Service D was a small group of the Belgian resistance during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

which operated chiefly in the provinces of

Luxembourg Luxembourg ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerg ; french: link=no, Luxembourg; german: link=no, Luxemburg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ; french: link=no, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg ; german: link=no, Großherzogtum Luxemburg is a small lan ...

Liège Liège ( , , ; wa, Lîdje ; nl, Luik ; german: Lüttich ) is a major city and municipality of Wallonia and the capital of the Belgian province of Liège. The city is situated in the valley of the Meuse, in the east of Belgium, not far from b ...

and Limburg. The "D" in the group's name is said to have stood for the activities which the group was involved in: the fight against "Defeatism" and "Denunciation" as well as the "Demoralization" of the Germans.

History

''Service D'' was founded in July 1940 in

by Joseph Joset. From 1941, the group specialized in the diversion of letters of denouncement to the police and the warning of those threatened who were threatened by them. This was possible because of the group's agents in the

Postal Service The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letters, and parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid-19th century, national postal syst ...

. One of the group's members even served as a telephonist at a

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...

headquarters. It also attempted to identify the informers. A subsection of the group, known as ''Équipe Z'' was involved in sabotage. Between April and May 1944, 80 members of the group were arrested in a series of attacks by the Germans, including much of the group's leadership.

References

{{Belgian resistance groups Belgian resistance groups Military units and formations established in 1940