Saga Who started the Rebellion?

Did all resistance groups join the alliance?

 

It would be more interesting to me if they didn't.

 

Yeah same here. I guarantee there were groups with ideals that didn't stack up with the alliance. There had to be groups who used terrorism or something that the Alliance would consider evil.

 

They don't contradict each other.

When Starkiller unites them, there are multiple cellules of Rebel Alliance anyway. Which most likely started organically as we have seen in Rebels. Then they start getting support from high profile politicians and that meeting was just it getting formalized.

 

Well, according to the deleted (but definitely George Lucas Canon) scene in RotS Bail Organa and Mon Mothma created the organization (to become known as the Alliance to Restore the Republic) and Padme doesn't want to hear about it, yet, and soon dies.

This is what Lucas said (through the voice of Princess Leia) in the summer of 1977 in the "Lucas Notes":

“Some of the more militant systems started training military forces (for the Rebellion).The more peaceful systems, like [Alderaan], became gatherers of information"

The one thing I'm not entirely sure about is whether Organa was the agreed information gatherer and Mothma the military coordinator (according to the ANH screenplay General Willard was the commander of the Rebel Forces and apparently the only one considered to be so important that he was evacuated from Yavin IV) or whether Mothma's role and responsibilities merely increased by the time of ROJ because she had also been forced to take over Organa's role.

The one thing that bothers me to no end (hadn't Pablo Hidalgo previously stated that we do not see the Alliance as a whole until ANH?!?) was this Rebels "Retcon" for the second season episode Wings of the Master:

“The rebellion that we see in [Star Wars - A New Hope] - we’re just hanging out with General Dodonna’s group – they don’t have those ships. By the time we get to Return of the Jedi we’ve assembled the rebellion, the Rebel fleet all in one place to strike against the Death Star. So the groups that have the A-Wings and the B-Wings and the ships we haven’t seen before bring those to the table.”

It looks to me as if Hidalgo and Feloni are completely oblivious to the fact, that during the medal ceremony we see dozens or hundreds of Rebel pilots that hadn't previously been on Yavin IV and probably belonged to a squadrons with A- and B-Wings not present during Leia's and the Death Star's arrival.

The ANH prologue (and the one of ESB, too) and the dialogues made it abundantly clear that the Rebel base on Yavin IV was the military backbone of the Alliance and the Rebel forces, and that its destruction would have meant the end of the Alliance and the rebellion against the Empire.

So not only is there a credible explanation why we did not see A- and B-Wings in ANH, but it's also one that doesn't rewrite what George Lucas intended and what audiences accepted in good faith as true and which added drama and tension to the film.

I really, really hope this retcon doesn't affect Rogue One and that Hidalgo and Feloni rethink their premise change in the course of the upcoming Rebels episodes.

 

I'm not sure we have a solid answer in the current canon, but I'm almost positive it'd be a joint effort between Bail Organa and Mon Mothma.

 

If you ask Rebels, Ahsoka did. If you asked The Force Unleashed, Galen Marek(sp?) did. If you ask me, the Organas probably did, or at least helped organize people in support of it.