German Unity Worries Old Resistance Fighters : France: They fear the merging nation’s future dominance more than any resurgence of Nazism.

PARIS —  For the men and women who fought in the French Resistance during World War II, the imminent unification of Germany is a particularly emotional and troubling moment in history.

They were the handful who answered the June 18, 1940, London radio appeal of Gen. Charles de Gaulle to resist the Nazi occupiers. They were the brave minority around whom De Gaulle built--cynical historians say “invented”--modern free France. They were the historical and spiritual heirs of a France that has fought Germany in three wars since 1870.

On Wednesday, the country they helped defeat and divide will be born again as a united nation.

French leaders, including President Francois Mitterrand, himself a former resistant who escaped from a German prison camp during the war, have generally welcomed the merger as good for Germany and for what they envision as the new united Europe.

However, many other former French Resistance fighters have grave reservations about the timing of the event and the dominant role they fear Germany will play in coming years. Although few in number and aging fast, the fighters still have an important moral voice in French society.

“I wonder about this extraordinarily powerful state of united Germany,” former Resistance newspaper editor Claude Bourdet, 81, said in a recent interview. “In physical numbers it is one of the most powerful states in the world, probably more powerful than the Soviet Union. Even if we did not have examples of Germany’s past that cannot be dismissed lightly, it would still cause concern. Any nation that is more powerful than others is not only a danger but also a question mark.”

After a special meeting of its members recently, the largest organization of former members of the Resistance issued a pessimistic statement on German unification.

“How can we not show our pain and uneasiness?” the members of the Assn. Nationale des Anciens Combattants de la Resistance asked in the statement. “How can we not be surprised by the speed at which the unification of the two German states has occurred? In a move precipitated by the Federal Republic (West Germany), which the four great victors over Nazism (Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the United States) have done little to temper, the unification is occurring with only a minimum of precautions.”

Members of the organization explained that they do not fear a resurgence of fascism in Germany, despite the presence of neo-Nazi movements and the extreme-right Republican Party under the leadership of former Waffen SS Sgt. Franz Schoenhuber. Rather, they explained, the concern has more to do with the resurgent economic might of a united Germany.

Certainly not all of the former Resistance activists are opposed to the reunification.

A minority, including University of Paris Prof. Joseph Rovan, 72, a specialist in Germany history who fought in the Roman Catholic Resistance movement, Temoignages Chretiens, during the war, views the unification as an important, even desirable development.

“The reunification of Germany fills me with joy because it marks the end of the repugnant regime of the East Germans,” said Rovan, who was captured by the Germans and imprisoned at the Dachau concentration camp before being liberated by Allied troops.

Rovan argues that is unfair to judge the Germans on the basis of the excesses of Hitler and the Nazis.

“We don’t judge France any more on the basis of Robespierre,” Rovan said, citing the French Revolutionary leader who ruled during the Reign of Terror.

Likewise, Resistance heroine Lucie Aubrac, who led an attack on Gestapo forces when she was pregnant with her second child in 1943, said she holds no grudges against the German people.

“I hated the Germans, I even killed Germans,” she said in a telephone interview. “Today I have the same hatred of Nazism. But if I meet a German and he tells me he was not a Nazi during the war then I would happily invite him for a drink. . . . History has evolved.”

Aubrac calls her view enlightened and says it is shared by most of the educated intellectuals of the Resistance.

“Down in the Cevennes,” she said, referring to the mountainous south central region of France in the Massif Centrale range, “you still have old underground fighters who refuse to sell things to German tourists. It still happens in this region that German tourists find their tires slashed.”

During the German occupation, editor Bourdet was one of the great romantic figures of the French Resistance. An excellent skier who also loved gardening, he was one of the fabled French intellectuals who fought against les boches , as the Germans were known.

His friends included Resistance hero Jean Moulin, philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and writer Andre Malraux.

Bourdet paid dearly for his resistance. Arrested in 1944 in Paris, he was taken to Buchenwald. When he was liberated by the Americans at the end of the war he weighed less than 90 pounds.

Interviewed recently in his elegant two-story apartment on Avenue George V, Bourdet answered questions about unification and the Germans in careful, measured language that nevertheless did not hide his concerns.

“I think the Germans have an extraordinary respect for authority, such that the German government can make them do practically anything it wants. Look at Bismarck, Kaiser Wilhelm and Hitler.”

Have the people changed in the past 50 years?

“I’m hesitant to say, because I don’t think there is an evil character in the German soul. I don’t think the Germans are any worse than anyone else. I think the danger comes in the extraordinary power of obedience. I think that explains the Nazis and the Third Reich. You never know about tomorrow.”