Resistance: The Underground War Against Hitler, 1939–1945

An oft-romanticized aspect of WWII was fraught with dark moral ambiguity, according to this sweeping history of anti-Nazi resistance. Historian Kochanski (The Eagle Unbowed) surveys resistance movements across German-occupied Europe, including French maquisards, Ukrainian partisans, Norwegian saboteurs, and Greek guerillas. It’s a saga of epic heroism, from the doomed Warsaw ghetto uprising of 1943 to the martyrdom of French Resistance leader Jean Moulin in a Gestapo torture chamber, as well as intrigue and adventure as spy rings and saboteurs played cat-and-mouse games with German pursuers. But it’s also a story of infighting and inhumanity, especially on the Eastern Front, where Communist and anti-Communist resistance factions clashed, and nationalist partisans conducted genocidal ethnic-cleansing campaigns. Shadowing the narrative is the terrible cost to civilians, countless thousands of whom were killed by the Germans in reprisal for resistance activities, a tragedy that cast doubt on the wisdom and ethics of much of the resistance enterprise. Writing in elegant prose, Kochanski balances meticulous detail with a broad analysis of patterns across movements—including the strategies of the British Special Operations Executive agents who tried to organize and manage them—and the experiences of individual resistance figures. This superb study demythologizes resistance movements while capturing their full drama. (May)