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 the practical realities of the daily lives of resisters in western Europe. It goes without saying that every resister had a unique experience. Even if we generalize (which we will) we still need to recognize that certain circumstances made a big difference to a resister’s life.

For one thing, life in the countryside was very different than life in a city. There were quantitatively more soldiers and police present on the streets of Paris than in a farming village in southern France. But it was easier to slip through anonymously in Paris than in the village. So a resister might be more noticeable and more likely to be betrayed in the small village. Unless the entire village was compromised in whatever the resister was doing, which did happen in a few places, mostly villages that sheltered the persecuted.

Also, food was easier to find in the countryside. It’s a toss-up whether it was easier to hide in the countryside or the city. On the one hand, there were barns and woods in the countryside to hide in. On the other, the city did afford a certain anonymity if you could avoid the round-ups and general police surveillance.

Another important factor in the mundane realities of a resister’s life had to do with how engaged that resister was. Someone who occasionally helped out by, say, carrying messages across the neighborhood or giving a stranger a meal had a very different experience than the fully committed full-time resister who had had to abandon his or her home and was living on the run.

Which brings us to the third factor in shaping a resister’s experience – the type of illegal work her or she was engaged in. Living in the woods as a maquisard training for a future battle was an entirely different experience than printing an illegal newspaper in a major city every week or even every day.

In our next blogs we’ll take a closer look at how these factors shaped the lives of resisters.