Resistance during World War II in the context of "Josip Broz Tito"

The Warsaw Uprising (Polish: powstanie warszawskie; German: Warschauer Aufstand), sometimes referred to as the August Uprising (Polish: powstanie sierpniowe), or the Battle of Warsaw, was a major World War II operation by the Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. It occurred in the summer of 1944, and it was led by the Polish resistance Home Army (Polish: Armia Krajowa). The uprising was timed to coincide with the retreat of the German forces from Poland ahead of the Soviet advance. While approaching the eastern suburbs of the city, the Red Army halted combat operations, enabling the Germans to regroup and defeat the Polish resistance and to destroy the city in retaliation. The Uprising was fought for 63 days with little outside support. It was the single largest military effort taken by any European resistance movement during World War II. The defeat of the uprising and suppression of the Home Army enabled the pro-Soviet Polish administration, instead of the Polish government-in-exile based in London, to take control of Poland afterwards. Poland would remain as part of the Soviet-aligned Eastern Bloc throughout the Cold War until 1989.

The Uprising began on 1 August 1944 as part of a nationwide Operation Tempest, launched at the time of the Soviet Lublin–Brest Offensive. The main Polish objectives were to drive the Germans out of Warsaw while helping the Allies defeat Germany. An additional, political goal of the Polish Underground State was to liberate Poland's capital and assert Polish sovereignty before the Soviet Union and Soviet-backed Polish Committee of National Liberation, which already controlled eastern Poland, could assume control. Other immediate causes included a threat of mass German round-ups of able-bodied Poles for "evacuation"; calls by Radio Moscow's Polish Service for uprising; and an emotional Polish desire for justice and revenge against the enemy after five years of German occupation.

The Croatian Partisans, officially the National Liberation Movement in Croatia (Croatian: Narodnooslobodilački pokret u Hrvatskoj; NOP), were part of the anti-fascist National Liberational Movement in the Axis-occupied Yugoslavia which was "perhaps Europe's most effective anti-Nazi resistance movement". It was led by Yugoslav revolutionary communists during the World War II. NOP was under the leadership of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (KPJ) and supported by many others, with Croatian Peasant Party members contributing to it significantly. NOP units were able to temporarily or permanently liberate large parts of Croatia from occupying forces. Based on the NOP, the Federal Republic of Croatia was founded as a constituent of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia.

The Yugoslav Partisans, officially the National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia (often shortened as the National Liberation Army) was the communist-led anti-fascist resistance to the Axis powers (chiefly Nazi Germany) in occupied Yugoslavia during World War II. Led by Josip Broz Tito, the Partisans are considered to be Europe's most effective anti-Axis resistance movement during World War II.

Primarily a guerrilla force at its inception, the Partisans developed into a large fighting force engaging in conventional warfare later in the war, numbering around 650,000 in late 1944 and organized in four field armies and 52 divisions. The main stated objectives of the Partisans were the liberation of Yugoslav lands from occupying forces and the establishment of a communist-ruled Yugoslav state.

The Bulgarian Resistance (Bulgarian: Партизанско движение в България, romanized: Partizansko dvizhenie v Balgariya, lit. 'Partisan movement in Bulgaria') was part of the anti-Axis resistance during World War II. It consisted of armed and unarmed actions of resistance groups against the Wehrmacht forces in Bulgaria and the Tsardom of Bulgaria authorities. It was mainly communist and pro-Soviet Union. Participants in the armed resistance were called partizanin (a partisan) and yatak (a helper, or a supporter, someone who provides cover for someone else).

The terms underground press or clandestine press refer to periodicals and publications that are produced without official approval, illegally or against the wishes of a dominant (governmental, religious, or institutional) group. In specific recent (post-World War II) Asian, American and Western European context, the term "underground press" has most frequently been employed to refer to the independently published and distributed underground papers associated with the counterculture of the late 1960s and early 1970s in India and Bangladesh in Asia, in the United States and Canada in North America, and the United Kingdom and other western nations. It can also refer to the newspapers produced independently in repressive regimes. In German occupied Europe, for example, a thriving underground press operated, usually in association with the Resistance. Other notable examples include the samizdat and bibuła, which operated in the Soviet Union and Poland respectively, during the Cold War.

Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a British organisation formed in 1940 to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in German-occupied Europe and to aid local resistance movements during World War II. SOE personnel operated in all territories occupied or attacked by the Axis powers, except where demarcation lines were agreed upon with Britain's principal allies, the United States, and the Soviet Union. SOE made use of neutral territory on occasion or made plans and preparations in case neutral countries were attacked by the Axis. The organisation directly employed or controlled more than 13,000 people, of whom 3,200 were women. Both men and women served as agents in Axis-occupied countries.

The organisation was dissolved in 1946. A memorial to those who served in SOE was unveiled in 1996 on the wall of the west cloister of Westminster Abbey by the Queen Mother, and in 2009 on the Albert Embankment in London, depicting Violette Szabo. The Valençay SOE Memorial honours 91 male and 13 female SOE agents who lost their lives while working in France. The Tempsford Memorial was unveiled in 2013 by the then-Prince of Wales in Church End, Tempsford, Bedfordshire, close to the site of the former RAF Tempsford.

A partisan or partizan is a member of a domestic irregular military force formed to oppose control of an area by a foreign power or by an army of occupation by some kind of insurgent activity.

The term can apply to the field element of resistance movements. The most common use in present parlance in several languages refers to occupation resistance fighters during World War II, especially under the Yugoslav partisan leader Josip Broz Tito.

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 (damaging or destroying 1/8 of all rail transports), and providing intelligence reports to the British intelligence agencies (providing 43% of all reports from occupied Europe). It was a part of the Polish Underground State.