Railway Workers in the Resistance

Railway Workers in the Resistance, whose original title was Railway Workers in the Battle of the Rails, is the final work of the Resistance historian Maurice Choury, who died on November 7, 1969, less than two hours after completing the manuscript.
Based primarily on firsthand accounts from surviving railway workers in the Resistance, collected by the ANCAC's Union of Resistance Fighters, the book gives a voice to grassroots patriots. It reveals the various forms of resistance, the perilous work of smugglers, intelligence gathering, the effectiveness of saboteurs, and sabotage techniques.
The book shows how railway workers infiltrated Vichy unions to turn them into a weapon against the Occupier by combining legal work and clandestine action and by triggering protest and patriotic strikes that disrupted enemy transport.
Maurice Choury reveals how the strike of August 10, 1944 was organized, which very quickly took on an insurrectionary character and was decisive both for the liberation of Paris and for that of the entire territory.
In this uninterrupted five-year struggle, railway workers paid a heavy price: 730 killed in action, 640 killed in armed service in 1939-1940, 819 shot and more than 1,200 victims of concentration camps during the Occupation.
To these people, Maurice Choury's book erects an imperishable monument. "Railway Workers in the Resistance " is a tribute to a profession that, in times of misfortune, demonstrated ardent patriotism and made painful sacrifices; it is also a contribution to the history of the Resistance and the Liberation that will be read by all those fascinated by this extraordinary epic.