began to print posters and newspapers with anti-German messages. Some adults began to plan acts of sabotage. Various individuals began hiding Jews and others who were considered undesirable by the authorities. Some groups went into the forested mountains of France, and acted as guerilla units fighting against the German enemies.

By 1943, Charles de Gaulle, based in England, began to impose order and disciplineon the largest resistance group. The actions of these groups were coordinated to assist with the D Day invasion of France by the U.S.A., Britain, and other allies. However, due both to poor communications and to ideological differences, the resistance never became a fully coordinated, monolithic force.
If the French resistance had not been assisted by outside armies, it probably would not have had the power to eject the German invaders.

Are there any lessons to be learned from these tragic
years, that are still within living memory?

I think that the most important lesson is that resistance to the invaders began in the minds of individuals who started to
act on their own initiative. Gradually, they took into their confidence very trusted friends and family members, and these groups were the nucleus of larger groups. Communication and coordination between these groups was difficult, because of the need for extreme secrecy.

Many of the things that resistance fighters did strongly resembled the things shown in the old TV situation comedy, “Hogan’s Heroes”. They engaged in spying, sabotage, smuggling, hiding fugitives, and, at times, fire-fights with armed enemies. In 1942 and 1943, the French fighters avoided big battles with the Germans, due
to a lack of personnel and armaments.

In the winter of 1943-44, the Germans began to weaken. The Allies brought (clandestine of course) arms and ammunition to the French fighters. The Germans tried to draft young French citizens to work in Nazi Germany. Faced by this prospect, thousands of young people dropped out of normal society and joined the underground. Therefore, fighting between the Germans and the French became more intense in 1944. One could say that the French resistance rescued France from the Nazis, but it’s also true to say that the Allies rescued the resistance from the Nazis.

Friendship and trust may have been the foundation of the resistance, but these didn’t eliminate potent confects within the movement. There were conservatives, socialists, communists, and outright criminals in the ranks.

At the end of the war, the simmering conflict between
the communists and the capitalists came into the open. The
U.S.A. threw it’s support to the conservatives, and the post war regime
became firmly capitalist.
—Sir Donald the Elusive
Dear Sam

In response to your response to my “Letter to the Editor”
[
November 2025 issue], oh, I agree, we without doubt live in a police state where almost anything can get one arrested.
You missed my point. The guy who was complaining about “DNA” swabs,
his complaint wasn’t about the various abuses our police state nation
use to arrest an individual. His complaint was DNA swabs were being
used to solve old rape and murder cases. I was making the point
that, if that’s all they’re using the swabs for, then fine, remove
all the serial killing, rapists that they can.

Thanks for looking up the Chinese government and the harvesting of organs of prisoners/political or religious victims, etc.
What you found there — Google AI Overview — pretty much spells it out.
And it’s an interesting thought when wondering if our govt could be doing the same thing. If the U.S. govt is doing it, then their means are much more dubious and horrifying. The U.S. tries to present itself as a beacon for which the rest of the world should follow. So their deception and lies are on a grander scale....
—S. H., a prisoner
The universal acquisition of DNA identity information, by the government, without consent, for any purpose — for ANY purpose — is a violation of the principle that a man should never be compelled to provide information that might be used against him, regardless of the nature of the accusation.
Over the years, a few women have told me of their own
experiences, to which they all referred as instances of rape.
The most interesting story was told by a woman who claimed that she’d
been raped by a man shortly after she’d started dating him.
She admitted that she’d been mercilessly provoking him and rejecting
the resulting advances. She said that she did it because she was
bitter about a recent divorce and wanted to “get even” with men.
After the so-called rape, she continued to date him for several years,
but she still claimed that he’d raped her.
Actual rapes, not phony crap like the one just mentioned, really do happen, but a claim of rape isn’t necessarily proof of
rape, and the truth is sometimes a matter of opinion. The feminazis like to mindlessly chant “No means