Wartime collaboration
Wartime collaboration is cooperation with the enemy against one's country of citizenship in wartime. As historian Gerhard Hirschfeld says, it "is as old as war and the occupation of foreign territory".
The term collaborator dates to the 19th century and was used in France during the Napoleonic Wars. The meaning shifted during World War II to designate traitorous collaboration with the enemy. The related term collaborationism is used by historians who restrict the term to a subset of ideological collaborators in Vichy France who actively promoted German victory.
Etymology
The term collaborate dates from 1871, and is a back-formation from collaborator, from the French collaborateur. It was used during the Napoleonic Wars against smugglers trading with England and assisting in the escape of monarchists. It is derived from the Latin collaboratus, past participle of collaborare "work with", from com- "with" + labore "to work".The meaning of "traitorous cooperation with the enemy" dates from 1940, originally in reference to the Vichy Government of France, which cooperated with the Germans after the fall of France and during their occupation, 1940–44. It was first used in the modern sense on 24 October 1940 in a meeting between Marshal Philippe Pétain and Adolf Hitler in Montoire-sur-le-Loir a few months after the Fall of France. Pétain believed that Germany had won the war, and informed the French people that he accepted "collaboration" with Germany.
Definitions
Collaboration in wartime can take many forms, including political, economic, social, sexual, cultural, or military collaboration. The activities undertaken can be treasonous, to varying extent, and in a World War II context generally working with the enemy actively.Stanley Hoffmann subdivided collaboration into involuntary and voluntary. According to him, collaboration can be either servile or ideological. Servile is service to an enemy based on necessity for personal survival or comfort, whereas ideological is advocacy for cooperation with an enemy power. In contrast, Bertram Gordon used the terms "collaborator" and "collaborationist" for ideological and non-ideological collaboration, respectively, in France. James Mace Ward has asserted that, while collaboration is often equated with treason, there was "legitimate collaboration" between civilian internees in the Philippines and their Japanese captors for mutual benefit and to enhance the possibilities of the internees to survive. Collaboration with the Axis Powers in Europe and Asia existed in varying degrees in all the occupied countries.
Collaboration with the enemy in wartime goes back to prehistory, and has always been present. Since World War II, historians have used it to refer to the wartime occupation of France by Germany in World War II. Unlike other defeated countries which capitulated to Germany, whose leaders fled into exile, France signed an armistice, cooperated with the German Reich economically and politically, and used the new situation to effectuate a transfer of power to a cooperative French State under Marshall Phillipe Pétain.
In the context of World War II Europe, and especially in Vichy France, historians draw a distinction between collaboration and collaborator on the one hand, and the related terms collaborationism and collaborationist on the other.
Stanley Hoffmann in 1974 and other historians have used the term collaborationnistes to refer to fascists and Nazi sympathisers who, for anti-communist or other ideological reasons, wished a reinforced collaboration with Hitler's Germany.
Collaborationism refers to those, primarily from the fascist right in Vichy France, who embraced the goal of a German victory as their own, whereas collaboration refers to those among the French who for whatever other reason collaborated with the Germans.
History
Colonialism
In some colonial or occupation conflicts, soldiers of native origin were seen as collaborators. This could be the case of mamluks and janissaries in the Ottoman Empire. In some cases, the meaning was not disrespectful at the beginning, but changed with later use when borrowed: the Ottoman term for the sipahi soldiers became sepoy in British India, which in turn was adapted as cipayo in Spanish or zipaio in Basque with a more overtly pejorative meaning of "mercenary".Harki is the generic term for native Muslim Algerians who served as auxiliaries in the French Army during the Algerian War from 1954 to 1962. The word sometimes applies to all Algerian Muslims who supported French Algeria during the war. The motives for enlisting were mixed. They are regarded as traitors in independent Algeria.
Napoleonic Wars
Afrancesados were upper-and-middle class Spanish supporters of the French occupation of Spain. The afrancesados saw themselves as heirs of enlightened absolutism and saw the arrival of Napoleon as an opportunity to modernize the country.Examples
World War II
During World War II, collaboration existed to varying degrees in German-occupied zones, ranging from government officials to celebrities and ordinary citizens. High-profile German collaborators included Dutch actor Johannes Heesters or English-language radio-personality William Joyce.France
In France, a distinction emerged between the collaborateur and the collaborationniste. The term collaborationist is mainly used to describe individuals enrolled in pseudo-Nazi parties, often based in Paris, whobelieved in fascism or were anti-communists. Collaborators on the other hand, engaged in collaboration for pragmatic reasons, such as carrying out the orders of the occupiers to maintain public order or normal government functions ; commerce ; or to fulfill personal ambitions and greed. Collaborators didn't necessarily believe in fascism or support Nazi Germany.
With the defeat of the Axis, collaborators were often punished by public humiliation, imprisonment, or execution. In France, 10,500 collaborators are estimated to have been executed, some after legal proceedings, others extrajudicially.
British historian Simon Kitson has shown that French authorities did not wait until the Liberation to begin pursuing collaborationists. The Vichy government, itself heavily engaged in collaboration, arrested around 2,000 individuals on charges of passing information to the Germans. They did so to centralise collaboration, ensure that the state maintained a monopoly in Franco-German relations and defend sovereignty so that they could negotiate from a position of strength. It was among the many compromises made by the Vichy government. Adolf Hitler gave Germans in France plentiful opportunities to exploit French weakness and maximize tensions there after June 1940.
On June 25, 1940, Jean Moulin, a French civil servant who served as the first President of the National Council of the Resistance during World War II, was advised by German authorities to sign a declaration condemning an alleged massacre of Chartres civilians by French Senegalese troops. Moulin refused to collaborate, knowing that the bombing massacre was carried out by Germans. He was then incarcerated by the Germans, and cut his throat with glass to prevent himself from giving up information.
Low Countries
In Belgium, collaborators were organized into the VNV party and the DeVlag movement in Flanders, and into the Rexist movement in Wallonia. There was an active collaboration movement in the Netherlands.Norway
, a major in the Norwegian Army and former minister of defence. He became minister-president of Norway in 1942, and attempted to Nazify the country, but was fiercely resisted by most of the population. His name is now synonymous with a high-profile government collaborator, now known as a Quisling.Greece
After the German invasion of Greece, a Nazi-held government was put in place. All three quisling prime ministers,, cooperated with the Axis authorities. Small but active Greek National-Socialist parties, like the Greek National Socialist Party, or openly anti-semitic organisations, like the National Union of Greece, helped German authorities fight the Resistance, and identify and deport Greek Jews.In the last two years of the occupation prime minister Ioanni Rallis, created the Security Battalions, military corps that collaborated openly with the Germans, and had a strong anti-communist ideology. The Security Battalions, along with various far-right and royalist organizations and some of the country's police forces, were directly or indirectly responsible for the brutal killing of thousands of Greeks during the occupation. Contrary to what happened to other European countries, the members of these corps were never tried or punished, due to the Dekemvriana events immediately after the liberation, followed by the White Terror and the Greek Civil War two years later.
Yugoslavia
The main collaborating regime in Yugoslavia was the Independent State of Croatia, a puppet state semi-independent of Nazi Germany. Leon Rupnik was a Slovene general who collaborated as he took control of the semi-independent region of the Italian-occupied southern Slovenia known as the Province of Ljubljana, and which came under German control in 1943.The main collaborationists in East Yugoslavia were the German-puppet Serbian Government of National Salvation established on the German-occupied territory of Serbia, and the Yugoslav royalist Chetniks, who collaborated tactically with the Axis after 1941.