In World War II, many governments, organizations and individuals collaborated with the Axis powers, "out of conviction, desperation, or under coercion." Nationalists sometimes welcomed German or Italian troops they believed would liberate their countries from colonization. The Danish, Belgian and Vichy French governments attempted to appease and bargain with the invaders in hopes of mitigating harm to their citizens and economies.
Some countries' leaders cooperated with Italy and Germany because they wanted to regain territories lost during and after the First World War, or which their nationalist citizens simply coveted. Others such as France already had their own burgeoning fascist movements and/or anti-semitic sentiment, and the invaders validated and empowered this. Individuals such as Hendrik Seyffardt in the Netherlands and Theodoros Pangalos in Greece saw collaboration as a path to personal power in the politics of their country. Others believed that Germany would prevail, and either wanted to be on the winning side, or feared being on the losing one.
Axis military forces recruited many volunteers, sometimes at gunpoint, more often with promises that they later broke, or from among POWs trying to escape appalling and frequently lethal conditions in their detention camps. Other volunteers willingly enlisted because they shared Nazi or fascist ideologies.
Stanley Hoffman in 1968 used the term collaborationist to describe those who collaborated for ideological reasons.[1] Bertram Gordon, a professor of modern history, also used the terms collaborationist and collaborator for ideological and non-ideological collaboration.[2] Collaboration described cooperation, sometimes passive, with a victorious power.[3]
Stanley Hoffmann saw collaboration as either involuntary, a reluctant recognition of necessity, or voluntary, opportunistic, or greedy. He also categorized collaborationism as "servile", attempting to be useful, or "ideological", full-throated advocacy of the occupier's ideology.
Belgium was invaded by Nazi Germany in May 1940[4] and occupied until the end of 1944.
Political collaboration took separate forms across the Belgian language divide. In Dutch-speaking Flanders, the Vlaamsch Nationaal Verbond (Flemish National Union or VNV), clearly authoritarian, anti-democratic and influenced by fascist ideas,[5] became a major player in the German occupation strategy as part of the pre-war Flemish Movement. VNV politicians were promoted to positions in the Belgian civil administration.[6] VNV and its comparatively moderate stance was increasingly eclipsed later in the war by the more radical and pro-German DeVlag movement.[7]
In French-speaking Wallonia, Léon Degrelle's Rexist Party, a pre-war authoritarian and Catholic Fascist political party,[8] became the VNV's Walloon equivalent, although Rex's Belgian nationalism put it at odds with the Flemish nationalism of VNV and the German Flamenpolitik. Rex became increasingly radical after 1941 and declared itself part of the Waffen-SS.
Although the pre-war Belgian government went into exile in 1940, the Belgian civil service remained in place for much of the occupation. The Committee of Secretaries-General, an administrative panel of civil servants, although conceived as a purely technocratic institution, has been accused of helping to implement German occupation policies. Despite its intention of mitigating harm to Belgians, it enabled but could not moderate German policies such as the persecution of Jews and deportation of workers to Germany. It did manage to delay the latter to October 1942.[9] Encouraging the Germans to delegate tasks to the Committee made their implementation much more efficient than the Germans could have achieved by force. Belgium depended on Germany for food imports, so the committee was always at a disadvantage in negotiations.
The Belgian government in exile criticized the committee for helping the Germans.[10] [11] The Secretaries-General were also unpopular in Belgium itself. In 1942, journalist Paul Struye described them as "the object of growing and almost unanimous unpopularity."[12] As the face of the German occupation authority, they became unpopular with the public, which blamed them for the German demands they implemented.[10]
After the war, several of the Secretaries-General were tried for collaboration. Most were quickly acquitted., the former secretary-general for internal affairs, was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment, and Gaston Schuind, Judicial Police of Brussels,[13] was sentenced to five.[14] Many former secretaries-general had careers in politics after the war. Victor Leemans served as a senator from the centre-right Christian Social Party (PSC-CVP) and became president of the European Parliament.[15]
Belgian police have also been accused of collaborating, especially in the Holocaust.
Towards the end of the war, militias of collaborationist parties actively carried out reprisals for resistance attacks or even assassinations. Those assassinations included leading figures suspected of resistance involvement or sympathy,[16] such as Alexandre Galopin, head of the Société Générale, assassinated in February 1944. Among the retaliatory massacres of civilians were the Courcelles massacre, in which 20 civilians were killed by the Rexist paramilitary for the assassination of a Burgomaster, and a massacre at Meensel-Kiezegem, where 67 were killed.[17]
See main article: Civilian life under the German occupation of the Channel Islands.
The Channel Islands were the only British territory in Europe occupied by Nazi Germany. The policy of the islands' governments was what they called "correct relations" with the German occupiers. There was no armed or violent resistance by islanders to the occupation.[18] After 1945 allegations of collaboration were investigated. In November 1946, the UK Home Secretary informed the UK House of Commons that most allegations lacked substance. Only twelve cases of collaboration were considered for prosecution, and the Director of Public Prosecutions ruled them out for insufficient grounds. In particular, it was decided that there were no legal grounds for proceeding against those alleged to have informed the occupying authorities against their fellow citizens.
On the islands of Jersey and Guernsey, laws were passed to retrospectively confiscate the financial gains made by war profiteers and black marketeers.
After liberation, British soldiers had to intervene to prevent revenge attacks on women thought to have fraternized with German soldiers.
See main article: German occupation of Denmark.
When on 9 April 1940, German forces invaded neutral Denmark, they violated a treaty of non-aggression signed the year before, but claimed they would "respect Danish sovereignty and territorial integrity, and neutrality." The Danish government quickly surrendered and remained intact. The parliament maintained control over domestic policy. Danish public opinion generally backed the new government, particularly after the Fall of France in June 1940.
Denmark's government cooperated with the German occupiers until 1943,[19] and helped organize sales of industrial and agricultural products to Germany. The Danish government enacted a number of policies to satisfy Germany and retain the social order. Newspaper articles and news reports "which might jeopardize German-Danish relations" were outlawed and on 25 November 1941, Denmark joined the Anti-Comintern Pact. The Danish government and King Christian X repeatedly discouraged sabotage and encouraged informing on the resistance movement. Resistance fighters were imprisoned or executed; after the war informants were sentenced to death.[20] [21] [22]
Prior to, during and after the war, Denmark enforced a restrictive refugee policy; it handed over to German authorities at least 21 Jewish refugees who managed to cross the border;[23] 18 of them died in concentration camps, including a woman and her three children.[24] In 2005 prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen officially apologized for these policies.[25]
Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, German authorities demanded the arrest of Danish communists. The Danish government complied, directing the police to arrest 339 communists listed on secret registers. Of these, 246, including the three communist members of the Danish parliament, were imprisoned in the Horserød camp, in violation of the Danish constitution. On 22 August 1941, the Danish parliament passed the Communist Law, outlawing the Communist Party of Denmark and also communist activities, in another violation of the Danish constitution. In 1943, about half of the imprisoned communists were transferred to Stutthof concentration camp, where 22 of them died.
Industrial production and trade were, partly due to geopolitical reality and economic necessity, redirected towards Germany. Many government officials saw expanded trade with Germany as vital to maintaining social order in Denmark and feared that higher unemployment and poverty could lead to civil unrest, resulting in a crackdown by the Germans. Unemployment benefits could be denied if jobs were available in Germany, so an average of 20,000 Danes worked in German factories through the five years of the war.[26]
The Danish cabinet, however, rejected German demands for legislation discriminating against Denmark's Jewish minority. Demands for a death penalty were likewise rebuffed and so were demands to give German military courts jurisdiction over Danish citizens and for the transfer of Danish army units to the German military.
See main article: Vichy France. World War I hero Marshal Philippe Pétain became the head of the post-democratic French State (État Français), governed not from Paris but from Vichy, when the French Third Republic collapsed after the Battle of France.[27] Prime minister Paul Reynaud resigned rather than sign the resulting armistice agreement. The National Assembly then gave Pétain absolute power to call a constituent assembly (constitutional convention) to write a new constitution. Instead Pétain used his plenary powers to establish the authoritarian French State.[28]
Pierre Laval and other Vichy ministers initially prioritized saving French lives and repatriating French prisoners of war.[29] The illusion of autonomy was important to Vichy, which wanted to avoid direct rule by the German military government.
German authorities implicitly threatened to replace the Vichy administration with unreservedly pro-Nazi leaders such as Marcel Déat, Joseph Darnand and Jacques Doriot, who were permitted to operate, publish and criticise Vichy for insufficiently cooperation with Nazi Germany.
The four main political factions which emerged as leading proponents of radical collaborationism in France were Marcel Déat's National Popular Rally (RNP), Jacques Doriot's French Popular Party (PPF), Eugène Deloncle's Social Revolutionary Movement (MSR), and Pierre Costantini's French League . These groups were small in size, between 1940 and 1944 fewer than 220,000 French people (including in North Africa) joined collaborationist movements.[30] [31] In the last six months of the occupation, Déat, Darnand and Doriot became members of the government.
See also: Milice. The collaboration of the French police was decisive for the implementation of the Holocaust in occupied France. Germany used French police to maintain order and repress the resistance. The French police were responsible for the census of Jews, their arrest and their assembly in camps from where they were sent abroad to extermination camps. To do this the police requisitioned buses and used the rail network of SNCF trains.