Richard Rashke - Useful Enemies

Collaboration is a neutral word. It means to work with someone to accomplish a mutually agreed-upon end. In the context of World War II, however, the word collaboration has taken on a pejorative meaning—to help an enemy who is engaged in crimes against humanity. Directly or indirectly by association, the collaborator is, or is perceived as, a contributor to the crime of the enemy.

Such an interpretation of collaboration is too broad to be meaningful or useful. Under that definition, tens of millions of Europeans were guilty of collaborating with the occupying Nazi enemy, in every European country from France in the west to Lithuania in the east.

One of the first politicians to use the term collaboration in the context of World War II was Marshal Philippe Pétain, who set up the Vichy regime in France in July 1940. Pétain proclaimed collaboration with Germany in implementing its genocidal goals as the foundation of the new Vichy government. Other regimes in German-occupied countries like Croatia and Belorussia, to name just two, also founded their governance on similar collaboration with Germany.

The Nazi occupation of a country presented the citizens of that country with five survival options: flee to another country, sit tight and wait it out, resist the occupiers and their puppet governments, work for the occupiers and their puppet governments, or work with them.

Flight was not always possible. When it was, it frequently meant jumping from the fire into the frying pan. Sit tight and wait was a more practical option. But to sit tight and survive frequently necessitated compromises like remaining silent in the face of brutality, robbery, and murder, or looking the other way.

The resistance option was a heroic choice that went beyond the dictates of wartime morality. If a civilian chose to resist the enemy at the risk of his own life and the lives of his family, he could do it in a guerilla or partisan movement like the French Resistance, many of whose fighters ended up at Camp Dora. Or a civilian could resist in smaller, less visible ways while trying to survive and protect his family, as thousands did. He could secretly hide a resistance fighter, tend his wounds, feed her, supply him with tactical information, or warn her of danger. He could assist a downed Allied flier, as many did. All these actions were done at great risk. All went beyond the dictates of wartime morality.

The last two survival options, working for the enemy and working with the enemy, suggest distinctions within the meaning of the term “wartime collaboration.” These distinctions encompass an array of blacks and whites and disturbing shades of gray.

Hundreds of thousands of Europeans worked for the Nazis without necessarily working with them to implement their goals. The word for implies a paying job such as cooking for the Nazi occupiers, minding their children, tending their gardens, washing their cars, cleaning the villas they had confiscated for themselves, becoming their girlfriends for jam and nylons, dancing and singing for them, typing their letters, translating their documents, and interpreting for them.

After the war, many who worked for the Nazis were stigmatized as Nazi collaborators. They were frequently shunned and suffered discrimination if they chose to remain in the town where they were known and recognized, unless everyone else in the town had done the same thing.

Is cooking for the Nazis collaboration?

Is washing the car of a Nazi officer collaboration? What if the car were used in a roundup of Jews destined for Auschwitz?

Is typing for the Nazis collaboration? What if the secretarial job is in a Gestapo office?

Is translating documents for the Nazis collaboration? What if the document being translated is a list of men, women, and children targeted for roundup and execution?

At the other end of the collaboration spectrum, hundreds of thousands of Europeans in both the west and the east crossed a moral divide and worked with the Nazi occupiers. They denounced Jews, Gypsies, resistance fighters, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other Nazi enemies. As paid spies, they infiltrated organizations hostile to the Nazis. They joined Nazi-controlled police forces. They volunteered as Einsatzkommandos. They helped the Germans round up Jews and other civilians. They murdered civilians. They guarded concentration, work, and death camps. They helped gas Jews. They voluntarily joined the German regular army or the Waffen SS.

There were also thousands who stood by and watched the brutal murder of civilians. A German colonel stationed in Kaunas, Lithuania, for example, was passing by a crowd that was jeering, clapping, and shouting “Bravo!” He saw mothers raising their small children over their heads so they could watch whatever was going on. Curious, the officer stopped to investigate.

“On the concrete courtyard,” he later wrote, “there was a blonde man aged around twenty-five, of medium height. He was taking a rest and supporting himself on a wooden club which was as thick as an arm and went up to his chest. At his feet lay fifteen, twenty people who were dead or dying. Water poured from a hose and washed their blood into a drain.

“Just a few paces behind this man stood around twenty men who—guarded by several armed civilians—awaited their gruesome execution in silent submission. Beckoned with a curt wave, the next one stepped up silently and was… beaten to death with the wooden club, and every blow met with enthusiastic cheers from the audience.”

When all the victims were dead, the executioner climbed on the heap of corpses and began playing the Lithuanian national anthem on an accordion. The crowd broke into patriotic song.

Is watching the murder of civilians and doing nothing about it working with the Nazis?

Is cheering and egging on the murderer of Jews working with the Nazis?

Is jeering and spitting on the prisoners marching through the village of Dachau to the SS concentration camp located there working with the Nazis?

Working with the Nazis prompts its own distinction: criminal or noncriminal? Dieter Pohl, a historian at the German Institute for Contemporary History, estimated that more than two hundred thousand non-Germans committed war crimes while working with the Nazis. Shooting a Jew is clearly a collaboration crime. But what about:

Denouncing a Jew either gratis or for a kilo of sugar?

Looting the homes of Jews after they have been murdered?

Guarding a factory as a Trawniki man?

Guarding a Nazi labor camp as a Trawniki man without specifically killing a prisoner?

There are many reasons why Europeans worked with the Nazis. They include force, blackmail, greed, or revenge; fear of being killed if one refused; fear of starvation or losing one’s job; the need to feed and protect one’s family; an opportunity to improve or advance one’s career; a chance to buy a better lifestyle; and an opportunity to murder one’s ideological and religious enemies—communists, Jews, Poles, Gypsies, Orthodox Serbs—without being punished for the crime.

Motivation for working with the Nazis prompts another distinction: voluntary or involuntary. That distinction asks the question: Under what circumstances in wartime is it morally permissible to voluntarily work for the Nazis?

Involuntary collaboration is frequently a simple black-and-white issue. The Nazis conscripted non-German civilians of occupied countries into the Waffen SS. They were never asked, “Would you like to help us kill Soviet soldiers?” At the death camps, worker Jews were not asked, “Would you like to cut the hair of the girls and women about to die in the gas chambers?” The eighty non-German guards transferred from Trawniki to Sobibor were not asked, “Would you like to work in a death camp?”