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| - Among the first members of the Belgian resistance were former soldiers, and in particular officers, who, on their return, from prisoner of war camps, wished to continue the fight against the Germans out of patriotism. Nevertheless, resistance was slow to develop in the first few months of the occupation because it seemed that German victory was imminent. The German failure to invade Great Britain, coupled with aggravating German policies within occupied Belgium — the persecution of Belgian Jews, conscription of Belgian civilians into forced labour programmes — increasingly turned patriotic Belgian civilians from liberal or Catholic backgrounds against the German regime and towards the resistance. With the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, members of the Communist Party, whi
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abstract
| - Among the first members of the Belgian resistance were former soldiers, and in particular officers, who, on their return, from prisoner of war camps, wished to continue the fight against the Germans out of patriotism. Nevertheless, resistance was slow to develop in the first few months of the occupation because it seemed that German victory was imminent. The German failure to invade Great Britain, coupled with aggravating German policies within occupied Belgium — the persecution of Belgian Jews, conscription of Belgian civilians into forced labour programmes — increasingly turned patriotic Belgian civilians from liberal or Catholic backgrounds against the German regime and towards the resistance. With the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, members of the Communist Party, which had previously been ambivalent towards both Allied and Axis sides, also joined the resistance en masse, forming their own separate groups calling for a "national uprising" against Nazi rule. During the First World War, Belgium had been occupied by Germany for four years and had developed an effective network of resistance, which provided key inspiration for the formation of similar groups in 1940. Most of the resistance was focused in the French-speaking areas of Belgium (Wallonia and the city of Brussels), though Flemish involvement in the resistance was also significant. Around 70% of underground newspapers were in French, while 60% of political prisoners were Walloons.
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