How to Flee the Gestapo

In the last post we talked about how resisters had to rely on their gut instincts or on referrals to judge whether to trust someone. In the case of an escape line such as Dutch-Paris, they had to trust strangers to work with and to help. But it made any resistance network vulnerable. The German […]

Rescuing people from the Nazis and their ilk was dangerous and illegal work. Everything had to be done clandestinely, which meant that the rescuers had to either trust their gut instinct about working with or helping strangers or they had to go by referral. It’s not like they could advertise in the paper and ask […]

In my last post I mentioned that the Dutch remember the last winter of the war, 1944/45, as the Hunger Winter. In September 1944 the Allies liberated the southern third of the Netherlands but failed to liberate the rest of the country where most of the populace lived. The Allied advance pushed eastward into The […]

We’ve all seen movies and read books with gripping tales of high derring-do by the Resistance. Some of them are based on true events because there were, indeed, moments of intense tension and danger for resisters. But for most resisters the majority of their illegal work was much less glamorous. Let’s take a look at […]

One last comment from my talk about Dutch-Paris on WW2TV. I was discussing the arrests of most of the men and women in Dutch-Paris’ aviator escape line that led, in most cases, to torture and deportation to the concentration camps. One of the viewers wrote that “soldiers shouldn’t ask civilians for help.” There were people […]

During my talk on WW2TV someone asked the excellent question of why the archives were closed so long. And someone else asked the more philosophical but related question of why anyone would care if someone’s grandpa was a collaborator. To protect living individual’s privacy, many archives close documents for a standard 60 or 75 years. […]

I’m happy to announce that my new young adult historical novel inspired by the true stories of teenagers in Dutch-Paris has been beautifully translated into Dutch by Maarten Eliasar.  It will be available from HL Books starting on 10 March 2023.  I’m looking for an American agent but will let you know as soon as […]

In earlier posts I described Dutch-Paris’s contributions to the iconic WWII of the Engelandspiel (Operation North Pole) and the Great Escape from Stalag Luft III. Today let’s look at the role that Dutch-Paris played in an escape of Allied POWs from the maximum security prison at Colditz Castle. It was difficult enough to get out […]

All of you who’ve told me you wish you could come to one of my talks about Dutch-Paris, here’s your chance. You can watch me talk about Dutch-Paris on the internet on the ww2tv channel on YouTube at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vWmwfHMb7o (or search ww2tv youtube and look for the episode called The Dutch-Paris Escape Line […]

Let’s review from the last couple of posts. Acts of resistance, and especially acts of violent resistance, did not happen in a vacuum in the Second World War. Occupation and resistance were a political and community struggle. Anything resisters did could have a negative impact on the community because of the occupation policy of holding […]