Underground media in German-occupied Europe
The widespread German occupation saw the fall of public media systems in France, Belgium, Poland, Norway, Czechoslovakia, Northern Greece, and the Netherlands.
[1] Without control of the media, occupied populations began to create and publish their own uncensored newspapers, books and political pamphlets.
[4] Underground forms of media allowed for information sharing among the oppressed, helping them build solidarity, strengthen morale and, in some cases, stage uprisings.
At its peak, the clandestine newspaper La Libre Belgique, a title which had first appeared under German occupation in World War I, was relaying news within five to six days; faster than the BBC's French-language radio broadcasts, whose coverage lagged several months behind events.
[9] Dozens of different newspapers existed, often affiliated with different resistance groups or differentiated by political stance, ranging from nationalist, Communist, Liberal or even Feminist.
Many consider these clandestine radios to be a failure for their lack of reporting on the state of the Jewish population in Czechoslovakia, under Nazi rule.
[17] The Czechoslovak resistance groups were also known to send anti-Nazi pamphlets into Germany, in hopes that anti-fascist Germans would rise up against the Nazi regime.
They would hide the small books and other pieces of anti-Nazi literature in tea pouches, shampoo, plant seed packaging, and German tourist pamphlets etc.
One of the better known pamphlets was inside the German tourism brochure Lernen Sie das schöne Deutschland kennen (Learn About Beautiful Germany) which included a map of the Nazi death camps.
At its height, Land og Folk reached a circulation of 130,000,[18] and was the largest underground newspaper in Denmark throughout the German occupation.
[19] With the population having access to news from the United Kingdom and Sweden through radio, the underground press in Denmark focussed on opinion pieces until 1943, when relations between Danish authorities and the Germans deteriorated.
[21] In the German-occupied zone, the first underground titles to emerge were Pantagruel and Libre France, which both began in Paris in October 1940.
[25] Initially underground newspapers represented a wide range of political opinions but, by 1944, had generally converged in support of Gaullist Free French in the United Kingdom.
[26] The four major clandestine newspapers during the German occupation were Défense de la France, Résistance, Combat and Libération.
Greece was occupied and divided into German, Italian and Bulgarian zones and a Greek puppet government was created.
[29] The left-leaning National Liberation Front (Ethniko Apeleftherotiko Metopo, or EAM) published the country's first underground newspaper, Forward (Embros), in January 1942.
The Panhellenic Union of Fighting Youths (Panellínios Énosis Agonizómenon Néon, or PEAN) published an alternative newspaper called Glory (Doxa) in both German-occupied Athens and the Bulgarian-occupied Macedonia.
The main newspaper of the occupation period was the De Freie Lötzeburger (The Free Luxembourger), also printed by the LPL and based on La Libre Belgique.
[33] During the Dutch famine (Hongerwinter) of 1944, many people smuggled crystal radios to farmers in exchange for fresh produce.
To conceal his secret identity as Pieter 't Hoen, writers at Het Parool periodically published articles under his pseudonym.
Het Parool's main objective was to raise national moral and organize the Dutch people against Nazi rule.
After the Germans began their occupation, working on an illegal newspaper was punishable by immediate jail time, and in the latter years of the war, death.
[36] Collectively, the underground press provided a space for free debate about political and religious issues, as well as for planning for after the liberation.
The main purpose of the underground newspapers was to distribute news from BBC Radio, as well as messages and appeals from the Norwegian government in exile.
[38] There were over 1,000 underground newspapers;[39] among the most important were the Biuletyn Informacyjny (News Bulletin) of Armia Krajowa and Rzeczpospolita (Republic or Commonwealth) of the Government Delegation for Poland.
