Talk:Resistance during World War II

Intro and oddity

The intro is exactly the same as the resistance section in the WWII article (well, not any more - I added one line there but not here). Which will look rather cheap to someone who links from there to here. I almost deleted the intro, but then realised this is the original and I don't want to step on DNA webmaster's toes :) .

By the way, I noticed an odd thing. yesterday I did an edit here (alphabetised the list) and now I see that edit is not in mentioned in the history listing. But the edits did 'stick' (so to say). Strange .... DirkvdM 19:52, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

• I know, I know, I know... .) I started the article because it was requested in the peer review of the WW2 main page, and I hoped people would literally rush their legs off adding onto it. But you are the only one who has done ANYTHING...I myself would have written more if I felt I had deeper knowledge. Hopefully folks will continue the article, since I agree with the peer review that it really should exist. Don't worry about my toes, they are rather small...but thanks for not deleting it (for the common sake). My regards, Dennis Nilsson. Dna-Dennis 03:16, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Communist resistance

I am shocked. There is no article on the Communist resistance yet? I don't know enough about it to write the article, but I do know enough to know that this is an outrage. Considering the size Wikipedia has reached by now, with artiocles on the most minute irrelevant trivia that's unforgivable. To ignore what I believe was the biggest resistance organisation during the biggest war. I've seen some anti-communist bias in Wikipedia, but this is like ignoring its existance. Might the reaon be that any article on that would have to lie too much not to reflect too positively on Communism? :)

Well, I've got that out of my system now. Now I can go to bed. No, better watch some Cheers episodes first to get me back into a good mood. :) DirkvdM 20:11, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

I hate when people just bitch about stuff not being here. And anyway the Soviet partisans page is older than this post. Should there be a more general communist resistance page? I notice there isn't a capitalist resistance page. I prolly should have just deleted this section. -Fredgoat (talk) 20:07, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

But this idea of "capitalist resistance" to fascism would be absurd. Communists are intrinsically opposed to fascism as they fight for kind of society exactly opposite to fascism. Fascism is endorsing capitalist mode of production, and naturally it has been employed by capitalists to fight communism amd suppress workers' rights. Losmilosmi (talk) 13:49, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Professional Resistance

Could someone explain what professional resistance is?

Thanks for your contribution, DirkvdM!

Thank you very much for your contribution, DirkvdM! I took the liberty of fixing/reformulating some minor things. And the Dutch focus you mentioned was absolutely minimal; god damn it - we have to start from somewhere! Thanks again! My regards, Dennis Nilsson. Dna-Dennis 03:46, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Verlaine's Poem

The article about the Battle of Normandy is contradicting the information in this article. It says:

One famous pair of these messages is often mistakenly stated to be a general call to arms by the Resistance. A few days before D-Day, the first line of Verlaine's poem, "Chanson d'Automne", was transmitted. "Les sanglots longs des violons de l'automne" [4] (Long sobs of autumn violins) alerted resistants in the Orléans region to attack rail targets within the next few days. The second line, "Bercent mon coeur d'une langueur monotone" (wound my heart with a monotonous langour), transmitted late on June 5, meant that the attack was to be mounted immediately.

The German intelligence service (the Abwehr) had discovered the meaning of this particular pair of messages. They rightly interpreted them to mean that invasion was imminent or underway. On hearing the second part, they alerted their superiors, and all Army commanders in France. Unfortunately for them, they had issued a similar warning a month before, when the Allies had begun invasion preparations and alerted the Resistance, but then stood down because of a forecast of bad weather. The Abwehr having given this false alarm, their genuine alarm was ignored or treated as merely routine.

Which is right?

There is a website Ici Londres that has recordings of the messages, which discusses which version of the poem were used in the broadcasting.Nikolaj Winther 07:13, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Are Nazi and communist ideologies very similar?

Maybe some of their methods of political power management are similar. Could you document their ideological similarity?

Both are ideologies promoting totalitarian socialism and government controlled economy. Successful economical, military and know-how training (soviets provided training for Nazis in concentration camp building and other sinister things). Pre-1941 cooperation between communist USSR and Nazi germany just confirms this. Quote from Hitler: "There is more that binds us to Bolshevism than separates us from it. There is, above all, genuine, revolutionary feeling, which is alive everywhere in Russia except where there are Jewish Marxists. I have always made allowance for this circumstance, and given orders that former Communists are to be admitted to the party at once. The petit bourgeois Social-Democrat and the trade-union boss will never make a National Socialist, but the Communists always will." Sigitas 15:15, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Naziism was Corporatist Capitalst NOT Socialist!!!85.216.89.205 (talk) 13:09, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Another one who confuses between Marxism and Stalinism hehehe. Neeeext! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.98.18.95 (talk) 20:48, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Austrian resistance movement

According to the Moscow declaration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Declaration and because most of the Austrian resistance groups wanted a free Austrian state (see O5), the Austrian resistance movement is not part of the German resistance movement – otherwise you would have to define the Czech resistance movement also as a German resistance movement, which is absurd. 18.07.2007, mv

first armed resistance unit

This article seems to be saying that resistance began in Yugoslavia - "This first WW2 armed resistance unit in occupied Europe was formed on June 22, 1941 [...]"

But according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_resistance_movement_in_World_War_II armed resistance in Poland began amost immediately.

e.g. Leśni - began partisan operations in 1939 Narodowa Organizacja Wojskowa - created 1939 Bataliony Chłopskie - created in 1940

and this list probably isn't complete. so how is the Yugoslav resistance the first??

217.75.131.195 (talk) 08:37, 6 December 2007 (UTC)zbychu

Polish resistance begun as early as in September 1939 (see for example Służba Zwycięstwu Polski) and was certainly the first (in Europe; leaving China and arguments "WWII begun before 1939" aside). It was also the largest in the world (see Armia Krajowa for details.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 01:51, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Here's the thing: while the Poles were certainly the first to resist the Germans, they didn't form actual military units (such as brigades). The Polish resistance operated in the early years of the war as a collection of individuals, not as a military organization. This is why the 1st Partisan Brigade should be mentioned in that context. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 14:15, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

While the AK started their operation to recreate pre-war Polish Army in 1943, as a military organization it traces its origins to Związek Walki Zbrojnej and mentioned SZP, both from 1939. Scores of resistance groups were created in 1939/1940, before being merged into ZWZ; some of them might have used military names. Groups of leśni operated all the times. Consider also the case of Henryk Dobrzański and his unit.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:12, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes I'm aware of WW2 history, far from downplaying the heroism of the Polish resistance, the organization didn't form real military units until 1943. Like you said, they were groups of people with a certain hierarchy of command, but this is far from an actual military formation. It takes more than a name to create a unit. The Partisans' organization can be compared to that of the AK two years early. With full-scale detachments, brigades, divisions, hospitals, supply trains, and even artillery brigades within several months of the start of the occupation. I realize this part of the war is somewhat obscure, but you can find info on all of this here [1], should you want to look it up. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 21:18, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps the best thing to do would be to find a reliable citation for specific things they were the first at. Certainly what you describe above sounds impressive. PS. Another early Polish partisan unit: Jędrusie. I need to translate more from pl:Kategoria:Polskie oddziały partyzanckie.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 04:36, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Sure, I'll do my best. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 08:25, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

For the record, I have created Category:Units and formations of Polish resistance during World War II. We could use a parent cat along the lines of Category:Resistance units and formations during World War II - currently we have nothing smaller than Category:Irregular units and formations for most countries and periods.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 04:20, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

famous resistance operations in 1944

Where is the mention about Slovak national uprising in 1944? Are 78 000 fighting men not enough? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zemetras1944 (talk • contribs) 10:34, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

If you want it, do it yourself. But there's something now, I added it so you don't have to, you can conserve your energy to bitch about something else. It's mostly pasted from another article. -Fredgoat (talk) 19:58, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

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Anti-resistance

As far as I can tell we have no article about anti-resistance units, operations, and so on! See also my comment at Talk:Counter-insurgency#Anti-partisan. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:48, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

I've created an article on Anti-partisan operations in World War II. Please help expand! --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 23:05, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

"notable resistance movements"

I thought the Communist Chinese were the largest, and they are not even in the list. Isn't fighting in China after 1939 usually considered to be part of WWII? I have always read that the Japanese had great difficulty controlling the parts of China that they nominally held and that the Communist resistance was so successful that it gave them a big head start in the revolution. David R. Ingham (talk) 17:28, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Danish resistance

The comment on the role of Duckwitz' role in the rescue of Danish Jews sounds unbalanced:

"However, the action was largely due to the personal intervention of German diplomat Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, who both leaked news of the intended round up of the Jews to both the Danish opposition and Jewish groups and negotiated with the Swedes to ensure Danish Jews would be accepted in Sweden."

This is not to detract from Duckwitz' contribution (which was essential, and for which he was duly honoured in many ways). However, it is incorrect to say that "the action was largely due" to Duckwitz. After the warning had been given, the action itself was entirely organised by the Danish resistance and the Jewish community, and was carried out with the help of many private individuals, who sheltered and/or transported Jews across Oeresund.

As it happens, in wartime Europe, this is an almost unique example of collaboration between local government, local resistance _and_ occupation force Germans to save the local Jewish community. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Henrikrasmussen (talk • contribs) 01:40, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Chetniks ??

Why are Chetniks listed as a resistance group ? No single battle fought against the Nazis or Fascist after the dissolution of few month lasting joint Partisan and Chetnik movement. On the other hand they collaborated with nazi/fascist forces on numerous occasions against the Partisan resistance. Not to mention their ethnic cleansing agenda.

Notable individuals: Draža Mihailović. Funny. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.137.106.146 (talk) 17:21, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree that Chetniks cannot be listed as resistance, they were colaborating with Nazi Germany, Italian Fascists and NDH Ustase. Losmilosmi (talk) 20:56, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

It is a tragicomic situation in which the "chetniks" are included in the resistance, there are tons of material proof that testify to their collaboration with ALL the occupiers and collaborators. They were one collaborationist organization among all others. I suggest that their organization should be cancelled from this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Raskiy (talk • contribs) 21:06, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Footnote about largest resistance movements

I'm a little worried about the credibility of the sources cited about the Chetnik numbers in the footnote about resistance movements. The citations in favor of the claim that the Polish resistance was the largest include books published by Columbia University Press, Yale UP, and Cornell UP, and involve well-known historians such as Norman Davies. The figures for the Chetniks come from two books, both by Velimir Vukšić, published by Osprey Press, which as its Wikipedia entry indicates is mostly a publisher of picture books. The other source is the lecture notes for some history class. There is rather a large credibility gulf here. I'm inclined to simply disregard the sources that disagree with the more credible ones and clear up this whole issue in favor of Davies et al, but someone seems to have put some work into documenting things, so I won't. The claim that the numbers of resistance members varied dramatically over time certainly seems plausible. Perhaps someone might dig up better sourcing for the Chetnik numbers?

I also share the worry expressed above about regarding the Chetniks as a resistance movement in quite the same sense as the others, given the fact that they weren't specifically a WWII resistance movement (as their earlier date of establishment indicates), the distinct agenda they therefore had (they weren't founded to resist WWII occupation), and the claims (for which someone might provide a citation?) that they collaborated with the Nazis. MJM74 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 00:01, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

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Yugoslav Partisans

How is it possible that YU partisans are listed all the way down after both Italian and French resistance movements, despite the first sentence on the "yugoslavian partisans" article itself says tat they were "Europe's most effective anti-Axis resistance movement during World War II"? Losmilosmi (talk) 21:14, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

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Split

I was just wondering whether it might be more helpful to the average user if this pages was split into two separate articles: Resistance in Axis-occupied Europe and Resistance in Japanese-occupied Asia? As it stands, the primary meaning of "resistance" seems to have got confused. The point of this article is (presumably) supposed to be Resistance (with a capital) rather than resistance, and that has a specific meaning in the context of WWII: it seems pretty dubious that Italian guerillas in East Africa would be labelled as "the resistance", for example.—Brigade Piron (talk) 11:39, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

@Brigade Piron: A good idea, but I think we need more content first. Overall, I can see this article as a parent article to the two subarticles that should be written. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:49, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Size

I've added a new section on size. I couldn't find any numbers for Chinese, and the French numbers are not chronological, but Polish, Soviet and Yugoslav are very comparable, and could be made into a nice graph, combining the table from Yugoslav_Partisans#Composition and File:AK-Soviet_partisans_numbers.JPG. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:49, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

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Discuss Splitting Article into resistance in Europe and resistance in Southeast Asia

  I should start by saying that I know nothing about resistance in Southeast Asia, but I have read quite a bit about resistance in Europe. Nevertheless, I agree with the idea of splitting this article into two geographic based articles.

1. - the article is indeed unwieldy for the common reader who might not know anything about the subject and
2. - it makes sense. The conditions of Nazi occupation were different from the conditions of Japanese occupation in many ways. Finding a hiding place on an island covered in rainforest is a different problem than finding one in a European city, for example. Also, the Japanese and the Nazis did not conduct their occupations exactly the same, which means that the resistance that was reacting to those occupations was not the same. Most European historians would argue that you would need to split resistance in Europe into two - east and west because Nazi policy was different in the east and the west and resisters in the west didn't have the complication of the Red Army.

  Once the article is split, the Europe article needs to mention the different conditions on different sides of the Elbe. It also needs to discuss the difference between the Resistance (politically organized, say by SOE) and the resistance (grass roots) - as another Wikipedian already mentioned - and expand on the differences between armed resistance and all the other forms of resistance. It should also mention recent research on transnational resistance, which argues against the traditional conceptualization of resistance into national efforts (thank you Charles de Gaulle).   In some ways, this article is a sign post to all the other articles on different resistance movements. That is an appropriate job for it. But it is also a good place (maybe the only place) to discuss WWII resistance as a whole. Readers could learn a lot from that even before going to more specific pages. The information would be a lot clearer and more comprehensible if the article is split into Europe and Southeast Asia as suggested. DP1944 (talk) 16:19, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

I agree. Split the article into two for Europe and Asia. One question, however: should the article on Asia be titled "Resistance in Southeast Asia" or "Resistance in Asia?" I don't know enough about that subject to have an opinion.Smallchief (talk)

We recently had a very similar discussion of splitting Collaboration with the Axis powers by spinning off Collaboration with Imperial Japan from collaboration with the European Axis powers for very similar reasons, and with what looks like some degree of success. The European sections are more coherent, while the Japan article has nearly doubled in size since splitting off. And just with Resistance movements, experts in, say Vichy France or Vidkun Quisling might know very little about, say, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere or Manchukuo.

Of course, it might also make it easier for readers and editors to match and compare the respective Eastern and Western spheres of occupation, collaboration and resistance.

See:

• User_talk:Elinruby#Do_you_think_it_might_be_helpful_to_create_a_Collaboration,_etc._,_Wikiproject_? and
• Talk:Collaboration_with_the_Axis_powers#Moving_out_Asian_sections_barely_trims_this_article.

@Elinruby: @Mathglot: @Scope creep: @DP1944: @Smallchief: @Piotrus:

With the best of my wishes for other toilers in vineyards, —— Shakescene (talk) 19:47, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Serbian Cetnik Movement

I am disgusted that the Yugoslav Royal Army "Cetniks" are not mrntioned. It seems that the good old communist silencing is good and well even today. Disgusting 120.22.233.251 (talk) 02:44, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Cetnik Battles vs Nazis

Четници су имали више офанзивних операција против Осовине. Одабрали смо следећеих десет битака четника против Немаца и усташа, поређаних хронолошки. 1. Опсада Краљева 2. Битка на Церу 1941. 3. Битка за Источну Босну 4. Битка за снабдевање 5. Операција “Тојфел“ (Битка на Озрену) 6. Битка за Вишеград 7. Битка за Рогатицу 8. Операција “Хајка“ 9. Битка за Требиње 10. Битка за Модричу 120.22.233.251 (talk) 02:46, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Poland also had the highest number of soldiers in the wehrmacht...

Not sure we should point to Poland as a bastion of resistance. This, too, is mythology. 2605:B100:1132:6702:D037:A3E1:3305:55E7 (talk) 05:58, 17 June 2024 (UTC)