Yes, because it is a backbone through which people trying to hold things together can communicate. Remember how the USSR supposedly held together and could not

Yes, because it is a backbone through which people trying to hold things together can communicate. Remember how the USSR supposedly held together and could not be defeated, and how the Nazi's overran Europe and there were many who figured the easy way out was to just give up and accept it? The free press held the line, in Western Europe through underground newspapers, which made a massive difference in keeping people informed and in the East between 45 and ~86 through the various - sometimes hand copied - smuggled literature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_media_in_German-occupied_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_media_in_German-oc... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_press https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_press Soldarity would have never gotten off the ground without that network and speaking for my own country I suspect that without de Volkskrant and Het Parool the war would have gotten much closer to completely eradicating the Jewish population here. It was bad enough as it was but the network that coordinated the distribution of the underground newspapers was also instrumental in keeping the underground resistance network going. The one fed off the other and vice versa, both as a training ground and as a messenger service. Lots of those stories will never be told (unfortunately) but there were a ton of very brave people that knew full well they risked a one-way trip to the dunes if discovered.