How to Flee the Gestapo

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 […]

One of the Comet escape line’s teenage couriers recently passed away at the age of 95. Like Dutch-Paris, Comet was also created by civilians. Unlike Dutch-Paris, Comet emphasized helping Allied servicemen to evade the Nazis by either taking them from Belgium to Spain or hiding them in Belgium. Both escape lines relied on the dedication […]

Our last post talked about the rescue of women political prisoners from the Ravensbrück concentration camp by the Swedish Red Cross, working in conjunction with Danish humanitarians. Several Dutch-Paris women benefited from that rescue mission. But not all the women who had been arrested as part of Dutch-Paris and deported to concentration camps were in […]

Seventy-five years ago, in the late winter and early spring of 1945, most of western Europe had been liberated from Nazi occupation. But the war was far from over. The Western Allies and the Red Army were driving towards Berlin and the USAAF and RAF were bombing Germany around the clock. The Nazis, however, were […]