People in occupied territories set up clandestine resistance
movements against their conquerors.
These movements cropped up in every occupied country,
without exception. Despite differences in their essential characters,
they everywhere evolved in a similar way. Everywhere
the oppressed boosted their morale by denigrating their conquerors.
Avid for news, they listened eagerly to radio broadcasts
from Allied stations - from Boston, Moscow, and, principally,
the B.B.C. transmission from London. With the news
pep-talks were broadcast and, later, instructions for action.
News was printed first in occasional pamphlets, then in newssheets
published as the opportunity arose.
Groups sprang up spontaneously and often survived and grew
strong. They did what was within their means, improving their
methods with experience. The German wrar machine was damaged
by progressively more frequent and more effective sabotage
operations.
Help was offered people pursued bv the enemy, escaped prisoners
of war, Jews, Allied pilots who had been shot down. A
network of escape routes extended from Belgium to the Pyrenees
and from Poland to Hungary and Greece. Air and sea operations
landed and collected agents. Resistance groups gathered information
useful to the Allied armies. The braver resistance fighters
acquired skill by attacking 'collaborators' or isolated soldiers.
Gradually, dissenting groups found hiding places in forests,
especiallv after large numbers of young men were inducted into
compulsory labour forces in Germany. Partisans and resistance
fighters operated in combat units. The aims of the resistance
were realized in the mass insurrections, repeated strikes, demonstrations,
armed uprisings in cities, such as Paris and Warsaw,
and in inadequately protected regions, such as Vercors and
Slovakia, leading up to the Allied liberation.
World History
