People like to romanticize the effectiveness of individual heroism but that’s not what wins wars.

France wasn’t liberated until a giant army showed up and pushed the Nazis out. That was mostly possible because the US had poured unprecedented resources into the war and the Soviets traded millions of lives with them.

What was the single biggest success of the French resistance?

What would those teenagers have done differently to not end up like the White Rose?

Yeah. It’s a shame she didn’t get together with all her teenage friends and face off against the SS. That definitely would have stopped them in their tracks.

I’m terrified of it.

I’ve talked to relatives on both sides of my family who have experience those times and they have nothing good to say about it.

My grandmother went from hoping the Nazis would ignore her, to hoping the American bombs would miss her, to hoping that the Russian soldiers wouldn’t rape her.

My grandfather had guys from both the KMT and the CPC point guns at his head to try to get him to join (on separate occasions) and ended up a refugee.

Both China and Austria are doing very nicely now but boy did it suck getting there.