Escape Lines
"Danger lurked everywhere and everybody had to be extremely careful."
- Victor Schutters, "Comète's Tasks From the Moment an Airman Lands"
- Victor Schutters, "Comète's Tasks From the Moment an Airman Lands"
"There were many escape lines and networks formed in Europe during World War II, some large and many quite modest, some operating successfully for long periods and others cut tragically short."
-WWII Escape and Invasion As wartime dangers were always shifting, so were escape lines - converging or breaking off, changing location or leadership. While this made archiving details more difficult, it helped those involved in the line adapt to their dangerous world. Pat Line:
"Named after the man who got it up and running as a reliable escape route for as many as 600 escapers and evaders." - P-O Life Shelburne Line: "Apart from the first two airmen, arrested at St Brieuc station because they didn't have the newly required residence permits...not a single evader was lost." - WWII Escape and Invasion The Chauny Line: "The Chauny Line began... as a temporary refuge that then forwarded men to other Lines... After D-Day it evolved to shelter men in the area until allied forces advancing from the Normandy beach-heads could liberate them." - WWII Escape and Invasion |
Opposition
In the midst of rolling tanks, dropping bombs, and firing soldiers, a war was also being fought by the civilians of occupied countries - one that took many forms. Sabotage, rescue, and espionage were all ways resistors successfully slowed their oppressors. In France:
"By the time the Allied invasion of France had started in 1944, the French resistance was credited with tying down large numbers of German troop columns. This contributed to the chronic shortage of manpower for the Germans at the Normandy Beach landings" - Andre Skapeta, "Three Most Successful Resistance Movements in WWII" In Poland: "Polish Home Army reached its zenith in the autumn of 1944 when it initiated the Warsaw Uprising, the largest military operation of a resistance movement on the continent…even taking and controlling parts of the city for weeks, inflicting heavy casualties on the Germans." - Andre Skapeta, "Three Most Successful Resistance Movements in WWII" |