France
The Resistance was not one army. It was newspapers, railways, escape lines, and people who hid other people. Some were Communists, some Catholics, some simply neighbors. The myth of a clean underground is a postwar convenience.
Archive
What happened. Then what the book invents.
One year at a time. Open 6 June 1944 when you want the fork. The invented war is kept on that page, marked fiction.
1 Sept 1939
Germany invades Poland
Britain and France declare war two days later. The Second World War in Europe has a start date even if it did not yet have an end.
Occupied Europe — the real thing
The book borrows the temperature. Not someone else’s country as a costume.
Poland
The Home Army fought an occupation that intended to erase the country. The cost was not cinematic. It was streets, families, and a capital leveled in 1944.
Norway, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia, Greece
Occupation looked different in each place — and the same in the ways that matter: collaborators, ration cards, disappearances, and ordinary people deciding whether to look away.
Germany itself
There were Germans who resisted: churches, students, small illegal groups. Most people did not. Historical fiction that pretends otherwise is lying about the temperature of a police state.