Resistance during World War II
Irregular forces in World War II / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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During World War II, resistance movements operated in German-occupied Europe by a variety of means, ranging from non-cooperation to propaganda, hiding crashed pilots and even to outright warfare and the recapturing of towns. In many countries, resistance movements were sometimes also referred to as The Underground.
The resistance movements in World War II can be broken down into two primary politically polarized camps:
- the internationalist and usually Communist Party-led anti-fascist resistance that existed in nearly every country in the world; and
- the various nationalist groups in German- or Soviet-occupied countries, such as the Republic of Poland, that opposed both Nazi Germany and the Communists.
While historians and governments of some European countries have attempted to portray resistance to Nazi occupation as widespread among their populations,[1] only a small minority of people participated in organized resistance, estimated at one to three percent of the population of countries in western Europe. In eastern Europe where Nazi rule was more oppressive, a larger percentage of people were in organized resistance movements, for example, an estimated 10-15 percent of the Polish population. Passive resistance by non-cooperation with the occupiers was much more common.[2]