Resistance was not futile

“Women played crucial roles, with many emerging as leaders, in the Resistance movements across German-occupied Western and Eastern Europe from 1940 to 1945. Tens of thousands of women joined the Resistance, and they came from all walks of life—housewives, businesswomen, students, stage performers, and princesses. They fought bravely with guerrilla bands, helped to sabotage enemy installations and communications lines, carried messages, gathered intelligence, and organized escape routes for refugees and downed Allied flyers. In Poland, for example, women fought and died in the tragic Warsaw uprisings of 1943 and 1944. Some 100,000 Yugoslav women were in the ranks of Marshal Josip Broz Tito’s famed Partisans in Yugoslavia. Of these, 25,000 died.” – The World War II Desk Reference, Douglas Brinkley and Michael E. Haskew, eds.