World War Two for the day

War History Online has an article about the French Résistance:

A veteran of the Résistance during World War Two tells of French efforts to sabotage the Nazi occupation:

From 1940 to 1942, the first years of the German occupation of France, there was no systematically organized Résistance capable of coordinated fighting throughout France. Active opposition to the German and Vichy authorities was sporadic, and carried out only by a tiny and fragmented set of operatives.
Most French men and women put their faith in the Vichy government and its figurehead, Marshal Pétain, who continued to be widely regarded as the “savior” of France, opinions which persisted until their unpopular policies and their collaboration with the foreign occupiers became broadly apparent.
The earliest Résistance organizations had no contact with the Allies, and received no material aid from London or anywhere else. Consequently, most focused on generating nationalist propaganda through the distribution of underground newspapers. Many of the major movements, such as Défense de la France, were centered around their newspapers.
Even after they became more intensively activist, propaganda and the cultivation of positive morale remained, until the very end of the war, their most important concerns.
Hundreds of French Résistance fighters were captured during the war by the Nazis, but enough managed to evade capture and continue the fight against Nazi occupation. Many were imprisoned or shot by the German troops. By 1944, the French Résistance had set up an extensive network of those they could trust and those they could not trust among French authorities. The French Résistance was not aligned to a single political party or group; instead, it saw itself as a military group. The congress of the Résistance took place on a regular basis and would consist of armed men from around sixteen groups operating throughout France. Representatives included those from Communist groups to Socialists and Conservatives, but they all had one thing in common: their loyalty laid with France and their leader, General Charles de Gaulle.
Much of the Résistance was focused on sabotage or confusing the German troops in their invasion of France. Local groups were organized and aligned to a regional framework, so that there was an organized network of attacks and plans. It was foreseen that the Résistance would also replace the German and Vichy authorities once they had been overthrown. Collaboration with the Germans was limited.
One assignment saw masses of sugar supplies being blown up by the resistance on barges on canals headed to Germany. Abandoning the water to get the supplies to Germany, the Nazis loaded the sugar onto trains, after which the Résistance had them derailed. It was then loaded onto lorries to be transported by road, but the Résistance tampered with the lorry motors and they never left France.
The Résistance became disciplined at operating under the radar of the Germans, yet the Germans also became adept at drawing out the Résistance at any chance they could get.
General Eisenhower estimated the value of the Résistance to have been equal to ten to fifteen divisions at the time of the Normandy landings. Eisenhower’s statements are all the more credible, since he based them on his GHQ’s formal analyses and published them only after the war, when propaganda was no longer a motive.
Historians still debate how effective the Résistance was militarily, but the neutralization of the Maquis du Vercors alone involved the commitment of over ten thousand German troops within the theater, with several thousand more held in reserve, as the Allied invasion was advancing from Normandy.
It is estimated that the FFI killed some two thousand Germans, a low estimate based on the figures from June of 1944 only. Estimates of the casualties among the Résistance are made harder by the dispersion of movements, at least until D-Day, but credible estimates start from eight thousand dead in action, twenty-five thousand shot. and several tens of thousands deported, of whom twenty-seven thousand died in death camps.
The best estimate is that nearly ninety thousand were deported from France without racial motive, overwhelmingly comprising resistance fighters and more than the number of Gypsies and Jews deported from France.

Rico says some contributions to history should not be forgotten...