The occupation of Europe by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy from 1939 met with resistance from all the peoples of Western, Central and Eastern Europe as well as the Balkans. This resistance took various forms from low level sabotage and intelligence gathering in some Western European countries to full scale Partisan resistance in other parts of Europe. In this first of two volumes on Partisans and Guerrillas between 1939 and 1945 the Partisans of Poland from 1939, the Soviet Union from 1941 and Czechoslovakia from 1939 are covered. Italian Partisans were active from the fall of Mussolini in 1943 and the French Resistance went from insurgency in 1940 until from 1942 til 1945 it developed into full scale partisan warfare in some remoter regions of the country. Using over 300 wartime photographs some of which have not been published before Philip Jowett retells the story of resistance, guerrilla and partisan warfare. This brutal chapter in World War Two annals was to greatly effect the situation at the front line while the populations of occupied countries suffered the wrath of the occupying armies. His second volume in this series will feature the occupied Balkans where some of the fiercest partisan fighting of the war took place.