Short History of World War II - James L. Stokesbury [142]
In Holland the assassination of a German officer resulted in the deportation of nearly 700 people to concentration camps. Eventually, the Resistance movements decided that this kind of direct action was probably too costly and that it ought to be avoided. There were exceptions to this decision, however. In Poland there was no cessation of the bloodshed; the Poles were so badly treated anyway their condition could hardly be worse, and throughout the war they fought furiously and indiscriminately against the conqueror. Particular assassinations and reprisals were part of an ongoing cacophony of terror there.
The Communists too tended to take a cold view of affairs. In many countries they were leaders of the organizational phase. They possessed the necessary background; they were used to acting clandestinely, to being persecuted, to having to live carefully. Resistance for them was little more than an extension of their normal activities. There were variations on this theme, too. The earliest French resisters found the Communists completely uninterested in them; the Reds marched to a drum beaten in Moscow, and as long as the Russo-German Nonaggression Pact was in force, they were well behaved. As soon as Germany invaded the Soviet Union the Communists became violent anti-Nazis. They were also quite willing to shed blood, their own as well as others’. They believed that if killings caused reprisals, the reprisals in turn caused more killings, and they were content to see villages wiped out if that would ultimately bring more people into the fight against the Fascists. Ideologically, everyone who was not a Communist was an enemy, so it meant little to them if innocents died. “Innocent” was not a word in their vocabulary.
The differing ideological views of the resisters, the different types of work done by different groups, the rivalries within and between them, the fear of infiltration by enemy agents, all made organization difficult. Gradually, the small cells did coalesce; safe houses became parts of escape routes; occasional broadsheets became newspapers; isolated intelligence-gatherers became networks. Few were as successful as the Dutch, who set up shop across from German headquarters in Amsterdam and ran a line across from the German central switchboard so that they could listen to all German calls. But within a relatively short time, the individual resisters had become the Resistance. As they moved to yet a further stage, the outside world began to take an interest in them.
As soon as they were chased off the Continent, the British began thinking how they were going to get back. Harboring a large number of governments in exile, maintaining ties and contacts wherever possible with the occupied territories, the British soon realized that the more Germans who could be tied up in internal security operations, the fewer there would be available for the battlefield. They established a group known as SOE, Special Operations Executive, to control and coordinate the activities of the various Resistance groups. Initially, there was some hope that SOE would become a “fourth arm,” equivalent to the army, navy, and air force, but it never got that far. Personality conflicts, the excessive demands for supplies and resources, the inability to control matters, all militated against this. Conventional service chiefs were