ABSTRACT
Agnes Humbert and Germaine Tillion, pioneering female militants in the early Resistance to the German Occupation of France in 1940, offer fascinating and yet strikingly different accounts of their personal engagement and nascent civil disobedience. The influence of these previous commitments — and of the circles of sociability within which such militancy was inscribed — was crucial in determining both Humbert's decision to join the Resistance and also her later account of this engagement. The time lapse might seem to imply that Germaine Tillion — unlike Agnes Humbert — experienced a loss of interest in her Resistance past in the period between her oral testimonies of 1945-46 and the more in-depth analysis that resulted in her article of 1958. The very process of acquiring official recognition for the Resistance organization therefore exercised a profound influence on the mental picture of its role that Tillion was developing in the course of her enquiries.
