The person with nothing left to lose might be dangerous, but also look at those with a lot to lose, a whole lot, especially when they decide to focus their resources into the fray. That is what the Mafia did in WW2, effectively turning Italy from Axis friendly land to the place where one of the main Axis leaders was eventually lynched in the street.

Really gets impossible to predict a lot of these things. I could easily write a backstory to the woman suicide bomber thing.

There have been some alternate history sci-fi of what would happen if the Axis powers had made it to occupy the US, or Parts of the US. My take on this, the various mafias would represent the economic backbone of a lot of the resistance that operates behind enemy lines. Corrupting enemy forces, terrorizing informants and the police, and brokering access to smuggling and supply routes with the outside world.

The Nazis quickly embraced the criminal element of occupied France, but the more religious and moralistic Italians did not work that way, neither did the highly religious Poles.

I could see California officially not having much of a resistance except in the Jefferson state areas, but the urban centers, not a single occupation convoy would roll anywhere without paying some unofficial road taxes. Fighters in the conflict zones would expect resupply from many (if not most) of the same shipping containers delivering material to occupation troops and supplementary police, along with a lot of the collaborator law enforcement types quickly and wisely learning how "silver or lead" choices end up working when it comes to lucrative resistance activities like dope fueled underground warehouse sex parties, kidnap for ransom activities against high ranking enemy and collaborator figures, and various unofficial "hostage rescue operations with a prisoner escape" which would in reality be prisoner exchange arrangements.