 | |
| Categories | National Press |
|---|---|
| Frequency | daily |
| Founded | December 1941 |
| First issue | December 1941 |
| Final issue | August 1974 |
| Country |  France |
| Based in | Paris |
| Language | French |
Combat was a Frenchnewspaper created during theSecond World War. It was founded in 1941 as aclandestine newspaper of the French Resistance.
In August 1944,Combat took over the headquarters ofL'Intransigeant in Paris, andAlbert Camus became itseditor in chief. The newspaper's production run decreased from 185,000 copies in January 1945 to 150,000 in August of the same year:[clarification needed] it did not attain the circulation of other established newspapers (the Communist dailyL'Humanité was publishing at the time 500,000 copies).
Following the liberation, the main participants in the publication includedAlbert Ollivier,Jean-Paul de Dadelsen,Jean Bloch-Michel (1912–1987), andGeorges Altschuler(fr). Among leading contributors wereJean-Paul Sartre,André Malraux,Emmanuel Mounier,Raymond Aron andPierre Herbart.[1] From 1943 to 1947, its editor-in-chief wasAlbert Camus.[2] Its production was directed byAndré Bollier untilMilice repression led to his death.
During 1946,Combat was opposed to the "game of the parties" claiming to rebuild France, and thus became closer toCharles de Gaulle without, however, becoming the official voice of his movement.
Loyal to its origins,Combat tried to become the place of expression for those who believed in creating a popular non-CommunistLeft movement in France. In July 1948 (more than a year after the May 1947 crisis and the expulsion of theCommunist Party (ministers) from the government),Victor Fay(de), aMarxist activist, took overCombat's direction, but he failed to stop the newspaper's evolution towards more popular subjects and less political information.
In 1950, it hosted a debate about theNotre-Dame Affair stimulated by a vehement letter byAndré Breton in response to the editorLouis Pauwels.[3][4]
Philippe Tesson(fr) became editor in chief from 1960 to 1974.Henri Smadja(fr) had thought Tesson could be a perfect puppet-editor but Smadja's situation, in part because of theTunisian regime, got worse. In March 1974, Philippe Tesson createdLe Quotidien de Paris (1974–1996), which he had conceived as the successor ofCombat.
During theMay 1968 crisis,Combat supported the student movement although from aStalinist point of view, through the signatures of the likes ofJacques-Arnaud Penent(fr). On 3 June, it published a falsified version of theAddress to All Workers by theCouncil for Maintaining the Occupations, removing the references to theSituationist International and the attacks against the Stalinists.[5][6]
Henri Smadja died by suicide on 14 July 1974, andCombat definitively ceased to be published the following month.
