In France, as elsewhere, the railways have always been an easy target for criminals, saboteurs, terrorists and other miscreants. It’s not difficult to work out why. The tracks stretch for thousands of miles, sprawling across changing landscapes, unprotected for long distances save for easily mountable fences. No police force or CCTV system can fully guard over this vast infrastructure.
So while today’s brazen assault on the French network, just hours before the Olympics officially open in Paris, is no doubt shocking, it is not entirely surprising or without precedent. In fact, the history of the country’s railways is marked by similar malicious episodes. France is particularly vulnerable both because of the importance of trains to its transport infrastructure but also down to the French penchant for social disruption.
Taking that into account, the perpetrators of this clearly well organised series of attacks, which saw signals along the tracks set on fire and cables severed, can be regarded as the direct descendants of the saboteurs who wreaked far greater havoc on the system in the run-up to D-Day.
French rail workers, fondly and universally known as “les cheminots”, were under pressure to undermine the running of the train service as soon as the Germans invaded in 1940. Initially, there was some reluctance to fall into line because the network was needed to ensure French people could be fed. But gradually, as the German occupation became ever more repressive, increasing numbers of cheminots joined the fight, enlisting with Résistance-Fer, the organisation through which they coordinated their anti-Nazi activities. Their efforts were synchronised by announcements on the BBC and supported by the RAF, who dropped explosives and other supplies by parachute.
As D-Day approached, a scheme to sabotage the whole French railway network named Plan Vert, was drawn up in order to ensure the railways could not be used by the Germans to bring reinforcements to the beaches and push the Allied forces back into the sea. This endeavour climaxed on the night before the Normandy Landings, and was supported by the Allied air forces’ Transportation Plan, itself a misnomer as it was actually a scheme to destroy the railways. The twin efforts of the Resistance and the bombers paid off. By D-Day, on June 6 1944, the French rail network had been reduced to a series of disconnected lines, greatly hampering German efforts to call in reserve troops with soldiers forced to march or ride bicycles to the front instead.
Most of these acts of impairment required the involvement of the cheminots because undermining the system effectively relied on their technical knowledge of it. Today’s TGV attackers appeared to borrow from their playbook, targeting cabling for signalling and telecommunications, knowing this would cause maximum damage without risking lives.
There may be political parallels too. The cheminots in WW2 were dominated by the Left though the group also attracted many of Charles de Gaulle’s moderate supporters. Some security sources have suggested that the extrême gauche (far Left) may also be involved in today’s attacks, perhaps operating in cahoots with Russia or Iran. Given the polarisation of French politics, extremists from either end of the political spectrum could be implicated.
That is a wider point of concern. But due to their inherent vulnerability, railways are fundamentally dependent on societal trust and cohesion. In a world where these unifying forces are weakening, we can expect more such incidents.
By quickly diverting services, France’s state-owned railway company SNCF has shown that tracks can be surprisingly flexible and reasonably easy to patch back together. This resilience has been amply demonstrated in war-torn Ukraine where train punctuality and cancellations are better than ours.
The bad guys may disrupt railways but they will never be able to stop them.
Christian Wolmar is the author of The Liberation Line, the last untold story of the Normandy landings, recently published by Atlantic Books, £25
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