Until the summer of 1942, the occupation authorities had been little troubled by the armed Resistance, which was still in its infancy. The Italians in particular, in control of most of the countryside, considered the situation to have been normalized. From that point, however, the Resistance gained pace, with EAM/ELAS, in particular, expanding rapidly. Armed groups attacked and disarmed local gendarmerie stations and isolated Italian outposts, or toured the villages and gave patriotic speeches. The Italians were forced to re-evaluate their assessment, and take such measures such as the deportation of army officers to camps in Italy and Germany, which naturally only encouraged the latter to join the underground "en masse" by escaping "to the mountains".