During World War II, only a limited group of people chose to consciously express their support for the politics of the Third Reich and Nazism. On the other side of the spectrum, only a minority elected to go underground and combat the same regime. Moreover, the motivation for either choice was often very different and even changed during the war in some cases. So there were plenty of different gradations on either side. However there was a substantial difference in the risks that people took.
Resistance fighters who fell into German hands paid for their actions with their lives more often than not. If the Germans did not execute them on the spot, they ended up in concentration and extermination camps. Many people were killed there or died from abuse and deprivation.
Resistance or collaboration for subtitles: click on settings in the video. Who, what, why? Not everyone who had an aversion to the German occupying regime and the collaboration, took action.
This required a lot of courage and the risk of repression was substantial. At the end of , in early , the resistance consisted of a handful of people. From onwards, the number of resistance groups outside the large cities also increased. In the weeks and months leading up to the liberation, there were approx. Around 15, of them did not survive the war.
Whether people choose to make a commitment depends on several factors. They might adhere to an ideology: antifascism, an anti-German or pro-Allied attitude, a marked sense of Belgian patriotism, royalism, communism, the fight for freedom and democracy, and so on. But convictions are not the only reason. The informal pre-war networks of colleagues, family, neighbours, friends, and so on, often also play an equally important role.
