Resistance

As mentioned here already i believe the final TMA on my course this year is a double one, it's subject will be how useful resistance and partisan warfare was in fighting fascism. I am currently reading Resistance in Western Europe which contains a number of essays on various countries in Western Europe and their resistance movements.

So far i have only read on Belgium and France (in another book) but one thing does seem to have sprung to mind at least from these 2 countries. Resistance was more against fascist collaborators than against the German Army at least until the war had turned for the worse for the Axis (after Stalingrad) and operations against the Germans seemed to require more assistance by the Allies (especially the SOE).

That is not to say there were not any operations against the army but the focus seemed to be to fight homegrown fascists. A reason for this may be that in the early years of the war the effect on the population of the German occupation was not as marked. Fascist collaborators in the occupied countries were given rein to rule for the Germans in return for satisfying the German's requirements. Its easy to see how a "wait and see" attitude would have arisen among the majority. However when those requirements got more onerous, especially when the Germans started to round up Jews, then resistance became more widespread but in a non-combat sense.

The popular image of resistance is of a civilian with a Tommy Gun shooting at some German soldiers but most resistance effort was in non-combat roles, such as producing newspapers with uncensored and anti-German news, hiding Jews and other people wanted by the authorities, supporting clandestine operations such as copying identity papers and intelligence. It is going to be interesting to try and work out how effective this was in combating Nazism but there must have been an effect, especially when 1000s of young people hid instead of be press ganged into working in German factories. The loss of that labour must have had an interesting degrading effect on the German war effort.

Anyway my reading continues...