Myths and Realities of Resistance

Abstract

It is tempting to decorate the occupation with a neat symmetry of heroes and villains. Harry Ree was a British SOE agent who had been parachuted into France in 1943, in order to organize sabotage operations with local resistance groups. After the war Ree gave lectures about his wartime experiences, and he recounts that one of the most difficult barriers to overcome was his audiences’ preconceptions:

which were backed up by their enjoyment of a kind of vicarious thrill at hearing about people they insisted on thinking of as whiterthan-white heroes or blacker-than-black villains, or hearing about plots and plays of cinematic unlikeliness.⁴

Resistance good; collaboration bad.¹

G. Kren & L. Rappoport

Armed resistance must be understood realistically, not romantically.²

R.L. Rubenstein & J.K. Roth

Both terms are vague and defy precise definition; ‘collaboration’ could mean anything from volunteering for the Waffen SS to buying a picture postcard of Marshal Pétain; likewise ‘resistance’ could be derailing an enemy troop-train or singing an obscene parody of ‘Lili Marlene’! The most that can be said is that collaboration/resistance resembled an old-fashioned hour-glass with collaboration the sand in the upper bulb. In 1940 collaboration predominated and resistance was negligible. As the war progressed, however, and the prospects of German victory receded, the sands of collaboration began to run out while those of resistance multiplied. By the time of the liberation the upper bulb was all but empty, the lower all but full.³

David Littlejohn