Collaboration With Nazi Germany And Fascist Italy

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, believing they brought liberation from colonization. The Danish, and Belgian and Vichy French governments attempted to appease or bargain with the invaders, in hopes of mitigating harm to their citizens and economies. Some countries cooperated with Italy and Germany because they wanted to regain territory lost during and after the First World War or which their nationalist citizens simply coveted. Others, such as France, already had strong fascist movements and/or anti-semitic sentiment, which the invaders validated and empowered. Individuals such as Hendrik Seyffardt in the Netherlands and Theodoros Pangalos in Greece saw collaboration as a path to power in 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, often with promises they later broke, or from among POWs trying to escape appalling conditions in their camps. Other volunteers freely enlisted because they subscribed to Nazi or fascist ideology.

In France the term "collaborationist" was coined for those who collaborated for ideological reasons. Bertram Gordon, a professor of modern history, also used the terms "collaborationist" and "collaborator" for ideological and non-ideological collaboration. Elsewhere, "collaboration" described cooperation, sometimes passive, with a victorious power.

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.

Collaboration in Western Europe

Belgium

Belgium was invaded by Nazi Germany in May 1940 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 and anti-democratic and influenced by fascist ideas,B. De Wever
Vlaams Nationaal Verbond (VNV)
at Belgium-WWII, ("Au sein de la direction du parti, on retrouve deux tendances : une aile fasciste et une aile modérée.") as part of the pre-war Flemish Movement, became a major player in the German occupation strategy. VNV politicians were promoted to positions in the Belgian civil administration. VNV and its comparatively moderate stance was increasingly eclipsed later in the war by the more radical and pro-German DeVlag movement.

In French-speaking Wallonia, Léon Degrelle's Rexist Party, a pre-war authoritarian and Catholic Fascist political party, 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 to mitigate harm to Belgians, it enabled but could not moderate German policies such as the persecution of Jews and deportation of workers to Germany, although it did manage to delay the latter to October 1942.Gotovitch, José; Aron, Paul, eds. (2008). Dictionnaire de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale en Belgique. Brussels: André Versaille ed. p. 408. . Encouraging the Germans to delegate tasks to the Committee allowed much more efficient implementation than could have been achieved by force. Since Belgium depended on Germany for food imports, the committee was always at a disadvantage in negotiations.Van den Wijngaert, Mark; Dujardin, Vincent (2006). La Belgique sans Roi, 1940–1950. Nouvelle Historie de Belgique, 1905–1950 (vol.2). Brussels: Éd. Complexe. pp. 20–6. .

The Belgian government in exile criticized the committee for helping the Germans. The Secretaries-General were also unpopular within Belgium itself. In 1942, journalist Paul Struye described them as "the object of growing and almost unanimous unpopularity." As the face of the German occupation authority, they became unpopular with the public, which blamed them for the German demands they implemented.

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, was sentenced to five. 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.

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, such as Alexandre Galopin, head of the '' Société Générale'', assassinated in February 1944. Among the retaliatory massacres of civilians was 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.

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. 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.

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, 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.

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 had managed to cross the border;RESCUE, EXPULSION, AND COLLABORATION: DENMARK'S DIFFICULTIES WITH ITS WORLD WAR II PAST
Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson and Bent Blüdnikow, Jewish Political Studies Review Vol. 18, No. 3/4 (Fall 2006), pp. 3–29 (27 pages) Published By: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, retrieved February 14, 2023 18 of these people died in concentration camps, including a woman and her three children. In 2005 prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen officially apologized for these policies.

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. It was feared that increased 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.

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.

France

Vichy France

World War I hero Marshal Philippe Pétain became the head of the post-democratic French State, governed not from Paris but from Vichy, when the French Third Republic collapsed after the Battle of France. 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. Pétain, instead used his plenary powers to establish the authoritarian French State ''(l'État Français)''.

Pierre Laval and other Vichy ministers initially prioritized saving French lives and repatriating French prisoners of war. The illusion of autonomy was important to Vichy, which wanted at costs to avoid direct rule by the German military government.

German authorities implicitly threatened to replace the Vichy administration with explicitly pro-Nazi leaders such as Marcel Déat and Jacques Doriot, who were permitted to operate, publish and criticize Vichy for insufficiently enthusiastic cooperation with Germany. These parties collaborated in organizing and recruiting the Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism to fight alongside German forces on the Eastern Front.

French workers for Germany

Vichy initially agreed, for every repatriated French prisoner-of-war, to send three French volunteers to work in German factories. When this program ''(la relève)'' didn't draw enough workers to please the Reich, Vichy began to conscript French citizens into the Service du Travail Obligatoire (STO; English: compulsory labour service).

Many workers joined the French Resistance rather than report for the STO, which had made the occupation personal for young French people, who began to disappear into forests and mountain wildernesses to join the ''maquis'' (rural Resistance).

Vichy collaboration in the Holocaust

Long before the Occupation, France had had a history of native anti-Semitism and philo-Semitism, as seen in the controversy over the guilt of Alfred Dreyfus (from 1894 to 1906). Historians differ how much of Vichy's anti-Semitic campaigns came from native French roots, how much from willing collaboration with the German occupiers and how much from simple (and sometimes reluctant) cooperation with Nazi instructions.

Pierre Laval was an important decision-maker in the extermination of Jews, the Porajmos (holocaust) of Roma people ( Gypsies), and of other "undesirables." Following an increasingly restrictive series of anti-Semitic and anti-Masonic measures. such as the Second law on the status of Jews, Vichy opened a series of internment camps in France — such as one at Drancy — where Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and political opponents were interned. The French police directed by René Bousquet, under increasing German pressure, helped to deport 76,000 Jews (both directly and via the French camps) to Nazi concentration and extermination camps.

In 1995, President Jacques Chirac officially recognized the responsibility of the French state for the deportation of Jews during the war, in particular, the more than 13,000 victims, of whom only 2,500 survived, of the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup of July 1942,
in which Laval decided, of his own volition, to deport children along with their parents. Bousquet also organized the French police to work with the Gestapo in the massive Marseille roundup (''rafle'') that decimated a whole neighbourhood in the Old Port.

Estimates of how many of France's Jews (about 300,000 at the start of the Occupation) died in the Holocaust range from about 60,000 (≅ 20%) to about 130,000 (≅ 43%).

Aftermath

As the Liberation spread across France in 1944–45, so did the so-called Wild Purges (''Épuration sauvage''). Resistance groups took summary reprisals, especially against suspected informers and members of Vichy's anti-partisan paramilitary, the Milice. Unofficial courts tried and punished thousands of people accused (sometimes unjustly) of collaborating and consorting with the enemy. Estimates of the numbers of victims differ, but historians agree that the number will never be fully known.

As a formal legal order returned to France, the informal purges were replaced by ''l' Épuration légale'' (legal purge). The most notable, and most demanded, convictions were those of Pierre Laval, tried and executed in October 1945, and Marshal Philippe Pétain, whose 1945 death sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment on the Bréton Yeu, where he died in 1951.

Several decades later, a few surviving ex-collaborators such as Paul Touvier were tried for crimes against humanity. René Bousquet was rehabilitated and regained some influence in French politics, finance and journalism, but was nonetheless investigated in 1991 for deporting Jews. He was assassinated in 1993 just before his trial would have begun. Maurice Papon served as prefect of the Paris police under President de Gaulle (thus bearing ultimate responsibility for the Paris massacre of 1961) and, 20 years later, as Budget Minister under President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, before Papon's 1998 conviction and imprisonment for crimes against humanity in organizing the deportation of 1,560 Jews from the Bordeaux region to the French internment camp at Drancy.

Other collaborators such as Émile Dewoitine also managed to have important roles after the war. Dewoitine was eventually named head of Aérospatiale, which created the Concorde airplane.

Luxembourg

Luxembourg was invaded by Nazi Germany in May 1940 and remained under German occupation until early 1945. Initially, the country was governed as a distinct region as the Germans prepared to assimilate its Germanic population into Germany itself. The ''Volksdeutsche Bewegung'' (VdB) was founded in Luxembourg in 1941 under the leadership of Damian Kratzenberg, a German teacher at the Athénée de Luxembourg. It aimed to encourage the population towards a pro-German position, prior to outright annexation, using the slogan ''Heim ins Reich''. In August 1942, Luxembourg was annexed into Nazi Germany, and Luxembourgish men were drafted into the German military.

Monaco

During the Nazi occupation of Monaco, the Monaco police arrested and turned over 42 Central European Jewish refugees to the Nazis while also protecting Monaco's own Jews.

Netherlands

The Germans re-organized the pre-war Dutch police and established a new Communal Police, which helped Germans fight the country's resistance and to deport Jews. The National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (NSB) had militia units, whose members were transferred to other paramilitaries like the Netherlands Landstorm or the Control Commando. A small number of people greatly assisted the German in their hunt for Jews, including some policemen and the Henneicke Column. Many of them were members of the NSB. The column alone was responsible for the arrest of about 900 Jews.

Norway

In Norway, the national government, headed by Vidkun Quisling, was installed by the Germans as a puppet regime during the German occupation, while king Haakon VII and the legally elected Norwegian government fled into exile. Quisling encouraged Norwegians to volunteer for service in the Waffen-SS, collaborated in the deportation of Jews, and was responsible for the executions of members of the Norwegian resistance movement.

About 45,000 Norwegian collaborators joined the fascist party '' Nasjonal Samling'' (National Union), and about 8,500 of them enlisted in the ''Hirden'' collaborationist paramilitary organization. About 15,000 Norwegians volunteered on the Nazi side and 6,000 joined the Germanic SS. In addition, Norwegian police units like the Statspolitiet helped arrest many of Jews in Norway. All but 23 of the 742 Jews deported to concentration camps and death camps were murdered or died before the end of the war. Knut Rød, the Norwegian police officer most responsible for the arrest, detention and transfer of Jewish men, women and children to SS troops at Oslo harbour, was later acquitted during the legal purge in Norway after World War II in two highly publicized trials that remain controversial. “He didn't mean to harm any good Norwegian” – the acquittal of Knut Rød, one of the organisers of the Norwegian Jew's deportation to Auschwitz, Seventh European Social Science History conference 26 February – 1 March 2008
retrieved 10 March 2008

''Nasjonal Samling'' had very little support among the population at large and Norway was one of few countries where resistance during World War II was widespread before the turning point of the war in 1942–43.

After the war, Quisling was executed by firing squad. His name became an international eponym for "traitor".

Collaboration in Eastern Europe

Albania

After the Italian invasion of Albania, the Royal Albanian Army, police and gendarmerie were amalgamated into the Italian armed forces in the newly created Italian protectorate of Albania.

The Albanian Fascist Militia formed after the Italian invasion of Albania in April 1939. In the Yugoslav part of Kosovo, it established the Vulnetari (or Kosovars), a volunteer militia of Kosovo Albanians. Vulnetari units often attacked ethnic Serbs and carried out raids against civilian targets. They burned down hundreds of Serbian and Montenegrin villages, killed many people, and plundered the Kosovo and neighboring regions.

Baltic states

The three Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, first invaded by the Soviet Union, were later occupied by Germany and incorporated, together with the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic of the U.S.S.R. (Belarus, see below), into Reichskommissariat Ostland.

Estonia

In German plans, Estonia was to become an area for future German settlements, as Estonians themselves were considered high on the Nazi racial scale, with potential for Germanization. Unlike the other Baltic states, the seizure of Estonian territory by German troops was relatively long, from July 7 to December 2, 1941. This period was used by the Soviets to carry out a wave of repression against Estonians. It is estimated that the NKVD's subordinate Destruction battalions killed some 2,000 Estonian civilians, and 50–60,000 people were deported deep into the USSR. 10,000 of them died in the GULAG system within a year. Many Estonians fought against Soviet troops on the German side, hoping to liberate their country. Some 12,000 Estonian partisans took part in the fighting. Of great importance were the 57 Finnish-trained members of the Erna group, who operated behind enemy lines.

Resistance groups were organised by Germans in August 1941 into the Omakaitse (), which had between 34,000 and 40,000 members, mainly based on the Kaitseliit, dissolved by the Soviets. Omakaitse was in charge of clearing the German army's rear of Red Army soldiers, NKVD members, and Communist activists. Within a year its members killed 5,500 Estonian residents. Later, they performed guard duty and fought Soviet partisans flown into Estonia. From among Omakaitse members were recruited Estonian policemen, members of the Estonian Auxiliary Police and officers of the Estonian 20th Waffen-SS Division.

The Germans formed a puppet government, the Estonian Self-Administration, headed by Hjalmar Mäe. This government had considerable autonomy in internal affairs, such as filling police posts. The Security Police in Estonia (SiPo) had a mixed Estonian-German structure (139 Germans and 873 Estonians) and was formally under the Estonian Self-Administration. Estonian police cooperated with Germans in rounding up Jews, Roma, communists and those deemed enemies of existing order or asocial elements. The police also helped to conscript Estonians for forced labor and military service under German command. Most of the small population of Estonian Jews fled before the Germans arrived, with only about a thousand remaining. All of them were arrested by Estonian police and executed by Omakaitse. Members of the Estonian Auxiliary Police and 20th Waffen-SS Division also executed Jewish prisoners sent to concentration and labor camps established by the Germans on Estonian territory.

Immediately after entering Estonia, the Germans began forming volunteer Estonian units the size of a battalion. By January 1942, six Security Groups (battalions No. 181-186, about 4,000 men) had been formed and were subordinate to the Wermacht 18th Army. After the one-year contract expired, some volunteers transferred to the Waffen-SS or returned to civilian life, and three Eastern Battalions (No. 658-660) were formed from those who remained. They fought until early 1944, after which their members transferred to the 20th Waffen-SS Division.

Beginning in September 1941, the SS and police command created four Infantry Defence Battalions (No. 37-40) and a reserve and sapper battalion (No. 41-42), which were operationally subordinate to the Wermacht. From 1943 they were called Police Battalions, with 3,000 serving in them. In 1944 they were transformed into two infantry battalions and evacuated to Germany in the fall of 1944, where they were incorporated into the 20th Waffen-SS Division.

In the fall of 1941, the Germans also formed eight police battalions (No. 29-36), of which only Battalion No. 36 had a typically military purpose. However, due to shortages, most of them were sent to the front near Leningrad, and were mostly disbanded in 1943. That same year, the SS and police command created five new Security and Defense Battalions (they inherited No. 29-33 and had more than 2,600 men). In the spring of 1943, five Defence Battalions (No. 286-290) were established as compulsory military service units. The 290th Battalion consisted of Estonian Russians. Battalions No. 286, 288 and 289 were used to fight partisans in Belarus.

On Aug. 28, 1942, the Germans formed the volunteer Estonian Waffen-SS Legion. Of the approximately 1,000 volunteers, 800 were incorporated into Battalion Narva and sent to Ukraine in the spring of 1943. Due to the shrinking number of volunteers, in February 1943 the Germans introduced compulsory conscription in Estonia. Born between 1919 and 1924 faced the choice of going to work in Germany, joining the Waffen-SS or Estonian auxiliary battalions. 5,000 joined the Estonian Waffen-SS Legion, which was reorganized into the 3rd Estonian Waffen-SS Brigade.

As the Red Army advanced, a general mobilization was announced, officially supported by Estonia's last Prime Minister Jüri Uluots. By April 1944, 38,000 Estonians had been drafted. Some went into the 3rd Waffen-SS Brigade, which was enlarged to division size ( 20th Waffen-SS Division: 10 battalions, more than 15,000 men in the summer of 1944) and also incorporated most of the already existing Estonian units (mostly Eastern Battalions). Younger men were conscripted into other Waffen-SS units. From the rest, six Border Defense Regiments and four Police Fusilier Battalions (Nos. 286, 288, 291, and 292).

The Estonian Security Police and SD, the 286th, 287th and 288th Estonian Auxiliary Police battalions, and 2.5–3% of the Estonian Omakaitse (Home Guard) militia units (between 1,000 and 1,200 men) took part in rounding up, guarding or killing of 400–1,000 Roma and 6,000 Jews in concentration camps in the Pskov region of Russia and the Jägala, Vaivara, Klooga and Lagedi concentration camps in Estonia.

Guarded by these units, 15,000 Soviet POWs died in Estonia: some through neglect and mistreatment and some by execution.

Latvia

Deportations and murders of Latvians by the Soviet NKVD reached their peak in the days before the capture of Soviet-occupied Riga by German forces. Those that the NKVD could not deport before the Germans arrived were shot at the Central Prison. The RSHA's instructions to their agents to unleash pogroms fell on fertile ground. After the Einsatzkommando 1a and part of Einsatzkommando 2 entered the Latvian capital, Einsatzgruppe A's commander Franz Walter Stahlecker made contact with Viktors Arājs on 1 July and instructed him to set up a commando unit. It was later named Latvian Auxiliary Police or ''Arajs Kommandos''. The members, far-right students and former officers were all volunteers, and free to leave at any time.

The next day, 2 July, Stahlecker instructed Arājs to have the Arājs Kommandos unleash pogroms that looked spontaneous, before the German occupation authorities were properly established. Einsatzkommando-influenced mobs of former members of Pērkonkrusts and other extreme right-wing groups began pillaging and making mass arrests, and killed 300 to 400 Riga Jews. Killings continued under the supervision of SS '' Brigadeführer'' Walter Stahlecker, until more than 2,700 Jews had died.

The activities of the Einsatzkommando were constrained after the full establishment of the German occupation authority, after which the SS made use of select units of native recruits. German General Wilhelm Ullersperger and Voldemārs Veiss, a well known Latvian nationalist, appealed to the population in a radio address to attack "internal enemies". During the next few months, the Latvian Auxiliary Security Police primarily focused on killing Jews, Communists and Red Army stragglers in Latvia and in neighbouring Byelorussia.

In February–March 1943, eight Latvian battalions took part in the punitive anti-partisan Operation Winterzauber near the Belarus–Latvia border, which resulted in 439 burned villages, 10,000 to 12,000 deaths, and over 7,000 taken for forced labor or imprisoned at the Salaspils concentration camp. This group alone killed almost half of Latvia's Jewish population,Andrew Ezergailis. The Holocaust in Latvia, 1941–1944: the missing center. Historical Institute of Latvia, 1996. , pp. 182–89 about 26,000 Jews, mainly in November and December 1941.

The creation of the Arājs Kommando was "one of the most significant inventions of the early Holocaust", and marked a transition from German-organised ''pogroms'' to systematic killing of Jews by local volunteers (former army officers, policemen, students, and Aizsargi). This helped with a chronic German personnel shortage and provided the Germans with relief from the psychological stress of routinely murdering civilians. By the autumn of 1941, the SS had deployed the Latvian Auxiliary Police battalions to Leningrad, where they were consolidated into the 2nd Latvian SS Infantry Brigade.Valdis O. Lumans. Book Review: Symposium of the Commission of the Historians of Latvia, The Hidden and Forbidden History of Latvia under Soviet and Nazi Occupations, 1940–1991: Selected Research of the Commission of the Historians of Latvia, Vol. 14, Institute of the History of Latvia Publications:European History Quarterly 2009 39: 184 In 1943, this brigade, which later became the 19th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (2nd Latvian), was consolidated with the 15th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Latvian) to become the Latvian Legion. Although the Latvian Legion was a formally volunteer Waffen-SS unit, it was voluntary only in name; approximately 80–85% of its men were conscripts.

Lithuania

Prior to the German invasion, some leaders in Lithuania and in exile believed Germany would grant the country autonomy, as they had the Slovak Republic. The German intelligence service Abwehr believed that it controlled the Lithuanian Activist Front, a pro-German organization based at the Lithuanian embassy in Berlin. Tadeusz Piotrowski, ''Poland's Holocaust'', McFarland & Company, 1997,
Google Print, pp. 163–68
/ref> Lithuanians formed the Provisional Government of Lithuania on their own initiative, but Germany did not recognize it diplomatically, or allow Lithuanian ambassador Kazys Škirpa to become prime minister, instead actively thwarting his activities. The provisional government disbanded, since it had no power and it had become clear that the Germans came as occupiers not liberators from Soviet occupation, as initially thought. By 1943, the German opinion of Lithuanians was that they had failed to show allegiance to them. When the Germans called-up Lithuanians for military service in spring 1943, Lithuanians protested against it by making the call-up produce dismally low numbers, which angered the German occupiers.

Units under Algirdas Klimaitis and supervised by SS ''Brigadeführer'' Walter Stahlecker started pogroms in and around Kaunas on 25 June 1941. Lithuanian collaborators killed hundreds of thousands of Jews, Poles and Gypsies. According to Lithuanian-American scholar Saulius Sužiedėlis, an increasingly antisemitic atmosphere clouded Lithuanian society, and antisemitic LAF émigrés "needed little prodding from 'foreign influences. He concluded that Lithuanian collaboration was "a significant help in facilitating all phases of the genocidal program . . . nd thatthe local administration contributed, at times with zeal, to the destruction of Lithuanian Jewry". Elsewhere, Sužiedėlis similarly emphasised that Lithuania's "moral and political leadership failed in 1941, and that thousands of Lithuanians participated in the Holocaust", though he warned that " til buttressed by reliable accounts providing time, place and at least an approximate number of victims, claims of large-scale pogroms before the advent of the German forces must be treated with caution".

In 1941, the Lithuanian Security Police was created, subordinate to Nazi Germany's Security Police and Criminal Police. Of the 26 Lithuanian Auxiliary Police Battalions, 10 were involved in the Holocaust. On August 16, the head of the Lithuanian police, , ordered the arrest of Jewish men and women with Bolshevik activities: "In reality, it was a sign to kill everyone." The Special SD and German Security Police Squad in Vilnius killed 70,000 Jews in Paneriai and other places. In Minsk, the 2nd Battalion shot about 9,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and in Slutsk it massacred 5,000 Jews.

In March 1942, in Poland, the 2nd Lithuanian Battalion guarded the Majdanek concentration camp. In July 1942, the 2nd Battalion participated in the deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka extermination camp. In August–October 1942, some of the Lithuanian police battalions were in Belarus and Ukraine: the 3rd in Molodechno, the 4th in Donetsk, the 7th in Vinnytsa, the 11th in Korosten, the 16th in Dnepropetrovsk, the 254th in Poltava and the 255th in Mogilev (Belarus). One battalion was also used to put down the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943.

The participation of the local populace was a key factor in the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Lithuania which resulted in the near total decimation of Lithuanian Jews living in the Nazi-occupied Lithuanian territories that would. From 25 July 1941, participation was under the '' Generalbezirk Litauen'' of ''Reichskommissariat Ostland''. Out of approximately 210,000 Jews, (208,000 according to the Lithuanian pre-war statistical data) an estimated 195,000–196,000 perished before the end of World War II (wider estimates are sometimes published); most from June to December 1941. The events happening in the USSR's western regions occupied by Nazi Germany in the first weeks after the German invasion (including Lithuania – see map) marked the sharp intensification of the Holocaust.

Bulgaria

Bulgaria was interested in acquiring Thessalonica and western Macedonia and hoped to gain the allegiance of the 80,000 Slavs who lived there at the time. The appearance of Greek partisans there persuaded Axis forces to allow the formation of Ohrana collaborationist detachments. The organization initially recruited 1,000 to 3,000 armed men from the Slavophone community in the west of Greek Macedonia.

Czecho-Slovakia

Sudetenland

Konrad Henlein, a populist strongman who represented the sizable German minority of the Sudetenland border region, actively sought a Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia. and his efforts arguably triggered the Munich Agreement After the invasion he administered the Nazi deportations that sent Jews to Theresienstadt Ghetto, almost none of whom survived. For example, 42,000 people, mostly Czech Jews, were deported from Theresienstadt in 1942, of whom only 356 survivors are known. Henlein also tried to expel all Czechs from the Sudetenland, but the neighbouring Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia refused to accept them and he was informed that the need of the area's factories for labour outweighed such ethnic policies.

Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (the Czech lands)

When the Germans annexed Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939, they created the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia from the Czech part of pre-war Czechoslovakia It had its own military forces, including a 12-battalion ' government army', police and gendarmerie. Most members of the 'government army' were sent to Northern Italy in 1944 as labourers and guards. Whether or not the government army was a collaborationist force has been debated. Its commanding officer, Jaroslav Eminger, was tried and acquitted on charges of collaboration following World War II. Some members of the force engaged in active resistance operations while in the army, and, in the waning days of the conflict, elements of the army joined in the Prague uprising.

Slovak Republic

The Slovak Republic (''Slovenská Republika'') was a quasi-independent ethnic Slovak state which existed from 14 March 1939 to 8 May 1945 as an ally and client state of Nazi Germany. The Slovak Republic existed on roughly the same territory as present-day Slovakia (except for the southern and eastern parts). It bordered Germany, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, German-occupied Poland, and Hungary.

Greece

Germany put a Nazi government in place in Greece. Prime ministers Georgios Tsolakoglou, Konstantinos Logothetopoulos and Ioannis Rallis all cooperated with Axis authorities. Greece exported agricultural products, especially tobacco, to Germany, and Greek "volunteers" worked in German factories.

The collaboration government created armed paramilitary forces such as the Security Battalions to fight the EAM/ELAS resistance Former dictator General Theodoros Pangalos saw the Security Battalions as a way to make a political comeback, and most of the Hellenic Army officers recruited in April 1943 were republicans in some way associated with Pangalos.

Greek National-Socialist parties like George S. Mercouris' Greek National Socialist Party of the ESPO organization, or such openly anti-semitic organisations as the National Union of Greece, helped German authorities fight the Greek resistance, and identify and deport Greek Jews. The BUND Organization and its leader Aginor Giannopoulos trained a battalion of Greek volunteers who fought in SS and Brandenburgers units.

During the Axis occupation, a number of Cham Albanians set up their own administration and militia in Thesprotia, Greece, under the Balli Kombëtar organization, and actively collaborated with first Italian and then German occupation forces, committing a number of atrocities. In one incident on 29 September 1943, Nuri and Mazzar Dino, Albanian paramilitary leaders, instigated the mass execution of all Greek officials and notables in Paramythia.

An Aromanian political and paramilitary force, the Roman Legion, led by Aromanian nationalists Alcibiades Diamandi and Nicolaos Matussis, also collaborated with Italian forces.

Hungary

In April 1941, in order to regain territory and under German pressure, Hungary allowed the Wehrmacht across its territory in the invasion of Yugoslavia. Hungarian prime minister Pál Teleki wanted to maintain a pro-Allies neutral stance,'Clinging to Neutrality'
Cornelius, Deborah S., in ''Hungary in World War II: Caught in the Cauldron, World War II: The Global, Human, and Ethical Dimension'', (New York, NY, 2011; online edn, Fordham Scholarship Online, 19 Jan. 2012), accessed 18 Feb. 2023 but could no longer stay out of the war. British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden threatened to break diplomatic relations if Hungary did not actively resist the passage of German troops across its territory. General Henrik Werth, chief of the Hungarian General Staff, made a private arrangement with the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, German High Command, unsanctioned by the Hungarian government, to transport German troops across Hungary. Teleki, unable to stop these events, committed suicide on April 3, 1941. After the war the Hungarian People's Court sentenced Werth to death for war crimes.

Hungary joined the war on April 11, after the proclamation of the Independent State of Croatia.

It is not clear whether the 10,000–20,000 Jewish refugees (from Poland and elsewhere) were counted in the January 1941 census. They, and about 20,000 people who could not prove legal residency since 1850, were deported to southern Poland. According to Nazi German reports, a total of 23,600 Jews were murdered, including 16,000 who had earlier been expelled from Hungary between July 15 and August 12, 1941, and either abandoned there or handed over to the Germans. In practice, the Hungarians deported many people whose families had lived in the area for generations. In some cases, applications for residency permits were allowed to pile up without action by Hungarian officials until after the deportations had been carried out. The vast majority (16,000) of those deported were massacred in the Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre at the end of August.

In the massacres in Újvidék (Novi Sad) and nearby villages, 2,550–2,850 Serbs, 700–1,250 Jews and 60–130 others were murdered by the Hungarian Army and "Csendőrség" (gendarmerie) in January 1942. Those responsible, Ferenc Feketehalmy-Czeydner, , József Grassy, László Deák and others, were later tried in Budapest in December 1943 and were sentenced, but some escaped to Germany.

During the war, Jews were called up to serve in unarmed "labour service" (') units which repaired bombed railroads, built airports or cleaned up minefields at the front barehanded. Approximately 42,000 Jewish labour service troops were killed on the Soviet front in 1942–43, of whom about 40% perished in Soviet POW camps. Many died as a result of harsh conditions on the Eastern Front and cruel treatment by their Hungarian sergeants and officers. Another 4,000 forced laborers died in the copper mine of Bor, Serbia. But Miklós Kállay, prime minister beginning on March 9, 1942, and Regent Miklós Horthy refused to allow the deportation of Hungarian Jews to German extermination camps in occupied Poland. This lasted until German troops occupied Hungary and forced Horthy to oust Kállay.

Following the German occupation of Hungary on March 19, 1944, Jews from the provinces were deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp; between May and July that year, 437,000 Jews were sent there from Hungary, most of them gassed on arrival.

Poland

Unlike some other German-occupied European countries, occupied Poland did not have a government that collaborated with the Nazis. The Polish government did not surrender, but instead went into exile, first in France, then in London, while evacuating the armed forces via Romania and Hungary and by sea to allied France and Great Britain. German-occupied Polish territory was either annexed outright by Nazi Germany or placed under German administration as the General Government.

Shortly after the German Invasion of Poland in September 1939, the Nazi authorities ordered the mobilization of prewar Polish officials and Polish police (Blue Police), who were ordered to report for duty under threat of severe penalties. Apart from serving as a regular police force dealing with criminal activities, the Blue Police was used by the Germans also to combat smuggling and resistance, to round up ''łapanka'', random civilians, for forced labor, and to apprehend Jews (German: ''Judenjagd'', "hunting Jews") and participate in their extermination. Polish policemen were instrumental in implementing the Nazi policy of centralising Jews in ghettos and, from 1942 onwards, liquidating the ghettos. In the late autumn and early winter of 1941, shooting Jews, including women and children, became one of their many activities at the orders of the German occupiers. After an initial phase of hesitation, Polish policemen became familiar with Nazi brutality and, according to Jan Grabowski

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