ABSTRACT
Resistance itself took many forms and developed at different times in different countries. Resistance could begin in any case with unspoken thoughts or unseen gestures, such as defacing posters, reading clandestine newspapers or listening to the BBC, before graduating to more active resistance such as intelligence gathering, hiding allied airmen and, ultimately, sabotage or guerrilla warfare. With regard to the latter, terrain was especially significant. It was clearly nearly impossible to organise full-time guerrilla resistance in, say, Denmark, but it could be done in the Massif Central of France, the mountains of Greece, Albania and Yugoslavia, and the forests and marshes of occupied Russia. Initially, the partisans were largely Red Army troops cut off by the speed of the German advance, although Communist Party functionaries were also given the task of organising resistance. Resistance and collaboration equally offered a kind of upward social mobility for groups that had not often enjoyed access to political power before the war.
