Contra Hitler y Stalin

The Resistance in Europe began at the same time that Nazi Germany on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other invaded Poland. Immediately internal and external reaction movements were formed to them. The successive invasions of Western European countries by Nazism; from Greece and the Balkans by Italian fascism; and from the Baltic Countries, Bessarabia and Karelia by the Soviets, similar groups emerged against these occupations and their imposed dictatorial systems. Sometimes they were small groups, others of considerable size; and they fought them both with weapons and with propaganda and counterinformation. They were what has been called the "army of shadows", glorified over the years by both film and literature. The Second World War did not end until the end of the 1950s, when the last guerrillas in Greece, Romania, Lithuania, Ukraine, in the Polish forests and also in Spain did not give up or were exterminated. These partisan groups had succeeded either the anti-Nazi or the anti-Soviet underground, and sometimes both. Even the resurgence of the Spanish maquis from 1944 was more linked to the partisan experiences of France and the Soviet Union, than to our Civil War itself, which is why it is included in the book. "Against Hitler and Stalin" tries to explain the phenomenon of resistance, analyzing how and why some people refused to accept an imposed and foreign political power. It studies the ways in which it was carried out, its different strategies and ideological sources that inspired it, the war and post-war context in which they developed, as well as their common denominator, which allow us to explain why the resistance took those forms in that specific moment.