In the west I'm not sure if they would even qualify as distractions. Liebman's Does Conquest Pay: The Exploitation of Occupied Industrial Societies says that the forces Germany stationed in France, for instance, were mostly to dissuade a British invasion, and so spent most of their time training (as opposed to hunting down partisans). Their presence did have the side benefit of keeping rebellious urges down, but they didn't have to do much, nor were they stationed there solely for their deterrent effect on rebels.

Harsh collective punishment, and generally low resistance activity, meant that the resistance had little practical effect. It may or may not have been good for morale, but you didn't really get very many people running away to join the resistance until the Nazis started rounding up workers to ship to Germany, and you didn't start getting effective resistance until right before D-Day when the Allies started supplying them with equipment and advisors and used them to slow down German reinforcements with railway sabotage and hit-and-run attacks on the roads.