Complicated Complicity

European Collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II

Martina Bitunjac, Julius H. Schoeps, Martina Bitunjac, Julius H. Schoeps

• Publisher: De Gruyter Oldenbourg
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9783110671261
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia tedesca

Complicated Complicity is about the forms taken, motives and spectrum of actions of European collaboration with the Nazis. State authorities, local military organizations and individual players in different countries and areas including France, Scandinavia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Greece, Italy, Portugal and the countries of the former Yugoslavia are discussed in the context of the history of World War II, the history of occupation and everyday life and as an essential influencing factor in the Holocaust.

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. In this time of increasing historical revisionism in Europe, such elucidating discourse is particularly relevant.

Part I

 

Western Countries between Collaboration, Neutrality and Resistance

Considerate Collaborationism: If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them

On Rationales behind Four Nordic Countries’ Very Different Forms of Collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II

Lars Dencik

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 – at the time part of the Kingdom of Denmark – 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-à-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 “devil” 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

For the purpose of the present analysis, it will suffice to present a rough summary. Many elements of resistance and collaborationism that – from other perspectives than adopted for the purpose of this article – 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. “Traitorous cooperation with the enemy” is a term often used with reference to the French Vichy Government, which cooperated closely with the Nazis from 1940–1944. 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 “collaborationism” and “collaboration” 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 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?

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 “to choose the lesser of two evils”. 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 fight...