Maquis (World War II) Maquis (World War II) The Maquis () were rural guerrilla bands of French Resistance fighters, called "maquisards", during the Nazi Occupation of France in World War II. Initially, they were composed of men and women who had escaped into the mountains to avoid conscription into Vichy France's "Service du travail obligatoire" ("Compulsory Work Service" or "STO") to provide forced labor for Germany. To avert capture and deportation to Germany, they became increasingly organized into active resistance groups. Originally the word came from the kind of terrain in which the armed resistance groups hid, high ground in southeastern France covered with
Causes of World War II World War II. In Mason's opinion, German foreign policy was driven by domestic political considerations, and the launch of World War II in 1939 was best understood as a "barbaric variant of social imperialism". Mason argued that "Nazi Germany was always bent "at some time" upon a major war of expansion." However, Mason argued that the timing of such a war was determined by domestic political pressures, especially as relating to a failing economy, and had nothing to do with what Hitler wanted. In Mason's view in the period between 1936–41, it was the state of the German economy, and