Resistance Movements to the Nazis during World War Two
We’ve been in Amsterdam, Oslo and Copenhagen and learned something about their different resistance movements to fascism during the Second World War, after the Nazis had invaded and taken over their countries and found some local sympathizers.
The initial resistance to the Nazi takeovers was frequently led by local members of the Communist Party, by engaged trade unionists, and by bands of young students from the universities. They moved from underground newspapers to sabotage and to assassinations of the Nazis and their collaborators. This required enormous courage and strong technical skills. Many in the resistance were captured, tortured, and killed, some betrayed by their colleagues.
The underground also included local churches, both Catholic and Protestant, who provided hiding places and took other action to protect the Jews and others seeking sanctuary from the Nazis.
Military, police, and intelligence services in Denmark played major roles in sending vital information about the locations of German ships, airfields and troop barracks to England. Denmark was still under local control until mid 1943.
Spotters along the Norwegian coast contacted the British with the whereabouts of the great German battleships, hidden deep in the Norwegian fjords. Saboteurs in Norway destroyed the Nazi’s heavy water nuclear efforts.
The Germans planned to deport Danish Jews to concentration camps in Germany; however, the Danish resistance reacted before the Germans could act. Over 7500 Jews were spirited in fishing boats from Denmark to safe asylum in Sweden. Only 500 Jews remained in Denmark; they were rounded up by the Germans and shipped to concentration camps.
Only 2700 Jews lived in Norway. About 1/3rd of them were rounded up by local authorities (the quislings) cooperating with the Nazis and German occupation forces and shipped to Auschwitz and other concentration camps. About half escaped to and secured asylum in Sweden.
The political leaders in Norway and the Netherlands and the kings, queens and royal families escaped to England where they helped lead their national resistance. Their respective military forces had delayed the German advances long enough for their leaders to escape. In Norway, the military fought the Germans for 2 months, far longer than most of the small nations invaded by Germany were able to hold out.
In Denmark the political leaders decided to stay, support, and work with their local citizens to fend off the worst aspects of the German occupation. They were ousted by the German occupation forces in 1943 when they refused to do Hitler’s bidding in suppressing local opposition and rounding up their nation’s Jews.
In Amsterdam, the nation’s Jewish populations were quickly rounded up and sent off to the concentration camps for extermination. It was easy to do so since the nation’s census identified residents by their religion and house numbers. About 2/3rds of the Jews in the Netherlands were killed by the Nazis – over 100,000 people. Dutch civil authorities collaborated with the Nazis in rounding up and deporting the nation’s Jews. The Dutch resistance hid Jewish children from the Nazi’s during the war.
German occupation forces suppressed the local press, public speeches and public rallies among all who criticized Hitler or the German occupation. Resistance movements started with an underground press, and with clandestine meetings to distribute pamphlets and newsletters. For some, this grew into sabotage of the German war efforts like blowing up trains and train tracks and eventually assassinations of German officials and their local allies. By mid ’43, the sabotage and armed resistance became ever more intense in Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands.
In the latter most part of the war (1945), Swedish diplomats and Red Cross were able to save about 20,000 Scandinavians and others being held in the Nazi concentration camps – the White Buses campaign which brought them to safety in Sweden.