In every war in which a nation is occupied by unfriendly powers there are invariably those people who are not willing to be subjugated through force or persuasion. This is the purpose of resistance: to defy the enemy through non-military means and prove that the spirit of the vanquished people is not dead, but still fighting. Resistance forces have historically undertaken "a task that was always dangerous, always illegal, and always the object of special vigilance by the occupying powers. Experience of occupation brought its own lessons, usually harsh." [Foot, 945]

In this paper, I will be examining how the resistance movements in Nazi Europe used propaganda, both their own and their enemy's, to stir up sentiment against Nazi domination and to aid the Allied cause in the Second World War. I will assume that the reader has a general understanding of the course of the war and recognizes the names of high-ranking officials and important events, such as Charles DeGaulle and the Munich Agreement. If this is not the case, the best reference I can give is The Oxford Companion to World War II, from which I have retrieved much of my information.

The Second World War is an especially important period in the history of resistance, because the tactics and organization used against the Nazis helped shape the actions of many resistance efforts of the rest of the century, including Soviet occupation during the Cold War and the guerrilla wars in Central and South America.

The events that precipitated the Second World War can be traced back to Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933. At first, there was very little resistance to Hitler and the Nazis. Germany had occupied the Rhineland and the Saarland, annexed Austria and forcibly occupied the Czech Sudetenland, but there was little to no resistance in any of these areas (though the Czechoslovakian government and her allies made numerous diplomatic efforts to resistance, which resulted in the Munich agreement.) [Foot, 765]

German propaganda posters painted the Nazis as liberators, but "It was neither very difficult nor very dangerous to deface posters, by simply tearing them down or painting them out, or by adding slogans to them..." [Foot, 1084]. Thus, the earliest resistance was no more than vandalism aimed at stopping propaganda. The resistance forces would soon learn to produce propaganda of their own.

Many resistance groups developed symbols or simple logos to use as "calling cards" when visiting destruction on Nazis and collaborationists. These symbols quickly spread, often through their use in defacing German posters. The most popular examples of these are the DeGaulle's cross, the Norwegian H7 symbol (for their exiled king, Haakon VII), and the ever-popular "V for Victory" sign. This could be considered the first use of propaganda to promote the cause of the resistance in the Second World War.

After nearly four weeks of intense fighting, Warsaw fell to the Nazis on September 27th. The same night saw the formation of the war's first major resistance group. Calling themselves Service for the Victory of Poland, the group's main goal was to provide an umbrella of leadership from the remnants of the Polish Army to the many smaller partisan groups, which had already formed. Thanks in a large part to the efforts of Polish General Michal Tokarzewski-Karaszewicz, Service for the Victory of Poland combined with more than one hundred other partisan groups in January of 1940 to become the Union for Armed Struggle, better known as the Polish Home Army. [Korbonski, 18]

The Polish resistance up to this point is one of the best examples of resistance in Nazi Europe. The speed with which the resistance organized and the extent to which it operated surpasses even the more famous Free French. But the creation of the Home Army was a tour de force of guerrilla ingenuity. Not only did it act as the government-in-exile's military presence; it helped to establish one of the most extensive resistance movements ever to exist. Drawing from both civilian and military recruitments, the Polish Home Army sabotaged enemy military production and transportation, organized armed revolts, and caused much havoc among the Nazi occupation forces. "But the need to counter Nazi propaganda and to boost civilian morale also led to the printing and distribution of newspapers, leaflets, and posters... Secret schools and university courses existed, artistic pursuits such as the theatre continued... It is not difficult to see why the Poles refer to this resistance activity as the 'Underground State.'" [Sword, 902] Most importantly, the Home Army's maintenance of a free Polish press and educational system helped to counteract Nazi propaganda and reassured the Poles that they were not a dead culture, but a nation which would one day be free again.

The underground press was an important facet of many other resistance forces, as well. The first Dutch resistance newspaper was established on May 15th, 1940, only one day after the Dutch had surrendered to the Nazis. [Foot, 1086] One of the clandestine Dutch newspapers reached a circulation of 80,000 each issue. [Foot, 786] Anti-Nazi newspapers and publications were also important in France, Norway and even in Germany itself.

Two of the most important resistance newspapers were Resistance, published at the Musee de l'Homme in Paris, and L'Humanite, a French-language Communist publication. L'Humanite remained dormant from 1939 until the invasion of the Soviet Union out of respect to the German-Soviet Treaty of Non-Aggression. After Hitler broke this treaty, however, the Communist publication advocated and even incited violence against the Nazi regime and Vichy French government.

According to Olav Riste, following German confiscation of radio wireless receivers in Norway, "the underground press became an all-important means of maintaining morale and a spirit of resistance as well as counteracting the propaganda and bias of the heavily censored newspapers." [Riste, 821]

Die Weisse Rose, a series of pamphlets published from a secret press at the University of Munich, was one of the most stunning examples of resistance inside Nazi Germany. Initiated, published, and distributed by five students and a professor, the publication's anti-Nazi propaganda was considered dangerous enough to warrant the University administration's attention. The press was in operation until the group was found out and denounced by the university beadle in February 1943. [Forster, 478] Though the members of the group were eventually executed for their actions, the students' determination and the threat that they posed to the Nazi government shows just how powerful printed media can be for propaganda, even at the local or student level.

Broadcast communications was another method in which the resistance forces quickly developed proficiency. In most areas of German occupation, radio transmitters (and sometimes receivers as well) were often the first items to be confiscated, but this did not stop countless underground or transmitter stations from surviving. Most independent resistance radio broadcasts were used for one of two purposes.

The first of these was broadcasting news that had been suppressed by local Nazi government. Dictatorships are notorious for misreporting losses and exaggerating victories, but resistance forces were sometimes able to gain Allied battle reports or first-hand reports from the battle front for broadcasting. This gave the local populace the chance to see for themselves what their government was hiding from them.

The second purpose in underground radio was military intelligence. Broadcasting information on Nazi troops and resources to Allied forces was extremely risky. The broadcaster had to be certain that only Allied forces would receive the broadcast, because Nazi reprisals for treason and spying were unusually harsh. For this reason, the S-phone radio was developed by British special forces to aid resistance intelligence broadcasters in avoiding detection. The S-phone was a surface-to-air radio which could be used either to broadcast information or as a navigational device. It could not be detected by ground receivers more than 5,000 ft away, yet could be heard in the air for more than 40 miles. [Foot, 1040]

As it became more obvious that helping the resistance would be a great asset to their cause, Allied governments became more accommodating of them. In September of 1941, the British government established the Political Warfare Executive to assist them in preparing and distributing propaganda. The PWE's major accomplishment was in providing BBC broadcasts to the clandestine radio transmitters of Occupied Europe, which was "to spread news of how the war was actually going, to keep alive a spirit of resistance, and to counter the daily assertions of Goebbels on Berlin radio." [Foot, 909]

In the later years of the war, both the British and the Americans experimented with "leaflet bombs," which spread dozens of leaflets over the European countryside when dropped. These leaflets were designed to persuade enemy soldiers to desert the Nazis, or to persuade civilians to join the local resistance forces. Nobody will ever know how successful these leaflets were at accomplishing these tasks, but the sight of thousands of tiny papers dropping from the sky with discouraging messages printed on them must have weakened the resolve of at least a few Nazi soldiers.

One of the least appreciated forms of communication in most studies of the resistance forces is the simple telephone. Possibly the best example of how useful the telephone was to the resistance movement is Source K, one of the most important sources of military intelligence the Allies had during 1942, arguably the most critical year of the war. Source K was a phone line tap made by French telephone engineer Robert Keller on the main phone line from Hitler's headquarters in Prussia to Occupied Paris. The original tap was made in January 1942, and it provided invaluable intelligence regarding the German navy. However, when Keller attempted to tap a second line in December of that year, "the Germans spotted it at once." [Foot, 1023] Keller is known to have been sent to a concentration camp after the second tap was made, and the original source would no longer operate.

To review, the resistance forces in Europe used a combination of media to both disseminate their own propaganda and to counter the Nazi propaganda which threatened their cause. The underground or clandestine press was most important for keeping spirits high and fighting off the notion that one's nation was truly dead. It was relatively easy to keep secret, and once the message had been received by one person, it could easily be passed on to another, thus further spreading the message. Clandestine radio broadcasting was especially important to the transmission of intelligence gathered by resistance fighters and spies to Allied forces. Due to co-operation with the BBC and the PWE, guerilla radio operators were also able to provide their listeners with the opposite side of the stories their government told them of battles, losses and politics.

Thanks to the efforts of the courageous men and women who produced these very unique form of media, many lives were saved from the oppression of Nazi dictatorship and much valuable information was passed on to the Allies. Without the underground media, the spirit of resistance may have been lost beneath the crushing oppression of the Gestapo and the hopelessness of the situation they faced.

In conclusion, the message of the underground media was clear: Oppression must be fought tooth and nail wherever it exists, and in every form possible, even if it's only words and pictures.