Nazi germany

Collaboration in wartime not only concerns relations between the occupiers and occupied populations but also the assistance given by any government to a criminal regime. During the Second World War, the collaboration of governments and citizens was a crucial factor in the maintenance of German dominance in continental Europe. It was, moreover, precisely this assistance that allowed for the absolutely unprecedented dimensions of the Holocaust, a crime perpetrated on a European scale.

The occupation of a territory is a common feature of war and brings with it acts of both collaboration and resistance. The development of national consciousness from the end of the 18 th century and the growing identification of citizens with the state changed the way such behaviour was viewed, a moral judgement being attributed to loyalty to the state, and to treason against it.

It cannot be denied that collaboration by governments as well as by individual citizens was a fundamental element in the functioning of German-occupied Europe.

What is nazism class 9

Moreover, unlike the explicit ideological engagement of some Europeans in the Nazi cause, it was by no means a marginal phenomenon. Nor was it limited only to countries occupied by the Wehrmacht: the governments of independent countries such as Finland, Hungary, Romania or Bulgaria collaborated, as did those of neutral countries such as Switzerland, Sweden and Portugal, albeit to varying degrees.

Collaboration, however varied it may be in its forms and motivations, always amounted to support for Nazi Germany, at the very least in terms of the management of the war. But the boundaries between these different forms of collaboration were porous, and many ultra-collaborationists felt they were acting as patriots. In the case both of occupations and alliances whether accepted freely or not collaboration was based on shared interests.

Notably, Nazi Germany relied on occupied countries, satellite states and allies to ensure supply and provisioning; their cooperation thus became indispensable for the war effort. Through their adherence to Nazi positions, moreover, collaborating governments contributed to legitimising policies of aggression, repression and persecution. For their part, collaborating countries attempted to acquire a more honourable position in the new European order under German domination, to safeguard their independence or to revise the provisions or the frontiers of the peace treaties after This phenomenon was visible from onwards in the case of the Balkan states that sought, in particular, to protect themselves from the expansionist designs of the USSR.

In , meanwhile, Vichy France hoped to safeguard its territorial integrity, while at the same time taking advantage of the defeat to establish a totalitarian regime.