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Genocide in the twentieth century occurred with increasing frequency, from the Armenian catastrophe of World War I, to the Nazi extermination of six million European Jews, to the massacres of their own people by Soviet and Chinese communist leaders. In each of these cases government policies encouraged participation by local populations in the killing, as informants, auxiliary security forces, or even executioners.

Terms and Definitions

The term collaboration is often associated with the betrayal of one's nation to serve a foreign power, and many of those who did so believed they were serving the interests of their country, as well as themselves, by participating in actions at the behest of an outside force, usually the political leadership of another state. Collaboration is also the active participation in genocide by groups or individuals. Collaborators differ from perpetrators in that they are not the initiators of mass murder, but instead provide assistance out of opportunism, ideology, religious hatred, or psychological conditioning. For example, although members of the Nazi SS Action Groups (SS Einsatzgruppen) on the Eastern Front were the primary perpetrators of the Holocaust, especially in 1941 and 1942, Ukrainian peasants who reported hidden Jews were collaborators. Similarly, while many SS officials in occupied France were perpetrators with the primary task of deporting Jews to death camps, the Vichy French police who aided in the location and arrest of Jews were collaborators.

Genocide

The same terms hold true with other cases of genocide over the past century. In the Armenian genocide of World War I the perpetrators were primarily Ottoman military forces concerned about Armenian identification with the Russian enemy. In the commission of this genocide, however, local Turkish villagers in Eastern Anatolia and other provinces collaborated with the forces of the state, denying refuge and aid to those attempting to escape, and protecting only those Armenian women willing to convert to Islam and abandon their Christian heritage. The genocide of 1.5 million Armenians was made possible by collaboration.

The wars in the former Yugoslavia, from 1991 to 1999, involved not just the Serbian military and police forces of Slobodan Milosevic, but also Serbian vigilante groups recruited from peasants and workers throughout Serbia, Croatia, Kosovo, Bosnia, and other regions. These collaborators, although often not formed into organizations of the Yugoslav government, or given any clear guidance from the regime in Belgrade, nonetheless assisted in attacks on other ethnic groups—principally Croatians and Muslim Bosnians—or took opportunistic advantage by occupying the homes and land of those who had been ethnically cleansed. The result was over 200,000 killed and two million refugees, many murdered or uprooted by their neighbors.

The Holocaust

Even in areas not directly occupied by the perpetrating regime, collaborators can exist among the political leadership and security forces of other states. As the most widespread case of genocide in the twentieth century, the Holocaust of European Jews and other minorities provides examples of every kind of approach to collaboration: coperpetrators, collaborators, bystanders, and resisters.

Among the Axis nations, which were allies of Nazi Germany, some states joined in its enthusiastic persecution and destruction of Jews, Romani, and others. In Slovakia and Romanian-occupied territory in the former Soviet Union, the Holocaust took on significant similarities to that practiced by the Third Reich. The Hlinka Guard in Slovakia, a clerical fascist party, killed or aided in the deportation of nearly the entire Jewish Slovak population. Romania was unique, in that while the pro-German government refused to exterminate Jewish citizens on its own soil, its forces murdered tens of thousands of Jews in southwestern Ukraine, which it occupied from 1941 to 1944, even Romanian Jews who had been deported to the area.

The Nazis also found collaborators in the territories they occupied, even when their policies were harsh toward the non-Jewish civilian population. In the USSR local militias in the Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia welcomed the German invasion as liberation from Communism, an ideology they identified with Jews. Nationalistic Baltic citizens created militia groups in response to the collapse of Soviet authority in the summer of 1941 and actively collaborated in the extermination of Jewish communities, in some cases even before the arrival of the first German military or SS forces. The same held true in the Ukraine, where thousands volunteered to assist in the murder of Jews, or reported on hidden Jews or their protectors.

Even some neutral states aided in Nazi efforts to exterminate the Jews of Europe. Switzerland, for example, routinely returned Jewish refugees to Nazi control, and others, including Turkey and Spain, refused to allow Jews to cross their borders unless they had visas allowing them to transit to a third nation, thereby in effect condemning these victims to a terrible fate.

Vichy France, the rump state left after France's defeat in 1940, is a distinct case. Although never officially a member of the Axis and occupied by Nazi Germany after the November 1942 Allied landings in North Africa, it nonetheless played an important role in extending the Holocaust to France. Although the regime of Marshall Henri Pétain and Pierre Laval never officially joined the Axis, it did provide indispensable support to the Nazi extermination of Jews. Vichy police participated in the round-ups of French and foreign Jews in France, and were very effective collaborators even after the Nazi occupation of 1942.

Some states in the Axis, most notably Bulgaria and Italy, before Benito Mussolini's overthrow in 1943, were less collaborationist. Bulgaria's leadership, despite strong German pressure, refused to surrender Bulgarian Jews to the Holocaust, supported in this decision by the local population, Orthodox clergy, and nearly all political organizations. Even Mussolini, so loyal in his devotion to Hitler in other matters, refused to deport Italian Jews to their deaths in Nazi-occupied territory. Some Jews had even been active in the initial leadership of the Fascist Party, although the anti-Semitic measures introduced by Mussolini's government in 1938 put an end to this involvement. In the two cases it seems to have been national pride, rather than any particular identification with Jews, that protected both communities.

Motivations

What motivates collaboration? Why do some chose to participate in genocide? There are a variety of motives, but one sobering truth remains: No twentieth-century regime bent on committing mass murder or genocide has lacked collaborators. Four major factors have been most important in motivating collaboration in genocide: political ideology, opportunism, religious hatred, and psychological conditioning.

Collaboration based on political ideology occurs when there is a convergence of political objectives between the primary perpetrators and others. An example would be the Arrow Cross movement in Hungary during World War II. Even though a German ally, Hungarian dictator Miklós Horthy opposed the Holocaust and gave sanctuary to Jews until 1944. The Hungarian Arrow Cross movement, however, was enthusiastically pro-Nazi anti-Semitic and willingly assisted in the deportation and execution of Jews, eventually arresting Horthy when he tried to stop the killings. The political identification of the Arrow Cross with Nazi Germany was nearly complete, making collaboration an imperative for party members.

Collaboration also arises from opportunistic motives. In occupied Poland the German Order Police and SS offered bribes to peasants who would inform on hidden Jews or act as guides in leading Nazi forces to their locations. While in some cases the Germans offered direct payments of salt, sugar, or alcohol, in other cases they merely held out the opportunity to plunder the possessions of captured Jews. Other Poles blackmailed Jews to provide money or other treasures rather than reporting them to the occupation authorities, but often did so anyway once the savings of such desperate Jews were exhausted.

In addition, collaboration frequently stems from religious hatred or indifference. Catholic priests and members of religious orders collaborated with genocide perpetrated by the Nazis and the Croatian Ustasha satellite regime, including sanctioning the forced conversions of Serbian Orthodox believers and deportations of Jews, Serbs, and Romani to concentration camps. Although some priests opposed the exterminations that followed, few dissented from the Croatian program to remove the Serbian and Jewish populations, resulting in the deaths of over 200,000 Serbs and 50,000 Yugoslav Jews.

Psychological conditioning was also an important factor in promoting collaboration. On the Eastern Front soldiers received lessons in anti-Semitism and Nazi racial theory from educational officers attached to the German army. This, coupled with years of Nazi propaganda in German schools, entertainment, and military training facilities encouraged German soldiers to regard Jews, Russians, and Poles as subhuman, and unworthy of living. Although regular German military forces in World War II did not initially participate in genocide, soon after the invasion of the USSR in June 1941 their forces did provide support to SS actions, and later participated in atrocities against the civilian population and Soviet prisoners of war.

Collaboration was a widespread response to Nazi occupation policies and military victories, and was more common than direct resistance. Given the dominance of Hitler's Germany on the European continent and the benefits to be derived from cooperation, the question is perhaps not why so many collaborated with the Third Reich, but why more did not.

SEE ALSO Bystanders; Perpetrators

Wayne H. Bowen