Located 1 hour and a half from Moêlan sur mer, not far from Vannes , in the Morbihan,the Musée de la résistance will immerse you in the Second Worl War!
Saint Marcel was one of the hot spots of the French resistance . This was where the battle of Saint Marcel, one of the very first battles fought by French fighters against the Nazi occupiers took place.
While preparing Operation Overlord in Normandy, the Allies looked for means to slow down Germans sending reinforcements to the landing beaches after D- Day. Close to Normandy 150,000 German soldiers were stationed in Brittany. In 1943 the attention of the Allies was attracted by the presence of the French resistance and Brittany's favorable situation . They were looking for a valid site to parachute weapons and equipment or even airborne troops. The maquis of Saint Marcel was created in 1943.
On the 18th of June 1944,4 days after General De Gaulle 's call to Resistance from London, the battle of Saint Marcel began. Sheltered and fed at huge risks by the locals 2000 Breton resistants and200 Free French parachutists faced the German troops; an advanced FFI (French Forces of the Interior) post opened fire on 2 German patrol cars probably in reconnaissance as many parachute drops had been noticed . One of the Germans escaped and gave the alarm. The Germans launched 3 attacks. The battles were extremely bloody and the maquis was dispersed by its colonels.
The museum presents the daily life of Breton men and women under the occupation and their engagement in the "Army of shadows";it shows weapons,vehicles , concentration camps tunics, uniforms. Multi media content, life-size reconstructions of a street under the Occupation and the inside of a blockhaus will take you right to the heart of the Second world War
