someone.

I've heard of people who spread wise tales/stories that seem realistic, just to see how far they spread. Perhaps this is one of those cases.

CWKahrFan, now that you mention it, a movie would have had to be made on an event like that. I'm really starting to lose hope for this whole thing...

Oh well, should've guessed it was too epic to be true.

Anyone else? Please? :o
 
I will say, if you can afford to arm every (willing) man, woman and child with a .22 single shot rifle and cannot arm them otherwise, the .22 probably IS the most effective weapon for a resistance. Don't forget the psychological fear of knowing every person is armed and willing to fight.

Some of us will have "better" weapons from our own collections anyways :D
 
I have to say I'm skeptical.

1. It's too good a story to be so obscure. I found only 3 references to it on the web, one the youtube video you linked, one a reference to the youtube video and a third which is probably referring to one of the other two references since the wording is so similar.

2. The number 300 is identical to the 300 Spartans who also fought to the death while outnumbered and in a hopeless situation just like the students supposedly did. The very close parallel is a little too good to be true.

3. It's hard for me to imagine that 300 persons armed with single-shot rifles could hold off the German army for 3 weeks when they were able to take all of France in only 6 weeks. Machineguns, grenades, multi-shot firearms, experience and numbers would heavily favor the German army. And why would it take them 3 weeks to bring in the tanks anyway?

4. It is provided with enough detail to be interesting but without so much as a single clue that might actually allow verification. That's never a good sign.
 
Considering the quality of the German Army in 1940, and how the invasion of France came off, I don't believe it would have taken them 3 weeks to conquer a military academy with defenders armed with single shot .22's. It took them only 30 hrs to overwhelm the Belgian fortress Eben-Emael defended by about 800 men.
 
Guess you guys are right...

Were there any other small lesser known "resistance/underground" groups?

I'm referring more to the French Resistance, and I guess the Bielski Partisans would be in that category as well.

When I think about groups like those, I can't help but think of the U.S. plan to drop FP-45 Liberators all over the place.

Any other small resistance groups known to have any effect, even if small, without really losing any of their "insurgents"?

Why I want to know, is... I think if we put ourselves in the shoes of those who were being occupied and abused, we'd like to say we'd have done something. Or at least tried. Right? I guess I'm just looking for some form of "justice" instituted by those people under those conditions. Maybe that's not the right word. I dunno, it's just something interesting to research and think about, at least for me.
 
The number 300 is identical to the 300 Spartans who also fought to the end while outnumbered and in a hopeless situation just like the students supposedly did. The very close parallel is a little too good to be true.
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That is the first thing I thought of when I read the OP. As I understand it, even in the historical context the number 300 was used to make the story better.
 
Battle of Saumur
June 1940
800 French and two days.
French armed with a lot more than single shot .22's
 
The thing with any "French Resistance" story is that the tale is probably heavily embellished right from the beginning.
When I lived in France in the mid-late 70's absolutely everybody there had been either in the resistance, or a Maquiard.

There are several museums of resistance/Partisans/Maquis groups online. Try contacting them as they seem to be very helpful. Here's a few links to get you started off.

http://www.awon.org/resist.html

http://www.musee-resistance.com/spip.php?article247

http://www.placesinfrance.com/musee_jean_moulin_paris.html

http://www.burgundytoday.com/historic-places/museums/musee-dela-resistance.htm

http://www.citadelle.com/en/museum-of-french-resistance-and-deportation.html

http://www.evasion-aisne.com/en/Whe...ce-et-de-la-Deportation-de-Picardie-TERGNIER2
 
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The number 300 is identical to the 300 Spartans who also fought to the death while outnumbered and in a hopeless situation just like the students supposedly did. The very close parallel is a little too good to be true.
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My first thought was of the Masada siege when I read the OP. I've never heard of any event like the one described.
 
Never heard of this one. Germany was in blitzkrieg mode at the time.
They may have gone around it and come back later to level it.

It is however barely plausible--don't forget that the Jews held off
the Germans in the Warsaw Ghetto for just shy of a month.
 
Well - as I mentioned above..

http://desertwar.net/battle-of-saumur.html

In June of 1940, the Battle of Saumur had :
"French

The French troops are heterogeneous and consist of:

550 students aspiring reserve (RAE) cavalry and 240 RAE train (equivalent EOR current) of the 4th division instruction, supervised by their instructors;

360 soldiers from various training area under the command of Captain Cadignan centers;

80 men commanded by Captain Monclos;

200 soldiers and gunners of 13th Algerian Rifle Regiment ;

a battalion of 350 men of the Infantry School St. Maixent;

1 Group Franc motorized cavalry under the command of Captain Neuchèze (the composer Jehan Alain);

a reconnaissance squadron (Captain Gobble);

260 riders in the 19th regiment of dragoons under the command of Squadron Leader Hacquard.

About 2500 armed men 24 tanks, five 75 mm guns, 13 anti-tank guns and 15 mortars to hold 40 km front.

Quite a bit more than the 300 mentioned - which BTW - approximates the number of cadets involved in another battle - not during WWI, but during the civil war.
257 cadets from VMI were involved in the Battle of New Market.

IMHO - the author of the video is mixing several stories together.
 
FWIW... Re: Book writer Maurice Druon:

"Druon was a cadet at France's cavalry school in Saumur when the Germans invaded France in 1940. Ignoring Marshal Pétain's order to lay down their arms, the members of the school held off two German divisions for two days at the Loire, for which heroism they were received with military honours by their adversaries and allowed to proceed to the unoccupied zone."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obi...s/books-obituaries/5173001/Maurice-Druon.html

These guys were probably mostly in their very late teens/early 20's... Apparently, one of Druon's many books was mostly about this incident... Seems like a few time-and-area-related incidents have been kinda generalized in the telling. Who exactly might have had the alleged single-shot .22's... hmmm?
 
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Good research. They were most definitely not armed with 22s, and fighting as a unit in the open.

Their accomplisment does not need to be embellished with any crap about les jeune fils with mouse guns.
 
3. It's hard for me to imagine that 300 persons armed with single-shot rifles could hold off the German army for 3 weeks when they were able to take all of France in only 6 weeks. Machineguns, grenades, multi-shot firearms, experience and numbers would heavily favor the German army. And why would it take them 3 weeks to bring in the tanks anyway?
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I have not heard of this either, but BillM is very correct that if such a fight did happen then it may have looked like 300 young men with .22s held off the Wehrmacht for 3 weeks. But from the German point of view any resistance that didn't sit squarely on lines of communication, travel, and supply, would have been bypassed, encircled, and later on subdued at their leisure.

As for why it would take 3 weeks, exactly that, the tanks were busy driving on the ocean in order to cut off the Northern Forces, primarily the British Expeditionary Force and a good portion of the French Army. The Germans would have bypassed this obstacle, loosely encircled it, and waited for strong Infantry formations to lay siege to it. In the intervening time they would of course appealed to the Frenchmen's sense of reason, they are cut off and will not win, no reason to throw away their lives to no consequence.

Several years later not so far away, at Bastogne, the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans did the same thing to the 101st Airborne. McAuliffe's reply "Nuts" comes to mind.
 
Adding to posts by Hal, there is also this wiki entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Saumur_(1940)

The battle did indeed take place. As for rifles, there is a little display of the weaponry used by the cadets at the tank museum there, a little area that explains the actions that took place there. (A really good tank museum if you're ever in the area, well worth the visit.) Most rifles were of the mle. 1892 Berthier mousqueton carbines (8mm Lebel) and some 1886/93 Lebel rifles. There were also a few older mle. 1874/14 Gras rifles used...these having been rebarreled for the 8mm Lebel cartridge. These were early WW 1 modifications issued to reservists in WW 1, and simply used old Gras barrel blanks. Despite these rifles being single fire only, it's my understanding they were quite accurate.

As for the .22 legend, I think this may have come from the fact that there were quite a few 1892 Berthier carbines that were chambered for this solely for shooting drills. Highly doubtful they would have been used in combat.

General Patton briefly studied at Saumur before WW 1. Also, a cousin of mine attended the academy in the early 1960s. He is retired now but volunteers in the tank restoration section. They are currently working on restoring a second Char B tank.

The battle is very well known in France, but not outside France. Possibly owing to the facts that very little historical accounts on the French perspective of the May-June 1940 fights is available to english readers.
 
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I'm referring more to the French Resistance, and I guess the Bielski Partisans would be in that category as well.

When I think about groups like those, I can't help but think of the U.S. plan to drop FP-45 Liberators all over the place.

Any other small resistance groups known to have any effect, even if small, without really losing any of their "insurgents"?

Why I want to know, is... I think if we put ourselves in the shoes of those who were being occupied and abused, we'd like to say we'd have done something. Or at least tried. Right? I guess I'm just looking for some form of "justice" instituted by those people under those conditions. Maybe that's not the right word. I dunno, it's just something interesting to research and think about, at least for me.
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I would recommend reading "Soldiers of the Night" by David Schoenbrun. A very good book. The story of the Resistance in France, or any other country occupied by Nazis, is a very complicated one and impossible to relate in short terms here.

As far as the Liberator is concerned, I don't know how many were dropped, but very few were actually used. I've interviewed many FFI veterans and none of them have ever seen or heard of it.
 
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