Georges Guingouin (2 February 1913, Magnac-Laval in Haute-Vienne, France – 27 October 2005, Troyes, France) was a French Communist Party (PCF) militant who played a leading role in the French resistance as head of the Maquis du Limousin. He was controversial as a result of extortion committed under his authority during the épuration sauvage in Limousin during 1944.
Youth Guingouin's father, a career non-commissioned officer, was killed at Bapaume in 1914. His mother was the daughter of a ceramics worker; she was the headmistress of a primary school. Guingouin was initially a pupil at the école primaire supérieure at Bellac, and was then admitted to the école normale d'instituteurs teacher training school at Limoges. After his military service, he was appointed as a teacher at Saint-Gilles-les-Forêts in 1935.
"Comme beaucoup d’autres, ce jeune instituteur est très préoccupé par l’engagement politique".Max Lagarrigue, questions.... La France durant l'Occupation , CNDP, 2007. Guingouin belonged to the communist party, becoming secretary of the Eymoutiers section which encompassed five rural cantons. He wrote articles about foreign politics in the party weekly, Le Travailleur du Centre. The historian Max Lagarrigue observed that rural communism was in a vigorous state at that time, thanks to the country leaders of the PCF, Renaud Jean and Marius Vazeilles, and that it made a good showing in the 1936 vote, with many rural candidates elected. Lagarrigue adds that Guingouin, as leader of the campaign in Haute-Vienne, earned himself the nomination to the federal committee, then to the regional office of the PCF.
Prefect of the maquis
Guingouin was mobilised in the rank of second class in 1939. He sustained an eyebrow injury on 18 June 1940, and was cared for in the Moulins military hospital in Allier, which he left voluntarily in order to avoid being taken prisoner. On returning to Saint-Gilles-les-Forêts, he secretly went back to his activities as a communist fighter, and wrote in 1940 a "call to the struggle". In September 1940, recalled from his teaching functions, he got back in contact with the underground communist party machinery and became federal secretary of Haute-Vienne. However, he decided not to circulate the 9th issue of the "Life of the party" communist party bulletin, which declared "We must be without hate towards the German soldiers. We are against de Gaulle and the capitalist clan whose interests are linked to VichyCited by Guingouin himself in the biography which he wrote for the Ordre de la Libération, of which he was a member.
In January 1941 Guingouin published the first issue of the Travailleur limousin (Limousin worker) underground journal. He later wrote that he held off from attacking de Gaulle or the United Kingdom, breaking with the official party line. In April 1941 he joined the maquis, which astonished Gabriel Roucaute, one of the party leadership's representatives in the zone libre. During the night of 30 September to 1 October, Guingouin organised the first armed requisitioning of ration cards, which would earn him a forced labour sentence in absentia at the hands of a military court in January 1942.
He named his first armed groups "Francs Tireurs", at a time when the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans had not yet been created. In March 1942, when the communists joined the armed struggle in earnest, Roucaute ordered him to stop his operations. Guingouin refused, and relations with the party became strained. After this, he joined with the FTPF.
Nicknamed Lo Grand (the Great) by the locals, Guingouin organised his first maquis, notably in Châteauneuf-la-Forêt. Certain types of operations under his command led to him being titled "prefect" of the maquis: in December 1942, he attempted to put a stop to hay and wheat requisitioning by blowing up the baler at Eymoutiers. He formed a fixed unit, the 1st Brigade de Marche Limousine, and mobile "flying" units with varying effectiveness.
In February 1943, he carried out a solo operation to break into a German ammunition warehouse disguised as a woman to hide his identity.
Guingouin's unit sabotaged and destroyed the Bussy-Varache viaduct on the Limoges-Ussel on 13 March 1943; the viaduct was not reconstructed until after the war. On the night of May 9, 1943, at the request of the English, Guingouin personally led a commando which sabotaged the boilers at the rubber factory in le Palais-sur-Vienne near Limoges, thereby halting the production of France's second largest rubber factory for five months. While returning, the commando narrowly missed an ambush by the police. On 14 July 1943, the subterranean cable linking the Bordeaux submarine base with Berlin was sabotaged in Limousin. Following this operation, the Germans demanded that serious measures be enforced in what they called "little Russia". Under the command of General Bois 15 guard squadrons, 12 squadrons of the GMT and residual gendarmerie forces were sent in to "maintain order", without significant success. In August 1943, Guingouin undertook anew to prevent wheat deliveries to the Germans by destroying the combines. As "prefect of the maquis", he regulated agricultural sales as well as boltage rates for bread manufacturing in order to counter the black market and fraud. At the same time he received the first parachute drops of armaments from the British Special Operations Executive. During January 1944, he brought together 120 volunteers at the château de Ribérie for military training. Shortly afterward, the German General Walter Brehmer attacked Guingouin's territory; Guingouin refused battle and dispersed his units.
In May 1944, Haute-Vienne had about 8,000 armed men, the most of any department in France. After the amalgamation of the Armée Secrète, ORA and FTPF resistance movements into the new French Forces of the Interior the structures of the armed resistance remained confused, so that in spite of the unification, the FTPF retained the possibility of acting autonomously. Photos of the maquis and its leader were taken at this time by the photographer Izis Bidermanas who had also taken up arms. On the evening of 9 june 1944 resistance fighters under sergeant Jean Canou part of Georges Guingouin group captured Major Helmut Kämpfe, considered the division hero between Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat and Sauviat-sur-Vige. Since 1986 a commemorative stele created by artist Jean-Joseph Sanfourche has stood along this road to mark the event.
At the start of July 1944, Guingouin was warned that a German offensive was being prepared against his maquis. On the 17th, the 1st brigade was attacked by the German brigade of General Curt von Jesser with a strength of 500 vehicles, supported by various reinforcements. This triggered the battle of Mont Gargan. The maquis lost 97 men (38 dead, 5 missing, 54 wounded) against 342 killed and wounded on the German side. It was one of the rare occasions when the resistance fought against the Wehrmacht in open battle.
At the beginning of June 1944, Guingouin was ordered to take Limoges by Léon Mauvais, an important communist party official and head of the FTP in the zone Sud. Guingouin refused, considering the operation premature and dangerous for the general population. In support of his decision he cited the tragic example of the premature liberation of Tulle, where, in reprisals, 99 men had been hanged from balconies on the main road of the city, and 101 others deported. Guingouin's refusal would have grave consequences for relations between Guingouin and the communist party hierarchy.
On 21 August, Guingouin encircled Limoges, and received from Jean d'Albis the surrender of General Gleiniger's men, with minimal bloodshed. Guingouin was appointed lieutenant-colonel of the French Forces of the Interior.
Following this, Guingouin would be accused of being directly or indirectly responsible for extortion which accompanied the liberation and "épuration" (cleansing) of Limoges and Limousin. According to Henri Amouroux, Guingouin had "45 people tried and sentenced to death in a week, of whom only one escaped", and that the first to be accused did not have anyone represent them in defense, and "worked from six to twelve hours per day, including Saturday and Sunday."
Guingouin was also accused of acquiring loot from a former youth work camp at Chamberet which would result in 6 executions, including three members of the Armée secrète.Michel Taubmann, L'affaire Guingouin, éd. Lucien Souny 1994 : «L'affaire de Chamberet», pp. 160–171.
Pariah of the Communist Party On 20 November 1944, Guingouin was seriously injured in a car accident (he suggested that his vehicle had been sabotaged) and hospitalised at Limoges. He was released in April 1945 after a long convalescence. In May 1945, Guingouin was elected mayor of Limoges. His relations with the communist party rapidly deteriorated. He was not proposed for a seat on the central committee, nor appointed to the deputation. At the assembly of communist elected officials of France on the 12 November 1945, he was subjected to an attack by Auguste Gillot (who was close to Maurice Thorez and Jacques Duclos); Gillot criticised him for having raised the price of tram travel in Limoges, a false accusation. However, Guingouin was not given the opportunity to respond, since the meeting ended immediately (see for an anecdote relating the atmosphere in the party at the time). The following month, he was released from his functions in the communist party of Haute-Vienne.
In 1947, Guingouin lost the mayorship of Limoges to a socialist, Léon Betoulle, who had been mayor of Limoges before the war, while his old rival, the French Socialist Party (SFIO) socialist Jean Le Bail,Jean Le Bail (1904-1965) was the Limoges deputy from 1946 to 1958, and senator of Haute-Vienne 1958-1959. A former pupil of the école normale supérieure, associate of philosophy, he was assigned to Limoges in 1929. He became the secretary of the socialist federation of Haute-Vienne. Anti-communist and pacifist, he kept his distance from all the resistance movements during the war. A vicious grudge drove him to pursue Guingouin, going as far as to sign in 1954 vindictive articles in Le Populaire du Centre against Guingouin. In 1947, a "jury of honour" had absolved Le Bail of suspicion of having refused to shelter his former classmate from the rue d'Ulm, Jean Cavaillès, in his house when Cavaillès was being sought by the police. Cavaillès was one of the founders in 1940 of the resistance movement Libération; he had been arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and shot the following year. who was despised by all the "genuine" members of the resistance,Michel Taubmann, Ibid., p. 192. became deputy for Haute-Vienne. On 19 May the same year, the appeals court of Grenoble gave a judgment condemning in particularly strong terms the paper L'Époque which 17 months previously had accused Guingouin of terrible crimes.A notable example from the proceedings "The bad faith of the author results unmistakable from the set of incriminated terms and dishonorable nature of the attacks [...] in a clear desire to ruin [Guingouin's] prestige." The punishment was severe: a fine of 10,000 Francs, plus 500,000 Frans worth of damages and interest, a large amount at the time. (Cité par Michel Taubmann, Ibid., p. 183.)