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
Maquis (World War II) In French Indochina, the local resistance fighting the Japanese since 1941 was backed up by a special forces airborne commando unit created by de Gaulle in 1943, and known as the Corps Léger d'Intervention (CLI). They were supplied by airlifts of the British Force 136. Politically, the Maquis were very diverse, including right-wing nationalists, socialists, communists, and anarchists. Some Maquis bands that operated in southwest France, were composed entirely of left-wing Spanish veterans of the Spanish Civil War. Spanish Civil War veteran Carlos Romero Giménez was a center-democratic liberal operating from Bordeaux. When Germany began a forced labor draft ("Service