Second World War overview and key events

European Resistance Movements in the Second World War glanced at the illuminated face on my wristwatch: a quarter to four! The sweat ran down me as I worked feverishly; the whole charge under the central beam, the fuse down -- and I after it. We had not a second to lose: the Germans might be back at any moment! An old raincoat served as a screen while I lighted the fuses.

Meanwhile, Kaare had set up the ladder against the outside of the pier, and it took him a fraction of a second to clamber up, stick his head over the edge, and report that all was clear. A moment later we were both on the bridge.

We left the ladder where it was and made off as quickly as we could up toward the Vekkero Road. For the first hundred yards we went cautiously, and silently. After that the only consideration was speed. Fourteen minutes later we stopped, panting, and listened expectantly. Not a sound! Kaare turned quickly to me and said: "You don't think we've got to do it again?" Before I could open my mouth to reply, the roar from Lysaker shattered the air (Olsen, 1952, p. 25).

This account of two young men blowing up a bridge in occupied Norway, a bridge that was important to German troop and munitions transport, is one of thousands of acts of resistance that occurred during World War II in Europe. Most were carried out by "ordinary" people, citizens in countries like Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France, Poland, Greece, Yugoslavia, and Albania, all the places occupied by Nazis. In these countries, so-called ordinary people felt called upon to resist in extraordinary ways. In some places, resistance was well organized with a hierarchal structure and a chain of command; in others, individuals simply saw a chance to undermine the enemy and took it.

The underground was as important to defeating the Nazis as the Allied military forces were. The things resisters did, whether large or small, organized or unorganized, were always at great risk -- often under penalty of death. Naturally, the question arises, what did the European resistance movements in the Second World War achieve? Who were the people that resisted, what were some of their activities, and did their activities make an impact? The underground movements complimented military action, saved lives, raised morale, and gave the Allies vital information and sabotage that helped them win the war.

Who Were They?

In every occupied country some people had the courage to resist the enemy, and as time went on their numbers grew. Oluf Olsen (1952), for example, was only eighteen years old when Hitler invaded Norway. He was too young to realize the full implications, but he resented their presence. He recruited a friend and together they gathered information about German anti-aircraft equipment at the airport, took photos, and sketched the site. They had no training in how to blow up a bridge, but they tried anyway and succeeded in damaging one enough "to stop the transport scheduled to leave Oslo the same morning with reinforcements for the troops engaged in the county... To delay it for a day and a half, thus reducing the pressure on our Norwegian troops in those parts" (p. 26).

Although it was important work, the two wanted to do more, and eventually, they escaped across the North Sea to England in a leaky sailboat, nearly losing their lives in the crossing. From there Olsen went to Canada to be trained in Toronto as a pilot for the RAF. He served in this capacity until he got a chance to join the secret service. Training included telegraphy, meteorology, and "a thorough knowledge of what the Allies knew of the German Military and its dispositions in Norway" (Olsen, 1952, p. 120). He was dropped out of an airplane into Norway in 1942. Olsen's task was to organize a spy network and set up a secret radio station for reporting military activity, the exact times of ship arrivals and departures, and weather conditions back to England.

The kind of persons he chose to help him was important -- people who could keep their mouths shut no matter what and not crack under pressure -- people who could tolerate fear. "I would not let anyone work for me who was in other illegal organizations at the same time, for too many men and women were caught who possessed altogether too much information...." (p. 161).

A clerk, a customhouse official, and a businessman helped him obtain travel permits, passports, food and supplies. Operating a radio station meant continually moving about because the Nazis would pick up their transmissions and search for them. Olsen states:

As soon as the British were informed of the number of ships, their size and escort, what time they had weighed anchor, and their speed and course, they could decide whether it was worth while to make an attack immediately, or wait till they had got the whole convoy further along the coast.... Time after time convoys left the port; time after time they were attacked in practically the same place, where there was neither harbor nor shelter for a ship that became a casualty. Ship after ship was sunk; cargo after cargo failed to arrive at its destination (Olsen, 1952, pp. 190-191).

The impact of their work could hardly be estimated.

Not everyone worked within an organization. Some resisted individually. Perhaps the best example of individuals that worked alone were those who rescued and helped the Jews. Eva Fogelman (1994) interviewed 300 rescuers who hid Jews in their homes and took on supporting them until the end of the war. The penalty for harboring a Jew was death. Fogelman describes the extreme difficulties they encountered. For example, a 17-year-old girl in Poland hid five Jews in her apartment. If other residents in the building heard the toilet flushing too many times, they might suspect she was hiding Jews and report her, so she had to impose strict rules about noise. If anyone got sick, she was on her own, as medical attention was out of the question. She had to go around to many different stores to buy food -- only enough for one or two people in each place -- in order to avoid suspicion that she was feeding more than just herself. Even how potatoes were peeled was an issue because Polish women peeled potatoes in short straight strips whereas Jewish women cut one long spiraling peel. This same young girl accomplished the seemingly impossible task of moving the whole "family" to new living quarters with Nazi soldiers occupying a house directly across the street!

Everything was further complicated if a child lived in the house. A young woman, whose sister was only six years old, warned her sister everyday about "not telling" and not trusting anyone with information about their home. At one point, the Nazis took the little girl into custody, questioned her, and beat her -- in fact, she was crippled for the rest of her life by a vicious kick to the base of her spine -- but she didn't tell them anything about the Jews living at her house. Ordinarily, one does not think of children being part of the resistance, but Folgelman says there were many child heroes whose caregivers were forced to depend on them.

Fogelman (1994) describes some common characteristics of people who hid the Jews, characteristics that can be extended to those involved in resistance work in general. These characteristics explain in part, at least, why they did it when everyone else was too afraid.

She found that most of those she interviewed came from loving homes where certain values were instilled early. For example, they had seen altruistic behavior modeled in a parent or caregiver as they grew up. They had a deep-seated reverence for life and the need to preserve it. Surprisingly, religion did not play a big role in who helped and who did not -- some of the resisters were religious, but others were not. Some were atheists. All stated, however, that their consciences were strong. They said they couldn't live with themselves if they did nothing to help the Jews survive. All believed that individual action mattered. They had self-confidence and the ability to think and act independently of others -- with this came moral courage. Their parents had taught them tolerance by welcoming friends from different cultures into their homes; consequently, they were not afraid of people who were "different," and the Jews did not seem exotic or dangerous to them. Finally, and essential for any kind of resistance work, they had an ability to live with constant fear. They were able to tolerate not only the terror always with them, but also the daily deceptions of living a double life, one as a resistance worker and one as an ordinary "normal" citizen (Fogelman, 1994).

Resistance Activities

Resistance took many forms. In Greece, for instance, resistance included guerrilla warfare. A small but vigorous Communist party already experienced with underground work was the first to initiate clandestine operations. They set up front organizations and recruited members. By April 1942, they had recruited enough people to form a guerrilla arm called ELAS. Aris Velouchiotis, a former schoolteacher and Communist revolutionary, was the leader of this group whose goal was to harass the occupiers and wear them down.

A charismatic leader with a strong streak of cruelty, he had a knack for communicating with peasants in the simple but subtle language of the mountains and possessed a flair for the dramatic. He draped his short, powerful figure with bandoliers, wore a black Cossack-style hat flamboyantly and was surrounded by a personal bodyguard of a score or more men, who adopted his headgear and hence were known as "black bonnets" (Bailey, 1978, p. 153).

Another group in Greece, EDES, developed in the mountains along the Albanian border. Republicans, their leader was Napoleon Zervas, who had served as an officer during the First World War but had been dismissed from the Army because of leading a coup d'etat against the monarchy 16 years earlier. In 1942 he led about 100 men against an Axis supply convoy in a guerrilla operation. They exploded a charge under a heavy tank, which split it open and tipped it over. Zervas and his man "swarmed down on the column. They killed the survivors and stripped the 60-odd victims of valuables. Then they brought up their pack mules and loaded them with wounded guerrillas and all the armaments they could salvage. Finally, they set fire to the trucks and tanks and disappeared into their mountain fastness" (Bailey, 1978, p. 155).

The Greek guerrillas were rugged, hardy farmers and herdsmen from remote mountainous regions. Their guerrilla activities were transformed in September 1942 when British soldiers were dropped by air into a mountainous region of Greece to blow up three viaducts: "Greece's north-south railroad ran over those viaducts, and by destroying any one of them, the British would put the railroad out of commission for at least six weeks, stopping German supplies bound for Piraeus and thence by ship to Rommel's Afrika Korps" (Bailey, 1978, p. 155). A Greek shepherd known as "Uncle Niko," who knew English from having lived in America, saw the English parachutes descending and said, "God has sent us Englishmen from heaven; it is my duty to help them" (cited in Bailey, 1978, p. 155).

Uncle Niko found the British soldiers and led them to a large cave. He supplied them with food, cooking utensils, and mules to carry their heavy gear. The British built a model of the viaduct they planned to destroy. They made their explosives to fit the model's V-shaped girders and practiced attaching charges and fuses blindfolded.

Other helpful Greeks arranged for the British commander, Colonel Myers, to meet with Zervas and Aris, and the three men decided to share command of the operation. Zervas and Aris's two guerrilla groups engaged the Axis forces that were guarding the viaduct while the British demolition team got under the bridge. Once there, they unexpectedly had to remold their plastic explosives because the viaduct had U-shaped girders rather than V-shaped. This took about an hour, during which time the Greek resistance kept the enemy busy. Then, the British blew a whistle to signal they were ready to light the fuses. Colonel Myers wrote, "Two minutes later there was a tremendous explosion, and I saw one of the seventy-foot steel spans lift into the air and -- oh, what joy! -- drop into the gorge below, in a rending crash of breaking and bending steelwork" (p. 156).

Zervis and Aris helped the Allies throughout the war. Towards the end they were involved in an operation called Animals, the purpose of which was to deceive the Germans into believing an Allied invasion of Greece was imminent. Actually, this was to distract their "attention from the site of the real invasion: Sicily...." (p. 159). The plan was simple but clever: "Off the Mediterranean coast of Spain, close enough so the tide could carry it ashore for the Spanish to discover and pass on to the Germans, they dumped a corpse dressed in a British officer's uniform and carrying phony documents referring to the coming invasion" (p. 159). The Germans were convinced. The guerrillas concentrated themselves on the southwestern coast adding credible "evidence" of a coming invasion.

On June 21 the guerrillas attacked Axis supply and communications lines all over the country, destroyed a 50-mile stretch of highway so that no supplies could be transported or troops moved, and "severed the north-south railway in no fewer than 16 places..." (p. 159). They thoroughly disrupted transportation. German troops in Greece that could have been used elsewhere to better advantage were pinned down while the invasion of Sicily took place.

The Greek guerrillas lived in small bands "in hillside huts and caves and moved their rendezvous areas frequently to avoid detection. They lived off the land and used the terrain to their advantage" (Bailey, 1978, p. 160). Not a day went by that they did not come down and blow something up, a stretch of railroad tracks or a bridge that was vital. And the Germans could never catch them. The fact they knew the land and were familiar with footpaths, underbrush, and secret places was a great advantage. In fact, an intimate knowledge of the area was an advantage to all resistance workers over the invading strangers.

The gamut and nature of resistance activities is so broad it would be impossible to describe them all in one essay. An interesting bit of comical resistance took place in Norway during the Christmas season of 1941. A Christmas Card company produced a series of humorous cards depicting the Norwegian flag and satirizing Nazis. The cards showed traditional Christmas gnomes wearing stocking caps, for instance -- caps the Nazis had outlawed as sending a message of resistance. The cards were also clearly in violation of the Flag Ordinance passed in June 1940, which said only members of the Nazi Party could display a Norwegian flag. The cards also wished the recipient, "God norsk jul,' (Merry Norwegian Christmas) rather than the usual 'God jul,' pointedly suggesting a return to Christmas as it used to be, without the uninvited guests" (Stokker, 1997, p. 189). The most potent card depicted a rose-painted chest with a large Norwegian flag being taken from it. Among the design of roses was an "H" worked in, which everyone knew stood for King Haakon who had been forced to escape to England. When the Germans realized the message of the cards, they confiscated all that were left and ordered the post office to send any found in the mail to the central post office. The following year an ordinance was issued: "Whosoever deals in propaganda for an enemy government or produces, obtains, or spreads items antagonistic to German interests, will be punished by death. Anyone possessing any item of anti-German propaganda must immediately turn it in to the nearest German or Norwegian police authorities. Violators will be punished by death" (cited in Stokker, 1997, p. 193). Despite the penalty, many cards survived and are in archives, museums, and private collections today. Beyond humor, the cards must have provided meaning for people whose country had been overrun by enemies.

In France, a series of small resistance groups worked independently of each other.

Overall, the Free French resistance was under General De Gaulle, although the English also formed a resistance operation there. Workers in the Free French resistance got their orders from England over the BBC. One group was doctors and medical people headed by Dr. Albert Haas (1984) and his wife Sonja. Dr. Hass was a Hungarian Jew and his wife, also Jewish, was French. Soon after the invasion, they joined a small clandestine group at Arles in which each member agreed to try to make contact with the Resistance network rumored to be forming. Dr. Haas' job in a clinic provided him with a safe and private meeting place that wouldn't attract attention. He and his wife began recruiting others and listening for coded orders to come over evening BBC broadcasts. Finally, one night they heard, "The bird is ready to fly with the chained duck." (Haas, 1984, p. 38).

It was their coded signal to meet the next day with contacts in a pre-arranged place and discuss going to England (by submarine) for a month of intensive training. They learned jujitsu, arts of sabotage, how to use plastic explosives, to read architectural plans, and how to read upside down. They became trained observers, learned how to steal, and ways to respond "coolly to unexpected dangers" (Haas, 1984, p. 46). Finally, they learned how to jump out of airplanes and memorized codes with which to decipher their orders, which were broadcast over the BBC. Then, they flew back to France and parachuted down.

Dr. Haas took a position on the medical staff of the Hopital St. Roche in Nice. He examined French men and women who had been sentenced to forced labor in Germany. Most of them he declared unfit for work in a labor camp and those he couldn't save from going "received instructions in sabotage" (Haas, 1984, p. 48). New members of the resistance got false identification papers and ration cards from Haas. The two were "always on the lookout for any scrap of information about German troop and naval activity" (p. 49). He helped set up radio transmitters in Austria and arranged to plant explosives in cafes where German soldiers liked to go. During all this, he maintained his medical work as though he were an ordinary doctor.

Then, he and Sonja were assigned the task of infiltrating the Todt organization. "Todt was the German paramilitary group that had been designing and building defense structures along the entire French coastline against a possible Allied invasion" (p. 52). Through complicated and clever maneuverings, both managed to become trusted employees of Todt: "Sonja's fluency in a variety of languages made her very useful to the Todt organization. She became personal secretary to Hauptbauleiter Pracht, the man directly responsible for construction of the Atlantic Wall. Thanks to Sonja, central intelligence in London had copies of all the plans before the first stone was even laid" (p. 55). She also gained access to the safe where top-secret blueprints were kept. Meanwhile, her husband seized opportunities to replace pro-German employees at Todt with his own people. Members of his group mixed seawater with the cement so that "the defense wall would look solid but crumble in a short time" (p. 55).

Unfortunately, Dr. Haas and his wife were eventually caught and arrested.

Dr. Haas did not break under torture or betray his fellow workers. He was sent to prison and charged with sabotage, terrorism, assassination, and high treason: "This last charge, the primary one, meant that I had committed espionage in order to deliver France into the hands of her enemies -- the Allies" (p. 64). Because he was a "traitor," he was kept in solitary confinement and not allowed to receive mail. At his trial in November 1943, the sentence imposed was death by firing squad. He considered hanging himself but decided against it because he realized he wanted his son to be proud of him. It was a good thing because in the end, he was not executed.

Haas (1984) was instead sent to Mauthausen, a concentration camp where he was starved, tortured, and abused, as were all the prisoners. He managed to stay alive, serving as the prisoner's doctor, until Americans liberated the camp. At that time he weighed only 84 pounds and was near death. Naturally, even in the camp he found all kinds of ways to sabotage the Nazis -- as his wife did also at Auschwitz (Haas, 1984).