The «  Plateau des Glières  »

The «  Memorial de Morette  »

The «  Plateau des Glières  » in a map

The «  Memorial des Glières  »

A wolf in the Plateau

The slogan of the maquisards was «  live free or die  »

Captain Anjot

Captain Bastian

Tom Morel

Old house next to the Plateau des Glières

The « plateau des Glières »

The plateau was a hot-spot of Resistance training in the Second World War. It was selected by the Maquisards because it is big and clear and it is not very open by the road so access was difficult for the enemy but also because it could be spotted by the ally planes by its proximity to Annecy Lake. A Maquis (a group of men who didn't want to collaborate with the Germans, in other words the Resisters or the Maquisards) was made up, it was directed by lieutenant Tom Morel. This Maquis included 200-300 men. The Maquisards were either Jews who were chased or persecuted by the Germans or they were Spaniards who fled the fascist governement in Spain and came to France to fight the Germans. Or they just were Frenchmen because the majority of the men older than twenty years old had to go to Germany to compensate for the jobs which weren't held by the German soldiers.

In 1942 (during the war) the French hexagon was cut in two parts . The north and the south-west were occupied by the Germans and at the beginning of the war, all the rest of France was occupied by Italians. So at the start of the war, the Plateau des Glières wasn't visited by the Germans contrary to others Plateaux near Grenoble (Grenoble is a town in the Alps). When the Germans occupied all France, they were frightened to bomb the Plateau des Glières because they believed it had cannons. Meanwhile, Tom Morel, Anjot and Bastian (three great Resistants of the plateau) trained new Maquisards.

In march 1944, the Germans attacked the Plateau because it was an unwatched place for weapons storage. 15 000 men among whom 5 000 militiamen (eg. French who worked with the Germans) and the alpine hunters blocked roads, bombed the Plateau and burned houses in which Maquisards lived. At that moment, the Resistants were no more than 250. Resistants, after resisting this blockade for a few days, left the Plateau discreetly, they crossed the Fier (the Fier is a river), Anjot was killed in Dingy (It's a village near Thônes), Tom Morel was killed by a militiaman who had hidden a gun to go and question him. Bastian when he climbed a mountain to try escape, got a stone on his head, he was crazy and he was arrested stupidly by militiamen, then he was escorted to the Collège Saint François in Annecy, the place of torture of Resistants. Until the summer 1944 the plateau des Glières was bombed by planes taking off in Annecy. Charles De Gaulle (French president 1959/1969) came to the plateau des Glieres to pay tribute to the Maquisards. A necropolis was built in 1973 by sculptor Emile Gilioli. The big V signified victory and the disc represented sunrise. This beautiful sculpture was inaugurated on 2 September 1973 by André Malraux, Minister of Culture at the time. Nicolas Sarkozy, our president, goes every year.