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Collaboration with the Third Reich: The Wider Historical Debate and the Role of Hajj Amin al-Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem

 
Filed under: Anti-Semitism, World Jewry
Publication: Jewish Political Studies Review

Jewish Political Studies Review
Volume 26, Numbers 3–4

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to place the collaboration of the Mufti in a comparative European perspective by examining how the problem of collaboration and awareness of the Holocaust have been purged from the collective memories of the various countries of Western Europe. We shall first explain the French origin of the collaboration concept and then distinguish between four distinctive types of collaboration with Nazi Germany: tactical collaboration, neutral collaboration, conditional collaboration and unconditional collaboration. The collaboration of the Mufti, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, was both ideological and military.   His recruitment of Muslims for the Waffen-SS clearly belongs to the most extreme form of collaboration, namely, unconditional collaboration. During the Nazi occupation, such collaboration was supported by no more than two percent of the European population. In exchange for risking their lives for Germany, Heinrich Himmler usually promised such collaborators some kind of racial equality in the Greater German Reich that would emerge after Germany won the war. Finally, we shall focus on postwar Europe, which cultivated memories of resistance and branded all forms of collaboration as a betrayal of the patriotic norm and of the governments- in-exile, thereby rendering superfluous any discussion of the motives and goals of collaboration, as it was considered a political crime. This development, while understandable, has prevented a frank discussion of collaboration and its significance – a problem which has become a piece of unfinished business in our generation.  While much is known about acts of resistance, an understanding of the meaning of collaboration requires more intensive and sustained examination.

I. Introduction

The history of Europe under Nazi domination is the history of a failed continent. According to István Déak, the distinguished Hungarian-American historian, World War II placed “Europe on trial” and in his “considered judgment,” as Christopher R. Browning has put it, “Europe did badly.”1 European states came to terms with the Third Reich as defeated nation-states occupied by Nazi Germany (Bohemia and Moravia, Poland, Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Yugoslavia, Greece, the Baltic countries, parts of the Soviet Union); as its politically more or less independent allies (Finland, Italy, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Croatia and Bulgaria); or as neutrals (Spain, Portugal, Switzerland and Sweden).2 Had they prepared for war more adequately, forged alliances in time, or had collaboration been less rampant, Allied victory would have come earlier and many lives could have been saved.3

This history was “deeply traumatic.” The impotence of the Western European nation-states that had promised to protect their citizens was demonstrated in three ways:  1) their defeat in war was “unprecedented;” 2) their occupation was “humiliating,” and 3) their liberation by foreign armies was also humiliating, even if they were friendly and Allies. But that was not all. The memories of collaboration and complicity had to be repressed. Pieter Lagrou, historian of postwar memories in Western Europe, wrote:

The threatening memory of, at best, impotence, humiliation and loss of meaning and, at worst, complicity could be dealt with only through the prism of resistance and patriotism…. In tracing the legacy of the war in postwar society, collaborationists represent … a dead-end street…. Their national treason was … excluded from the national collective memories.4  

“Indeed, the postwar ideology and identity – of resistance – were to a large extent constructed to counter the legacy of collaboration.”5 Collaboration was not the only historical phenomenon that was excluded. References to Jewish victims in postwar debates on recognition for the victims of Nazi persecution were almost completely absent in The Netherlands and only marginally present in Belgium and France. During the first two postwar decades, “the awareness … of the specificity of the Jewish experience in the universe of Nazi persecution had not permeated public opinion….”  Toward the survivors of genocide “open hostility often prevailed.”6 In post-Vichy France, it took until 1981, – before awareness of the Holocaust – namely, the acknowledgement of national responsibilities for complicity in ethnic cleansing7 – found its way into the historical discourse, thanks to British and American historians.8  In fact, the first overview of Belgian complicity in anti-Jewish policies was not published until 2007.9

After their liberation, entire countries identified with resistance, as a means of legitimizing their role in postwar international politics:

Resistance was crucial to the formation of a national epic. ‘Being liberated’ was too passive a mode to celebrate the recovery of national independence, and gratitude is a weak basis for national identity. For Holland, Belgium and France, glorification of the contribution of the resistance movements was the only basis available for [constructing] a true national myth.10

All over Europe, “from Italy to Poland, from the Netherlands to Romania,” the claim was made that the overwhelming majority of the nation had resisted. The myth of universal resistance emerged.11 In France, for example, thousands of books on the resistance have been published. The broad range of these publications, – from armed resistance to intelligence, from clandestine press to strikes, from commemorational acts to the rescue of Jews, –12 makes it clear that resistance may be rather loosely defined “as any act that impeded the enemy in any way.”13

With the postwar retribution against the collaborationists, the range of acts defined as forms of treason also was wide-ranging: from radio propaganda or literary writing, producing armaments for Nazi Germany, and from volunteering for the Waffen-SS to having sexual relations with an enemy or performing a song and dance routine for French POWs held in Germany (e.g.,  Maurice Chevalier).14 This strongly suggests that, at that time, collaboration was regarded as any act that was supportive of the enemy. The inclusiveness of the terms, “resistance” and “collaboration,” make sense only in the context of the totality of modern war, in which enormous crimes were considered as “ideologically justified necessities.”15 Both are reminiscent of the infamous dichotomy between friend and foe, as proposed by the Nazi legal scholar Carl Schmitt.16

By looking into the origins of the term, “collaboration,” and by distinguishing its different levels, – corresponding with the political agendas of the collaborationists, – this essay seeks to provide the background knowledge necessary in order to appreciate the degree of complicity of Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Lastly, the focus of this essay is on postwar Europe that cultivated memories of resistance and which, by labeling all forms of collaboration as betrayal, made treatment of the entire subject off limits. Thus, Europeans turned their backs on their own history of World War II, when they were, to quote Déak once again, “on trial.”17 British historian, Tony Judt has accused the Europeans of promoting “myths.” Among them are:  that “Nazism was a strictly German phenomenon;” that only the Germans were responsible for the war, for all the suffering and the atrocities; and that Vichy was a mere “aberration in the national history.” These fictions served as a means for repressing the ugly past of collaboration in their drive toward European integration, social harmony and material improvement.18

This “Euro-cant” was “fundamentally false,” because, due to its “collective amnesia,” which lasted twenty years, it denied the collaborationist past a place in European memory.19 Perhaps, this European denial of its own past mistakes and crimes enables Europeans to persist in regarding themselves as model pupils in the school of nations, who can express sentiments of moral outrage at will.

II. The Origins and Four Types of Collaboration

In 1940, after the overwhelming military victories of the Third Reich, twelve governments led by five presidents and seven monarchs had to decide whether to go into exile in London in order to fight Adolf Hitler, or to stay and to try to remain in power by reaching an arrangement with Hitler. Nine left for London; three remained in Europe. The King of Belgium opted for German captivity. The King and government of Denmark accepted a German offer of sovereignty and neutrality, and in France, Marshall Philippe Pétain thought he could reach an arrangement with Hitler.20

For months, Pétain insisted on having a personal conversation with the Führer.21 On October 24, 1940, they met at Montoire, in a small railway station. A few days later, Pétain delivered an address to the French people on the radio:

I am today embarking on a path of collaboration…. This collaboration must be sincere …. Until now I have spoken to you as a father, today I speak to you as a leader.  Follow me and place your faith in eternal France.22

Pétain became immensely popular, much more than his government,23 probably because (as Winston S. Churchill once remarked) in France, loyalty always had been to the government in power, irrespective of one’s personal feelings with regard to its desirability.24 Pétain created the impression that Hitler had offered him “collaboration”, but this was not true.25 Prominent Nazis made sure they did not give any illusions about French equality and therefore, did not use this term.26

What Pétain meant precisely was not entirely clear. The French word, “collaboration,” meant and means roughly the same as, “cooperation,” in English.  The German equivalent was, Zusammenarbeit, literally, “working together.”   “Collaboration” did not yet mean, Kollaboration, “a politically motivated desire for German victory….”27 It did not yet have the connotation of betrayal of the fatherland, and was by no means a serious political crime. As Prince Charles M. Talleyrand-Périgord, the legendary French foreign minister and diplomat, had written:   “All extensions of territory …  by force or by fraud … were cruel jests of political lunacy, whose real effect is to … diminish the happiness … of the governed for the … vanity of those who govern.” And in times like these, according to Talleyrand, a refusal to act amounted to giving further opportunities to the architects of destruction. “Much good could be done, much evil be prevented.”28 Obviously, this amounted to defending collaboration.

One of the leading French collaborators, Jacques Benoist-Méchin, who served as Secretary of State for the Council of Ministers under Vichy,29  later explained that, following the undeniable defeat, there were only three options for France:   1) to work against the conqueror; 2) to work for the conqueror; and, 3) to work with the conqueror. Depending upon the demands of the Nazis and through policies of limited cooperation, the last option would “secure for France a tolerable life in the ‘New Order.’”30 In one way or another, this implied that “collaboration” would constitute some system of informal German rule, through cooperation between French and German authorities.31

It is obvious that the third option of working with the conqueror would not be rewarded by the Allies if they won the war. In all probability, they only would reward those who worked against the Nazi conqueror, namely resistance. The benefits of collaboration depended upon the length of the war and the intensity of the war effort required for Nazi-occupied Europe to win. In the summer of 1940, the German armies seemed invincible. “By conquering the highly industrialised lands of Western Europe, Germany had the real prospect of escaping from its inferior pre-war position and becoming a military-industrial superpower.”32  Most Europeans decided they wanted a “Honeymoon with Hitler.”33 Only British Prime Minister Winston Churchill continued the fight.  British political philosopher, Isaiah Berlin, describes Churchill, who transformed “cowards into brave men:”

[He was] a man larger than life, composed of bigger and simpler elements than   ordinary men, a gigantic historical figure during his own lifetime, superhumanly bold, strong         and imaginative, … an orator of prodigious powers, the saviour of his country, a mythical hero who belongs to legend as much as to reality, the largest human being of our time.34

At the time, Soviet Russia was still Hitler’s ally and the United States was neutral. Therefore, collaboration seemed to make sense. Later, after Germany had invaded the Soviet Union, unnecessarily declared war on the U.S., and Japan had gone to war, the “disproportion of economic resources stood at a ratio of 4:1 against Hitler’s Reich.”35 Germany “sucked both food and labour from its eastern colonies which were rapidly pushed into starvation and increasing mortality.”36 The Third Reich increased its demands upon the occupied peoples in the West in many different ways: financially; economically; as far as deliveries of agricultural and industrial products, including weaponry, were concerned; and in terms of forced labor. “The forced recruitment from occupied Western Europe prompted raucous scenes and wildcat strikes.”37 After the German defeat at Stalingrad (1943), it was difficult to distinguish between working with the conqueror and working for the conqueror:

The tragedy of those who collaborated because they felt that it was in the best interests of France is that they were driven more and more in the camp of those who collaborated because they thought it was in the best interests of Germany. Ironically, the more the prospects of German victory receded, the more the French survival collaborators were compelled to play the role of German victory collaborators.38 

In 1943, the Germans were taking half of all non-agricultural production and an even greater proportion of agricultural produce from France. The near-universal memories of the Occupation are of winter’s inescapable cold and the endless lines for food. A mother of two who was tired of standing on line committed suicide.39 In the summer of 1940, however, it was possible to distinguish working for Germany from working with Germany.

In a seminal work on collaboration across Europe, the Swiss historian and journalist, Werner Rings, names four different forms of collaboration, according to the degree of identification with the ideology of Nazism, as follows: tactical, neutral, conditional and unconditional collaboration.

Tactical collaborationists pretended to cooperate, while they actually were not willing to help the Third Reich, for a variety of motives. The Danish government belonged to this group; likewise, many Jewish Councils. They did not want to work for Nazi Germany, but saw no alternative to working with the Nazi authorities.40 Whether they could have done otherwise, depends on whether one considers non-participation under a dictatorship as an option, as Hannah Arendt argued.41 Perhaps, in theory, this form of defiance might have been possible. But faced with a dictatorship as cruel as Nazi Germany, such an option could have been suicidal. According to Richard J. Overy, the eminent British historian, one should not underestimate the “real power of a system to enforce compliant behaviour:”

In most cases the power of ordinary people to confront or withdraw from the imperatives to comply, whether these are intellectual or institutional or social or psychological, is evidently much more limited than the black/white division between perpetration and dissent would suggest. If the power of ordinary people to say no were so great, they would say no more often.42

The enforcement of compliant behaviour was not inflicted by German authorities equally upon all social groups. Whereas the elites of the occupied countries managed to take care of themselves, the “unfree” and the downtrodden, – Jews, foreigners, the poor, the unemployed, criminals, prisoners of war, the illiterate, – were pressured by local authorities and notables of the occupied populations to do whatever they ordered them to do.43 Richard Overy recalls the example of the illiterate female camp guard portrayed in the novel (and the movie) Der Vorleser (“The Reader”) by Bernhard Schlink, who during her post-liberation cross-examination in court about her failure to open the doors of a burning church to release Jewish prisoners, blurted out to her judge: “what would you have done?” The presiding judge had no answer.44

Richard Vinen’s thoughtful book about occupied France describes a thirty-nine-year-old illiterate woman from Chartres who had taken two German lovers and then volunteered to work in Germany. She did not speak German and therefore, had to communicate with her lovers and employers in pidgin French. She could not read the German documents she had signed, and by the time she had returned to France, she had abandoned all attempts to justify herself. She “insisted to her interrogators that she had never denounced anyone, but beyond that her responses were autistically incommunicative.”45 How can one interpret her behavior? Was she a collaborator or a powerless victim of the transformation of the personal into the political?

Another example is that of a German farmer’s wife who was found in Paris in June 1945, “having smuggled herself aboard a train bringing French deportees back from camps in Germany.”

It transpired that she had had an illicit affair with a French prisoner of war assigned to their farm while her husband was on the eastern front. She had fallen so much in love with this enemy of her country that she had followed him to Paris, where she was picked up by the police.

As Anthony Beevor has noted correctly, these few lines raise many questions. Had her lover not given her the right address?46 Or had he, as so many German soldiers had done in his place, used an alias? This, of course, was a “very minor tragedy” in comparison with everything else that had happened in Eastern Europe, but it remains “a poignant reminder that the consequences of decisions by leaders such as Hitler and Stalin ripped apart any certainty in the traditional fabric of existence.”47

There were also neutral collaborationists, to whom we can refer as “survival collaborators.”48 Sometimes, as a group, it is hard to distinguish them from tactical collaborators. There were many such types. According to Déak, they were “the vast majority of the Europeans.”49 They adapted in order to survive, because life had to go on. The only alternative to working for or in Germany was chaos, unemployment, hunger, or bankruptcy. For example, civil servants in Belgium and France who stayed on under Nazi occupation belonged to this group, despite the fact that they were not Nazis themselves. As was the case with Talleyrand before them, they claimed that they could prevent worse and serve the interests of their own peoples without having political ambitions and a political agenda of their own,50 in contrast to the followers of Pétain with their arch-conservative slogan, “Famille, Travaille, Patrie.51

The term “accommodation,” coined by the Dutch historians Ernst H. Kossmann and Hans Blom and subsequently used by Pieter Lagrou and István Déak, describes this same phenomenon: namely, types of “non-political” cooperation with Nazi Germany by “passive accommodators,” “trying to get by,” staying “neutral” or acting as “bystanders” (all terms used by István Déak), without any ideological commitment to Nazism (Hans Blom).52 This lack of a political agenda, of course, did not truly imply that the work of these bureaucrats or laborers working for Germany was not political. In an era of “total war,” everything is political, and, therefore, Déak’s wording may be unfortunate. The open support of the regimes of occupation by high-ranking civil servants served their personal interests and also was a source of disappointment for many of their countrymen. For example, the members of the Dutch Supreme Court accepted the dismissal of its Jewish president, mr L. E. Visser, without a single word of protest. After the Liberation, they simply refused to comment on their motives and clung to their lucrative positions.53

This group of neutral collaborationists also includes the millions of workers who escaped unemployment and hunger at home by working for Germany, either in their home towns or in Germany proper, – under different forms and degrees of compulsion.54 Similarly, farmers, merchants, industrialists, and builders who did business with Nazi Germany fall in this category. “German production orders” guaranteed much more than mere economic survival;55 they allowed local firms to stay in business and brought both the French and the Dutch economies out of the recessions which resulted from the defeats of 1940.56

There were considerable material rewards for neutral collaboration. One of the few reasons that Nazi Germany respected Swedish neutrality was the large deliveries of iron ore. “In recent accounts,” this trade has been described as “sustaining a genocidal regime with supplies” that could have been cut off. At the same time, ending iron ore exports to the Third Reich would have increased the possibility of German military retaliation. German coal and coke were necessary for the Swedish winter and kept Swedes alive and warm in much the same way that the German war economy kept the French and the Dutch economies afloat.57

The “horizontal” collaborationists across Europe, i.e., women who had relations with German military men, belong to this group as well. The most famous (and glamorous) examples of the more than two million of these women were the French actress, Léonie Barthiat, alias Arlétty, and the Parisian fashion queen, Coco Chanel. It is estimated that German soldiers fathered between 50,000 and 75,000 children in France. Recent research, however, “suggests that the real figure was 200,000.” Often their French mothers were lower-class women who worked as waitresses, shop assistants, chambermaids, as cleaners and cooks for or with the Germans. Their fathers usually were “low-ranking soldiers.”58 In the occupied Dutch territories, approximately 14,000 children were fathered by Germans. Recent research on Denmark has shown that one in ten women who had sexual relations with the Germans gave birth.59

The Dutch historian Karel Berkhoff describes how Ukrainians, many of whom were women, who were brought to German factories by force, and treated as “almost slaves,” actually were satisfied with their lives in Nazi Germany. As late as 1944, they were 90 to 100 percent as productive as German workers because they experienced forms of freedom unknown in the Soviet Union. They felt “freer than ever,” for they talked about whatever they liked without a care.60 They, too, were rewarded, albeit in a non-material sense.

The huge scale of this neutral or “survival” collaboration, which reflected a European-wide need for self-preservation, resulted in a “notoriously murky” …”moral universe,”61 and in the emergence of “informal rules” that governed what was considered to be legitimate, or not, in relations with the Germans. In his seminal book on the French under occupation, Robert Gildea describes these informal but generally respected rules:

On the economic front, it was deemed permissible for a firm to accept a contract to supply the Wehrmacht, provided the employer did not force his employees to work with undue zeal or put pressure on them to go work in Germany.62 The workers in these factories generally enjoyed advantageous conditions, such as fuller rations than the average….63 To rip off the Germans by small-scale black marketeering was just Gallic cunning, but large-scale dealing that deprived the community of scarce resources was not considered right. Socially, it was acceptable to drink with a German in a bar but not to invite him home. If a German was billeted on a family it was not thought proper that he should dine at the family table. Flirting with Germans was normal and to have sex with them for money was not a crime, particularly as the German military was very worried about its men catching VD….64 Between flirting, picking up girls, buying rounds, and paying for casual sex, the lines were extremely fuzzy….65 Exaggerated merrymaking by French women and German soldiers was frowned on, while affairs with Germans by married women such as the wives of POW’s was beyond the pale on every count.66

Working for the Germans did not exclude participation in “patriotic gestures of a symbolic nature,” such as attending the funerals of British airmen who crash-landed,67 listening to the BBC, or reading clandestine newspapers. Dramatic acts of armed resistance, such as the shooting of the pro-French Feldkommandant of Nantes by a communist commando, divided the Nantais for decades after the Liberation, because two days later the Germans retaliated by executing fifty hostages.68 For example, undermining the German war effort by “hiding farm stocks or sending the oldest horse,” handing over the most run-down bicycle to the Germans, going underground and not reporting for work in Germany, or failing to report back for work after leave from Germany, did not involve “too many risks,” and, therefore, was regarded as positive.69 

Generally speaking, actions that undermined the family or the community70were frowned upon. During the Occupation, the power of the family and the community increased71 to the point that anything against them was considered illegitimate.72 According to Richard Vinen, in this way “the social structures of family and community mediated the constraints of occupation.”73 The interests of the community prevailed over those of either the Pétainist or the Gaullist nation.74 Proof of the strong identification with the community was evident in the willingness to produce arms or build fortifications for the Germans, such as the huge Atlantikwall. It benefited the local economy, and thereby, the local community. At the same time, going to war for the Germans did not help the community and was regarded as detrimental to the (Gaullist) nation. According to Gildea, the existence of these rules and the close interaction between French and Germans show that the French were neither “passive victims” nor “cynical collaborators.”75 They demonstrated “imagination, resourcefulness, and Gallic cunning in order to make the Occupation liveable.”76 For the most part, the moral universe in occupied Europe consisted of family first, and if circumstances permitted, then the community, and rarely, the nation, only if its needs did not conflict with those of the family and community.

The last two types of collaboration are conditional and unconditional collaboration. As opposed to neutral collaboration, conditional collaboration was based upon some degree of support for, albeit not a total identification with, Nazi ideology. As a group, conditional collaborationists were marginal in comparison with the tens of millions of neutral collaborationists but they clearly exceeded the small group of unconditional collaborationists. In 1940-1941, Anton A. Mussert, the leader of the Dutch Nazi party in occupied Holland, was eclipsed by the political leaders of the so-called Nederlandsche Unie [Netherlands Union]. The latter was the most successful political movement in Dutch history and the most successful of the conditional collaborationist movements in Europe. Six months after its foundation, it numbered some 800,000 members, one in six adult Dutch men. They despised Mussert’s Nazi party, but accepted adaptation to the German occupation and hoped for some sort of compromise peace between Hitler and Churchill.77 In December 1941, the Nazis suspended the Netherlands Union because of its opposition to Mussert.

Subsequently, Mussert was granted a political monopoly which was not entirely successful because he was not a full-fledged Nazi. Mussert was convinced of Germany’s victory and was as vehemently opposed to democracy and capitalism as were the German Nazis. However, he was not a dogmatic antisemite, nor did he accept the complete subjugation of Holland to Germany. For example, he opposed Holland becoming a German province like Austria, which would have meant that he would no longer play a political role.78 In a report to Berlin, Dr. Arthur Seyss-Inquart, the Nazi Reichskommissar in Holland, characterized Mussert, as a “liberal nationalist” by nature who tried to use fascist methods and who, at the end of the day, was frightened of the Third Reich.79 Seyss-Inquart viewed Mussert as less capable than the average regional party functionary in Germany. Mussert considered the idea of a union between Holland and Flanders in order to leverage Nazi power and demographics. It bothered Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler terribly.

The Nazis were unwilling to share power with Mussert or with other conditional collaborationists elsewhere in Europe. In Norway, an experiment with conditional collaborationist civil servants lasted only five months and likewise, in Luxembourg.80 Like Mussert in Holland and Quisling in Norway, Pétain opposed France becoming a German province. However, his government was divided on many issues. Stanley Hoffman has called this rightist dictatorship “a pluralistic dictatorship.”81 It was anti-liberal, anti-democratic, anti-Marxist and antisemitic, but it was not fascist. There was no fascist party of national unity, no dictator, no military wing of the party, and, most importantly, there was no claim to total power based upon alleged racial superiority.82

III. The Grand Mufti: One of the Few Unconditional Collaborationists

Unconditional collaborationists were a small minority of occupied Europeans. On the average, they could count on the support of fewer than two percent of the population. None of them received the recognition and power from the Nazis they had hoped for. They were a mixed group that included figures such as: “the former socialist and professor of philosophy Marcel Déat, the Russian General Boris Kaminski, the Danish doctor Fritz Clausen, the Norwegian police chief and Justice Minister Jonas Lie, the former Communist Jacques Doriot and the Belgian Catholic fascist Leon Dégrelle.” They were in full agreement with Nazism. Their cooperation was not based upon the extenuating circumstances. It was based on their ideological beliefs. Hence, they were expected to make the sacrifices necessary for a German victory. While their own power was important to them, it is not clear what else they hoped to gain politically. Their total identification with Nazi Germany made it impossible for them to state their specific contribution to Nazi Germany after it had won the war.83 The Nazis enjoyed playing conditional collaborationists against their unconditional counterparts. For example in Holland, Mussert’s rivals were Meinoud M. Rost van Tonningen and later, Henk Feldmeijer.84 In Norway, “Super Collaborator” Jonas Lie opposed Vidkun Quisling.85 Himmler, who supported unconditional collaborationists, followed this policy.

Obviously, Himmler agreed with Hitler that the major objectives of the war were the conquest of living space (Lebensraum) in the East and the extension of the “grossdeutschen” to a “germanischen” (Germanic) or “grossgermanischen” (Great Germanic) empire that would form a supra-national community of the Germanic race.86 This new Germany would include other Germanic peoples, such as the Dutch and the Norwegians. Himmler considered that only his SS was capable of conquering and ruling the East and winning over the Germanic peoples to the idea of their annexation by Germany.

In the East, the SS ruled supreme, but in the West, other Nazi politicians obstructed Himmler’s monopoly of power. Hence, the political relevance of the competition between the conditional collaborationists, supported by other Nazis, among them Martin Bormann, and the unconditional collaborationists, backed by Himmler.87 In the West, however, Himmler also controlled all of the German police forces, an essential political asset in any dictatorship. Of equal political importance was the fact that, at the end of 1941, Hitler gave Himmler permission to recruit foreign volunteers of high racial quality for the SS.88 They were to symbolize the new Great Germanic Empire of the postwar era.

Thus, the ideologues of the SS tended toward radical views regarding race. They despised members “of other races” more than other Nazis. But they favored members of other “Germanic” peoples more than their fellow Nazis did. For example, Gottlob Berger, the SS officer in charge of the recruitment of foreigners, claimed that Flemish workers in Germany ought to be treated like Germans, and the Higher SS and Police Leader in the occupied Dutch territories, Hanns Rauter, believed that “all of the Dutch are truly ethnic Germans.”89 The recruitment of foreign volunteers was not merely a military necessity. For the SS and for Himmler personally, these Germanic fighters symbolized the fact that the SS was the vanguard of the politics of Germanisation. Himmler even remarked that he could imagine a Dutchman, a Dane, or a Norwegian as his successor. In order to attract fighters for the SS, the position of these people in the new Empire had to be presented clearly. Obviously, they could not have independence or sovereignty. The vague offer of racial equality in the new Germanic Empire was the only option.90

These non-German but “Germanic” or “Nordic” men, such as Lie of Norway and Feldmeijer of Holland, fought in the Waffen-SS, which was refashioned from a German elite army into a pan-Germanic army. They risked their lives for German victory. Relatively speaking, Holland supplied more men to the Waffen-SS than had any other occupied territory in Western Europe.91 This was a major development: “Had some 200,000 Britons [voluntarily enlisted], – in terms of relative size of the respective populations, that would have been the British equivalent of the Dutch experience….” This group should not be dismissed as a mere handful.92

Recently, scholars have shown renewed interest in these volunteers. The Dutch historian Evertjan van Roekel set the record straight by examining the diaries of Dutchmen in the SS. He discovered that contrary to previous claims in their postwar memoirs that they knew nothing about the Holocaust, these Dutchmen actually had internalized the antisemitism of their German masters. In their diaries they describe executions of Jews, with bullets and grenades; the hanging of a rabbi from the tower of a synagogue; and the burning of the beards of Jews with petrol.93 A Danish volunteer happily wrote: “Yes, we’ll eradicate these Jews from the surface of the earth….”94

The unconditional ideological and propagandistic collaboration of the Grand Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini has been analyzed in the recent work by Barry Rubin and Wolfgang Schwanitz, in a book by David Motadel, and in this journal, by Jeffrey Herf and by Matthias Künzel. The Mufti’s status as an unconditional collaborationist certainly comes from his propaganda to recruit Muslim volunteers for the Waffen-SS. Himmler’s biographer, Peter Longerich, describes how Himmler accepted Bosnian Muslims to the SS, after he had accepted volunteers from Wallonia and France, who definitely were not regarded as Germanic. By so doing, Himmler reformed the SS a second time, by adding non-Germanic soldiers who fought in a type of foreign legion of the German elite army and the pan-Germanic army.95 David Motadel has described the role of the Grand Mufti. He played “almost no role in SS recruitment in the East.” But he had considerable success in the Balkans:

In the Balkans, Himmler and Berger [the SS-General with recruitment in his portfolio] employed the mufti of Jerusalem to promote enrolment in the Handzar division [of Bosnian Muslims]. In fact, the aim of the mufti’s tour in spring 1943 was not only to win back the trust of the Muslim civil population but also to promote the new division and to give a religious character to SS recruitment in the Balkans. Al-Husayni’s efforts to promote military recruitment during his tour seemed successful. By the time he left the Balkans, thousands of Muslims had enlisted, much to the delight of SS officials.96

As usual, the propaganda disseminated grandiose promises, as follows: “Only if Germany were victorious, would Muslims have an opportunity to gain their independence” from the English, American, French and Russian foreign rulers: “If Germany is defeated, the last hope for you Muslims ever to become free also fades. “The Mufti’s use of this type of propaganda granted “Islamic legitimacy to the recruitment campaign.”

Many of these recruits, however, had “material interests.” They had been soldiers in the Red Army and simply wanted to escape the dreadful POW-camps. They hoped to survive the war in German uniform,97 as it was known that the SS had excellent conditions as far as food and armaments were concerned. Furthermore non-ideological motives were important for non-German volunteers in the SS. In fact, less than half of the Dutch volunteers had been ideologically motivated. The majority were non-political adventurers.98 Apparently, in the Waffen-SS, only the Germans had ideological motivations. For only a real German would want to give his life for his country and his race. Were not Germans the one and only master race? The foreign volunteers introduced problems into the SS. The criminal statistics of the SS show that whereas Germans were prone to commit crimes related to property foreigners tended to desert the ranks.99

In the summer of 1943, the SS organized a training course for the first imams of the Handzar Division. For three weeks they underwent training in Babelsberg, a pleasant Berlin suburb, near the parks of Potsdam, the German Versailles and home of the German movie industry. The aim of the course was to turn the imams into “motivated SS officers.” Hajj Amin al-Husseini “set out the overall agenda of the course,” by making the “most elaborate attempt ever made to connect National Socialist ideas with Islam.” He emphasized four areas that “formed the basis of an alliance between the Third Reich and the Muslim world: ” 1) Germany had never attacked any Islamic state; 2) Germany was fighting “world Judaism,” the ”hereditary enemy of Islam,” as well as England, which had destroyed Muslim rule in India, and Bolshevism, which “tyrannized 40 million Muslims;” 3) According to the Mufti, National Socialism in “many respects” shared the “Islamic worldview,” in its emphasis on the idea of leadership, and; 4) Muslims wanted to die for their ideology as did the Germans. The attitudes of National Socialists and Muslims toward community, family, motherhood, children and work ethic were very similar. Hajj Amin concluded:

It is the task and duty of all Muslims to unite for the defense of this impending threat and to cooperate with their friends hand in hand. The genuine cooperation of the 400 million Muslims with their true friends, the Germans, can have a great influence on the course of the war and is, for both sides, very advantageous.100

As late as April 1944, during the inauguration of a new Institute for Imams in a run-down German hotel, Hajj Amin stated that this indicated the flourishing alliance between Muslims and the Greater German Reich:

Your obligation is not just to lead your comrades in prayer and in religious matters but also to strengthen that moral attitude within them, which Islam demands from the Muslim and which makes him a brave soldier who despises death in order to achieve a free life.101

When the SS planned a training course for imams near Budapest, an incognito visit by the Mufti was scheduled on October 7, 1944. It is not clear, however, if it actually took place.102 The Mufti resembles other unconditional collaborators. According to Motadel, “the Germans consulted and used him when necessary, but he had no power of his own103 in his relations with Nazi politicians. His last contribution to the cause of Nazi Germany was a propaganda article published on November 25, 1944 by the paper of the Eastern Turkic SS Corps, in which Hajj Amin al-Husseini ‘called on the faithful, in the name of Allah, to fight alongside Hitler’s Germany.”104 The Mufti was unwavering in his loyalty to Hitler.

IV. After the Liberation: The Gospel of Resistance and the Imposition of the Patriotic Norm as the Legal Norm

After years of “national mobilization on a unique scale,” Europe was liberated. In order to win this “apocalyptic struggle,” all measures seemed justified “however legally or morally dubious.” The “moral obligation to defeat the enemy at all costs overrode any moral or legal constraints….” The “appeal to national survival” always constituted the “higher morality.”105 According to Tony Judt, “in the circumstances of the liberation, everybody sought to identify with the winners,” namely the Allies and the Resistance.106

Once this total war had been won celebrations of the Resistance in speeches, monuments or in books commissioned by the governments, generally speaking, rewarded the governments that had left for London and supported the legitimacy of the Allies. The latter made it clear that the occupied peoples in the West supported democratic institutions and had not succumbed to the temptations of National Socialism. Since few of those who were occupied had supported the un-conditional political collaborationists, “domestic fascists, even in France, would never have come to power without the victory of their foreign allies.”107

But the “gospel” of the Resistance provided a far from complete description of the record of the occupied populations who had swollen the ranks of the neutral collaborationists. This gospel, in occupied France and elsewhere in occupied Europe, boldly proclaimed that the vast majority of the occupied had behaved as patriotic Frenchmen, Dutchmen, etc.108 What was distinctive about the myth of French Resistance was the incorrect and misleading declaration that the French had liberated themselves. “Liberation meant the recovery of freedom, national unity, and greatness and the leadership of Charles de Gaulle.”109 It was impossible to make this claim in The Netherlands, Norway and Belgium, where local resistance movements contributed almost nothing to the Liberation. The Balkans were the only region that was liberated by its own peoples.110

The Allies did not support the exiled representatives of the occupied states because of their minimal contributions to the war effort. Nor did the Allies support them for what they represented in terms of “popular allegiance in their own countries.” They backed them because they wanted to build “a broad Allied front.”111 It took some imagination, but the Allied victory of 1945 was represented as a “collective victory” of the Allies, the exiled governments and the resistance forces, offered by the generous Anglo-Saxon liberators.112

Obviously, the governments- in-exile of these countries wanted to return to power, if only to prevent Allied military governments from taking over,113 as had been the case in Germany. The prospect of direct Allied rule made the quest for legitimacy by the former governments- in-exile more urgent and catapulted the purge of the Quislings to the top of their political agendas.114 Only by rapidly conducting purges could they prove that they were worthy of power. The view that total war meant war between societies had implications for such purges. It seemed self-evident that those who willingly and knowingly helped the enemy no longer deserved to be a part of democratic and civilized societies. By helping the enemy they had endangered the survival of the very societies to which they belonged in the past. Vengeance became the moral foundation of the retribution for collaboration, even among elites.115

Political scientist Otto Kirchheimer has described how from the summer of 1944 on the patriotic norm of betrayal of the Fatherland in Western Europe became the official legal norm. The new regime in France, then led by General Charles de Gaulle, and the constitutional governments in Belgium, Holland and Norway which returned to their capitals riding on the Allied bayonets, flatly denied the legal existence, the existence de iure,116 of their predecessors, such as Pétain, Quisling, and their collaborationist colleagues and their followers.117 The legal hypothesis that the war between De Gaulle and the constitutional governments, on the one hand, and Nazi Germany, on the other, had never ended, made it possible to apply the patriotic norm with regard to political behavior and to punish many, but by no means all, who had collaborated with the enemy.118

France and Denmark “both punished some 300 per 100,000” countrymen, whereas Belgium punished close to a thousand. The Netherlands punished some 1,200 per 100,000, and record-breaking Norway penalised 1,400 per 100,000.119 Déak estimates that post-World War II courts investigated “one in every twenty adult males” for treason, war crimes or collaboration.120 In 1952, a Dutch legal expert, G.E. Langemeijer, retrospectively discussed the thrust of postwar retribution. Its purpose was to punish those who had publicly abandoned their fighting national- political community, namely the governments- in- exile.121 It was their public political stand during the war that mattered, not that they had profited from war and occupation. Thus, it stood to reason to punish simple people who had become members of Nazi parties and not to bring to law the economic collaborators who had made huge profits during the Occupation.122 As Déak explained,

Just as accommodation to the wishes of the occupier had been popular in most occupied countries, so now did the prosecution of collaborators meet with widespread public approval. It was as if the Europeans hoped to rid themselves of the memory of their compromises and crimes by decimating their own ranks.123

As expected, the result was “universally unsuccessful and inadequate,”124 because some were punished while many others were not.

The women who had performed “horizontal collaboration” were the most visible victims of the new social and legal order. They were dragged through the streets and called “whores;” their hair was shorn and they were prosecuted “for relations with the enemy.” In some cases, women were sentenced up to five years in prison.125 The more prominent among them fared much better. For instance, the French actress Arletty, who had had a relationship with a high-ranking German officer, told her judges: “Si vous ne vouliez pas que je couche avec les Allemands, fallait pas les laisser entrer?” (“If you did not want me to sleep with the Germans, why did you let them enter?”) She was sentenced to eighteen months in prison, but was allowed to serve her time in a private castle in La Houssaye-en-Brie with friends who had been in the Resistance. She was not permitted to perform for three years but could resume her career afterward.126

Because the collaborationists allegedly had formed a political Fifth Column that had fought for the Germans on the home front, they had simply betrayed the Fatherland. Therefore, any discussion of the effectiveness of their policies, which would have included their goals and programs, was ruled out.127 This simplistic interpretation of the history of the occupied populations made it possible to ignore the painful questions, such as the popularity of the Vichy regime,128 or the astonishing success of the Netherlands Union. The patriotic norm of the traditional states had been eroded in many other social circles as well,129 particularly by neutral collaborationists with their preference for the interests of the family and the local community. For many decades after the Liberation, this reality was conveniently forgotten. 

Across Europe, the gospel of Liberation and Resistance concealed “the complexities of the Occupation, and it would be a long time before all the truths were out.”130

* * *

Notes

1 Review by Christopher Browning of István Déak, Europe on Trial: The Story of Collaboration, Resistance and Retribution during World War II (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2015), in: New York Review of Books, August 13, 2015. “Europe did badly,” in: Déak, Europe on Trial, 225. 

2 Europe on Trial, 7-8, 225.

3 Ibid., 42.

4 Pieter Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation: Patriotic Memory and National Recovery in Western Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 2.

5 Ibid., 5.

6 Ibid., 251-252.

7 Ibid., 289; Europe on Trial, 10.

8 Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy et les Juifs (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1981). This book was first published in a French translation. The English version: Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews (New York: Basic Books, 1981).

9 Rudi Van Doorslaer,ed., Emmanuel Debruyne, Frank Seberechts and Nico Wouters, with Lieven Saerens, Gewillig België: Overheid en Jodenvervolging tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff en Antwerpen: Manteau, 2007). 

10 The Legacy, 26.

11 Tony Judt, “The Past is Another Country: Myth and Memory in Postwar Europe,” in:  István Déak, Jan T. Gross, Tony Judt , eds., The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and its Aftermath (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 298.

12 The Legacy, 23-24.

13 Review by Mark Celinscak of Déak, Europe on Trial, in: Michigan War Studies Review, 1 February 2016.

14 René Kok, Max Blokzijl: stem van het nationaal-socialisme (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Sijthoff, 1988); Alice Kaplan, The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brassilach (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000); Europe on Trial, 4-5; Déak, Gross, Judt, The Politics of Retribution in Europe. See also:  Section IV of this essay.

15 Europe on Trial, 13.

16 Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen: Text von 1932 mit einem Vorwort und drei Corrolariën (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1963, 1991).

17 See:  Footnote No. 1.

18 “The Past,” 303, 296, 293.

19 Ibid., 303, 293.

20 Werner Rings, Leben mit dem Feind:  Anpassung und Widerstand in Hitlers Europa (Munich: Kindler Verlag and Zürich: Ex Libris Verlag, 1979), 69. The English translation: Werner Rings, Life with the Enemy: Collaboration and Resistance in Hitler’s Europe, 1939-1945 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982).

21 Leben mit dem Feind, 183.

22 David Littlejohn, The Patriotic Traitors: A History of Collaboration in German-Occupied Europe, 1940-1945 (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1972), 210.

23 Ibid., 209.

24 Pieter Geyl, Debates with Historians (Cleveland, Ohio: The World Publishing Company, 1965), 235-236.

25 Eberhard Jäckel, Die deutsche Frankreichpolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1966), 108.

26 Leben mit dem Feind, 170.

27 Richard Vinen, The Unfree French: Life under the Occupation (London, New York, Toronto: Allen Lane, 2006), 115.

28 Debates with Historians, 226-227.

29 Unfree French, 93.

30 Patriotic Traitors, 210.

31 Robert Gildea, Marianne in Chains: Daily Life in the Heart of France during the German Occupation (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 2002), 18.

32 Nicholas Stargardt, The German War: A Nation under Arms, 1939-1945 (London: The Bodley Head, 2015), 270.

33 Europe on Trial, 41-66.

34 Isaiah Berlin, “Winston Churchill in 1940,” in: Henry Hardy, ed., Isaiah Berlin: Personal Impressions (London: The Hogarth Press, 1980), 16, 23.

35 The German War, 268.

36 Ibid., 274.

37 Ibid., 273.

38 Patriotic Traitors, 211.

39 The Unfree French, 215.

40 Leben mit dem Feind, 197-207 (Denmark); 208-213 (Jewish Councils).

41 Letter from Hannah Arendt to Gershom Scholem, 20 July 1963, in:  Marie-Luise Knott, ed., Hannah Arendt und Gershom Scholem:  Der Briefwechsel: 1939-1963 (Berlin: Judischer Verlag im Suhrkamp Verlag, 2010), 441-442.

42 Richard J. Overy, “Perpetrator Research in International Context” [paper presented at the Berlin Conference on “Täterforschung,” organized by the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung in 2009], www.bpb.de/ Veranstaltungen/Dokumentation/127465/ perpetrator-research-in-a-global-context, 16.

43 The Unfree French, 370.

44 “Perpetrator Research,” 15.

45 The Unfree French, 373-374.

46 Anthony Beevor, The Second World War (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012), 782-783.

47 Ibid., 783.

48 The Patriotic Traitors, 211; Marianne in Chains, 66.

49 Europe on Trial, 2.

50 Debates with Historians, 227; Leben mit dem Feind, 112-114.

51 Leben mit dem Feind, 171-172; The Patriotic Traitors, 208.

52 J.Th.M. Houwink ten Cate, “Generaal Winkelman, secretaris-generaal Hirschfeld en de Duitse bezettingspolitiek in mei-juni 1940,” in: Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 105, 2, 1990, 227-230. See also:  The Legacy, 25, and Europe on Trial, 1-2, 4-5.

53 Corjo Jansen, with Derk Venema, De Hoge Raad en de Tweede Wereldoorlog:  Recht en rechtsbeoefening in de jaren 1930-1950 (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Boom, 2011), 331-332.

54 For the classical study of foreign laborers in the Third Reich, see:  Ulrich Herbert, Fremdarbeiter, Politik und Praxis des “Ausländer-Einsatzes” in der Kriegswirtschaft des Dritten Reiches (Berlin, Bonn: J.H.W. Dietz Verlag, 1985; reprint 1999).

55 Marianne in  Chains, 66.

56 Hein Klemann, Nederland 1938-1948: Economie en samenleving in jaren van oorlog en bezetting (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Boom, 2002), 67-78; Marianne in Chains, 63-64.

57 John Gilmour, Sweden, the Swastika and Stalin: The Swedish Experience in the Second World War (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 125-126.

58 Marianne in Chains, 69; The Unfree French, 160-163.

59 Monika Diederichs, Wie geschoren wordt moet stil zitten: De omgang van Nederlandse meisjes met Duitse militairen (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Boom, 2006), 183-184.

60 Karel Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule (Cambridge, Mass. and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), 256-257.

61 Marianne in Chains, 16.

62 Ibid., 405.

63 Ibid., 65.

64 Ibid., 405.

65 Ibid., 57.

66 Ibid., 405.

67 Ibid., 370.

68 Ibid., 374-378.

69 Ibid., 410-411.

70 Ibid., 405.

71 The Unfree French, 372-373.

72 Marianne in Chains, 405.  Gildea, however, also states that actions that undermined the nation were not legitimate. This seems doubtful because producing arms for the German military was hardly in accordance with the interests of the French nation. This is his only reference to the nation in this context. In his remarkable study, Gildea writes that: “Very often the measure of what was acceptable was its impact on the community: production orders might keep the local economy afloat and people in work, whereas trafficking deprived the locality of scarce resources.” Marianne in Chains, 69. 

73 The Unfree French, 373.

74 Marianne in Chains, 69.

75 Ibid., 405.

76 Ibid., 408.

77 Wichert ten Have, De Nederlandse Unie: Aanpassing, vernieuwing en confrontatie in bezettingstijd 1940-1941 (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1999), 492-501.

78 Leben mit dem Feind, 145.

79 First Report by Reichskommissar Dr. Arthur Seyss-Inquart on the Situation and the Development of Occupied Holland, 29 May-19 July 1940, to Reichsminister Alfred Rosenberg in Berlin, [July, 20, 1940] reprinted in: J.J. van Bolhuis, “Enkele Hoofdfiguren van het Duitse Bestuur,” in: J.J. van Bolhuis, ed., Onderdrukking en Verzet. Nederland in Oorlogstijd (Arnhem: Van Loghum Slaterus and Amsterdam: J.M. Meulenhoff, 1950), vol. 1, 335.

80 Leben mit dem Feind, 165-166.

81 Stanley Hoffmann, “Aspects du Régime de Vichy,” in: Revue Française de Science Politique, vol. VI, no. 1, 1956, 46.

82 Leben mit dem Feind, 173.

83 Ibid., 158-159.

84 Bas Kromhout, De Voorman: Henk Feldmeijer en de Nederlandse SS (Amsterdam / Antwerpen: Atlas Contact, 2012), 485; N.K.C.A. in ‘t Veld, De SS en Nederland (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), vol. 1, 190-197.

85 Terje Emberland and Mathhew Kott, Himmlers Norge: Nordmenn i det storgermanske prosjekt (Oslo: H. Aschehoug & Co., 2012). See also: Bernt Routghvedt, Med penn og pistol: En biografi om politiminister Jonas Lie (Oslo: Cappelen Damm, 2010).

86 Bernd Wegner, Hitlers Politische Soldaten: Die Waffen-SS 1933-1945: Leitbild, Struktur und Funktion einer nationalsozialistischen Elite (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, 1990), 295.

87 Ibid., 296.

88 Ibid., 297.

89 Ibid., 299.

90 Ibid., 299-300.

91 Nederland en de SS, vol. 1, 310.

92The Patriotic Traitors, xiii.

93 Evertjan Van Roekel, Jongens van Nederland: Nederlandse Vrijwiligers in de Waffen-SS (Utrecht Antwerpen: Het Spectrum, 2011), 152-159

94 Claus B. Christensen, Niels B. Poulsen, and Peter Scharff Smith, “The Danish Volunteers in the Waffen SS and their Contribution to the Holocaust and the Nazi War of Extermination,” www.dcism.dk/graphics/CVer/Personlige_CVer/Holocaust_and_Genocide/Publikationen/holocaust_DK_Kap_4, 83.

95 Peter Longerich, Himmler: Hitlers belangrijkste handlanger: Biografie (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 2009), 677-682.

96 David Motadel, Islam and Nazi Germany’s War (Cambridge Mass. /London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), 250.

97 Ibid., 250-251.

98 Jongens van Nederland, 83-84.

99 Hitlers Politische Soldaten, 331. The dominance of race in the SS ideology made it acceptable in the SS to complain endlessly about the non-Germans; this makes it difficult for the historian to interpret exactly how disappointing these non-Germans really were, from disciplinary and military points of view. It seems somewhat unwise to repeat anti-foreign sentiments in the SS, the Order Police or other German units without reservations. For an example of the misunderstanding of the alleged antisemitic and anti-Communist characteristics of the so-called Trawniki men in the German ranks, see:  Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Bataillion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (London: Penguin Books, 2001), 52.

100 Islam and Nazi Germany’s War, 274-275.

101 Ibid., 276.

102 Ibid., Islam, 276.

103 Ibid., Islam, 281.

104 Ibid., 290.

105 Richard Overy, The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945 (London: Penguin Books, 2014), 631-632.

106 Judt, “The Past”, 295.

107 The Legacy, 21.

108 Marianne in Chains, 365.

109 Ibid., 366.

110 Europe on Trial, 225.

111 The Legacy, 27-28.

112 Ibid., 29.

113 Marianne in Chains, 367.

114 The Legacy, 22.

115 Klaus-Dietmar Henke and Hans Woller, eds., Politische Säuberung in Europa: Die Abrechnung mit Faschismus und Kollaboration nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (München: DTV, 1991); Luc Huyse en Steven Dhondt, eds., Onverwerkt verleden:  Collaboratie en Repressie in België, 1942-1952 (Leuven: Kritak, 1991); Sjoerd Faber en Gretha Donker, Bijzonder gewoon:  Het Centraal Archief Bijzondere Rechtspleging (1944-2010) en de “lichte gevallen” (Zwolle: WBooks, 2010); Henk Eefting, De Bijzondere Rechtspleging 1944-1952:  Rampzalige gevolgen voor politieke delinquenten en collaborateurs (Soesterberg; Uitgeverij Aspekt, 2014); Europe on Trial.

116 Otto Kirchheimer, Politische Justiz:  Verwendung juristischer Verfahrensmöglichkeiten zu politischen Zwecken (Stuttgart: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1981), 465.

117 Ibid., 462.

118 Ibid., 465.

119 Hans Fredrik Dahl, Quisling: A Study in Treachery (Cambridge New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 416.  See also: Footnote 1 on that page. These data were compiled by Prof. Luc Huyse of Leuven University.

120 Europe on Trial, 8.

121 G.E. Langemeijer, “Terugblik op de Bijzondere Rechtspleging,” in: De Nieuwe Stem, vol. 7, 1952, 129-143.

122 This was, however, criticized at the time; Wilhelm M.E.N. Noach, De Bijzondere Rechtspleging:  Straf- en Tuchtrechtelijk Optreden tegen Onvaderlandslievend Gedrag uit de Bezettingsjaren (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1948), 165; Joggli Meihuizen, Noodzakelijk kwaad. De bestraffing van de economische collaboratie in Nederland na de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Boom, 2003).

123 Déak, “Introduction,” in: Déak, Gross, Judt, The Politics of Retribution, 3.

124 “The Past,” 301.

125 Marianne in Chains, 52.

126 Arletty, La Défense: Autoportrait (Paris:  Éditions de la Table Ronde, 1971; reprinted by Ramsay Poche Cinéma, 2007).

127 Politische Justiz, 462.

128 Ibid., 465.

129 Ibid., 466.

130 Marianne in Chains, 411.