How to Flee the Gestapo

We’ve been talking about how Dutch-Paris recruited new members. No matter who a resister approached, the invitation to join the network was fraught with peril. There was the possibility that the person they were talking to was either working for the Germans or being watched by them. There was always the possibility that even someone you’d known for years might betray you. They might have even done so extremely reluctantly but under some pressure applied by the occupation authorities, such as holding a family member hostage.

Let’s pause for a moment and look at this from the other side, from the perspective of the person being asked to do something illegal and very obviously dangerous. Many people refused to help without betraying the person who asked them. Others were eager to have an opportunity to act against the oppressor or to help the persecuted.

It’s also possible that the person being asked was already in the resistance and was alarmed to be approached by strangers. The first thought had to be that these strangers claiming to be resisters could very easily be Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve been talking about how resisters often relied on the people they already knew from work or the neighborhood or their families or school to expand their networks. That makes sense because telling someone that you were involved in the illegal work of resistance was tantamount to giving them the power to destroy you by betraying you to the occupation authorities.

But Dutch-Paris did not rely solely on referrals to recruit members. As an escape line, Dutch-Paris needed some very particular things to hide fugitives and get them over international borders. Sometimes they had to trust a stranger because that stranger had access to something they needed.

For example, when John Weidner was setting up a base in Annecy, near but not on the Swiss border, he needed to be able to Read the rest of this entry »

In another example of employment related connections among resisters, I’ve noticed that a number of people in Dutch-Paris worked for the same Dutch insurance company, De Utrecht. If we were talking about any other circumstance than the illegal resistance during the Nazi occupation, the number would be insignificant. But these men lived in different cities, even different countries at a time when travel and communications were restricted. They were not the leaders of Dutch-Paris who circulated from place to place. They stayed in their own cities and yet managed to end up in the same highly secret resistance network.

How to explain that? Pure coincidence is always a possibility but I don’t think so. It’s entirely likely that these men knew each other, at least professionally, from their work. They may even have met at company gatherings.

And think about the advantages of working at an international insurance company would offer Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s another example of  social connections among members of Dutch-Paris that were established before the war. Sometimes people recruited others for their resistance network from among the people they worked with.

There was a man in eastern Belgium, for example, who worked for a government bureau that allowed him to travel from place to place in the fulfillment of his professional duties. This was true for police officers, doctors and clergy, of course. But it was also true for people who did things like inspect and repair roads and bridges. After all, the occupation lasted five years and it was in the best interests of the occupation forces to Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve been discussing the practical consequences for resistance networks like Dutch-Paris of the fact that they could not openly recruit or advertise for the best candidates without being arrested and worse. One of these consequences was that everything they did went by word of mouth or gut instinct, meaning that many people came into contact with Dutch-Paris by referral.

As a researcher it’s very hard to trace the pathways made by such referrals because the documents don’t discuss them. Official reports or forms didn’t require a resister to explain how they came to be part of their network. They tended to ask about actions. Most of the interview type documents didn’t ask the question either. But there were definitely circles of connections outside of resistance among the men and women in Dutch-Paris. Some I uncovered. Some I can guess at. And I’m confident there are others I have no idea of.

Here’s an example. There were a number of Dutch Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve been talking about how resistance lines, especially escape lines, were vulnerable because they had to trust strangers and were always in need of more help and more resources. Resisters knew this. They knew that they literally put their lives in someone else’s hands when they trusted them with their identity. But in a clandestine organization their only choice was to trust their guts about the character of strangers or to rely on referrals from people they did know.

The leaders of Dutch-Paris happened to be remarkably good judges of other people’s characters. They had serious doubts about some of the men who were later revealed to be working for the Germans and refused to work with them. They created very good security measures and followed them. But they had a problem unique to rescue organizations. Dutch-Paris existed to help the persecuted. Not just the persecuted whom they personally knew but the persecuted of any nation or faith.

As a clandestine organization they had to rely on the persecuted to Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve been talking about how resistance networks’ inability to vet recruits and those they helped made them vulnerable. Their constant need for more help and more resources also made them vulnerable, if only because it might force them to trust someone they were not 100% sure about. This combination made resisters vulnerable to German agents, some of whom were local people in the pay of the occupation authorities and some of whom were officers of German police authorities.

The German military police, the Abwehr, took great interest in Allied activity in occupied areas including the whereabouts and evasion of downed Allied aviators. They knew that there were civilians helping such aviators to evade capture and were determined to stop it. That’s why the life expectancy of an escape line was measured in months, and not many of them.

One of these Abwehr officers hired locals to infiltrate resistance networks but also went into the field himself under the name of Eugene. He relied on his employees to make the first contact with resisters and then introduce him as another resister with access to radio contact to London and false documents.

This is how it worked in the case of Dutch-Paris. One of the line’s couriers went Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s continue our discussion of the hazards of having to trust strangers for a resistance line. It was possible that the authorities might capture someone the line was helping and get information out of that person. It was also a very real possibility that a German agent might infiltrate an escape line by pretending to be a downed Allied aviator.

But the most serious danger and the one that caused the most damage was the German agents who infiltrated resistance lines by pretending to be resisters. Many of these agents were not themselves German but were French or Belgian or Dutch men or women being paid by the Germans to betray their countrymen and women.

Dutch-Paris itself did not fall victim to Read the rest of this entry »

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 occupation authorities were very aware of this vulnerability among resisters and especially in escape lines. They exploited it expertly and efficiently to infiltrate the networks.

One of the better known ploys used by German military police was to send false aviators through an escape line. The idea was that a German agent would pretend to be a downed Allied aviator all the way through the line to Spain. In Spain he would Read the rest of this entry »

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 for three letters of recommendation.

This fundamental fact of resistance had several consequences. The most dire was that it made resistance networks vulnerable to the enemy. As an example, the Comité was helping a Jewish man hide in Brussels. The man was able-bodied and willing to risk walking through the streets each month to collect the new ration cards and money that his family would use in hiding for the next month.

But one month he and every other pedestrian on the street walked into a trap. The occupation authorities often cordoned off Read the rest of this entry »