Complicity in Nazi-Occupied Territories

Complicity in Nazi-Occupied Territories Did local populations in Nazi-occupied territories play a significant role in Nazi atrocities?

Viewpoint: Yes, local populations played a significant role in Nazi atrocities for a variety of reasons, ranging from ideological to criminal.

Viewpoint: No, the actions of local populations were insignificant in terms of the instigation and extent of Nazi atrocities.

Source Database: History in Dispute

Table of Contents Introduction | Viewpoint 1 | Viewpoint 2 | Further Readings | Source Citation

The complicity of local populations and occupation governments in the Holocaust remains a subject both sensitive and controversial. Almost from the beginning of World War II the Germans relied heavily on local helpers who, whatever their specific motives, served their masters voluntarily. Certainly not every auxiliary policeman or similar minor functionary took German pay with conscious aim of killing Jews. Poles and Balts, Ukrainians and Byelorussians, however, did regularly help deport Jews and sequester their property. In western Europe as well, local officials acting under German authority--or in the case of Vichy France, the orders of their own government--enforced anti-Semitic regulations to the letter and beyond. In such environments it was relatively easy to recruit collaborators. The surprise, indeed, would have been if none had been forthcoming. To some degree the Nazis' helpers were part of a long-standing anti-Semitic tradition in Europe. Nevertheless, it is a long step from prejudice and discrimination, even from pogroms, to continuous mass murder. Hatred was sharpened, particularly in the Baltic states and parts of Poland, by a process of associating Jews with Communism and the Soviet Union. On a slightly more refined level, Eastern European nationalist movements conditioned to regard Russia as an ethnic and political enemy saw "cooperation" on the Jewish issue as a way of currying favor with an occupier brutally indifferent to anything or anyone not directly useful to the Third Reich. Perhaps most important in the long run was the general erosion of limits on behaviors fostered, directly and indirectly, by Nazi occupation and Nazi ideology. Where turmoil had become king and randomness a way of life, the question increasingly was not, "Why kill the Jews?," it was "Why not kill them? It doesn't matter anyway." Viewpoint: Yes, local populations played a significant role in Nazi atrocities for a variety of reasons, ranging from ideological to criminal.

One of the more interesting aspects of World War II and the Holocaust was the degree of collaboration the Nazis received from local populations that came under German occupation. This assistance applies almost across the board. In the west, the number of active collaborators in France was considerably larger than the number of people in the French resistance. Even as late as 1944, membership in the resistance did not even approach one percent of the total population. This matter rarely discussed in France, at least until the 1983 trial of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie reopened many old wounds. The 5th Schutzstaffeln (SS) Panzer Division Wiking (Viking Division) contained many Belgian and Dutch volunteers. There was also a Belgian SS unit, the Walloon Brigade, led by one of the leaders of the Belgian Rexist Movement (organized in 1930), Léon Degrelle.

In the east, even in Poland, where three million Poles were killed by the Nazis, Poles did at times take part in atrocities against Jews. In the Ukraine, the local population eagerly collaborated with the Germans when the Wehrmacht (German army) overran the area in 1941. Even after the nature of German rule in the Ukraine became all too apparent, the Nazi authorities could still count on the collaboration of some elements of the local population, as demonstrated in the infamous John Demjanjuk case (1981-1988). As the war turned against the Germans, Ukrainian nationalist organizations such as the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its military wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), taking the approach of "the enemy of my enemy is my enemy," fought a quixotic and ultimately losing struggle against both the retreating Germans and the advancing Soviets. In the Baltic States, the Germans again found a welcoming local population, especially in Estonia and Latvia, where some elements quickly gravitated to the German authorities. It is worth noting that among the ranks of minor Nazi war criminals, there are several Estonians, Latvians, and some Lithuanians. The most notable recent examples are Boleslav Maikovskis and Karl Linnas, both of whom were deported to the Soviet Union from the United States during the 1980s after their true identities and activities, which they had kept from U.S. immigration authorities, were discovered. Given that the differences in the horror of German occupation in these areas could be measured only in degrees, the question remains: how were the Germans able to obtain as much cooperation as they did from the local populations in the areas they conquered?

The answer to this question is complex, but can ultimately be divided into two broad and related categories, ideological and nonideological. On the ideological side, there were many people in Nazi occupied territories who shared aspects of Nazi ideology, most notably anti- Semitism and anti-Bolshevism. In the west some of the more than one hundred thousand Belgian, Dutch, and French who ultimately joined the SS did so to answer the German call for a "crusade against Bolshevism." Others did so out of a sense of adventure, boredom, or the apparent prestige that went with the wearing of the SS uniform. The Germans were able to make use of the fractured nature of French politics, especially the Anglophobia rampant after the 1940s, in influencing the policies of the Vichy government, which was ultimately composed of ideologues (Charles Maurras), unscrupulous opportunists (Pierre Laval), and misguided patriots (Henri Pétain). In the other occupied countries of the west, the Germans had no trouble finding the equivalents of Vidkun Quisling in Norway.

In the east, the Germans clearly did not regard all native populations as mere Untermenschen (subhumans). The populations of the Baltic States were long regarded as Germanic, and each of these countries had nationalist movements that were strongly pro- German. The populations in these areas also had the benefit of having some powerful friends at the Nazi court, ranging from the muddled Nazi Party "philosopher" Alfred Rosenberg (who was a native of Estonia) to the powerful head of the SS, Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler. When the Germans overran these areas in the summer of 1941, Himmler, who was always on the prowl for new sources of manpower, was persuaded by some of his leading subordinates to look with favor upon the populations in those areas.

Mostly Estonians and Latvians answered the call of the anti-Bolshevik crusade. Some fifteen thousand Estonians and six thousand Latvians signed up to join the SS, though only a total of about five thousand men were equipped by April 1943, owing to material shortages. The SS recruited a sufficient number of men in the Baltic States to raise several units, most of which were police battalions. Later in the war, the SS formed one Estonian and two Latvian divisions. These eventually incorporated a Ukrainian unit, the notorious Kaminski Brigade. All of these units were, to some degree, motivated by ideology. They also demonstrated a penchant for committing atrocities. The police battalions came under the control of the local Higher SS Leader and Police Chief. Occasionally in 1941 they worked with the SS Einsatzgruppen (special action commandos) operating in the area. Consequently, the police battalions were involved in many atrocities.

The nonideological cause has several aspects to it. The primary of these, certainly in the east, was revenge, pure and simple. The Ukraine had been subjected to the brutalities of the Russian Revolution from 1917 to 1920. Then followed Soviet premier Joseph Stalin's collectivization drives from 1928 to 1932, with its concomitant deportations and executions, the resulting terror famine in 1932-1933, and finally the massive purges from 1937 to 1939. By 1941 the death toll from Soviet rule, beginning in 1918 and ending in 1941, easily ran more than ten million. Thus it should not have been a surprise that by the summer of 1941 the Ukraine was filled with people who had more than ample reason to seek some degree of vengeance against the Soviet authorities and the representatives of Soviet power. Eastern Poland and the Baltic States were occupied by the Soviet Union in 1939 and 1940, respectively, as part of the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 23 August 1939. Even in the short period of time the Stalinist authorities were in control of these areas, they managed to compile a catalogue of crimes sufficiently grim enough to earn the searing hatred of the local populations. Consequently, many were happy to wreak more than a little revenge upon the Soviet authorities.

This attitude also played a part in the Holocaust. Anti-Semitism had long been a part of the social fabric in the Baltic States, Poland and especially the Ukraine, the scene of several ugly pogroms in the Czarist era. Poles had also conducted pogroms against Jews as late as the winter of 1939-1940, an activity the Germans did little to curtail. Although Stalin was certainly an anti-Semite, the official announced policy of the Soviet Union was to severely condemn anti-Semitism. Given this fact, and the longstanding poor treatment of Jews in these areas, it was not surprising that the Jewish populations in these areas welcomed the Soviet occupation. This development certainly served to reinforce the already strong anti- Semitic aspects of the local nationalist movements, not to mention the notion, so prominent in Nazi ideology, which held that Bolshevism was a creation of the Jews.

Another interesting aspect of Nazi rule both in and outside of Germany was the ability of the Nazis, from Adolf Hitler on down, to corrupt both people and institutions. Hitler, for example, corrupted many of his generals with rather large cash bribes. Nazi officials took advantage of the gross inequities present in the German university system to find aggrieved academics who were more than willing to take over university chairs from fired Jewish colleagues. In the occupied territories, German authorities quickly found the point at which people could be corrupted. Sometimes, it was a matter of mere survival. Many Ukrainian participants in Nazi war crimes, such as Demjanjuk, were captured Soviet soldiers. Given the alternative to a German promise of somewhat better treatment, not to mention survival, their decisions to work with the Germans was to some degree understandable. In Poland, acquiescence to, if not collaboration with, anti-Jewish actions often meant the literal difference between life and death, by starvation or worse. Others, especially in the west, were seduced by the prospect of positions of authority and all of the perquisites--financial and otherwise--that went with it. Finally, as with all totalitarian movements, a fair number of outright criminals, thugs, and degenerates were drawn to Nazisim, largely as a means for them to practice their own depravities. One can only imagine what was going on during the suppression of the Warsaw uprising in 1944 when the Kaminski Brigade, now officially part of the Waffen SS, was criticized by German authorities, including some high ranking SS officers, for excessive cruelty.

While this is certainly no confirmation of Daniel J. Goldhagen's rather overstated argument in Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (1996), it is abundantly clear that the Germans did get substantial help, at least early on, from the local populations in areas they overran for a variety of reasons. In this context, it is always a good idea to keep the words of German playwright Bertolt Brecht in mind. "Caesar crossed the Rubicon and took Rome. Did he do it by himself?"

-- R. L. Dinardo, United States Marine Corps Command and Staff College

Viewpoint: No, the actions of local populations were insignificant in terms of the instigation and extent of Nazi atrocities.

In every German-occupied or allied territory during World War II, some members of the local population participated in large-scale atrocities perpetrated or inspired by the Nazis. Many more, meanwhile, played the important role of impassive bystanders to Nazi crimes. Still, others actively resisted Nazi atrocities and defended the victims. The role and behavior of local populations varied depending on their circumstances in western and eastern Europe, in occupied and unoccupied collaborationist states, and over time. Yet, while the actions of local populations were in many instances significant in terms of absolute numbers or moral implications, they were virtually always insignificant in terms of the instigation and outcome of Nazi atrocities, because the decisive factors were always German intentions and timing.

While the Nazis perpetrated innumerable atrocities against a multitude of victims, the case primarily relevant to the issue of local participation was the Nazi persecution and extermination of the European Jews. In other Nazi atrocities, for example the "euthanasia" program of murdering the mentally and physically handicapped, the genocide of the Sinti and Roma, the murder of Soviet prisoners of war, and the genocidal treatment of non-Jewish Poles, local populations played virtually no role other than that of victims. The Nazi campaign against the Jews, however, was a different matter. Because this campaign was waged throughout Europe, in occupied as well as collaborationist states, it provides the best example of the variety of roles that local populations could perform in Nazi crimes, and the effect, if any, of this participation on the nature and extent of Nazi atrocities.

Across Europe the degree of German control virtually always proved more important than the degree of collaboration on the part of local governments or populations. Whether and when the Nazis occupied a region, how soon they began to kill and deport the Jews of the region, and how early they were driven out by Allied armies nearly always determined the percentage of Jewish victims, regardless of the attitudes and behavior of the non-Jewish population. In addition to the relative insignificance of native anti-Semitism it is important to recognize that in every part of Europe, some individuals risked their lives to help Jews. While this fact does not outweigh the willing contributions of many local inhabitants to the Nazi "Final Solution," it serves as a reminder of the dangers of generalization. The fact that some citizens participated in Nazi atrocities does not mean that the population as a whole collaborated, particularly in view of the severe persecution that local populations frequently faced. Finally, a broad glance at the balance sheet of the Holocaust indicates that while the Nazis took advantage of preexisting anti-Semitism and the willingness of some local collaborations to participate in Nazi atrocities, their participation was not crucial. The Nazis were themselves all too willing and able to carry out their crimes, whether or not local populations assisted them.

The importance of direct German control is evident from the variation in death rates between occupied and collaborationist countries. In countries with collaborationist regimes, which might have been expected to contribute significantly to Nazi crimes, the percentage of Jews killed in the Holocaust was nearly always considerably less than in Nazi-occupied territories, where the local populations enjoyed far less freedom of action. The degree of direct control established by the Nazis was critical in determining the extent of the Holocaust in most cases: in the countries annexed or occupied longest by the Germans--for example, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland, the Baltic States, and Holland--the death rate for Jews ranged from 60 to 90 percent. In countries with collaborationist regimes where the Nazis moved late to deport the Jews, meanwhile--such as France, Italy, Norway, and Denmark--death tolls for Jews did not exceed 50 percent. In Romania, likewise, despite the lack of German occupation and despite the horrific killing of Jews by Romanians independent of Nazi initiatives, more than half of the Jews survived. Finally, in German- allied countries that the Germans never effectively occupied, Bulgaria and Finland, most Jews survived the war. The variation in Jewish death rates demonstrates that the key variables were the degree of German commitment, and the amount of time available to the Germans to impose their will. The only major exception to this trend confirms the pattern: in Hungary, a German-allied country that the Germans occupied late in March 1944, 70 percent of Hungarian Jews perished. Yet, most Hungarian Jews were still alive by spring of 1944, constituting the last major group of Jews remaining in German-held territory. This fact, as well as the close proximity of the Auschwitz prison camp, made it possible for the Germans to concentrate their efforts against the Hungarian Jews. The atrocities carried out by the Hungarian Arrow Cross from late 1944 through early 1945, furthermore, were made possible by the German occupation, which deposed the Hungarian government and allowed a fascist Arrow Cross regime to seize power in October 1944.

As the Hungarian example demonstrates, the Germans were certainly not alone in their capacity to commit mass atrocities. Considerable numbers of local collaborators actively participated in the killing of Jews and Gypsies, especially in eastern Europe, where many thousands of local auxiliaries served in roving killing squads and as death-camp guards. In the wake of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, pogroms--instigated by the Einsatzgruppen (special action commandos)--also raged in the Baltic States and other parts of the occupied Soviet territories. However, as a percentage of the total population, the number of those who took an active part in atrocities was always low, and their criminality should not be assumed to be representative of the total population. Furthermore, the killing in the former Soviet territories took place in the context of a brutal war and occupation which itself followed on the heels of an extended period of chaos and political violence, including World War I (1914-1918), the Russian Revolution (1917-1920), and the Soviet annexation of Poland and the Baltic States (1939-1940). The susceptibility of many individuals to hatred and violence, while hardly justifiable, must be understood within this history and the immediate context for which the German invasion was largely responsible.

Michael R. Marrus has written, in The Holocaust in History (1987), that "murder on such a colossal scale involved the entire organization of society to one degree or another and depended on a measure of support everywhere" in Europe. Much of this support, however, came from collaborationist governments and their bureaucratic and security apparatuses in the deportation process, and not from the general population. While the Nazis recruited camp guards and executioners in eastern Europe, the actual numbers required were relatively small compared to the general population--and, it could be added, to their victims. Several hundred thousand men in the Einsatzgruppen and reserve police units were able to kill as many as two million people. The Treblinka death camp, in which roughly eight hundred thousand Jews perished, reportedly had a staff of about one hundred German and Ukrainian guards. While local auxiliaries indeed played a significant role in these crucial instruments of the Holocaust, the Nazis could have summoned the manpower on their own. The surprising ease with which they recruited killers from local populations in eastern Europe is certainly disturbing, but it was not a prerequisite to the murder campaign that the Nazis initiated.

In addition, it must be emphasized that despite the participation of eastern European collaborators in mass killings, atrocities on this scale would not have taken place without German facilitation. Murderous pogroms had ravaged the eastern European Jewish community in the recent past, but it took the Nazi invasion to transform this experience into a campaign of total annihilation. As documented by Raul Hilberg in The Destruction of the European Jews (1961), the commander of Einsatzgruppe A, General Walther Stahlecker, even reported that "to our surprise, it was not easy at first to set in motion an extensive pogrom against the Jews" because of a lack of enthusiasm on the part of non-Jewish Lithuanians; after some prodding, the latter were convinced to launch pogroms in which ten thousand Jews were slaughtered. In western Europe, with no tradition of state-sponsored murder, local populations were normally not directly involved in killing operations, though collaborators participated in the process of selection and deportation. In both western and eastern Europe, however, the key ingredients of mass murder were German initiative and commitment and not the relative involvement of the local population.

More generally, local populations across Europe demonstrated a discouraging indifference to the plight of Jews. This indifference may have simplified the Nazis' task of separating, deporting, and exterminating Jews. The failure of local populations to maintain solidarity with their Jewish fellow citizens was, however, the result not only of anti-Semitism, but also of genuine obstacles and conflicts of interests directly created by the Germans. Non-Jewish populations were also persecuted and were subjected to severe punishment and collective retribution for demonstrating solidarity with Jews. Non-Jewish resistance groups, especially in Poland, are often criticized for failing to offer more support to Jewish partisans. Yet, the desperation of Jewish resistance fighters, whose entire communities were being destroyed, often conflicted with the needs of non-Jewish resistance groups to build their (limited) strength and to wait for an opportune moment before rising up against the German occupiers. Anti-Semitism undoubtedly contributed to the lack of solidarity and the indifference of the people of occupied territories to the fate of their Jewish fellow citizens, but Nazi terror was more responsible for determining the behavior of local populations, as well as for the policies of persecution.

The question of significance has been dealt with here in historical, and not strictly moral, terms. There is no doubt that everywhere in Europe, more could have been done to help Jews, especially in collaborationist states, but also in occupied ones. Perhaps--though it seems unlikely under the circumstances of total German control--substantial opposition to the "Final Solution" could have made a difference. This argument is, however, counterfactual. If there had been such opposition, it might have been possible for local populations to have had a significant impact on the course of the Holocaust. In fact there was not, and therefore the role of local populations was ultimately insignificant to the outcome of the "Final Solution," which the Nazis alone had the means and the determination to carry out.

-- Daniel Inkelas, Washtenaw Community College

A Ukrainian Guard Recalls the Holocaust Pavel Vladimirovich Leleko, a Ukrainian guard at the infamous Treblinka prison camp from September 1942 to September 1943, was interrogated on 20 February 1945 by Russian counterintelligence officers.

We started to unload the cars with the help of the so-called "blue crew" consisting of doomed prisoners wearing a blue armband on the sleeve.

Those arriving were told that they must first go to the bath house and will then be sent further to the Ukraine. But the sight of the camp, the enormous flaming pyre burning at one end of the camp, the suffocating stench from decomposing bodies that spread from some 10 km around and was particularly strong within the camp itself, made it clear what the place really was.

The people chased out of the cars with whips guessed immediately where they had been brought; some attempted to climb over the barbed wire of the fencing, got caught in it, and we opened fire on those who were trying to escape and killed them. We tried to quiet down the fear-crazed people with heavy clubs.

After all those who were able to walk had been unloaded, only the ailing, the killed and the wounded remained in the railroad cars. These were carried by the prisoners belonging to the "blue crew" into the so-called "infirmary," the name given to the place where the ailing and the wounded were shot and the dead were burned. This place became particularly crowded when the prisoners marked for death who were brought in the railroad cars attempted to commit suicide.

Thus in March 1943 there arrived a train in which half of the prisoners cut their throats and hands with razors. While unloading was going on, the prisoners cut themselves with knives and razors before the eyes of us, the policemen, saying: "anyhow you will kill us." The majority of those who did not die of self-inflicted wounds were shot. After the unloading, all those who could stand on their feet were chased toward the undressing place. There the women were separated from the men and pushed into a special barrack, while the men were told to undress right there outside another barrack.

During the first years of the existence of the camp, women and men undressed together in the same barrack. But it happened once that the prisoners attacked the "chief of the working crew" in the undressing barrack. Somehow the men managed to escape from there. Several policemen and Germans immediately rushed in. One of the Germans started firing into the crowd from his sub-machine gun. After they had stopped shooting, the Germans and the policemen started to beat with clubs and whips those who survived. After this incident, men were assigned to a special place in the open air in which to undress, by the barrack, across from the women's undressing place.

Pushed by the clubs of the Germans and the policemen, the men threw off their clothing, having first handed their valuables and money to a special "cashier's office." The women were obliged to remove their shoes before entering the undressing place. They were forced to remove all their clothing under the supervision of German policemen and prisoners of the so-called "red crew" [sic] Those who resisted were whipped. Very often the Germans and the policemen tore off and cut off the clothing of those who did not want to undress or undressed too slowly. Many women begged to be allowed to keep at least some clothing on their persons, but the German, [sic] smiling cynically, ordered them to undress "to the end."

The policemen or the workers threw to the ground and undressed those who refused to do so. The undressed women were told to hand over all their valuables and money to the "cashier's office." After this the women were driven in groups to another part of the barrack, where 50 prisoners-"hairdressers" were working. The women sat on a long bench and the "hairdressers" cut off their hair. The cut hair were [sic] packed in large bags and sent by trainloads to Germany. One of the Germans told me that in Germany they are used to fill mattresses, also for soft upholstery. He said that this hair make [sic] very good mattresses and the Germans buy them willingly.

After their hair was cut the women were sent in batches to the third section of the camp, to the "bath house," but in reality to the gas chamber to be exterminated there. Before entering the gas chamber building they passed along a long path bordered on both sides with a high fence made of barbed wire and branches. Along the edge of the path stood policemen and Germans. Each one held a whip or a club.

Source: The Nizkor Project, Web Page.