The Resistance in Western Europe, 1940–1945

Writing any transnational history is a daunting task, given the languages and bodies of scholarship that must be considered. Hence, studies of the resistance during World War II are typically written within national silos. Historian Olivier Wieviorka (Univ. Paris-Saclay), having authored books on the Vichy regime, the French Resistance, the Normandy landings, and memory and the Second World War, is well qualified to produce a comparative study of the resistance in six Western European nations—Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Italy—in the Anglo-American, rather than Soviet, theater of the war. The author makes good use of archival material, particularly at the National Archives in Kew and College Park, Maryland, but most of his information is drawn from secondary literature on occupation, resistance, liberation, propaganda, and foreign policy. Wieviorka analyzes the trilateral relations between resistance movements in Europe, governments in exile in London, and Anglo-American supporters of resistance movements, chiefly Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) and, later, the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and their propaganda counterparts, the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Political Warfare Executive, and the US Office of War Information. He is clear-eyed about the heavy reliance of resistance organizations on external support: “National factors ... played a notable role in the birth of the resistance; in its growth, however, the Anglo-Americans’ role was clearly preeminent” (4). Nevertheless, underground forces and governments in exile refused “to sacrifice their sovereignty on the altar of war” (59), even while accepting Allied aid. Anyone writing a history of the resistance and its SOE supporters wrestles with the question of organization—chronological, geographic, or thematic? Wieviorka proceeds chronologically and geographically, allowing specific themes to emerge naturally. He begins by describing how European resistance forces entered the Allied coalition, underscoring that the process was not inevitable. Many of these nations began the war as neutrals. The Belgian king, for instance, neither embraced the Allied cause nor went into exile. The Danish government was (albeit unenthusiastically) collaborationist. Italy began the war in the Axis camp, but Mussolini never succeeded in suppressing internal dissent to the extent that Hitler did. In 1943, Italy switched sides, but held the status only of a “cobelligerent,” not a formal ally of the Anglo-Americans. In 1940, Hugh Dalton, Britain’s minister of economic warfare and a believer in international socialist solidarity, argued that the SOE and the resistance could achieve dramatic results through sabotage, propaganda, and economic tactics. In 1941, however, it became apparent that his vision was impractical. Instead, the SOE increasingly espoused the vision of Colin Gubbins, its eventual director, who sought to use resistance forces to support conventional military operations, thereby