Cooke Philip - Hitlers Europe ablaze: occupation, resistance, and rebellion during World War II

Copyright 2013 by Philip Cooke and Ben H. Shepherd

FIRST NORTH AMERICAN EDITION BY SKYHORSE PUBLISHING 2014

All rights to any and all materials in copyright owned by the publisher are strictly reserved by the publisher.

First published in Great Britain in 2013 as European Resistance in the Second World War by Praetorian Press, an imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Jon Wilkinson

Back cover photograph: Stjepan Filipovi (19161942), a Croatian partisan, photographed moments before his execution. Courtesy of Muzej Istorije Jugoslavije (Museum of Yugoslav History) .

Print ISBN: 978-1-62914-506-8

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63220-159-1

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction
By Philip Cooke and Ben H. Shepherd

1. Fifth Column, Fourth Service, Third Task, Second Conflict?
Evan Mawdsley

2. Belgium
Fabrice Maerten

3. The Czech Lands
Christina Vella

4. France
Juliette Pattinson

5. Greece
Vangelis Tzoukas and Ben H. Shepherd

6. Italy
Massimo Storchi

7. The Netherlands
Marjan Schwegman

8. Poland
Paul Latawski

9. Scandinavia
Chris Mann

10. The Soviet Union
Alexander Statiev

11. Yugoslavia
Vjeran Pavlakovi

List of Plates

Note : the maps in this book are intended to give the reader a general idea of the scale and location of events, and therefore omit a certain level of geographical detail.

List of Contributors

Philip Cooke is Professor of Italian History and Culture at Strathclyde University. He is a specialist in twentieth-century Italian history and culture and the author of numerous books and articles on the Italian Resistance movement and its long-term impact, including The Legacy of the Italian Resistance (New York, Palgrave, 2011). He is co-editor of the journal Modern Italy .

Ben H. Shepherd is Reader in History at Glasgow Caledonian University. He specializes in the military history of Germany and Austria during the first half of the twentieth century, with particular focus on the origins and conduct of counter-insurgency warfare. His two monographs, War in the Wild East: The German Army and Soviet Partisans (2004) and Terror in the Balkans: German Armies and Partisan Warfare (2012), were both published by Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. Terror in the Balkans will also be published in Serbo-Croat by Magellan Press, Belgrade, in late 2013. Shepherd was also co-editor, with Juliette Pattinson, of War in a Twilight World: Partisan and Anti-Partisan Warfare in Eastern Europe, 193945 (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). He is currently working on a general history of the German army under the Third Reich, to be published by Yale University Press in 2015.

Evan Mawdsley is Honorary Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow. Author of The Russian Civil War (Edinburgh, Birlinn, 2008), Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War (London, Hodder Arnold, 2007), World War II: A New History (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009) and December 1941 (New Haven, Conn. and London, Yale University Press, 2011), he is also general editor of the forthcoming Cambridge History of the Second World War .

Fabrice Maerten studied history at the UCL (Catholic University of Louvainla-Neuve). In 1996, he defended his doctoral thesis on political and ideological resistance in the province of the Hainaut (Belgium) during the Second World War. He has worked at the Centre for Historical Research and Documentation on War and Contemporary Society (CEGESOMA) in Brussels since 1995. Since 2011, he has been Head of the Documentation sector. His main research interests are the resistance and Catholicism in Belgium during the Second World War and he has published widely in these areas. He is the author of many entries in the Dictionnaire de la Seconde Guerre mondiale en Belgique (Bruxelles, Andr Versaille, 2008). His most recent book (co-authored with Alain Colignon) is La Wallonie sous lOccupation, 19401945 (Bruxelles and Waterloo, SOMA-CEGES/Renaissance du livre, 2012).

Christina Vella is a consultant for the United States State Department and teaches history at Tulane University in New Orleans. She holds a PhD in modern European and US history, lectures widely on a range of historical topics, and is a frequent consultant to National Public Radio, PBS, and the History Channel. She is the author of several book chapters and five books, including, with Radomir Lua, The Hitler Kiss: A Memoir of the Czech Resistance (Baton Rouge, Lou., 2002).

Juliette Pattinson is Reader in History in the School of History at the University of Kent. She has published widely on the history of the Second World War. Her books include: Behind Enemy Lines: Gender, Passing and the SOE in the Second World War (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2007; paperback 2011); with Ben Shepherd, War in a Twilight World: Partisan and Anti-Partisan Warfare in Eastern Europe (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); and with Lucy Noakes, The Cultural Memory of the Second World War in Britain (London, Bloomsbury, 2013). She also contributed the chapter You didnt think about being a woman at that time: British secret agents during the Second World War, to Celia Lee and Paul Martin (eds), Women and War (London, Pen & Sword, 2011).

Vangelis Tzoukas studied Sociology in Panteion University of Social and Political Studies (Athens). His dissertation thesis (2003) is titled The Warlords of EDES in Epirus. Locality and Political Integration. A revised edition of his PhD will soon be available from Hestia Publications (in Greek). He has written many articles on the period of Resistance and Civil War in Greece (19419). Some of his writings include: The origins of Civil War in Epirus: the case-study of Koliodimitraioi in Lakka-Souli, in Kl. Koutsoukis-J. Sakkas (ed.), Aspects of the Greek Civil War 194649 (Athens, Filistor, 2000), pp. 34357); Warlords and Chieftains in the decade 194050: the case of Epirus, in N. Marantzidis (ed.), The other Kapetanioi-anticommunists armed in the period of Occupation and the Civil War (Athens, Hestia Publications, 2005), pp. 375430; Treason and Resistance in the political writings of EDES, in I. Mihailidis, I. Nikolakopoulos and H. Fleischer (eds), Enemy Inside. Aspects of collaboration in occupied Greece (Athens, Ellinika Grammata, 2006), pp. 197207. He is currently Teaching Fellow in the Department of Philosophy and Social Studies (University of Crete).

Massimo Storchi is Director of Historical Archives for Reggio Emilia. He studied contemporary history at Bologna University. His research has focused on the Italian Resistance and political and social conflicts in northern Italy in the first half of twentieth century, with particular attention to issues of violence. He is the author of Uscire dalla guerra. Ordine pubblico e forze politiche. Modena 1945 1946 (Milan, FrancoAngeli, 1995); Combattere si pu vincere bisogna. La scelta della violenza fra Resistenza e dopoguerra. Reggio Emilia 19431946 (Venice, Marsilio Editori, 1998); Sangue al bosco del Lupo. Partigiani che uccidono partigiani. La storia di Azor (Reggio Emilia, Aliberti, 2005); Il sangue dei vincitori. Saggio sui crimini fascisti e i processi del dopoguerra (19451946) (Reggio Emilia, Aliberti, 2008); with Italo Rovali, Il primo giorno dinverno. Cervarolo 20 marzo 1944 . Una strage nazifascista dimenticata (Reggio Emilia, Aliberti, 2010) and Question Time. Cos lItalia. Cento domande (e risposte) sulla storia del Belpaese (Reggio Emilia, Aliberti, 2011).