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Complicated

Complicity

European Collaboration with Nazi Germany during

World War II

Edited by

Martina Bitunjac and Julius H. Schoeps

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ISBN 978-3-11-067108-7

e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-067118-6

e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-067126-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021932031

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;

detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

Â© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Cover: With the kind permission of Yad Vashem Archives. The World Holocaust

Remembrance Center.

The photo shows Slovak soldiers humiliating Lipe Baum, a Jewish man,

during the deportation of the Jews in Stropkov. Slovakia, May 23, 1942.

Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd.

Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck

www.degruyter.com

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Foreword by the Editors

Due to the rise of Nazism, the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 and

the subsequent occupation of other countries by the Wehrmacht, large parts of Europe found themselves in a difficult political, economic and military situation. At

the same time, as both occupying force and Axis partner, the Nazis were establishing governments that would cooperate with them. In many of these countries, war

crimes and genocidal policies against various minorities within the country were

intentional, most often in the course of their own territorial pursuits. Against the

background of the war, European countries and societies reacted with a mixture

of passivity, fatalism, collaboration but also resistance. Yet what did this situation

mean for public life, the prospects of the particular country and for the existentially endangered groups and individuals? Which forces actively collaborated with the occupiers and tried to turn this to their own advantage?

Collaboration, also referred to as collaborationism in professional circles, is

today considered to be one of the most problematic aspects of the history of occupation in World War II as well as of the Holocaust. In this context, the starting

points, motivations, behaviors, reactions and actions taken by political systems,

institutions, groups and individuals varied widely and depended on diverse factors and the dynamics of events determined by the war and filled with violence.

Viewing the different forms all over Europe of collaboration with Nazi Germany is less complicated due to the fact that only instances of resistance â real

or imagined â against the former dominance of Germany are subject to debate.

This generally politicized narrative was cultivated especially in the post-war period to strengthen the sense of community and national identity in the Eastern

Bloc countries, but also in France and Italy. At least in some European countries, a more revisionist presentation of the phenomenon of collaboration and

the significance it had in World War II has come to prevail. Narratives about the

countryâs own victims and losses compete with memories of those minorities

and objects of hate, including Jews, Sinti and Roma, who were left completely

defenseless and at the mercy of the German occupying forces, their allies and

collaborators.

In May 2019 in Rome, the conference âCollaborationism with Nazi Germany.

A European Controversyâ, organized by the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies in Potsdam and the La Sapienza University in Rome, was

dedicated to this topic, analytically comprehensive yet regionally specific. It

brought researchers and academics from many different countries together,

who from their different perspectives reflected on the similarities and differences

in European collaboration with Nazi Germany. Some of the contributions published in this volume are based on lectures given at this conference. Additional

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671186-202

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contributions and country analyses have been added to provide a more precise

view of this phenomenon and to round off the volume.

The present volume does not claim to be complete. This book cannot and

does not intend to be. What is presented here is an attempt at taking stock to describe and evaluate the behavior of some countries in World War II. Moreover,

this book seeks to stimulate further studies and academic and social discussions

about collaboration, particularly in those countries where the countryâs collaboration with the Nazis is ignored, unmentioned or taboo.

Research, Terminology and Theoretical Approaches

Since the 1970s, people have begun to consider collaboration a subject for research, especially in Western Europe.1 Meanwhile, this wide-ranging topic â

which still includes some âblind spotsâ â has become an established field of

research.2 There are now a large number of works with country-specific studies on collaboration,3 which deal in particular with the trans-national participation in the organized mass murder of European Jews.4 Some of these works

are dedicated to the cooperation of the military with the German Wehrmacht

on its campaigns of conquest;5 others examine economic relations with Nazi

1 For more on this see: Werner RÃ¶hr, ed., Europa unterm Hakenkreuz. Okkupation und Kollaboration, 1938â1945 (Berlin/Heidelberg: HÃ¼thig, 1994), 17â30.

2 For more on this see: Grzegorz RossoliÅski-Liebe, âKollaboration im Zweiten Weltkrieg und im

Holocaust. Ein analytisches Konzept,â Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte, 19.07.2019, accessed August 27,

2020, https://docupedia.de/zg/Rossolinski-Liebe_kollaboration_v1_de_2019, 1â32.

3 Cf. this volumeâs bibliography organized by country and the comprehensive overviews by Peter

Black, BÃ©la RÃ¡sky and Marianne Windsperger, eds., Collaboration in Eastern Europe during

the Second World War and the Holocaust (Vienna/Hamburg: New Academic Press, 2019); Klaus

Kellmann, Dimensionen der MittÃ¤terschaft. Die europÃ¤ische Kollaboration mit dem Dritten Reich

(Vienna/Colongne/Weimar: BÃ¶hlau Verlag, 2019); IstvÃ¡n DeÃ¡k, Europe on Trial. The Story of Collaboration, Resistance, and Retribution during World War II (Boulder: Westview Press, 2015); Joachim

Tauber, ed. âKollaborationâ in Nordosteuropa. Erscheinungsformen und Deutungen im 20. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006); Christoph Dieckmann, Babette Qiunkert and Tatjana

TÃ¶nsmeyer, eds. Kooperation und Verbrechen. Formen der âKollaborationâ im Ã¶stlichen Europa

1939â1945 (GÃ¶ttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2003); Werner RÃ¶hr, ed., Europa unterm Hakenkreuz. Okkupation und Kollaboration, 1938â1945 (Berlin/Heidelberg: HÃ¼thig, 1994).

4 Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003);

Saul FriedlÃ¤nder, Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933â1945. 2 vol. (New York: Harper Perennial

1998/2008).

5 See f. e. Jochen BÃ¶hler and Robert Gerwarth, eds., The Waffen-SS. A European History

(New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Rolf-Dieter MÃ¼ller, An der Seite der Wehrmacht.

VI Foreword by the Editors

P:08

Germany.6 Even specific professions that shaped the particular societies have become subject to academic research, i.e. the collaboration of intellectuals7 or moviemakers.8 Studies on the so-called âsentimentalâ collaboration, especially in France

and Italy9 along with the actions of Fascist and nationalistic women10 also include gender-specific questions and problems. The forced collaboration of the

JudenrÃ¤te, the Jewish police and the so-called âGreiferâ with the Nazis11 has

also increasingly come into the focus of research. It has also been the subject

of memoirs and novels.12 Movies13 have been made showing the phenomenon of

Hitlers auslÃ¤ndische Helfer beim âKreuzzug gegen den Bolschewismusâ 1941â1945 (Berlin: Ch. Links

Verlag, 2007).

6 See f. e. Dietrich Eichholtz, âWirtschaftskollaboration und âOstgesellschaftenâ in NS-besetzten

LÃ¤ndern (1941â1944)â in Okkupation und Kollaboration in Europa unterm Hakenkreuz. Okkupation

und Kollaboration (1938â1945), ed. Werner RÃ¶hr (Berlin/Heidelberg: HÃ¼thig, 1994), 433â459; Richard J. Overy, ed., Die âNeuordnungâ Europas: NS-Wirtschaftspolitik in den besetzten Gebieten

(Berlin: Metropol, 1997).

7 Maria BjÃ¶rkman, Patrik Lundell and Sven Widmalm, eds., Intellectual Collaboration with the

Third Reich. Treason or Reason? (London/New York: Routeledge, 2019).

8 Roel Vande Winkel and David Welch, eds., Cinema and the Swastika: The International

Expansion of the Third Reich Cinema (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Markus

Spieker, Hollywood unterm Hackenkreuz: der amerikanische Spielfilm im Dritten Reich (Trier:

WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 1999).

9 This is also known as âhorizontal collaborationâ. Cf. Fabrice Virgili, Shorn Women: Gender

and Punishment in Liberation France (Oxford: Berg, 2002); Nicoletta Moccia, Il male commune

nella storia. Le donne collaborazioniste processate a Milano dal 1954 al 1947 (Milan/Udine: Mimesis, 2019). Compare to the study on women in Poland: Maren RÃ¶ger, Kriegsbeziehungen: IntimitÃ¤t,

Gewalt und Prostitution im besetzten Polen 1939 bis 1945 (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 2015).

10 Cf. the new studies on female Fascists in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe Andrea PetÅ,

LÃ¡thatatlan elkÃ¶vetÅk â NÅk a magyarorszÃ¡gi nyilas mozgalomban (Budapest: Jaffa KiadÃ³, 2019);

Olena Petrenko, Unter MÃ¤nnern. Frauen im ukrainischen nationalistischen Untergrund 1944â1954

(Paderborn et al.: Ferdinand SchÃ¶ningh, 2018), and Martina Bitunjac, Verwicklung. Beteiligung.

Unrecht. Frauen und die UstaÅ¡a-Bewegung (Berlin: Duncker&Humblot, 2018).

11 Cf. Isaiah Trunk, Judenrat. The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation

(New York: University of Nebraska Press, 1972) and Julius H. Schoeps, âDie Zusammenarbeit

der JudenrÃ¤te mit den NS-BehÃ¶rden im historisch-kritischen Urteil der Nachwelt,â in Jewish

Lifeworlds and Jewish Thought: Festschrift Presented to Karl E. GrÃ¶zinger on the Occasion of his

70th Birthday, ed. Nathanael Riemer (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2012), 343â348.

12 Cf. f. e. LÃ©on Werth, 33 Days. A Memoir, introduction by Antoine de Saint-ExupÃ©ry (New York:

Melville House, 2015) and IrÃ¨ne NÃ©mirovsky, Suite franÃ§aise (Paris: Gallimard, 2006).

13 Over recent years, there have been several movies released dealing with this topic: at the beginning of the German-Russian Holocaust film âParadiesâ (2016) by Andrej Kontschalowski, collaboration by French security forces is discussed. The German three-part tv movie âUnsere MÃ¼tter,

unsere VÃ¤terâ (2013) from the director Philipp Kadelbach deals with anti-Semitism in the Polish

resistance movement and among collaborating Poles, which caused controversial headlines not

Foreword by the Editors VII

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collaboration to a wide audience. All of this makes it clear that collaboration and

resistance are topics that play an increasing role in the discourses of memory.14

Despite the interdisciplinary research and medial reflections that are already available, no satisfactory uniform definition of the phenomenon of âcollaborationâ exists, primarily due to the complexity and variability of the term.

Co-working, cooperation, collusion, complicity, betrayal â historiography has

used various terms to make the topic of collaboration both tangible and understandable. It is, however, clear that these terms are insufficient, some of them

even problematic. This is especially true for the alternative use of the word âcooperationâ, a word which implicitly suggests working together with the occupiers as equals.15

The interpretation of the term is further complicated by the fact that the historical perception and interpretation of collaboration varies widely: Resistance

fighters and political opponents of the Nazi regime considered all forms of working together with the German occupying forces, even if it was the result of the

unequal power structure, as treason. From the politician to the businessman, the

worker to the simple domestic servant, the anti-Fascist resistance considered all

those who worked for the Germans to be their supporters and thus traitors. The

Soviets even considered forced laborers, who were forced to work under inhumane conditions in Nazi Germany, to be collaborators. After their liberation and

return home, they were often killed or imprisoned. In this light, what we understand by âcollaborationâ is an extremely elastic and often morally charged term.

In fact, a broader definition of âcollaborationâ includes a wide range of coworking between politicians, the military, representatives of business, culture

and other professions. The term leaves the exact motive â coercion, persuasion,

adaption or pragmatism â just as undefined as Germanyâs various forms of political domination in the occupied or allied countries. Despite this and other

concerns, the word âcollaborationâ has become established as a catch-all for

the various forms of the asymmetrical cooperation with the Nazis â even during

only in Poland. The Hollywood movie âDefianceâ (2008) telling the true story of the Bielski Partisans, Jewish resistance fighters, and shows the collaboration of Belarusian police.

14 John-Paul Himka and Joanna B. Michlic, eds., Bringing the Dark Past to Light: the Reception

of Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 2013); Harald

Welzer, ed. Der Krieg der Erinnerung: Holocaust, Kollaboration und Widerstand im europÃ¤ischen

GedÃ¤chtnis (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 2007).

15 Cf. RossoliÅski-Liebe, âKollaboration im Zweiten Weltkrieg und im Holocaust. Ein analytisches Konzept,â 2.

VIII Foreword by the Editors

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World War II. There are no alternative suggestions of what to call this phenomenon or are rarely if ever considered.16

In the present volume, we define collaboration as a part of the history of

World War II, the history of occupation and everyday life and as an essential

influencing factor in the Holocaust. Collaboration is understood to be a reaction

to offerings and (forced) demands made by the Nazis that legitimized, accompanied, exercised, supported and/or made the Nazi policies possible. However,

the term, understood as a catch-all term, cannot provide a clear separation of

the conditions and circumstances under which this happened.17 In the academic

debate on this topic, which should be interdisciplinary and conducted from an

international perspective, the analysis of spheres of influence and room for

maneuver of the respective governments, institutions and people is of primary

importance.

Dimensions of Collaboration

Collaboration took place in every country in Europe which was occupied by or

allied with Nazi Germany or which were neutral. Its variety of forms and expressions encompassed all social groups, political parties and organizations,

economic and cultural sectors, the church and the military along with the authorities and the police. However, an examination of this spectrum must take

into account the various methods of Nazi rule, such as military and civil administration. The Nazis were the ones who dictated how the political collaboration would proceed with each country.

Although the Germans pursued an ideologically based and economically

motivated policy throughout Europe, unlike in Western Europe, the ânew mastersâ exercised a more aggressive use of power of âdomination, administration

and exploitationâ in the East. Three of their main goals of occupation were the

territorial expansion of Lebensraum, the exploitation of the respective countryâs

human and material resources and the annihilation of undesirable populations:

the Slavic so-called âsubhumansâ, the Jews, Roma, homosexuals, the sick, Free

Masons and the politically unreliable.18

16 Cf. Kellmann, Dimensionen der MittÃ¤terschaft, 12.

17 Cf. RÃ¶hr, Okkupation und Kollaboration in Europa unterm Hakenkreuz, 63, 84.

18 Hagen Fleischer, âNationalsozialistische Besatzungsherrschaft im Vergleich: Versuch einer

Synopse,â in Anpassung. Kollaboration. Widerstand. Kollektive Reaktionen auf die Okkupation,

eds. Wolfgang Benz, Johannes Houwink ten Cate and Gerhard Otto (Berlin: Metropol Verlag,

1996), 257â302, here 271 f.

Foreword by the Editors IX

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All key positions in public life were placed under German control, so that

self-administration by locals was only possible at the lowest levels, as Stephan

Lehnstaedt and Joachim Tauber illustrate in the present volume in the countries

of Poland and Lithuania. The persecution policy carried out by the German occupiers in Eastern Europe included the use of mass terror. Resistance in particular

was met with retaliation and harsh sanctions against the civilian population. For

example, in the Czech town of Lidice after the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the director of the Reich Main Security Office and Deputy Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, or in the Serbian towns of Kragujevac and Kraljevo, where

more than 4,000 civilians were killed by the Wehrmacht in October 1941.19

In contrast to the rigid policy of exploitation and violence seen in Eastern

Europe, the German occupying forces were more âmoderateâ in Western Europe.

Unlike in the East, in the Netherlands or in Scandinavia, for example, a national

administration was re-established under German control. The population in Norway, for example, experienced better treatment overall by the Nazi occupying

forces, as the local population was considered to be âraciallyâ more valuable

than the Slavs. In addition, the occupying force profited from the existence of

and committed cooperation from Nazi or Fascist political groups, parties or sympathizers which existed in every country and who seized this opportunity to establish themselves in power politics.20

Nevertheless, the willingness to cooperate with the Germans depended on

various factors, such as how the new rulers treated the civilian population and

what the local pre-existing historical enemy stereotypes were, determined by previous wars (with the exceptions of Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands). Other

influencing factors included the moment of surprise at the unexpected German

invasion and the subsequent defeat of the respective country, as it was, for instance in Poland and Yugoslavia, but also in the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway.21 In countries like Slovakia, collaboration was seen as a guarantee for the

creation and continued existence of their own state under German influence.

In addition, some countries profited from their own territorial ambitions being

19 Cf. Lukia Drulia, ed., Von Lidice bis Kalavryta: Widerstand und Besatzungsterror. Studien zur

Repressalienpraxis im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 1999) and Oliver von Wrochem,

ed., Repressalien und Terror. âVergeltungsaktionenâ im deutsch besetzten Europa 1939â1945 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2017).

20 Cf. Arndt BauerkÃ¤mper and Grzegorz RossoliÅski-Liebe, eds., Fascism without Borders:

Transnational Connections and Cooperation between Movements and Regimes in Europe from

1918 to 1945 (New York: Berghahn, 2017).

21 Fleischer, âNationalsozialistische Besatzungsherrschaft im Vergleich: Versuch einer Synopse,â 262 f.

X Foreword by the Editors

P:12

approved of by Nazi Germany. Countries which collaborated politically also had

enough room to maneuver to avoid German demands regarding the deportation

of the Jews and other areas of collaboration, particularly when their own national

interests were at stake.

The behavior of each local population should be seen in relation to the actions

of their governments. The line between voluntary and forced collaboration was

often very thin. Some people became involved out of necessity, they collaborated

for fear of deportation and reprisals; others did so for the opportunities for personal advancement, an improvement in living conditions, pragmatism, corruption,

personal gain or ideological conviction. Alternatively, they remained passive,

went about their daily lives as usual and thus supported the criminal activities

in their country with their indifference. It can be assumed that without the aid

and abettance of the local authorities and the conformist behavior of the local

population, the German occupying machinery could not have functioned as it

ultimately did.

The most tragic effects of collaboration were seen in the persecution and

murder of six million Jews and those classified as Jews. Anti-Semitism in all its

manifestations was prevalent all throughout Europe; it was present in all social

classes and now underwent a political and criminal radicalization. Collaboration with the Germans fell on ears already fertile with anti-Semitism, which, in

some countries had already been enshrined into law before the German occupation, like in Hungary (in 1920) and in Yugoslavia (in 1940). In allied and cooperative countries, discussions about the execution of the persecution measures

dealt only with formalities and the division of tasks to complete the deportation.

There were, however, also regimes, such as the Croatian UstaÅ¡a, which also

acted autonomously in the extermination of Jews. They did not require instructions; they acted on their own initiative accordingly.

About this Book and its Topics

Most of the contributions in this volume range between country-specific overviews and micro-historical studies. The present volume will try to show facets of

the complexity of the history of collaboration from different perspectives. These

facets range between decisions of state and reactions to Nazi proposals, national

and economic interests, country-specific aspirations of hegemony, pragmatic decisions and Nazi pressure.

The local cooperation and assistance with Nazi Germany in the handing and

implementation of the Holocaust takes a central place in this book, especially

since the âexterminationâ of the entire Jewish population was an expressly stated

Foreword by the Editors XI

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goal of the Nazis. In order to carry this out, special Judenberater (Jewish advisors)

were made available to some countries. Anti-Jewish laws formed the basis for discrimination and deportation. In addition, military units and local police forces

were set up to implement the deportation and annihilation of the Jews. Moreover,

there was an enormous level of participation from governments, political players

and ânormalâ people in the process of exterminating the Jews and in receiving

expropriated Jewish property, motivated by anti-Semitism and other factors. The

clarification of this European readiness to contribute to the Holocaust, which

played into the Germansâ hands, has in retrospect led to the demythification of

the still widespread perception of German sole responsibility and/or guilt.

The fact that this guilt does not correspond to the historical overview of collaboration is already made clear in the first chapter of the present volume âWestern Countries between Collaboration, Neutrality and Resistanceâ, in which Lars

Dencik describes and analyzes the various forms of collaboration in the Scandinavian countries. Valentina Sommella concentrates on the political-military

collaboration of the Vichy regime and the French involvement in the persecution of the Jews, highlighting the interaction between Generals PÃ©tain and de

Gaulle, who divided the country into those who collaborated and those who

took up armed resistance against the German occupying forces.

In the second chapter âAspects of Collaboration in Central Europe: The Cases

of Poland and Hungaryâ, in his country study of occupied Poland, Stephan Lehnstaedt focuses on the political and administrative collaboration along with the

(military) cooperation of ethnic Germans, while Alessandro Vagnini illustrates

German-Hungarian relations primarily on the basis of the anti-Semitism already pervasive and enshrined by law in Hungary before the German invasion

in March 1944.

In the chapter âCountries of Eastern Europe: Political Interests, Anti-Semitism

and Military Supportâ, Olaf GlÃ¶cknerâs overview of the situation reveals some

facets of Ukrainian collaboration in the military involvement in the war against

the Soviet army and the murder of the Jews through mass violence. Giuseppe

Motta focuses on political, economic and ideological anti-Semitic collaboration

in the case of Romania. In his country analysis of Lithuania, Joachim Tauber concentrates particularly on the political-administrative level, taking into account

the ghettos in Vilnius, Kaunas and Å iauliai run by local authorities and their participation in the Holocaust.

In the chapter âCollaboration in Slavic and Balkan Countriesâ, Martina Bitunjac illustrates the persecution and murder of the Jews in the Slovak State

and the Independent State of Croatia, both of which cooperated with Nazi Germany. BjÃ¶rn Opfer-Klinger analyzes different political aspects (i.e. diplomacy,

the economy) of the Bulgarian collaboration with the Third Reich, both before

XII Foreword by the Editors

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and during the war, while Meinolf Arens and Katerina Kakasheva deal with two

special regions of the Balkans, occupied Vardar Macedonia and West Banat â

scenes of German, Bulgarian and local terror with particularly aggressive persecution of the Jews and mass violence.

The following chapter âSouth European Case Studies: Greece, Italy and Portugalâ begins with Ioannis Zeleposâ examination of Greek military formations,

the security battalions, within the framework of German occupation politics. In

her micro-historical study, Ester Capuzzo illuminates the effects of the Italian

âracial lawsâ on the Jewish community in Fiume (Rijeka) on the territory of

what is now Croatia, which fought to survive the at times collaborating, at times

competing Italian, German and Croatian forces. Fernando Clara demonstrates

that collaboration also encompassed the cultural sphere in neutral European

countries, using the example of the various ways the Portuguese Secretariat of

National Propaganda in the Estado Novo had room to maneuver.

In the final chapter âReflections on Jewish âCooperationâ with the Nazis in

Western and Eastern Europeâ, Julius H. Schoeps devotes himself to the forced

cooperation of the JudenrÃ¤ten (Jewish Councils) and individual Jewish informers, the so-called Greifer, who were fighting to survive and after World War II

found themselves confronted with accusations of having betrayed their fellow

Jews, thereby making themselves culpable.

The present volume is thus intended as a contribution to the still current and

in many countries emotionally charged debate about the motivations, forms and

possible leeway in collaboration with the Nazis. This is particularly true in the

chapters dealing with how collaboration was treated in Germany, France and

the countries of the former Yugoslavia, in Ukraine and Hungary in the context

of today, illustrating the associated problems of a differentiated historical treatment and an adequate memory culture.

New forms of right-wing populism, nationalism and growing intolerance

of Jewish fellow citizens and minorities have made such historically sensitive

studies considerably more difficult in many countries today. Instead, Fascist

holidays are being celebrated and war criminals are enjoying growing popularity in some places. Contradictory memories of Nazism, Fascism, occupation

and the Holocaust collide. The discussion about what was then right and wrong,

about victims and perpetrators is at times emotionally charged and, particularly

in post-Communist Eastern Europe, accompanied by a political polarization.

Against this background, a further goal was to shed light the current political

and social perceptions of collaboration and collusion, which had been taboo in

many countries after the war. KrisztiÃ¡n UngvÃ¡ry criticizes and analyzes the myth

of only the Germans being responsible for the crimes of World War II and the Holocaust, which has recently been cultivated even by official German foreign policy.

Foreword by the Editors XIII

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Serge Klarsfeld distances himself from mythologizing publications about World

War II in France and â from the perspective of a Holocaust survivor â makes Vichy

Franceâs complicity in the Holocaust clear. Trvtko Jakovina examines the distorted

historiography in the countries of the former Yugoslavia, particularly in Croatia

and Serbia, where collaboration is still partially a taboo and unmentionable. Franz

Sz. HorvÃ¡th and Imre SzakÃ¡l critically examine the partially revisionary memory politics in Hungary and Ukraine, respectively.

For making the conference at the La Sapienza University possible, we would

like to thank our friends and colleagues in Rome: Giovanna Motta, Antonello

F. Biagini, Alessandro Saggioro, Giuseppe Motta and Roberto Sciarrone. We would

like to thank Elke-Vera Kotowski from the Moses Mendelssohn Center in Potsdam

for revealing a humane aspect of World War II, which she presented in the exhibit

âRescuers, Helpers, Unsung Heroes. Rescue Resistance during the Nazi Period in

Europeâ in cooperation with the Jewish community of Rome at the Italian Institute

for German Studies as part of our conference. Many thanks go to Margaret-Ann

Schellenberg for the thorough editing and translation of some contributions and

essays. We also owe our thanks to the librarians of the Moses Mendelssohn Center,

Karin BÃ¼rger and Ursula Wallmeier, as well as Felix Lohmann for their help in

the preparation of the extensive bibliography. We thank Andreas Toscano del

Banner for creating the maps published here. Finally, we would like to thank

all of the authors who have enriched this book with their scholarship and sociocritical analyses.

To commemorate the victims of the Holocaust, who were at the mercy of a

systematic policy of extermination, in times of resurging anti-Semitism, we have

selected a photograph showing a Jewish man whose beard is being forcibly removed by young members of the Hlinka Guard in the Slovak town of Stropkov for

our cover. According to the Yad Vashem Archives, this shows Lipe Baum, owner

of a large farm. Amused and laughing, these members of the paramilitary defense

organization of the Slovak government posed for several pictures with their deliberately chosen Jewish victims. The main focus of the photos is not, however, the

five perpetrators as intended, but rather the Jewish man who is looking directly

at the camera. Lipe Baum had to suffer the violence, but they could not take

away his dignity. The photo was taken shortly before the Jewish man, his family and the Jewish residents of his town were deported. He was later murdered

in the German extermination camp SobibÃ³r.22

22 Cf. the information about Lipe (Leib) Baum in the Central Database of Shoah Victimâs

Names in the Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem, accessed August 18, 2020, https://yvng.yadva

shem.org/index.html?language=en&s_lastName=Baum&s_firstName=Lipe&s_place=&s_da

teOfBirth=&cluster=true.

XIV Foreword by the Editors

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Public humiliation, dehumanization, intimidation and the public display

of Jews were seen on the streets every day in the 1930s and 1940s â whether in

Germany, Austria, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine or Lithuania. The discrimination

ranged from the humiliating cleaning of sidewalks, Jews being made to hang a

sign with anti-Semitic content around their necks, the removal and burning of

sidelocks and beards of Orthodox Jews to the public undressing of Jewish men

and women and brutal lynchings on public squares (particularly in Eastern Europe). The victims were defenseless, completely at the mercy of the initiators of

the violence, the spectators and onlookers. The photographic recording of these

cruelties represented an additional violation; it was part of the crime and was to

serve the perpetrators as proof of a successful demonstration of power over the

exterminated Jewish population.

Today these photos are not only historical testimonies of European antiSemitism and the Holocaust, which â as this book shows â was greatly facilitated by the close collaboration between Nazi Germany and other European

countries. They also serve as a timeless wake-up call and admonition against

anti-Semitism, Holocaust relativism, hate and racism â phenomena that no society, then or now, was or is immune to.

Martina Bitunjac and Julius H. Schoeps

Potsdam 2020

Foreword by the Editors XV

P:18

Contents

Foreword by the Editors V

Part I

Western Countries between Collaboration, Neutrality

and Resistance

Lars Dencik

Considerate Collaborationism: If You Canât Beat Them, Join Them.

On Rationales behind Four Nordic Countriesâ Very Different Forms of

Collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II 5

Valentina Sommella

France between Collaboration and Resistance. The Armistice Decision,

the Montoire Meeting and Vichyâs Ambiguous Stand between the Axis

and the Allies 33

Aspects of Collaboration in Central Europe:

The Cases of Poland and Hungary

Stephan Lehnstaedt

A âLand without Quislingsâ. Collaboration in Poland 53

Alessandro Vagnini

The Hungarian Anti-Jewish Laws and Relations between Hungary

and Germany 69

Countries of Eastern Europe: Political Interests,

Anti-Semitism and Military Support

Olaf GlÃ¶ckner

The Collaboration of Ukrainian Nationalists with Nazi Germany 83

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Giuseppe Motta

Between Ideological Affinity and Economic Necessity. Romania and Nazi

Germany before and during World War II 99

Joachim Tauber

Collaboration in Lithuania 121

Collaboration in Slavic and Balkan Countries

Martina Bitunjac

Between Racial Politics and Political Calculation. The Annihilation of

Jews in the Slovak State and the Independent State of Croatia 137

BjÃ¶rn Opfer-Klinger

Bulgariaâs Collaboration with the Axis Powers in World War II 161

Meinolf Arens and Katerina Kakasheva

War and Collaboration in Occupied Vardar Macedonia and West Banat

1941â1944 193

South European Case Studies: Greece, Italy and Portugal

Ioannis Zelepos

Collaboration in Greece 1941â1944 213

Ester Capuzzo

Italian âRacial Lawsâ and the Jewish Community of Fiume 229

Fernando Clara

âCollaborating Neutralityâ? Portuguese Collaboration Networks at the

Secretariat of National Propaganda 241

Reflections on Jewish âCooperationâ with the Nazis in

Western and Eastern Europe

Julius H. Schoeps

Between Collaboration, Betrayal and Coercion. A Nightmarish Chapter of

European-Jewish Relations under the Nazis 263

XVIII Contents

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Part II

KrisztiÃ¡n UngvÃ¡ry

The Thesis that only Germans are to Blame â Well-Intended,

but Unsustainable 281

Serge Klarsfeld

The Most Extreme of all of the French Stateâs Collaboration:

The Surrender of the Jews 289

Tvrtko Jakovina

Being in Love with Traitors. Views on Collaboration during World War II in

Several Balkan Countries after the End of the Cold War 295

Franz Sz. HorvÃ¡th

Traumas that do not End? Not Dealing with History in Hungary 303

Imre SzakÃ¡l

The Question of Collaboration and the Politics of Memory in Ukraine 309

About the Authors 315

Bibliography Categorized by Country 321

Index of Persons 341

Index of Places 347

Contents XIX

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Part I

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Western Countries between Collaboration,

Neutrality and Resistance

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Lars Dencik

Considerate Collaborationism:

If You Canât Beat Them, Join Them

On Rationales behind Four Nordic Countriesâ Very Different

Forms of Collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II

This article deals with the four Nordic countries Denmark, Finland, Norway

and Sweden and how they related to Nazi Germany during World War II. In certain paragraphs the position of the fifth Nordic country, Iceland â at the time

part of the Kingdom of Denmark â to Nazi Germany, will also be considered. I

will sketch out the relationships between the Nordic state authorities and Nazi

Germany as well as between civilian organizations in these countries and the

Nazi German cause. My main focus will then be on what rationales the respective country acted vis-Ã -vis Nazi Germany. What were their rationales with respect

to collaboration with Nazi Germany?

A special focus will also be on how policies and actions of and in these five

Nordic countries affected their Jewish inhabitants, in particular to what extent

these policies and actions directly or indirectly contributed to the Holocaust.

Two underlying questions that will be more directly addressed by way of conclusion are: under what conditions is resistance to the âdevilâ warranted and

not just heroic? Under what conditions may collaborationism be a fruitful option and not per se condemnable? It should be said in the outset that this article

will not present all the variations of resistance to, and collaboration with, Nazi

Germany that took place in the countries I deal with. In all of these countries

different kinds of opposition and resistance to the ambitions and presence of

Nazi Germany took place, and in all of them various forms of cooperation with

Nazi Germany also took place. Readers who seek insights into the complexities

of how each of the countries more specifically related to Nazi Germany during

World War II are referred to the many very careful and detailed empirical research studies there are in each of the countries on both their respective resistance movements and collaborationism.1

1 See e. g. Richard Petrow, The Bitter Years: The Invasion and Occupation of Denmark and

Norway, April 1940âMay 1945 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975); Robert Bohn, Reichskommissariat Norwegen: âNationalsozialistische Neuordnungâ und Kriegswirtschaft (Munich:

Oldenbourg, 2009); Geir Thorsdahl, Quislings biskoper: en norsk kirke i nazismens tjeneste

(Oslo: Kagge Forlag, 2017); Marte Michelet, Den stÃ¸rste forbrytelsen. Ofre og gjerningsmenn i det

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671186-001

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For the purpose of the present analysis, it will suffice to present a rough

summary. Many elements of resistance and collaborationism that â from other

perspectives than adopted for the purpose of this article â might be quite salient

in the history of the respective nation will not be reported in this article.

Collaborationism: Offensive and Defensive

Cooperation

Collaborationism refers to cooperation with the enemy against your own country in wartime. Usually it is regarded high treason. âTraitorous cooperation with

the enemyâ is a term often used with reference to the French Vichy Government,

which cooperated closely with the Nazis from 1940â1944. Stanley Hoffman in

his classic work on collaborationism in France (1968)2 subdivided collaboration

into involuntary, meaning reluctant recognition of the necessity to cooperate, and

voluntary. Another distinction can be made between forced and ideological collaborationism. Both of these comprise deliberate services to an enemy. Whereas

the first kind is service to an enemy based on perceived necessity for survival

or avoidance of suffering, the second kind, ideological collaborationism, is advocacy for cooperation with an enemy power because this is seen as a champion

of some desirable domestic transformations.

The terms âcollaborationismâ and âcollaborationâ in the present essay will

be used without any immediate implications of treason. The terms will be used

purely descriptively to denote the cooperation of state authorities and of certain

civilians in the Nordic countries with Nazi Germany during World War II.

When it comes to fighting against an enemy, heroic resistance is mostly what

is celebrated. Less attention, at least post hoc, is given to the costs in terms of lost

lives through such resistance. Those who manifest active resistance towards an

norske Holocaust (Oslo: Gyldendal, 2014); Carsten Holbraad, Danish Reactions to German Occupation: History and Historiography (London: UCL Press, 2017); Claes Johansen, Hitlerâs Nordic

Ally? Finland and the Total War 1939â1945 (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military, 2016); Katarina Baer,

Nad olid natsid (Tallinn: Post Factum, 2018); Sven Radowitz, Schweden und das âDritte Reichâ.

Die deutsch-schwedischen Beziehungen im Schatten des Zweiten Weltkriegs (Hamburg: KrÃ¤mer

Verlag, 2005); Paul Levine, Swedish Neutrality during World War II: A Controversy Still Unresolved

(Stockholm: Fakta info direkt, 1999); Klas Ã mark, Att bo granne med ondskan. Sveriges fÃ¶rhÃ¥llande till nazismen, Nazityskland och FÃ¶rintelsen (Stockholm: Albert Bonniers FÃ¶rlag, 2016).

2 Stanley Hoffmann, âCollaborationism in France during World War II,â The Journal of Modern

History 40, 3 (1968): 375â395.

6 Lars Dencik

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overwhelming enemy are often regarded to be men and women of extraordinary

civil courage. Passivity might be an alternative to resistance. However, passivity

is often deemed as cowardice and lack of civil courage. A particular kind of passivity is to be a bystander. By implication this, in particular post hoc, is deemed

as passive support to the aggressor.

Another alternative to resistance might be collaboration with the enemy. In

most cases, in particular post hoc, those who cooperate are condemned as traitors. Collaboration with the enemy may, however, have different reasons and

justifications. There is a need to distinguish between two fundamentally quite

different kinds of collaboration.

One is collaboration because of sympathy for and active willingness to support the enemy. This could be, e. g. a local Nazi group endorsing and doing

services such as giving information about your fellow citizens to the German occupiers. This is referred to as offensive cooperation with the enemy. Such cooperation may be carried out both by state authorities and civilian organizations

and individuals.

Another kind of collaboration might be caused by concerns to save groups

and individuals from reasonably expectable harm that might otherwise follow,

f. e. a national government deciding to accept demands by a foreign force in

order to avoid the realizations of threats that might cause severe harm to its population. This is referred to as defensive cooperation with the enemy. Such cooperation may be carried out by state administrations as well as civilian groups and

individuals.

Analytically it may be quite clear what this distinction between offensive

and defensive cooperation with your enemy implies. In practice, however, for

instance when it post hoc comes to judge to what extent a certain act of cooperation with the enemy was actually in its effect an offensive or defensive act of

cooperation may not be easy to sort out. Actions taken in a crisis situation tend

to be double-edged and end up with ambiguous consequences.

As is well known, the road to hell is sometimes paved with the best intentions. Hence, a further distinction is needed. Any act, including acts of cooperation, may be driven by either an ambition to support the party cooperated with,

or, on the contrary, by an ambition to reduce the harm this party might afflict.

From this perspective, it is the intention of the actor that decides whether their

act of cooperation is offensive or defensive. However, from the perspective of

history, it is rather the effects of the cooperative acts that counts. Did they in

fact contribute to support the enemy or not? Did they actually help in reducing

the harm to their own interests, or more concretely, help in saving the lives of

members of their own group?

Considerate Collaborationism: If You Canât Beat Them, Join Them 7

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If offensive cooperation is generally based on intentions to support the enemy,

defensive cooperation is to be judged on the effects the actions taken. Intentions

are sometimes openly declared or may be inferred from previous stands and

actions by the actor. Effects, however, are to be measured in terms of net utility

to the actor.

A Rational Motive for Collaborationism

Any occupied country as well as any suppressed population is faced with the

question of how to deal with the enemy given the ambition is to minimize the

harm, say in terms of causalities, this enemy might cause? One way of handling

such a situation might be to cooperate with the enemy because by doing so you

may save lives. However, there is often the following complication: the very cooperation with the enemy may also cost lives, if not directly then indirectly and

in the long run.

In Judaism there is a concept which is actually also a religious rule: Pikuach

nefesh (to save a soul/saving a life). It denotes the principle in Jewish law that

the preservation of human life overrides virtually any other religious rule or ethical command. It is a religious duty for Jews to preserve their own lives, as well

as those of others, at virtually any cost. This moral imperative, however, gives

no clear guidance when confronting the following ancient but still quite valid

dilemma: How to handle a situation in which you are demanded to sacrifice

lives in order to save other lives?

The obvious utilitarian solution is âto choose the lesser of two evilsâ. A utilitarian calculus may seem relatively easy in principle, in real life conditions it

is, however, very often overwhelmingly complicated. Often it also takes the

long-term side-effects of the choice taken into consideration. What might be a

lesser evil from the short-term perspective of one particular actor, say Sweden,

might in a longer and broader perspective indirectly inflict greater evil on another actor, say the Allied forces fighting Nazi Germany.

Collaboration with and resistance to an enemy like Nazi Germany can easily

be regarded from a moral standpoint. However, whether to engage in collaboration with the enemy or not may also be regarded as a question of balancing pros

and cons. The same goes for engaging in resistance to an enemy. The question is

then not whether it is right or wrong to do so, but rather what can be gained,

what will be lost? However, this is more easily said than done in actual practice.

One tricky factor is the time dimension: the long-term effects of a given action

8 Lars Dencik

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may come to repeal what appeared as a gain or loss in the immediate or shortsighted perspective. Gains and losses in actual life situations typically also occur

in several different dimensions at the same time: the political, economic, military,

moral and human. Gains in one of these dimensions may occur parallel to losses

in one or more of the other, and vice versa.

We will not dwell here on how to solve these kinds of mostly extremely

complex, and as a matter of fact often unsolvable, calculations. What in the

final account is the right thing to do in a real-life situation of occupation and

war if taking all dimensions and several different time perspectives into serious account has to largely remain an open question. We can choose to focus

on many possible measures, e. g. economic, military or political gains and losses,

and on anything from immediate gains and losses to the post-hoc moral judgments actions may invoke. With all this in mind, it will suffice for our purpose in

this context to take only one simple, but particularly salient dimension and measure into consideration: the number of lives your own group has lost at the end

of the war.

Complexities of Collaborationism and Resistance

There are situations where it is not clear whether the attitudes and relations of a

party to an enemy is to be judged as collaboration or resistance. You may well

collaborate to some degree and in some respects in order to resist or even fight

the enemy in other ways. If the aim of the enemy is, e. g. to exterminate all of

your kind, resistance may take the form of doing whatever can be done to save

some lives. Such âresistance-by-cooperationâ, however, could readily be perceived as treason by both victims and observers of these actions. When the effects

are summed up post hoc, historyâs judgment might, however, turn out differently.

Recent European history provides examples of such situations. One is the

ghetto of ÅÃ³dÅº during World War II. The chair of the ghettoâs Judenrat, Chaim

Rumkowski, chose to cooperate and meet the demands of the Nazi rulers in order

to try to have as many as possible of the inmates escape extermination. His calculation was to lead the ghetto to be an effective and indispensable production unit

for the Nazi rulers. Still he was forced to sacrifice many of the ghettoâs inhabitants

to the Nazi murder factories. He then decided to sacrifice as much as possible

those who could not be productive. He believed that by staying ahead of the Germansâ thinking, he could keep them satisfied and preserve at least some of the

otherwise doomed Jews.

Considerate Collaborationism: If You Canât Beat Them, Join Them 9

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A survivor of the ÅÃ³dÅº ghetto, Arnold Mostowicz, noted in his memoir3 that

Rumkowski gave a percentage of his people a chance to survive two years longer than the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto who perished in the Uprising. The ÅÃ³dÅº

ghetto was the last ghetto in occupied Poland to be liquidated. It is estimated

that a total of 210,000 Jews passed through it. In August 1944, about 72,000

Jews were deported from the ÅÃ³dÅº ghetto to be killed in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Rumkowski and his family joined the last transport to Auschwitz. There he was

murdered on August 28, 1944 by Jewish Sonderkommando inmates, who beat

him to death as revenge for his handling of the inmates of the ÅÃ³dÅº ghetto.4 Historyâs judgment might turn out differently, but until now, Chaim Rumkowski and

other âJewish eldersâ who somehow collaborated with the Nazis are by many

regarded as traitors.

In dealing with the actions and fate of Chaim Rumkowski, two conventional

propositions may become questionable, namely that collaboration with the

enemy is per se contemptuous and that resistance to an attacking and occupying

force is per se heroic. Of course, collaboration with the enemy may as a matter of

fact very often be treacherous and thus also contemptuous â but under certain

conditions it may in fact also be heroic. Likewise, resistance to an invading and

occupying force is in fact very often heroic. However, if not carefully calculated

strategically, it may in effect turn out to be counter-productive and thus by consequence be treacherous to the cause of liberation and saving the lives of family, friends and compatriots.

When studying concrete cases of collaborationism, there is the need to specify which actors are relevant to focus on, and also along which dimensions of collaboration and resistance we should look for collaboration and resistance. One

necessary distinction is between steps taken by official institutions of the country and actions carried out by actors, groups or individuals who make up the

countryâs civil society.

Collaborationism and resistance can be carried out in many dimensions. It is

useful to distinguish between at least four main dimensions: military, economic,

political and ideological collaboration/resistance. From these perspectives, I will

3 Arnold Mostowicz, With a Yellow Star and a Red Cross: A Doctor in the ÅÃ³dÅº Ghetto, translated from the Polish by Henia Reinhartz. Library of Holocaust Testimonies (Elstree: Vallentine

Mitchell, 2005).

4 Source âÅÃ³dÅº Ghetto Deportations and Statistics,â last modified November 26, 2020, https://

kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/Lodz/statistics.html. When the Soviet troops arrived, only 877 surviving Jews were found hidden in the ghetto. It is estimated that in all, up to 15,000 ÅÃ³dÅº Jews

may have survived the Holocaust in different ways.

10 Lars Dencik

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in the following sketch out some of the crucial characteristics and actions taken

by state authorities and certain civil society organizations towards Nazi Germany

during World War II in the four Nordic countries Denmark, Finland, Norway and

Sweden. My main focus will then be to try to grasp what might have been the

rationales for collaborationism in each of the countries. In what respects did the

cooperation take on the character of offensive cooperation and in what respect as

defensive cooperation with Nazi Germany?

The Nordic Countries in 1939 from a German

Perspective

Observing the Nordic countries on the map of Europe from a German 1939 strategic perspective, the two most relevant foci are probably not the Nordic countries

by themselves, but the location of Great Britain and the Soviet Union respectively. Great Britain was then already defined as an enemy of Nazi Germany and,

Map of the Nordic Countries.

Considerate Collaborationism: If You Canât Beat Them, Join Them 11

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regardless of the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact, so was in fact the

Soviet Union as a Communist country populated by Slavic peoples.5

Given that in the summer of 1939 Germany already had plans for military

expansion, a key spot in the Nordic region is the relatively narrow piece of land

in the north between the Atlantic from where there is open sea and access to

Great Britain one the one side, and the Soviet continent on the other. This is

where Norway, Sweden and Finland border each other on land. Here, two areas

of particularly geopolitical significance should be pointed out:

a) The city of Narvik at the northern Norwegian west coast. Narvik is an important port for the export of iron ore from the area of Kiruna in Sweden located about 150 km east of Narvik. Although located far up north in an

Arctic area, the port of Narvik is an open port year round due to the North

Atlantic Drift (Gulf Stream). There is a direct rail connection called the Iron

Ore Line between the iron ore mines in Kiruna and Malmberget in Sweden

and the port of Narvik in Norway.

Narvik was one of the key targets for the German invasion of Norway

on April 9, 1940. The German war ambitions regarded both the port itself

and the iron ore from Sweden as highly significant. Immediately after the

German invasion, Allied forces were directed towards the German occupiers.

On May 28, 1940, the Allied forces succeeded in taking back the city. However, when Norway was forced to capitulate on June 8, Narvik again became

controlled by German occupiers.

b) Until its independence in 1918, Finland had been a region within the czarist Russian Empire for more than a century. After the Bolsheviks conquered

power and established the Soviet Union, there had been constant frictions

around the border area between Finland and the Soviet Union. In the wake

of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, in October 1939, the Soviet Union demanded

to be permitted to locate military bases in Finland and also that Finland

should transfer certain of its areas along its border to the Soviet Union,

among others the district of Karelia. However, as has been documented in

5 It is true that the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and Communist Soviet Union was agreed to on August 23, 1939. Recent historic research has, however,

documented that concrete plans to invade the USSR had begun already on July 30, 1940. Cf.

Rolf-Dieter MÃ¼ller, Der Feind steht im Osten. Hitlers geheime PlÃ¤ne fÃ¼r einen Krieg gegen die

Sowjetunion im Jahre 1939 (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2011), 125; Gerd R. UeberschÃ¤r, âHitlers EntschluÃ zum LebensraumâKrieg im Osten,â in Der deutsche Ãberfall auf die Sowjetunion â Unternehmen Barbarossa 1941, eds. Gerd R. UeberschÃ¤r and Wolfram Wette (Frankfurt/Main:

Fischer Taschenbuch, 1991), 19f.

12 Lars Dencik

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subsequent historic research,6 the real ambition of the Soviet Union leadership was to include all of Finland in the Soviet Union the same way as

the neighboring Baltic States Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had been. On

November 30, 1939, the Soviet Union launched a military attack on Finland. This so-called Winter War ended on March 13, 1940 by Finland being

forced to give up significant land areas, among them Karelia. Thus, the land

area of Finland was reduced and the Finnish border with the Soviet Union

was moved westwards.

Looking at Denmark and Sweden through a 1939 German strategic lens, Denmark appears as a potentially important supplier of agricultural products and

food, and Sweden of timber, iron ore and industrial products to a war-waging

Germany.

Some Basic Data on the Nordic Countries and

their Respective Relations to Germany in World

War II

In this brief overview, I will also include Iceland, now one of the Nordic countries, but at the time of the outbreak of the war, part of the Kingdom of Denmark.

DENMARK: 3,8 million inhabitants; 7,000 Jews.7

Invaded by Germany on April 9, 1940. Denmark met this invasion with virtually no resistance. The king and government stayed in the country and collaborated with the German

occupiers.

FINLAND: 3,7 million inhabitants; 2,000 Jews.8

On June 21, 1941, Finland joins Germany in the war against the Soviet Union. This is an

attempt to recapture lands that had been lost to the Soviet Union in the Winter War

1939â40. In this so-called Continuation War, Finnish troops fought side by side with German troops until September 1944.

6 Ohto Manninen, The Soviet Plans for the North Western Theatre of Operations in 1939â1944

(Helsinki: National Defense College, 2004).

7 Cf. Niels Wium Olesen, â9. april 1940 og den tyske fredsbesÃ¦ttelse,â last modified November 26, 2020, https://danmarkshistorien.dk/perioder/besaettelsestiden-1940-45/9-april-1940-

og-den-tyske-fredsbesaettelse/

8 Olli VehvilÃ¤inen, Finland in the Second World War: Between Germany and Russia, trans.

McAlester (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).

Considerate Collaborationism: If You Canât Beat Them, Join Them 13

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ICELAND: 125,000 inhabitants. Barely a handful of individual Jews.9

At the outbreak of World War II, the head of state in Iceland was the Danish king. When

Denmark was invaded on April 9, 1940, all official Icelandic relations to Germany were broken. On May 10, 1940, British troops and later also US military settled on the island and

stayed there until the end of the war. Towards the end of the war on June 17, 1944, Iceland

broke its official ties with Denmark and proclaimed itself an independent republic.

NORWAY: 3,0 million inhabitants; 2,100 Jews.10

On April 9, 1940, Norway was attacked by German invaders. The king and government

refused to give in to German pressure. The German invaders met strong Norwegian resistance. When this was broken by the Wehrmacht, the king and government escaped to

Great Britain and formed an exile government there. In Norway, a regime lead by Vidkun

Quisling took over. A Norwegian resistance movement âHjemmefrontenâ (The home front)

became active.11

SWEDEN: 6,4 million inhabitants; 7,000 + 3,00012 Jews.13

Sweden stayed neutral during World War II; it was not attacked and did not actively participate in the war. However, due to requests and pressure from Germany, Sweden accepted German troops to be transported through Sweden and also maintained vital export

and other trade relations to the Nazi Germany.

In the following, I will present some selected but crucial facts of particular relevance for this study country by country. For each country, I will report on its involvement in World War II, on Nazi affiliations of and within the country, on

collaboration, both official and civilian, and finally on the fate of the Jews in the

country during World War II.14

9 Cf. âIslandbloggenâ, last modified November 26, 2020, http://www.islandsbloggen.com/

2008/07/400-r-av-judendom-p-island.html.

10 Lennart Oldenburg, Under stÃ¶veln: Norge 1940â1945 (Stockholm: Atlantis 2008).

11 At the German invasion Quisling proclaimed himself leader of a national government. He

was however soon replaced by the German Josef Terboven as Reichskommissar fÃ¼r die vom

Deutschen Reich besetzten norwegischen Gebiete. Later Quisling was made head of the Administatrative Council and further on also installed as Prime Minister.

12 The 3,000 Jews mentioned here are Jews mainly from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia

who, in an effort to escape Nazi Germany in 1939/1940, had been admitted entry, mostly by

transit visa, to Sweden.

13 Klas Ã mark, Att bo granne med ondskan.

14 The sources I have based my general descriptions of each country on are grouped nationwise in the bibliography of this book.

14 Lars Dencik

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Collaboration: Denmark

Denmark was attacked by German troops on April 9, 1940. At their invasion and

occupation of Denmark, the German forces met virtually no effective resistance,

neither military nor civilian. After the occupation, most of Denmarkâs trade, industrial and in particular, its significant agrarian production was directed towards

Germany. The German preparations for the invasion, code name Unternehmen WeserÃ¼bung, were not unnoticed by the Danish government, but in order not to

provoke the powerful German neighbor, no countermeasures were taken by

the Danish government.

The Danish king stayed in the country and remained head of state during the

occupation. The government, the parliament and the local administrations, including the police, continued to function as before.15 This changed on August 29, 1943,

when the policy of cooperation and negotiation with the occupier broke down and

the Germans introduced military rule and a state of emergency. The breakdown of

the policy of collaboration was preceded by a growing belief in the Danish population that the war was approaching an end, which also inspired an increase in illegal strikes and sabotage actions by Danish resistance groups. Given this, Hitler

demanded the Danish government to install harsh measures to curb and control

the Danish population. The political parties forming the coalition government refused, and as a consequence, the government, parliament and king ceased to function in their roles and the Germans took over the administration of the country â

assisted in this by the deputy heads of the different departments of the government. A fight broke out during which 23 Danes were killed. The majority of the

Danes had an ambivalent attitude to the collaborationistic policy and to its partial

breakdown in August 1943. Except for members of the resistance groups, most

Danes felt the official and ongoing collaboration policy provided them protection

and a possibility to continue their relatively unharmed private lives.

Through the years of the war, approximately 20,000 Danes went to Germany

to work in German factories. About 12,000 Danish citizens volunteered for German army duty. There is a legend that during the German occupation and all of

World War II, the Danish king Christian X rode his horse through the city with a

yellow Star of David on his chest. This, however, never happened. King Christian

X, as well as the Danish government, discouraged Danish civilians to carry out

15 Henrik Dethlefsen, âDenmark and the German Occupation: Cooperation, Negotiation, or

Collaboration?,â Scandinavian Journal of History 15:3 (1990):193â206; Phil Giltner, âThe Success of Collaboration: Denmarkâs Self-Assessment of its Economic Position after Five Years of

Nazi Occupation,â Journal of Contemporary History 36,3 (2001): 483â506.

Considerate Collaborationism: If You Canât Beat Them, Join Them 15

P:37

sabotage and encouraged informing on attempts to do so by the resistance movement that emerged in the wake of the occupation.

However, according to a secret British report from 1942, the king actually

threatened to don the star if this should have been forced upon Danish Jews. In

the kingâs private personal diary dated September 10, 1942, the following entry

can be found:

When you look at the inhumane treatment of Jews, not only in Germany but occupied

countries as well, you start worrying that such a demand might also be put on us, but we

must clearly refuse this due to their protection under the Danish constitution. I stated that

I could not meet such a demand towards Danish citizens. If such a demand is made, we

would best meet it by all wearing the Star of David.16

Until October 1, 1943, i. e. during the first three and a half years of occupation,

the Jews in Denmark were not severely harassed by the German occupiers. Danish Jews, for instance, were not forced to pin a yellow star on themselves and

their daily lives were not disturbed significantly more than the daily lives of any

other Dane in the country.

During October 1943, almost all of the approximately 7,000 Danish Jews

were rescued to Sweden by Danish civilians; 472 Danish Jews were caught and

deported to Theresienstadt. There they received a relatively âbenevolentâ treatment compared to Jews from other countries. None were sent to be exterminated.

Fifty-three people, mostly old and sick, died in Theresienstadt, all of the others

came back to Denmark. When returning home to Denmark from Sweden and

Theresienstadt, they for the most part found their apartments well-kept by their

Danish neighbors.17

16 Danish original: Naar man saa den umenneskelige Behandling, JÃ¸derne var Genstand for ikke

blot i Tyskland, men ogsaa i de besatte Lande, begyndte man at vÃ¦re Ã¦ngstelig for, at Kravet

ogsaa en Gang blev stillet os, men det maatte vi pure afvise som fÃ¸lge af disses Retsstilling inden

for Grundloven. Jeg udtalte, at jeg heller ikke vilde gaa med til et saadant Krav overfor danske

Statsborgere. Hvis et saadant Krav rejstes, imÃ¸degik vi det bedst ved, at vi alle anlagde Davidsstjernen. Finansminsteren indskÃ¸d, at det var jo altid en Udvej.

This quote was released in connection with the 70th anniversary of the rescue of the Danish

Jews and published in many daily Danish newspapers. Here quoted from Kristeligt Dagblad

from September 23, 2013. Also in Politiken on September 24, 2013. A fuller story is given in the

comprehensive book by Bo Lidegaard, Countrymen: The Untold Story of How Denmarkâs Jews

Escaped the Nazis (New York: Knopf, 2013). A critical account is presented by VilhjÃ¡lmur Ãrn

VilhjÃ¡lmsson, âChristian X og jÃ¸derne. Hovedrolleindehaver i dansk krigspropaganda,â RAMBAM 19 (2010): 68â85.

17 Hans Sode-Madsen, Theresienstadt â og de danske jÃ¸der, 1940â45 (Copenhagen: Lindhardt

og Ringhof, 1992); Hans Sode-Madsen, I Hitler-Tysklands skygge. Dramaet om de danske jÃ¸der

1933â1945 (Copenhagen: Lindhardt og Ringhof, 2003). Silvia Goldbaum Tarabini Fracapane,

16 Lars Dencik

P:38

Collaboration: Finland

On November 30, 1939, three months after the outbreak of World War II, Soviet

troops attacked Finland. The Finnish met the Soviet invasion attempt with tough

resistance but still had to accept a peace agreement on March 13, 1940, implying

that they had to give up 10 percent of Finnish territory to the Soviet Union. This

had been preceded by negotiations between Finland on the one side and France

and Great Britain on the other to obtain their assistance via Norway and northern

Sweden. However, in February 1940, the Norwegian, Swedish and Danish governments declared they would refuse French and British troops transit. Without

any outside support, Finland had to accept the Soviet claims. Of relevance in this

context is that during the fall of 1939, the Soviet Union had pressured the neighboring Baltic States Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to permit Soviet military bases

to be located in their territories, and that Soviet expansionism in general had

rather free reins in the wake of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. In mid-June 1940,

Soviet troops occupied Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. There was an overwhelming fear that the Soviet would also occupy all of Finland.18

At the same time, Germany was secretly planning what has become known as

Operation Barbarossa â the German attack on the Soviet Union. A vital part of this

plan was for Germany to have access to Finnish land, especially its northern areas

and some sea areas as bases for attacks on Murmansk and Leningrad, among others.

Operation Barbarossa, the German surprise attack on the Soviet Union, its

partner according to the Molotov-Ribbentrop accords, took place on June 22, 1941.

However, coordination talks between the Finnish military command and Germany

had already started at the end of 1940. On December 30, the Finnish were briefed

about the secret German plans to attack the Soviet Union, shortly thereafter, they

started building up required infrastructure and coordinate information with the

Wehrmacht. German troops began to arrive. After some time, the number of German soldiers in Finland amounted to 200,000.19

In February 1940, the German Reichsmarschall GÃ¶ring promised Finland they

would get back all of the land the country had lost â with interest. In April 1941,

Finnish volunteers began to be recruited for a Finnish Battalion of Waffen-SS, the

The Jews of Denmark in the Holocaust. Life and Death in Theresienstadt Ghetto (London: Routledge,

2020). Leni Yahil, The Rescue of Danish Jewry (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of

America, 1969).

18 Manninen, The Soviet Plans for the North-Western Theatre of Operations.

19 On the Finnish troops see e.g. Lars Westerlund, The Finnish SS-Volunteers and Atrocities:

against Jews, Civilians and Prisoners of War in Ukraine and the Caucasus Region 1941â1943. An

Archival Survey (Helsinki: Kansallisarkisto, 2019).

Considerate Collaborationism: If You Canât Beat Them, Join Them 17

P:39

so-called SS-Panzer-Division Wiking, in which 1,408 Finnish soldiers volunteered

for Waffen-SS.

In May 1941, i.e. one month ahead of the German attack on the Soviet Union,

the Finnish Parliament decided to back the German attack on the Soviet Union,

realizing that regardless of which way it turned out, Finland would become a battlefield between the German and Soviet superpowers. When on June 22, 1941, Germany finally started Operation Barbarossa by attacking the Soviet Union also

from Finnish territories, Adolf Hitler declared Finland to be fighting side by side

with the Germany. On June 25, Finnish troops joined the attack on the Soviet

Union and what has become known as the Finnish âContinuation Warâ began. It

lasted until September 19, 1944.20

Out of the tiny Jewish community in Finland, several were drafted to fight

on the Finnish, and by implication also German, side against the Soviet Union.

Approximately 300 Finnish Jews fought in the Continuation War, eight were

killed in action. Some of the Finnish Jews who were fluent in German and/or

Russian served in Finnish intelligence and as translators between German and

Finnish commanders. The Finnish Jewish soldiers were granted leave on Saturdays and Jewish holidays, and the Finnish front had a field synagogue operating in the presence of Nazi troops. Three Finnish Jews were offered the German

Iron Cross for their wartime service. All three refused the award.

During World War II, approximately 500 Jewish refugees from Europe arrived in

Finland. About 350 moved on to other countries, including about 160 who were

transferred to neutral Sweden to save their lives on the direct orders of the commander of the Finnish Army, Marshal Carl Gustaf Mannerheim. At one occasion

in November 1942, the Finnish police agreed to turn over eight Jewish refugees from

Austria to Nazi Germany.21 When it was discovered that seven of these Jews were

immediately murdered, it caused strong protest from, among others, the Archbishop,

the Social Democratic Party and Lutheran ministers. Members of the government resigned in protest. No more foreign Jewish refugees were deported from Finland.

Although SS-FÃ¼hrer Heinrich Himmler visited Finland twice to try to persuade

the authorities to hand over the Finnish Jews, he was unsuccessful. Germanyâs ambassador to Helsinki concluded in a report to Hitler that Finns would not endanger

their citizens of Jewish origin in any situation. Yad Vashem records that 22 Finnish

Jews died in the Holocaust â it should, however, be noted that all of them died

while fighting for the Finnish Army.

20 VilhjÃ¡lmur Ãrn VilhjÃ¡lmsson, Finland in the Second World War: Between Germany and Russia (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).

21 They were sent from Finland to Estonia, then occupied by Nazi Germany.

18 Lars Dencik

P:40

Collaboration: Iceland

At the time of the outbreak of World War II, Iceland was not an entirely sovereign

state. Although Iceland had been granted some legal autonomy on December 1,

1918, the Danish king was still Icelandâs head of state and Denmark remained responsible for its foreign affairs and defense. As Denmark was occupied by Nazi

Germany on April 9, 1940, the connections with Denmark broke down and

shortly thereafter on May 10, British troops and later US military settled on the

island and stayed there until the end of the war. Under the shadow of the war

and Denmark being occupied by Nazi Germany, on May 20, 1944 Iceland held a

referendum whether to keep the union with the Kingdom of Denmark or to declare Iceland an independent republic. A vast majority voted in favor of the latter

and on June 17, 1944, Iceland proclaimed itself a sovereign independent republic.

The Icelandic historian VilhjÃ¡lmur Ãrn VilhjÃ¡lmsson, who has focused much

of his research on anti-Semitism and Iceland during World War II, concludes that

âa large group of Icelanders looked to Hitlerâs Germany with interest.â22 An Icelandic Nazi party was founded in 1933. Already in 1934, the party split, and a new

constellation naming itself Flokkur ÃjoÃ°ernissinna Ì (Nationalist Party) was formed.

This party cultivated contacts with its German mother party. Its party program

called for the total annihilation of âworld Jewryâ. However, the party never received more than 2.8 per cent support from the electorate â too little to allow the

party to enter the Icelandic parliament. During the British and American presence

in Iceland, the party and all pro-German activities were forbidden, and politicians

from other parties who had been sympathetic to the German cause adopted a low

profile. Germans residing in Iceland were transported to internment camps.23

No Icelandic collaborationism took place during World War II except for

certain pro-Nazi actions taken by some individuals. There were Icelanders who

volunteered for German war duty and some spied for the Germans. One example

is BjoÌrn Sveinn BjoÌrnsson, son of the first president of the republic. BjoÌrnsson

volunteered for the Waffen-SS in Denmark. Other leading members of Flokkur

ÃjoÌÃ°ernissinna after the war enjoyed successful professional careers in Iceland.

One would become the National Police Commissioner in the capital ReykjavÃ­k,

while another who had been a leading force in the Icelandic Nazi party, DavÃ­Ã°

Ãlafsson, became Governor of the National Bank after the war.

22 VilhjÃ¡lmur Ãrn VilhjÃ¡lmsson, âIceland. A Study of Antisemitism in a Country without

Jews,â in Antisemitism in the North. History and State of Research, eds. Jonathan Adams and

Cordelia Hess (Berlin: de Gryuter, 2019), 69â105.

23 Ibid., 79.

Considerate Collaborationism: If You Canât Beat Them, Join Them 19

P:41

There had never been more than a handful of Jews living in Iceland. There

has never been a synagogue built.24 Still, conspiracy theories about the Rothschild family were popular also outside the purely Nazi circles. The Icelandic

Nazis also directed their race-hatred towards certain selected individuals such as

the politician Ãlafur Thors who served several times as Prime Minister between

1942 and 1963. With his dark curly hair, Ãlafur Thorsâ appearance was interpreted

by the Icelandic Nazis as a sign of Jewish descent. Incidentally, Thor Jensenâs

older half-brother was a member of Dansk AntijÃ¶disk Liga (Danish Anti-Jewish

League).25

As Nazism grew and spread in Europe, there were Jews trying to escape by

seeking a safe haven in Iceland. However, âWhen Jewish refugees sought a safe

haven in Iceland in the 1930s, most of them were rejected by authorities and

large segments of society. Among the few who made it to Iceland, many were

expelled by the authorities.â26 Ãrn VilhjÃ¡lmsson concludes: anti-Semitism in its

ugliest form had made the journey to Iceland faster than the refugees.27

No Icelandic Jews were deported or directly murdered in the Holocaust. However, Icelandâs policy of denying Jewish refuges entry by consequence meant that

a number of these refuge seeking Jews fell victim to the Nazi German extermination of Jews.

Collaboration: Norway

On April 9, 1940, German troops attacked Norway. The German representative

sent a request to Norwayâs government to accept being occupied, to which the

Norwegian government replied: Vi bÃ¸yer os ikke frivillig, kampen er allerede i

gang. (We will not submit voluntarily; the struggle is already underway.)

28 The

armed Norwegian resistance against the German invaders/occupiers lasted two

months. On June 10, 1940, the Norwegian forces capitulated. The king, Haakon

24 Ibid., 71.

25 Ibid., 80.

26 Ibid., 71.

27 Ibid., 72.

28 Cf. Prof. Tomm Kristiansen in Aftenposten, 28 September, 2016. The Norwegian government

was unprepared and unwilling to capitulate to the ultimatum timed to coincide with the arrival

of German troops and delivered by Curt BrÃ¤uer, the German representative in Oslo. The German demand that Norway accept the âprotection of the Reichâ was rebuffed by Halvdan Koht

and the Norwegian government before dawn had broken on the morning of the invasion. âVi

bÃ¸yer oss ikke frivillig, kampen er allerede i gangâ, replied Koht.

20 Lars Dencik

P:42

VII of Norway, and the democratically appointed Norwegian government went

into exile in Great Britain. Part of the Norwegian population started to engage

in passive and also active resistance to the Nazi rule.

An administrative council headed by the German Nazi official Josef Terboven was installed by the Germans as a regime under their influence. Vidkun

Quisling, a major in the Norwegian army and former minister of defense in the

Norwegian government had already the day after the German invasion proclaimed himself Prime Minister. This didnât last long, but on 25 September

1940, with Hitlers support, he was made leader of the governing State Council.29 The name Quisling has become a synonym for a high-profile collaborator.

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.30

Around 45,000 Norwegians joined the Fascist party Nasjonal Samling, about 8,500

of them also enlisted in the collaborationist paramilitary organization Hirden. In

addition, a national socialist Norwegian police force, Statspolitiet (STAPO) â independent of the ordinary Norwegian Police â, helped arrest many of the Jews in

Norway. Norway was one of the rather few countries where active resistance to the

Members of the Waffen-SS volunteer legion âNorwayâ (the Norwegian Legion) parading in front

of Vidkun Quisling, 1941.

Bundesarchiv. No. Bild 101III-Andresen-004-40

29 Cf. Magne Skodvin, Striden om okkupasjonsstyret i Norge. Fram till 25. september 1942 (Oslo:

Samlajeget, 1956).

30 Cf. Oddvar K. HÃ¸idal, Quisling: A Study in Treason (Oslo: Norwegian University Press,

1989); Stein U. Larsen, âCharisma from Below?: The Quisling Case in Norway;â Totalitarian

Movements and Political Religions 7 (2006): 235â244.

Considerate Collaborationism: If You Canât Beat Them, Join Them 21

P:43

German invasion was manifested and widespread even before the turning point of

the war in 1942/43.

In the course of the occupation, about 35,000 Norwegians were imprisoned,

and 1,400 died in Nazi concentration camps. After the war, 92,000 people were

accused of having assisted the Germans. 15,000 Norwegians volunteered for

Waffen-SS.

In 1942, the systematic persecution and arrest of all people of Jewish descent in Norway began. Norwegian Nazis (Hirdmen) organized the deportation

of 772 of the approximately 2,100 Jews who lived in Norway, assisted by the

Statspolitiet. Through the years 1942 and 1943, these Norwegian Jews were deported to Nazi German death camps. Most of them on a single day, November 26,

1942, when 532 Norwegian Jews were deported from Oslo on the ship DS Donau.

Most of them were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau and murdered there â among

them all the women and children. Only nine of those deported on the Donau

survived. In all, only 26 of the deported Norwegian Jews survived the camps.31

The belongings and homes of the deported and murdered Norwegians Jews,

as well as of some of those who had escaped to Sweden,32 were confiscated and

partially taken over by local Norwegians.33 Recent research on the Norwegian

resistance movement indicates that parts of the Norwegian resistance movement chose to look away when the harassment and deportations of Jews took

place in Norway.34 The murdered Norwegian Jews accounted for more than one

third of the Norwegian Jewry and constituted more than 50 per cent of all Norwegians killed during the war.

Collaboration: Sweden

Like the other Nordic countries, Sweden had declared itself a neutral country. By

implication this signaled a wish to stay outside a war, should it break out. As we

have learnt, the fact that a country declared itself neutral did not prevent Germany from attacking and occupying Denmark and Norway. Nor did it prevent

31 Cf. Bjarte Bruland, Holocaust in Norwegen. Registrierung, Deportation, Vernichtung (GÃ¶ttingen: Vandenhoeck&Ruprecht, 2019).

32 One account of the escape and its consequences is given in Irene Levin, Vi snakket ikke om

Holocaust. Mor, jeg og tausheten (Oslo: Gyldendal, 2020).

33 Cf. the Official Norwegian Reports: Norges Offentlige Utredninger. Inndragning av jÃ¸disk eiendom i Norge under den 2. Verdenskrig (Oslo: Statens forvaltningstjeneste statens trykning, 1997).

34 Marte Michelet, Hva visste hjemmefronten? Holocaust i Norge: Varslene, unnvikelsene, hemmeligholdet (Oslo: Gyldendal, 2018).

22 Lars Dencik

P:44

Finland, which officially stayed neutral throughout the war, to engage in the war

on the German side. Sweden, however, was not attacked by Germany, nor used

as a base by the Allied forces and thus managed to stay outside the war and also

in actual practice to maintain a position of neutrality throughout the war.35

At least during the first three years of World War II, there was a latent threat of

being invaded like neighboring Denmark and Norway hanging over Sweden.36 To

maintain staying neutral and outside the war, however, demanded concessions to

requests from the German side. Actually, this had already started before the war.

In October 1938, inspired by Switzerland, Sweden pressed for marking German passports with a âJâ to help block German Jews from entering Sweden. At

the time, strong xenophobic and anti-Jewish sentiments in certain sectors of the

Swedish public prevailed, not least among certain public office holders and academics, who opposed to âthe importation of Jewsâ, partly âto protect the Swedish stockâ, partly because they perceived this as a possible threat to their own

positions. On a political level, they also argued that receiving Jewish refugees

would increase unwanted anti-Semitism in the Swedish population.37

After the war had broken out, Germany complained on occasion about Swedish press reports. Sweden, to avoid annoying German sensitivity on these points,

adapted to some of the German demands and took restrictive measures towards

certain elements critical of Nazi Germany in the Swedish press.

As part of their warfare towards Norway, Germany demanded access to the

transportation of goods and troops through Sweden. After difficult deliberations,

on June 18, 1940 and again on July 8 of the same year, the Swedish government

gave in to the German requests. The German use of the Swedish railway system

successively increased, and Germany also came to control part of the Swedish

tele-line system.

A special event within the realm of Swedenâs cooperation with Germany occurred around midsummer 1941, when Sweden gave in to German demands to

transport large military troop units, Division Engelbrecht, from Norway to Finland

through northern Sweden. All through the war, Sweden served Germany as a

35 Cf. Klas Ã mark, Att bo granne med ondskan. Sveriges fÃ¶rhÃ¥llande till nazismen, Nazityskland

och FÃ¶rintelsen (Stockholm: Albert Bonniers FÃ¶rlag, 2011).

36 Cf. Wilhelm Carlgren, Svensk utrikepolitik 1939â1945 (Stockholm: AllmÃ¤nna FÃ¶rlaget, 1973).

This fears peaked in the fall of 1941 when the Germans required to transport a division of men

and military material to Finland through Sweden, and again in spring 1942 in view of an expected Allied invasion of Norway.

37 Cf. Karin Kvist Geverts, Ett frÃ¤mmande element i nationen. Svensk flyktingpolitik och de judiska flyktingarna 1938â1944 (Uppsala: Acta Univeristatis Uppsaliensis, 2008).

Considerate Collaborationism: If You Canât Beat Them, Join Them 23

P:45

major supplier of vital goods such as iron ore, steel and bearings to the German

war industry.38 Furthermore, about 200 Swedes volunteered for the Waffen-SS.

The Swedish immigration policy vis-Ã -vis Jewish refugees was very restrictive in the mid- and late 1930s until the outbreak of the war and in practice until

the Norwegian and in particular the Danish Jews needed a safe haven in

October 1943.39 As mentioned before, Sweden tacitly accepted the Nazi âracialâ

laws by endorsing a âJâ stamped into the passports of Germans citizens of Jewish

descent so they could be identified and rejected entry to Sweden. Still, at the beginning of the year 1941 Sweden had admitted about 3,000 Jews escaping from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. In 1942/43, Sweden received up to 1,000

Jewish refugees from Norway40 and in October 1943 welcomed approximately

7,000 Jews from Denmark. No Jews living in Sweden were deported to Nazi concentration camps.41

Victims and Survivors

How many people in each of the countries were killed because of World War II?

How many died because of Nazi German persecution directed directly toward

them? How many Jews in each of the countries became victims of the Holocaust, i.e. were murdered by the Nazis?

The absolute exact numbers are hard to calculate, but estimated approximate figures based on balancing different sources give enough information to

be useful to the present analysis:

As can be seen in Table 1, Finland and Sweden stand out in terms of causalities during World War II among the four Nordic countries. Fighting the war on

the German side, Finland lost by far more lives both in absolute and relative

terms than all of the other Nordic countries taken together, whereas neighboring

Sweden, staying neutral during the war, lost âonlyâ a fraction of that sum â for

38 Cf. Gerard Aalders and Cees Wiebes, Die Kunst der Tarnung: Die geheime Kollaboration neutraler Staaten mit der deutschen Kriegsindustrie. Der Fall Schweden (Frankfurt/Main: Zweitausendeins, 1994).

39 Hans Lindberg, Svensk flyktingpolitik under internationellt tryck 1936â1941 (Stockholm:

AllmÃ¤nna FÃ¶rlaget, 1973).

40 Different sources give varying numbers. Cf. Malin Ekenberg/Anders Mella, Norska flyktingar till Sverige under andra vÃ¤rldskriget (LuleÃ¥: LuleÃ¥ Tekniska Universitet, 2007).

41 Cf. Pontus Rudberg, The Swedish Jews and the Victims of Nazi Terror, 1933â45 (Uppsala:

Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2015).

24 Lars Dencik

P:46

the most part sailors who sank with their ships at sea, but also some who voluntered in the German Waffen-SS.

An interesting comparison is also to be drawn between lost lives in Denmark

and Norway. Both countries had officially declared themselves neutral up to the

beginning of the war, both were attacked and invaded by German troops on the

very same day, April 9, 1940. Denmark did not put up any significant resistance to

the German invasion, the king and government stayed and collaborated with the

German occupiers. In Norway, the opposite is true. Norwegian forces fought the

Table 2: Approximate Numbers of Direct Victims of Nazi German Persecution:

The Nordic Countries.

â DENMARK ï¶,ï°ï°ï° Danes were imprisoned by the Nazis.

ï¶ï°ï° died in German concentration camps.

ïµï³ Danish Jews died in KZ-camps, approx ï±ï°ï° due to the Holocaust.

â FINLAND No Finnish citizens were killed or deported by the Nazis.

â NORWAY ï³ïµ,ï°ï°ï° Norwegians were imprisoned by the Nazis.

ï±,ï´ï°ï° Norwegians died in German concentration camps.

ï·ïµï³ Norwegian Jews died in KZ-camp, approx ï¸ï°ï° due to the

Holocaust.ï´ï²

â SWEDEN No Swedish citizens were killed or deported by the Nazis.

Table 1: Approximation of Number of People Killed during World War II.

The Nordic Countries

COUNTRY Population

ï±ï¹ï³ï¹

Military

causalities

Civilians

killed

Jewish Holocaust

victims

Total people

killed

Killed % of

population

DENMARK ï³,ï·ï¹ïµ,ï°ï°ï° â ï¶,ï°ï°ï° ï±ï°ï° ï¶,ï°ï°ï° ï°.ï±ï¶

FINLAND ï³,ï·ï°ï°,ï°ï°ï° ï¹ï´,ï·ï°ï° ï²,ï±ï°ï° â ï¹ï¶,ï¸ï°ï° ï².ï¶ï²

NORWAY ï²,ï¹ï´ïµ,ï°ï°ï° ï²,ï°ï°ï° ï¸,ï²ï°ï° ï¸ï°ï° ï±ï°,ï²ï°ï° ï°.ï³ïµ

SWEDEN ï¶,ï³ï´ï±,ï°ï°ï° ï±ï°ï° ï²,ï°ï°ï° â ï²,ï±ï°ï° ï°.ï°ï³

The data in the following tables are collected from national sources such as Hvor mange

drÃ¦bte danskere, Danish Ministry of Education, 2005.

42 This amounts to about 40% of the total Norwegian Jewry.

Considerate Collaborationism: If You Canât Beat Them, Join Them 25

P:47

invading German troops and tried to hinder the occupation. When this failed, the

king and the government left the country and continued to direct the resistance to

the German occupation from their exile in London. The costs for this in terms of

lost Norwegian lives turned out to be more than twice as high as was the case in

cooperating Denmark.

Regarding Jewish Holocaust victims, it should be noted that although Finland fought side by side with German troops, no Finnish Jews were rounded up

either by German or by local Finnish Nazis and deported to the Nazi concentration and extermination camps.43 The situation was not entirely different in Denmark. Until October 1943, when the politics of collaboration broke down, the

Danish Jews were on the whole not physically harmed by the German occupiers

because of their Jewishness. When the collaboration policy had broken down, a

comparatively small number of Danish Jews, 472 people, were arrested and

transported to Theresienstadt, from where none of them â in contrast to Jews

from other countries who had been sent to Theresienstadt â were deported to

Auschwitz-Birkenau or any other of the extermination camps.44

Fifty-three Danish Jews died on the way to or in Theresienstadt, not directly

murdered but due to illness, hardships and age. In January 1945, towards the end

of the war, when there were already plans to eliminate the camp, the Swedish

Count Bernadotte, member of the royal family and vice chairman of the Red

Cross of Sweden, succeeded in negotiating with the German authorities, among

them ReichsfÃ¼hrer-SS Heinrich Himmler, to get permission to send buses to Theresienstadt to evacuate Scandinavian citizens, among them the Danish Jews. These

busses, called the White buses because they were painted white with large red

crosses and Swedish flags on their roof and sides, drove back through war-struck

Europe and occupied Denmark to bring them to safety in Sweden. There, the by

far largest share of the Danish Jews, approximately 7,000 people, were already

located, helped and rescued to Sweden by Danish civilians.45

Sweden had stayed outside the war and no Swedish Jews lost their lives in

the Holocaust. In sharp contrast to this stand the events in Norway. In 1942, the

systematic persecution and arrest of all people of Jewish descent intensified in

Norway. A total of 773 Norwegian Jews were deported to Nazi German death

43 Eight foreign (Austrian) Jews were sent to Estonia, seven were killed, one returned.

44 One (1) Danish man â supposedly by mistake â got included in a transport to AuschwitzBirkenau in March 1944. Cf. H.G. Adler, Theresienstadt 1941â1945. The Face of a Coerced Community (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

45 Cf. Bo Lidegaard, Countrymen: The Untold Story of How Denmarkâs Jews Escaped the Nazis

(New York: Knopf, 2013).

26 Lars Dencik

P:48

camps in 1942 and 1943. Only 38 Norwegian Jews survived the camps. This means

that 47.1% of Norwegian Jewry were according to a calculation of Jewish deaths in

WWII.46 The murdered Norwegian Jews constituted more than 50 per cent of all

Norwegians killed during the war.

Before the outbreak of the war, the Norwegian Jews numbered about 2,100.

On the census in 1946, the number had been reduced to 556. Most of them had

survived by escaping to Sweden. In contrast to the Danish Jews who were generally very well received in Denmark upon their return from Sweden, the Norwegian

Jews confronted difficulties at their return home. This could involve problems getting back their apartments, properties and jobs.

Collaborationism and Heroism Re-evaluated

As should be clear by now, the Nordic countries pursued very different policies

and strategies vis-Ã -vis Nazi Germany during World War II. What were their rationales for acting as they did? There were certainly many concerns and mixed, even

contradicting, motives for the actions taken by the states and national authorities.

Still, in the final analysis, one basic question and one overruling rationale for the

policy taken in each of the countries may be delineated. The premise is that there

is little doubt that the pre-war regimes in all of the Nordic countries regarded Nazi

German expansionism as threatening. It was quite clear to them all at the time

that the German military force were overwhelmingly strong compared to their

own national military capabilities.

At the bottom of the challenges facing each of the four neutral Nordic countries at the time of the outbreak of World War II lies the Faustian question: what to

do if a by far stronger and malicious party, a âdevilâ, decides to attack and rule

over your life? A question that compels considerations of both strategic and moral

character, and not least, how to balance such considerations against each other.

One immediate impulse might be to oppose the invader because it would

be morally right to do so regardless. The âdevilâ is the incarnation of evil, and

when he attacks you and even takes over your home, you fight back as much as

you can to show you do not accept his unjust ruling over you and your country.

To you, it is simply the righteous thing to do; others might regard your resistance heroic.

46 Cf. Michelet, Den stÃ¸rste forbrytelsen. Cf. also Bjarne Bruland, Holocaust i Norge. Registrering, deportasjon tilintetgjÃ¸relse (Oslo: Dreyers, 2017).

Considerate Collaborationism: If You Canât Beat Them, Join Them 27

P:49

An opposite, and perhaps less immediate, impulse might be to realize your

own relative weakness and simply give in to the supremacy of the National Socialists. You cannot do anything about his rampage anyway. To you, this appears

as the only sensible option there is, although others might regard your actions as

being both cowardly and unworthy. Collaboration in order to gain advantages for

oneself is seldom regarded as heroic. On the contrary, the party which engages in

this will get their âhands dirtyâ, their reputation will become tainted.

However, a certain degree of collaboration in order to save lives and avoid

more harm than unavoidably necessary might very well be the most humane

thing you can do, given the circumstances. This collaboration then must not be

based in any sympathy or ideological agreement with the âdevilâsâ political or

military aims. On the contrary, it is out of conscious disagreement with these

goals, even as a move to prevent from realizing them, that you engage in negotiations with the Nazis. Collaboration from this point of view consists of carefully considered pragmatic actions taken for calculated strategic reasons. I will

label this considerate collaborationism.

So, let us try to describe the overruling rationale for collaborationism in

each of the four Nordic countries.

Denmark: Pragmatic Collaborationism â Courting

the Nazis

Refraining from fighting back and on the official level de facto accepting the German occupation by engaging in peaceful cooperation, in particular concerning

commerce and trade, while at the same time not giving in to Nazi German ambitions to capture and deport Danish citizens of Jewish descent, served to make the

German occupation of Denmark comparatively mild. In spite of this, on the civilian

level, in particular among university students and Communists, there were some

clandestine groups who put up an organized and armed resistance towards the

presence of the German occupiers. These groups, however, never really provoked

the Germans from continuing their, in comparison to how it went in other Nazi

occupied countries, relatively less violent occupation of Denmark. However, after

the breakdown of the official collaboration policy in October 1943, this changed

drastically. The magnitude of civilian resistance greatly intensified, manifesting

itself in, among others, the widespread assistance of Danish civilians, medical

personnel, fishermen, individual police officers, priests and so on in helping

their Jewish countrymen to escape to Sweden.

28 Lars Dencik

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Danish pragmatism with respect to collaborationism seems to have served

the Danish society and their citizens, including their Jewish citizens, quite well.

Finland: The Enemy of Your Enemy is Your

Friend â Even If He is a Nazi

Given the geopolitical reality, having been attacked by Soviet military forces

and deprived of vital parts of their land, Finland had a primary goal to gain

back what had been occupied by the Soviet Union. The fact the Finland engaged on the German side in their war against the Soviet Union should be understood from this perspective. At the same time, it is noteworthy that although

actually not occupied by Nazi Germany, like Denmark Finland refused to let

their Jewish citizens be rounded up and deported.

Given this, the Finnish military collaborationism appears to have been a

pragmatic way of serving national geopolitical interests as well as, strangely

enough, also the tiny Jewish portion of the Finnish population.

Norway: Official Ideological Collaboration

and Civilian Resistance â Fighting the Nazis

and Spilling Blood

The Norwegian government, including the king, refused to give in to Nazi German claims. Instead, they supported and organized resistance, both military

and civilian, to the German occupation of Norway. The