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A paratrooper or military parachutist is a soldier trained to conduct military operations by parachuting directly into an area of operations, usually as part of a large airborne forces unit. Traditionally paratroopers fight only as light infantry armed with small arms and light weapons, although some paratroopers can also function as artillerymen or mechanized infantry by utilizing field guns, infantry fighting vehicles and light tanks that are often used in surprise attacks to seize strategic positions behind enemy lines such as airfields, bridges and major roads.
The Home Army was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej established in the aftermath of the German and Soviet invasions in September 1939. Over the next two years, the Home Army absorbed most of the other Polish partisans and underground forces. Its allegiance was to the Polish government-in-exile in London, and it constituted the armed wing of what came to be known as the Polish Underground State. Estimates of the Home Army's 1944 strength range between 200,000 and 600,000. The latter number made the Home Army not only Poland's largest underground resistance movement but, along with Soviet and Yugoslav partisans, one of Europe's largest World War II underground movements.
The 1st Czechoslovak Independent Armoured Brigade Group was an armoured unit of expatriate Czechoslovaks organised and equipped by the United Kingdom during the Second World War in 1943.
The 1st (Polish) Independent Parachute Brigade was a parachute infantry brigade of the Polish Armed Forces in the West under the command of Major General Stanisław Sosabowski, created in September 1941 during the Second World War and based in Scotland.
Operation Tempest was a series of uprisings conducted during World War II against occupying German forces by the Polish Home Army, the dominant force in the Polish resistance.
The French Forces of the Interior were French resistance fighters in the later stages of World War II. Charles de Gaulle used it as a formal name for the resistance fighters. The change in designation of these groups to FFI occurred as France's status changed from that of an occupied nation to one of a nation being liberated by the Allied armies. As regions of France were liberated, the FFI were more formally organized into light infantry units and served as a valuable manpower addition to regular Free French forces. In this role, the FFI units manned less active areas of the front lines, allowing regular French army units to practice economy of force measures and mass their troops in decisive areas of the front. Finally, from October 1944 and with the greater part of France liberated, the FFI units were amalgamated into the French regular forces continuing the fight on the Western Front, thus ending the era of the French irregulars in World War II.
In Poland, the resistance movement during World War II was led by the Home Army. The Polish resistance is notable among others for disrupting German supply lines to the Eastern Front, and providing intelligence reports to the British intelligence agencies. It was a part of the Polish Underground State.
The Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force[a] was a short-lived Lithuanian volunteer military unit created with German support during the occupation of Lithuania during World War II with the stated intention of combatting the quickly approaching Red Army and Soviet and Polish insurgents, and thus ensure security in General District of Lithuania within Reichskommissariat Ostland. The Nazi occupation authorities actually planned to use the force mainly for Eastern Front battles, only minimally fighting Soviet partisans. The anti-Nazi Lithuanian resistance supported the creation of the force, hoping to use it against Soviet forces after the defeat of Nazi Germany.
The 30th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS(1st Belarusian), originally called the 30th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS , was a short-lived German Waffen-SS infantry division formed largely from Belarusian, Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian personnel of the Schutzmannschaft-Brigade Siegling in August 1944 at Warsaw in the General Government.
Georges Henri Journois was a French resistance fighter and Brigadier General who died in a subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp in Wilhelmshaven, Germany.
Poles in France form one of the largest Polish diaspora communities in Europe. Between 500,000 and one million people of Polish descent live in France, concentrated in the Nord-Pas de Calais region, in the metropolitan area of Lille, the coal-mining basin around Lens and Valenciennes and in the Ile-de-France.
Edward Pomorski was the last Minister Plenipotentiary of the Polish Government-in-Exile, in Belgium from 11 December 1970 to 31 December 1988. He was Commander of the Polish Resistance P.O.W.N. in Belgium and the Netherlands (1940–1945).
Albert Ouzoulias was a French politician and a Communist leader of the French Resistance during World War II (1939–45) using the name of "Colonel André". He played a major role in the 1944 liberation of Paris.
The Polska Organizacja Walki o Niepodległość, also known as the POWN, was a Polish resistance army during World War II, It was founded in the south of France by Aleksander Kawałkowski in 1941, and conducted intelligence activities and propaganda. It operated at first primarily in France, where it was the major component of the Polish resistance in France during World War II, where it was also known by the code name "Monika" or "Monica" It was called : Monique-bas in the free zone) and Monique-haut in the occupied zone.
Władysław Ważny, also known as Wladyslaw Rozmus and Tiger, was a Polish Army officer and Special Operations Executive agent. He served during World War II. He searched for German V-1 flying bomb and V-2 launchers in occupied France and was an organizer of the French resistance movement.
Occurring amid the Battle of France, the Oignies and Courrières massacre involved mass killings of French civilians in the two nearby town of Oignies and Courrières in Nord-Pas de Calais on 27–28 May 1940. The number of victims is reckoned at between 114 or 124. The unit responsible for the atrocity was the 487th Infantry Regiment of the 267th Infantry Division in the Wehrmacht. The massacre was one of the largest to occur during the Battle of France. Altogether, it is thought a total of 500 French civilians were murdered by German forces in Nord-Pas de Calais in May 1940.
The liberation of Rennes, along with its surrounding settlements, took place on 4 August 1944 by the joint action of the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) and the 8th Infantry Division of the United States Army led by General Georges S. Patton, ending four years of capture of the city by the Nazi Germans as part of the liberation of Brittany.
Albert Eon was a head of the military resistance in Brittany, north-west France in World War II and developer of the Specialized Airborne of France.
Raymond Emmanuel Marie Siméon Chomel was a French General and leader of the resistance during World War Two.
Polish immigration to the Nord-Pas-de-Calais coalfield took place before and especially after the First World War. It took place mainly in the second half of the 1920s, when the mines, drowned in October and November 1918 by the Germans at the end of the war, were once again usable. Half of the Polish immigrants had initially entered Germany as Westphalian miners.