By the 3rd September the Germans were nearing Paris, but were halted by the Allies at the Battle of the Marne. The Germans fell back to high ground and dug-in. The Allies, unable to break through followed suit. The resulting line of trenches stretched from the Channel to Switzerland. Eleven million civilians lived under German occupation for four years in Belgium and Northern France. Resistance was ruthlessly suppressed and members of the underground executed. The Germans shot British nurse Edith Cavell by firing squad for helping Allied servicemen escape. French schoolboy Yves Congar kept an illustrated diary, documenting with vivid accounts and illustrations the cruelty and hardships of the German occupation. To ensure civil obedience and for forced labor the Germans rounded up thousands of Belgian and French civilians and transported them by cattle truck to concentration camps in Germany.
