Axis-occupied Western Europe between 1940 and 1945 generally did not witness the large-scale partisan warfare that characterized resistance to occupation in the continent's eastern half; the West's topography, population density, and national traditions largely precluded that possibility. Nor did the comparatively tolerable (relative to ideologically driven Nazi brutality in the East), albeit grim reality of occupation fuel the levels of desperation that swelled partisan ranks in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. But Western European resistance existed almost from the start of occupation. Resistance networks conducted or aided propaganda, sabotage, intelligence gathering, and escape bids by downed Allied airmen. Wider, national-level resistance movements readied themselves to participate in eventually liberating their countries in sync with conventional Allied offensives. At both levels, resistance groups liaised with agents from, and were supplied by, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) and also (from 1942) the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Resistance crucially sustained a general spirit of freedom under occupation, and though its practical contribution to eventual Axis defeat was relatively small, its sabotage campaign in particular played a valuable role in liberation.

Yet only from the 1970s did this measuredly positive appraisal of Western European resistance start to supplant the unreservedly heroic narrative that preceded it. From then onward, works such as the groundbreaking Vichy France (1972) by Robert O. Paxton, who gratifyingly provides the foreword to this new work, highlighted the extent of popular conformity or collaboration with the occupiers, and the degree to which resistance had been a minority undertaking with limited means at its disposal. The 1970s also saw the publication of the first wider study of all European countries in which resistance took place, M. R. D. Foot's Resistance (1976). More recent, edited works along such lines include Bob Moore's Resistance in Western Europe (2001) and Philip Cooke and Ben H. Shepherd's European Resistance in the Second World War (2013).

Olivier Wieviorka's scholarly, eloquent, and absorbing work employs a different but no less valuable approach. Mining a prodigious source base drawn from the national archives of Great Britain and the United States, he eschews a country-by-country examination in favor of a transnational, thick narrative study of Western European resistance within the context of Allied grand strategy.

Among other things, Wieviorka examines the sometimes difficult but ultimately fruitful relations between the SOE, the OSS, and various parties within the Anglo-American political and military leadership. He also shows how resistance was shaped by political factors at the national level. Governments-in-exile and resistance leaders based in London added considerable complexity to the dynamics emanating out of Western Allied capitals to shape resistance warfare. Relations between, on the one hand, governments-in-exile serving national populations or factional political interests and, on the other hand, Anglo-American offices serving Allied grand strategy, inevitably generated tensions. Anglo-American offices sought, often unsuccessfully, to engage potentially cooperative elements in those governments still operating on occupied soil, most notably those of Denmark and Vichy France. New opportunities, but new tensions also, emerged with the entry of Western European communists onto the resistance scene following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Ultimately, however, any fractiousness in relations was outweighed by a general desire to see the Axis defeated and Western Europe liberated without the bloody civil strife that would eventually befall Yugoslavia and Greece.

The effectiveness of resistance was also determined practically, by geography and resources. Norway, for example, provided early, cost-effective opportunities for the SOE to support resistance because Norway could be infiltrated relatively easily by agents coming by sea or operating from neutral Sweden. Generally, however, Anglo-American political and military leaderships limited the weaponry, equipment, and agents they supplied to resistance groups. Given the scale of the contribution resistance was likely to make to Allied victory relative to that of conventional Allied forces, this was a sensible ordering of priorities. But even in France, whose resistance movement was generally top of the pecking order when it came to provisions, this inevitably created constraints on the ground.

Nor did the increasingly oppressive and exploitative character of German occupation automatically swell the ranks and visibility of the resistance. A general deterring factor was the occupiers’ readiness to inflict brutal reprisals. This was showcased especially severely in central and northern Italy in 1944 amid terrain that lent itself relatively well to anti-partisan warfare. And while young Frenchmen sought to evade the Nazis’ obligatory labor draft, and some consequently formed maquis groups amid the rugged geography of central-southern France, only a minority actively resisted the occupiers.

Often, however, such as in Norway and Denmark, resistance significantly disrupted German economic exploitation. As Allied troops advanced during the summer of 1944, resistance struck important blows against German communications and supply lines, and secured vital installations and ensured social order in the face of imminent liberation. Allied and resistance leaderships also successfully preempted the sort of premature large-scale uprising behind German lines that brought calamitous retaliation to the Polish capital of Warsaw. Such uprisings did take place, for instance, in Paris and northern Italy, and they were well timed to coincide with the imminent arrival of conventional Allied forces. Following liberation, via a relatively smooth transition from temporary Allied military administration to postwar democratic government, the generally responsible conduct of different resistance factions helped Western Europe avoid the violent fate of the continent's southeastern corner.

Scholars of different national resistance movements might have some issues here and there with the degrees of attention Wieviorka devotes to the various occupied countries, and this reviewer would have welcomed a bit more examination of the impact of German anti-resistance measures. But Wieviorka's top-down, strategic-level analysis of Western European resistance remains a formidable achievement, nevertheless. That great potential remains for a bottom-up people's history of the subject is certainly no criticism of his work.

Wieviorka's study is not only absorbing, but also affirming of the virtues of international cooperation. Despite external and self-inflicted obstacles, the balance sheet of Allied-resistance cooperation was emphatically positive. Anglo-American offices, governments-in-exile and leaders, and resistance movements on the ground operated effectively and in concert because what united them was more fundamental than what divided them.