Front de l'Indépendance

Independent Front Front de l'Indépendance
Participant in the Second World War
Insignia of the FI
Active	March 1941-September 1944
Ideology	Broadly Socialist-Communist
Leaders	Albert Marteaux André Roland Fernand Demany
Opponents	German Occupying Forces

The Independent Front or FI (French: Front de l'Indépendance, Dutch: Onafhankelijkheidsfront (OF)) was a Belgian resistance movement during World War II, founded in March 1941 by Dr. Albert Marteaux of the Communist Party of Belgium, Father André Roland, and Fernand Demany, another communist. The aim of the organisation was to unite Belgian resistance groups of all opinions and political leanings; nonetheless the only political party that that was affiliated as such was the Communist Party. The FI operated a significant propaganda, social and paramilitary organization, in addition to its military and sabotage functions and operated in competition with the larger pro-government Armée secrète.

The FI established sabotage operations, escape routes and a false document service, and distributed 250 different underground publications. This essential part of the war, in the area of information, found a culmination of sorts in the publication by the Front on 9 November 1943 of Faux Soir, a spoof version of the Le Soir newspaper circulated under the noses of the occupation authorities.

The FI was highly active in preventing large numbers of Belgian men being forced to leave the country to work as forced labour in Germany. These 40,000 of these so-called "Réfractaires" were hidden by the FI's "Organisation Socrates".

In February 1943, the FI sent the sociologist Victor Martin on a spying mission in Germany to search for reliable information about what happened to the Jews deported to Germany. He came back in May with the first reliable report on their fate, as well as with detailed information on the functioning of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

By the end of the war, the Front de l'indépendance contained representatives from a large number of organisations, including: