Editing Underground press (section)

==Origins==
[[File:La Libre Belgique June 1915.jpg|thumb|''[[La Libre Belgique]]'', an underground newspaper produced in [[German occupation of Belgium during World War I|German-occupied Belgium]] during [[World War I]]]]

In Western Europe, a century after the invention of the printing press, a widespread underground press emerged in the mid-16th century with the clandestine circulation of [[Calvinist]] books and broadsides, many of them printed in Geneva,<ref>Monter, E. William. ''Calvin's Geneva'', Wiley, 1967.</ref> which were secretly smuggled into other nations where the [[colportage|carriers]] who distributed such literature might face imprisonment, torture or death. Both Protestant and Catholic nations fought the introduction of Calvinism, which with its emphasis on intractable evil made its appeal to alienated, outsider subcultures willing to violently rebel against both church and state.  In 18th century France, a large illegal underground press of the Enlightenment emerged, circulating anti-Royalist, anti-clerical and pornographic works in a context where all published works were officially required to be licensed.<ref>[[Robert Darnton|Darnton, Robert]]. ''The Literary Underground of the Old Regime''. Harvard University Press, 1982.</ref> Starting in the mid-19th century an underground press sprang up in many countries around the world for the purpose of circulating the publications of banned Marxist political parties; during the German Nazi occupation of Europe, clandestine presses sponsored and subsidized by the Allies were set up in many of the occupied nations, although it proved nearly impossible to build any sort of effective underground press movement within Germany itself.

The [[French resistance]] published a large and active underground press that printed over 2 million newspapers a month; the leading titles were ''[[Combat (newspaper)|Combat]]'', ''[[Libération-Sud|Libération]]'', ''[[Défense de la France]]'', and ''[[Franc-Tireur (movement)|Le Franc-Tireur]]''. Each paper was the organ of a separate resistance network, and funds were provided from Allied headquarters in London and distributed to the different papers by resistance leader [[Jean Moulin]].<ref>''The French Resistance'' by Raymond Aubrac (Paris: Hazan, 1997), p. 18-32.</ref> Allied [[prisoners of war]] (POWs) published an underground newspaper called [[POW WOW]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.merkki.com/powwow.htm |title=Pow Wow, the only truthful newspaper in Germany: To be read silently, quickly and in groups of three |author=Mary Smith |author2=Barbara Freer |access-date=3 April 2014 |quote=Pow Wow was the largest circulating daily underground newspaper in Germany during World War II.  Its headquarters were at Stalag Luft I. It grew from a small penciled newssheet read by hundreds into a neatly printed 2,000 word daily, eagerly perused by thousands. At its most successful period, it boasted editions in three languages and a circulation that reached seven prison camps.  Pow Wow stood for Prisoners Of War - Waiting On Winning and it claimed to be the only truthful newspaper in Germany. |archive-date=4 November 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131104203454/http://www.merkki.com/powwow.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref> In [[Eastern Europe]], also since approximately 1940, underground publications were known by the name ''[[samizdat]]''.

The countercultural underground press movement of the 1960s borrowed the name from previous "underground presses" such as the [[Dutch underground press]] during the [[Nazism|Nazi]] occupations of the 1940s.  Those predecessors were truly "underground", meaning they were illegal, thus published and distributed covertly. While the countercultural "underground" papers frequently battled with governmental authorities, for the most part they were distributed openly through a network of street vendors, newsstands and [[head shop]]s, and thus reached a wide audience.

The underground press in the 1960s and 1970s existed in most countries with high GDP per capita and [[freedom of the press]]; similar publications existed in some developing countries and as part of the ''samizdat'' movement in the [[communist state]]s, notably [[Czechoslovakia]]. Published as weeklies, monthlies, or "occasionals", and usually associated with [[left-wing politics]], they evolved on the one hand into today's [[alternative weekly|alternative weeklies]] and on the other into [[zine]]s.