resistance

resistance. In every country occupied by Axis forces there was some degree of resistance to occupation, although, in spite of the myth to the contrary, there was never any continent-wide resistance movement, either in Europe or in Asia; each country reacted according to its own historical experience. At first in some countries almost everybody, in others almost nobody, undertook a task that was always dangerous, always illegal, and always the object of special vigilance by the occupying powers. Experience of occupation brought its own lessons, usually harsh. More and more people joined in resistance everywhere, as the time of liberation approached.

Resisters came from every class in society. Railway workers in western Europe may be picked out as a single sub-class with an unusually high share of resisters, but even they had collaborators and German staff mixed up among them.

1. Active resistance

Scholars continue to debate about how resisters should be categorized. Three main active tasks stand out: collecting intelligence about the other side (see also spies); helping others to escape (see also MI9); and sabotage of the war effort (see also subversive warfare). Sabotage could range from pinprick attacks on individual weapons or machines to full-scale onslaughts on formed bodies of troops. It could extend also to moral sabotage, exercised through clandestine publishing or the circulation of rumour, and might merge eventually into insurrection.

Several Allied secret services such as SOE were eager to assist in these tasks, sometimes with political objects in mind. On the occupied spot, few resisters bothered about spymasters' rules which laid down that each task was to be undertaken by separate groups. Enthusiasts were prepared to tackle several tasks in a night, or even at once, if they thought doing so would do the occupiers harm. Trained professionals, sent in from outside to curb their enthusiasm, were rare, and to the professional policemen of the Axis security services they were often easy prey. It was natural to talk, even to boast, to one's friends about what one was doing to help get rid of the invaders, particularly in those countries that had no recent experience of being occupied (unlike the Poles). Careless talk of this kind could easily be overheard, and come to the wrong ears. When captured, some former resisters turned double agent, thus making trouble for their more loyal friends.

Anyone who was in this business for more than a few hours realized how secret it had to be. Sensible resisters wrote down as little as they could, and trusted nobody they had not known well before the war began. women were of great use, not only as couriers, but also in the organizing and leading of resistance groups (see Witherington, for example); this was one of the spheres in which they again proved their right to combatant status and to equality with men.

Courage, swiftness of decision, discretion, patience, and steadiness of purpose were indispensable qualities in a successful resister; to be observant and inconspicuous helped. Above all, resisters (like generals) needed luck.

Sometimes they were able to collect in sizeable bodies, clear of Axis police influence (see maquis, for example), but as a rule they had to have some cover job, in town or country, and conduct resistance work instead of sleeping. Often they became involved with gangs of criminals; for example, they needed first-class forgers to provide them with papers to enable them to pass through control points, which were legion. Black markets, often encouraged by the Gestapo in German-occupied countries, sometimes involved resisters; sometimes they found themselves robbing tobacconists or banks; criminals occasionally went into resistance, for criminal reasons. Nevertheless, post-war myth has exalted resisters into national heroes and heroines, for the most part, and revisionist history has not dented the myth severely.

See also resistance section of relevant major powers.

M. R. D. Foot

2. Passive resistance

Resistance movements in the Second World War assumed some forms which were non-violent in character: strikes, go-slows, demonstrations, nonco-operation, symbolic acts of loyalty to the legitimate government, running underground information services, and hiding wanted people or helping them to escape. These actions have generally attracted less attention than armed struggle, yet they played an important part in the politics of the occupied countries, and contributed to the overall effect of resistance. Often they fall within the category of civil resistance as a political technique: only exceptionally were they a product of a general ethic of non-violence.

In Norway, after the German invasion of April 1940 (see Norwegian campaign), resistance came to be headed by two organizations: Milorg, concerned above all with military supplies, training, and co-operation with Allied military forces outside the country; and Sivorg, which (along with many ordinary peacetime organizations) played an important role in organizing civil resistance. The division of labour between these two bodies was never complete, and there was some overlapping of military and civil resistance. From the start of the occupation, the widespread antipathy to the occupying power and its Norwegian supporters was demonstrated in ‘cold-shoulder’ attitudes and small acts of defiance. From 1941 onwards, various organizations—the clergy, teachers, and others—led extensive non-co-operation against attempts to impose National Socialist ideas and practices. Throughout they stressed that their actions were in accord with international law, especially the 1907Hague Conventions. Despite threats and deportations, their solidarity was not broken, and the power of the regime was effectively limited. The Norwegian Nazi leader Vidkun Quisling conceded the point when he had to abandon his plan for a ‘State Assembly’, and, in an outburst in May 1942, said: ‘It is you teachers who are to blame . . .’

In Denmark, also occupied in April 1940, strikes and demonstrations became widespread, often in conjunction with acts of violent sabotage. In October 1943, when Berlin ordered the arrest of Denmark's several thousand Jews, a tip-off from the German shipping attaché prompted the resistance's escape service to organize their transport across the Sound to Sweden: fewer than 500 fell into German hands.

In the Netherlands, occupied in May 1940, many aspects of the resistance had a civilian character, especially as most of the Dutch realized that in their small and crowded country, with its lack of adequate cover, armed resistance was not likely to be successful. There was no large-scale sabotage, no Maquis, and no armed revolt such as the Paris and Warsaw risings. However, there were three mass strikes: in February 1941, against the arrests of Jews; in spring 1943, against a call-up of former prisoners-of-war for forced labour in Germany; and in September 1944, on the railways, to frustrate German counter-measures against the landings of Allied troops (see MARKET-GARDEN). The Germans took harsh reprisals, especially severe in 1944 when there was widespread famine, and the strikes did not lead to much improvement in German policy, but they did contribute powerfully to a Dutch sense of solidarity.

In France, occupied in June 1940, perhaps the most effective actions in the field of unarmed resistance were those of the railway workers. In the summer of 1944, at the time of the Normandy landings (see OVERLORD), the railways were of very limited use to the German forces: a German survey conceded that it was not so much the damage by Allied air forces, nor the incessant demolitions by those waging subversive warfare, of saboteurs, that made the railways unworkable, as the permanent attitude of non-co-operation and go-slow of the railway staff.

In other Axis-occupied countries non-co-operation in various forms was a significant part of resistance. In one case, Luxembourg, the inhabitants took advantage of a Nazi-organized plebiscite in 1941 to vote 97% against the occupation. However, where (as in China, Bohemia and Moravia, Poland, the USSR, and Yugoslavia) the occupation regime was especially harsh, and was based upon doctrines of national expansion and racial superiority, non-co-operation generally assumed covert forms: failure to carry out orders efficiently, go-slows, underground activities of various kinds.

In some Axis or pro-Axis countries there were important acts or movements of civil resistance, especially against deportations. For example, in Germany, attempts in Berlin in 1943 to deport Jews who were married to non-Jews met with spontaneous demonstrations, mainly by the wives of those arrested: the deportations were stopped. In Bulgaria in the same year, mass opposition to deportations of Jews led the fascist government to give up its plan to send the Jews of Bulgaria to the death camps (see OPERATION REINHARD).

Before the war or in its early stages, Gandhi—who led the wartime non-violent resistance movement against the British in India (see India, 3)— Aldous Huxley, and many others in Allied countries had seen non-violent resistance as a possible means of effectively opposing military attack and occupation. The events of 1939–45 suggest that such resistance can indeed have an effect, but that it often operates best in conjunction with armed resistance movements. While non-violent civil resistance sometimes emerged quite early in the war—before the great turning-points of El Alamein and Stalingrad—there is no doubt that in many occupied countries it derived strength from the knowledge that the Allied armies were in the field, and from the continued existence of governments-in-exile. On its own, civil resistance was not capable of dislodging a determined occupying power. However, it did sometimes save lives, significantly modify occupation policy, or assist Allied military operations; and in many countries the fact that there had been widespread civil resistance against foreign occupation maintained national self-respect not only during the war, but also long afterwards. See also conscientious objectors.

Adam Roberts

Bibliography

Foot, M. R. D. , Resistance: An Analysis of European Resistance to Nazism 1940–1945 (London, 1977).
Gjelsvik, T. , Norwegian Resistance 1940–1945 (tr. T. K. Derry and and C. Hurst , London, 1979).
Haestrup, J. , Europe Ablaze (Odense, 1976).
Michel, H. , The Shadow War (tr. R. H. Barry , London, 1972).
Roberts, A. (ed.), The Strategy of Civilian Defence: Non-violent Resistance to Aggression (London, 1967).
Sharp, G. , The Politics of Nonviolent Action (Boston, 1973).
Suhl, Y. (ed.), They Fought Back: The Story of the Jewish Resistance in Nazi Europe (London, 1968).