A Partisan Web of Resistance: Recruitment Patterns in the Belgian Armed Resistance during WWII

While civilian and everyday dissent have rightly attracted substantial attention in resistance studies, there is still much to uncover about the history of armed resistance. This study addresses the core questions of why people take up arms and how clandestine movements recruit new members through the historical case of the Belgian resistance against the Nazi occupation (1940-1944). Belgium had no established tradition of armed resistance or political violence, and was widely regarded as a strongly civilian, non-militaristic country. Yet, during the Second World War, at least 140.000 Belgians joined armed resistance movements. Where earlier scholarship on WW2 resistance has tended to foreground individual motivations and prewar political allegiances, this study focuses on the sociological and situational factors that enabled clandestine networks to emerge and operate throughout the war. Drawing on archival files for more than 800 members of the Armed Partisans in Belgium, we examine recruitment patterns in a rural, catholic-conservative area. By combining quantitative social network and regression analyses with qualitative, in-depth historical research, we connect the sociological profiles of recruiters and recruits, and assess factors associated with recruitment, including geographical proximity, prewar activities, kinship ties, social class, gender, and ideological affiliation. We then explore how these recruitment patterns relate to different forms of resistance activity, ranging from courier work and the provision of shelter to sabotage and armed attacks. Finally, we analyse survival rates across distinct recruitment trajectories to assess which recruitment pathways proved more sustainable over time. This study’s distinctive contribution lies in its integration of archival-based historical inquiry with advanced quantitative methods from the social sciences. Second World War resistance and Nazi repression loom large in contemporary discourses on resistance and repression, from anti-ICE demonstrators carrying placards reading “Nazis were just following orders too” to Putin’s instrumentalisation of ‘The Great Patriotic War’. Yet Second World War historiography has largely remained disconnected from the interdisciplinary field of resistance studies. We therefore look forward to engaging with the resistance studies community on what this iconic historical case can further contribute to understanding resistance in all its complexity – and, conversely, how conceptual insights from resistance studies can sharpen our interpretation of Second World War resistance.