Role of resistance in western Europe

As the RedBaron said this thread is not just about France. Clems shall we just move on to another country?
For instance, I know the Danes did a great job. The King wore a yellow star to show his protest. Over a thousand policemen were sent to Buchenwald because they helped the Danish jews to escape to Sweden.

 

OT. Glad to see you back, Red Baron. Hope you stick around.

 

Sorry, i just took France as an exemple because I don't no much things about the other resistances except in Italy and french resistance is aguably the best-knowm exemple. But I recognize I don't know much things about Belgian, Dutch or other western european resistances.

 

That's fine Clems we are all here to learn. I'm sure you'd be interested in finding out about more about the Danes. Another example I cna think of is Wallenberg. He was a Swedish ( officially neutral) diplomat but he helped many jews to escape via the Swedish embassy in Budapest. I also rember the story of an aristocratic lady at Herm (Channel Islands) . I forgot her name, but she made the Germans obey her orders!

 

Personally I think the Western Resistance movements have been rather over emphasised.

Im not saying that they did not achieve many great things but that perhaps they are given credit for alot more than they really deserve, especially when compared to those groups in the East.

I think that in the post-war world, the occupied western nations needed someway of showing their wartime 'record' and things got a little blown out of proportion. We consistently hear about resistance in the West but rarely here of those who collaborated and those actively joined 'Germanic' formations.

Its my belief that roughly the same amount of people joined resistance networks as joined the 'enemy'. The rest of the people just kept their heads down. Its only with the events of D-Day that resistance in the west rises to a crescendo.

Just my view and Im not trying to troll or cause offence but I do believe that more is made of it to try and show those who got occupied in a more favourable light and I dont doubt the contributions that those who took part actually made.

 

Just to this, what about the Vichy governments of Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belguim, Netherlands and France these were open collaborators with the germans throughout there occupations. Little known kact was that Vichy France held concentration camps during ww2 in France, the 373rd infanrty division was a belgium 'volunteer' division originally used for antipartisan duty is russia, the 'Free Corp Denmark' was formed against the communits as well, about 45000 Norwegians joined the Nasjonal Samling (National Union) assisting the germans in arresting jews in Norway or how about the 11th SS Voluteer PanzerGrenadier Division Nordland (Netherlands) also faced the Russians, and last but not least the Britisches Frei-Korps (British Free Corps) a mixture of british and commenwealth troops fighting under the waffen SS, I do not know of there deployment or if they actually fought against the Russians but I do know that they did support duties such as driving truck and directing traffic, these men even wore german SS unifroms and title cuffs.

I know that most of the above did fight against the East but in terms of your quote they are still west europeans collaborating with the Germans very openly.

 

Quite true, but after D-Day the role of the resistance became important and te resistance seriously helped the allies (175,000 FFI in France in June and 300,000 by August, 400,000 by September just as an exemple while at the peak of the italian resistance they were 270,000 resistants in Italy).

And the men that joined germanic formations where quite few :30,000 in France (not including the milice), a little more in belgium and holland. They were more "passive" collaborators but themselves were few and I know in France, many were already dead on V-E day.

I agree the resistance role was minor before the invasion of western europe, but I mainly want to know their role after D-day. After all, the partisans in the east were also the most important when they were soviet offensives in their sectors.