Resisting Resistance: the German Secret Police in Occupied Belgium and France

(eng) During the four years of the occupation, different branches of the German secret police monitored and subjugated French and Belgian citizens. The Zentralpolizeistelle in the government-general and the Geheime Feldpolizei in the area closer to the front suppressed occupied citizens’ underground attempts to resist to the occupation or to the war, in order to keep them into an attitude of docile neutrality. Denunciations, arrests, trials, executions, deportations and even sometimes torture were used to make the occupied zone secure and exploitable.