Guy Môquet was arrested in 1940 distributing propaganda against the war. This policy reversed after resistance appeared as the only way to fight Nazism directly inside France, and after resistance movements started gaining strength (about the same time as Charles de Gaulle's appeal of 18 June 1940). The Communist party offered itself as the leader of French resistance to German occupation and internal French Nazi forces. Postwar propaganda argued that the French Communist Party deserved every patriotic Frenchman's support because of the heroism of its Resistance heroes and Môquet was one of those thus celebrated, not least because of his now famous and very moving last letter before his execution. This ideal was embraced in France for several decades after the war. The PCF is commonly referred to as the "party of the 75,000 executed people". A street and a Métro station in Paris were named after him in 1946. Many other place names across France also bear his name and Châteaubriant dedicated a high school to him.