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Figure 1. There were 12 founding member countries of NATO in 1949. Some of these countries were very actively involved in supporting or conducting resistance type activities during WW2, some were not.(Map created with Mapchart.net)
Purpose of a stay-behind organisation (SBO)
Purpose of a stay-behind organisation (SBO)
During WW2, much experience was built up concerning the operations of resistance organisations in France, the Netherlands, Greece, Norway, Belgium and other countries. Although there are those that doubt the value of the contributions of these resistance groups to the total war effort, it is very clear that the people involved in these resistance groups often made heroic efforts, in very dangerous and life threatening situations, to fight for their countries and loved ones. Many of these resistance fighters lost their lives during WW2, and their activities saved the lives of many.
These resistance groups were not always well organized, well supported, well equipped or well trained. However, their value was realized by military and political leaders (such as Winston Churchill) who had a more mature grasp of WW2, its circumstances, its possible outcomes and what these outcomes could imply for civilization.
After WW2, it was realized that the next global threat (in the viewpoint of the USA and its allies) was the USSR. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries then pre-established so called stay behind groups, so that in the event of the USSR invading these countries, there would already be an organized resistance in place, complete with communications equipment, weapons and ammunition caches, as well as trained resistance fighters, which included skilled radio operators.
The real story actually begins before NATO was established.
NATO and the Stay Behind Organisations
NATO and the Stay Behind Organisations
There are many versions of the purpose, activities, integration across and between the NATO countries and how or why these SBO's were exposed/dissolved/abolished in the early 1990's (very conveniently when the USSR was dissolved). Most of these paint the SBO's as something vile and evil, politically unacceptable, or as semi-terrorist groups which had all sorts of political motives. This was not the rationale for their establishment, and of course is not the whole story, the full truth, or even a portion of the truth. It does sell newspapers though.
Why would you not want a well-established, trained, equipped, dependable SBO in your country? Have the original reasons for their establishment vanished, diminished, or are they now hidden within a new cycle of naive politics?
The twelve founding members of NATO in 1949 were: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States. The treaty was signed in April 4, 1949 and came into effect in August 1949. Greece and Turkey became members of NATO in 1952, West Germany in 1955, and Spain in 1982. The former East Germany was included in 1990, after the West Germany/East Germany reunification. Several other countries joined after the Cold War ended, and currently there are 29 members since July 2018; Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic (Czechia), Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
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