Ceux de la Libération

"Ceux de la Libération" (CDLL) was a French resistance movement during the German occupation of France in World War II.

CDLL was one of the eight major resistance groups of the Conseil National de la Résistance (CNR).

History

Ceux de la Libération was formed in November 1940 by Maurice Ripoche, Henri Pascal and Jacques Ballet. The movement soon had several thousand members in the Northern occupation zone.

In early 1942, Roger Coquoin, a demobilized Captain and the head of the Chemistry Laboratory at the Académie Nationale de Médecine, met with the CDLL leader Maurice Ripoche. He became involved with the group and succeeded Ripoche as leader after the latter's arrest in March 1943. Under Coquoin's command, the CDLL expanded to Paris and the rest of France, gathering new volunteers in Normandy, Champagne, Bourgogne and Vendée. Coquoin also made contact with other resistance movements in the occupied zone and even in the southern zone of Vichy. His capabilities in chemistry enabled him to develop detonators and abrasive pellets for destroying German trucks. After Coquoin was killed in an ambush in December 1943, Gilbert Védy, CDLL's delegate to the Assemblée consultative provisoire in Algiers, returned to Paris to head the movement. However, three days after his arrival, on 21 March 1944, Védy was arrested and poisoned himself during the interrogation rather than risk divulging any information.