Complicated Complicity: European Collaboration with Nazi Germany During World War II 3110671085, 9783110671087

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Complicated Complicity

Complicated Complicity European Collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II Edited by Martina Bitunjac and Julius H. Schoeps

ISBN 978-3-11-067108-7 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-067118-6 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-067126-1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2021932031 Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover: With the kind permission of Yad Vashem Archives. The World Holocaust Remembrance Center. The photo shows Slovak soldiers humiliating Lipe Baum, a Jewish man, during the deportation of the Jews in Stropkov. Slovakia, May 23, 1942. Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Foreword by the Editors Due to the rise of Nazism, the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 and the subsequent occupation of other countries by the Wehrmacht, large parts of Europe found themselves in a difficult political, economic and military situation. At the same time, as both occupying force and Axis partner, the Nazis were establishing governments that would cooperate with them. In many of these countries, war crimes and genocidal policies against various minorities within the country were intentional, most often in the course of their own territorial pursuits. Against the background of the war, European countries and societies reacted with a mixture of passivity, fatalism, collaboration but also resistance. Yet what did this situation mean for public life, the prospects of the particular country and for the existentially endangered groups and individuals? Which forces actively collaborated with the occupiers and tried to turn this to their own advantage? Collaboration, also referred to as collaborationism in professional circles, is today considered to be one of the most problematic aspects of the history of occupation in World War II as well as of the Holocaust. In this context, the starting points, motivations, behaviors, reactions and actions taken by political systems, institutions, groups and individuals varied widely and depended on diverse factors and the dynamics of events determined by the war and filled with violence. Viewing the different forms all over Europe of collaboration with Nazi Germany is less complicated due to the fact that only instances of resistance – real or imagined – against the former dominance of Germany are subject to debate. This generally politicized narrative was cultivated especially in the post-war period to strengthen the sense of community and national identity in the Eastern Bloc countries, but also in France and Italy. At least in some European countries, a more revisionist presentation of the phenomenon of collaboration and the significance it had in World War II has come to prevail. Narratives about the country’s own victims and losses compete with memories of those minorities and objects of hate, including Jews, Sinti and Roma, who were left completely defenseless and at the mercy of the German occupying forces, their allies and collaborators. In May 2019 in Rome, the conference “Collaborationism with Nazi Germany. A European Controversy”, organized by the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies in Potsdam and the La Sapienza University in Rome, was dedicated to this topic, analytically comprehensive yet regionally specific. It brought researchers and academics from many different countries together, who from their different perspectives reflected on the similarities and differences in European collaboration with Nazi Germany. Some of the contributions published in this volume are based on lectures given at this conference. Additional https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671186-202

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contributions and country analyses have been added to provide a more precise view of this phenomenon and to round off the volume. The present volume does not claim to be complete. This book cannot and does not intend to be. What is presented here is an attempt at taking stock to describe and evaluate the behavior of some countries in World War II. Moreover, this book seeks to stimulate further studies and academic and social discussions about collaboration, particularly in those countries where the country’s collaboration with the Nazis is ignored, unmentioned or taboo.

Research, Terminology and Theoretical Approaches Since the 1970s, people have begun to consider collaboration a subject for research, especially in Western Europe.1 Meanwhile, this wide-ranging topic – which still includes some “blind spots” – has become an established field of research.2 There are now a large number of works with country-specific studies on collaboration,3 which deal in particular with the trans-national participation in the organized mass murder of European Jews.4 Some of these works are dedicated to the cooperation of the military with the German Wehrmacht on its campaigns of conquest;5 others examine economic relations with Nazi

1 For more on this see: Werner Röhr, ed., Europa unterm Hakenkreuz. Okkupation und Kollaboration, 1938–1945 (Berlin/Heidelberg: Hüthig, 1994), 17–30. 2 For more on this see: Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, “Kollaboration im Zweiten Weltkrieg und im Holocaust. Ein analytisches Konzept,” Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte, 19.07.2019, accessed August 27, 2020, https://docupedia.de/zg/Rossolinski-Liebe_kollaboration_v1_de_2019, 1–32. 3 Cf. this volume’s bibliography organized by country and the comprehensive overviews by Peter Black, Béla Rásky and Marianne Windsperger, eds., Collaboration in Eastern Europe during the Second World War and the Holocaust (Vienna/Hamburg: New Academic Press, 2019); Klaus Kellmann, Dimensionen der Mittäterschaft. Die europäische Kollaboration mit dem Dritten Reich (Vienna/Colongne/Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 2019); István Deák, Europe on Trial. The Story of Collaboration, Resistance, and Retribution during World War II (Boulder: Westview Press, 2015); Joachim Tauber, ed. “Kollaboration” in Nordosteuropa. Erscheinungsformen und Deutungen im 20. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006); Christoph Dieckmann, Babette Qiunkert and Tatjana Tönsmeyer, eds. Kooperation und Verbrechen. Formen der “Kollaboration” im östlichen Europa 1939–1945 (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2003); Werner Röhr, ed., Europa unterm Hakenkreuz. Okkupation und Kollaboration, 1938–1945 (Berlin/Heidelberg: Hüthig, 1994). 4 Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003); Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933–1945. 2 vol. (New York: Harper Perennial 1998/2008). 5 See f. e. Jochen Böhler and Robert Gerwarth, eds., The Waffen-SS. A European History (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Rolf-Dieter Müller, An der Seite der Wehrmacht.

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Germany.6 Even specific professions that shaped the particular societies have become subject to academic research, i.e. the collaboration of intellectuals7 or moviemakers.8 Studies on the so-called “sentimental” collaboration, especially in France and Italy9 along with the actions of Fascist and nationalistic women10 also include gender-specific questions and problems. The forced collaboration of the Judenräte, the Jewish police and the so-called “Greifer” with the Nazis11 has also increasingly come into the focus of research. It has also been the subject of memoirs and novels.12 Movies13 have been made showing the phenomenon of

Hitlers ausländische Helfer beim “Kreuzzug gegen den Bolschewismus” 1941–1945 (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2007). 6 See f. e. Dietrich Eichholtz, “Wirtschaftskollaboration und ‘Ostgesellschaften’ in NS-besetzten Ländern (1941–1944)” in Okkupation und Kollaboration in Europa unterm Hakenkreuz. Okkupation und Kollaboration (1938–1945), ed. Werner Röhr (Berlin/Heidelberg: Hüthig, 1994), 433–459; Richard J. Overy, ed., Die “Neuordnung” Europas: NS-Wirtschaftspolitik in den besetzten Gebieten (Berlin: Metropol, 1997). 7 Maria Björkman, Patrik Lundell and Sven Widmalm, eds., Intellectual Collaboration with the Third Reich. Treason or Reason? (London/New York: Routeledge, 2019). 8 Roel Vande Winkel and David Welch, eds., Cinema and the Swastika: The International Expansion of the Third Reich Cinema (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Markus Spieker, Hollywood unterm Hackenkreuz: der amerikanische Spielfilm im Dritten Reich (Trier: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 1999). 9 This is also known as “horizontal collaboration”. Cf. Fabrice Virgili, Shorn Women: Gender and Punishment in Liberation France (Oxford: Berg, 2002); Nicoletta Moccia, Il male commune nella storia. Le donne collaborazioniste processate a Milano dal 1954 al 1947 (Milan/Udine: Mimesis, 2019). Compare to the study on women in Poland: Maren Röger, Kriegsbeziehungen: Intimität, Gewalt und Prostitution im besetzten Polen 1939 bis 1945 (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 2015). 10 Cf. the new studies on female Fascists in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe Andrea Pető, Láthatatlan elkövetők – Nők a magyarországi nyilas mozgalomban (Budapest: Jaffa Kiadó, 2019); Olena Petrenko, Unter Männern. Frauen im ukrainischen nationalistischen Untergrund 1944–1954 (Paderborn et al.: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2018), and Martina Bitunjac, Verwicklung. Beteiligung. Unrecht. Frauen und die Ustaša-Bewegung (Berlin: Duncker&Humblot, 2018). 11 Cf. Isaiah Trunk, Judenrat. The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation (New York: University of Nebraska Press, 1972) and Julius H. Schoeps, “Die Zusammenarbeit der Judenräte mit den NS-Behörden im historisch-kritischen Urteil der Nachwelt,” in Jewish Lifeworlds and Jewish Thought: Festschrift Presented to Karl E. Grözinger on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday, ed. Nathanael Riemer (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2012), 343–348. 12 Cf. f. e. Léon Werth, 33 Days. A Memoir, introduction by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (New York: Melville House, 2015) and Irène Némirovsky, Suite française (Paris: Gallimard, 2006). 13 Over recent years, there have been several movies released dealing with this topic: at the beginning of the German-Russian Holocaust film “Paradies” (2016) by Andrej Kontschalowski, collaboration by French security forces is discussed. The German three-part tv movie “Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter” (2013) from the director Philipp Kadelbach deals with anti-Semitism in the Polish resistance movement and among collaborating Poles, which caused controversial headlines not

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collaboration to a wide audience. All of this makes it clear that collaboration and resistance are topics that play an increasing role in the discourses of memory.14 Despite the interdisciplinary research and medial reflections that are already available, no satisfactory uniform definition of the phenomenon of “collaboration” exists, primarily due to the complexity and variability of the term. Co-working, cooperation, collusion, complicity, betrayal – historiography has used various terms to make the topic of collaboration both tangible and understandable. It is, however, clear that these terms are insufficient, some of them even problematic. This is especially true for the alternative use of the word “cooperation”, a word which implicitly suggests working together with the occupiers as equals.15 The interpretation of the term is further complicated by the fact that the historical perception and interpretation of collaboration varies widely: Resistance fighters and political opponents of the Nazi regime considered all forms of working together with the German occupying forces, even if it was the result of the unequal power structure, as treason. From the politician to the businessman, the worker to the simple domestic servant, the anti-Fascist resistance considered all those who worked for the Germans to be their supporters and thus traitors. The Soviets even considered forced laborers, who were forced to work under inhumane conditions in Nazi Germany, to be collaborators. After their liberation and return home, they were often killed or imprisoned. In this light, what we understand by “collaboration” is an extremely elastic and often morally charged term. In fact, a broader definition of “collaboration” includes a wide range of coworking between politicians, the military, representatives of business, culture and other professions. The term leaves the exact motive – coercion, persuasion, adaption or pragmatism – just as undefined as Germany’s various forms of political domination in the occupied or allied countries. Despite this and other concerns, the word “collaboration” has become established as a catch-all for the various forms of the asymmetrical cooperation with the Nazis – even during

only in Poland. The Hollywood movie “Defiance” (2008) telling the true story of the Bielski Partisans, Jewish resistance fighters, and shows the collaboration of Belarusian police. 14 John-Paul Himka and Joanna B. Michlic, eds., Bringing the Dark Past to Light: the Reception of Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 2013); Harald Welzer, ed. Der Krieg der Erinnerung: Holocaust, Kollaboration und Widerstand im europäischen Gedächtnis (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 2007). 15 Cf. Rossoliński-Liebe, “Kollaboration im Zweiten Weltkrieg und im Holocaust. Ein analytisches Konzept,” 2.

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World War II. There are no alternative suggestions of what to call this phenomenon or are rarely if ever considered.16 In the present volume, we define collaboration as a part of the history of World War II, the history of occupation and everyday life and as an essential influencing factor in the Holocaust. Collaboration is understood to be a reaction to offerings and (forced) demands made by the Nazis that legitimized, accompanied, exercised, supported and/or made the Nazi policies possible. However, the term, understood as a catch-all term, cannot provide a clear separation of the conditions and circumstances under which this happened.17 In the academic debate on this topic, which should be interdisciplinary and conducted from an international perspective, the analysis of spheres of influence and room for maneuver of the respective governments, institutions and people is of primary importance.

Dimensions of Collaboration Collaboration took place in every country in Europe which was occupied by or allied with Nazi Germany or which were neutral. Its variety of forms and expressions encompassed all social groups, political parties and organizations, economic and cultural sectors, the church and the military along with the authorities and the police. However, an examination of this spectrum must take into account the various methods of Nazi rule, such as military and civil administration. The Nazis were the ones who dictated how the political collaboration would proceed with each country. Although the Germans pursued an ideologically based and economically motivated policy throughout Europe, unlike in Western Europe, the “new masters” exercised a more aggressive use of power of “domination, administration and exploitation” in the East. Three of their main goals of occupation were the territorial expansion of Lebensraum, the exploitation of the respective country’s human and material resources and the annihilation of undesirable populations: the Slavic so-called “subhumans”, the Jews, Roma, homosexuals, the sick, Free Masons and the politically unreliable.18

16 Cf. Kellmann, Dimensionen der Mittäterschaft, 12. 17 Cf. Röhr, Okkupation und Kollaboration in Europa unterm Hakenkreuz, 63, 84. 18 Hagen Fleischer, “Nationalsozialistische Besatzungsherrschaft im Vergleich: Versuch einer Synopse,” in Anpassung. Kollaboration. Widerstand. Kollektive Reaktionen auf die Okkupation, eds. Wolfgang Benz, Johannes Houwink ten Cate and Gerhard Otto (Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 1996), 257–302, here 271 f.

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All key positions in public life were placed under German control, so that self-administration by locals was only possible at the lowest levels, as Stephan Lehnstaedt and Joachim Tauber illustrate in the present volume in the countries of Poland and Lithuania. The persecution policy carried out by the German occupiers in Eastern Europe included the use of mass terror. Resistance in particular was met with retaliation and harsh sanctions against the civilian population. For example, in the Czech town of Lidice after the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the director of the Reich Main Security Office and Deputy Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, or in the Serbian towns of Kragujevac and Kraljevo, where more than 4,000 civilians were killed by the Wehrmacht in October 1941.19 In contrast to the rigid policy of exploitation and violence seen in Eastern Europe, the German occupying forces were more “moderate” in Western Europe. Unlike in the East, in the Netherlands or in Scandinavia, for example, a national administration was re-established under German control. The population in Norway, for example, experienced better treatment overall by the Nazi occupying forces, as the local population was considered to be “racially” more valuable than the Slavs. In addition, the occupying force profited from the existence of and committed cooperation from Nazi or Fascist political groups, parties or sympathizers which existed in every country and who seized this opportunity to establish themselves in power politics.20 Nevertheless, the willingness to cooperate with the Germans depended on various factors, such as how the new rulers treated the civilian population and what the local pre-existing historical enemy stereotypes were, determined by previous wars (with the exceptions of Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands). Other influencing factors included the moment of surprise at the unexpected German invasion and the subsequent defeat of the respective country, as it was, for instance in Poland and Yugoslavia, but also in the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway.21 In countries like Slovakia, collaboration was seen as a guarantee for the creation and continued existence of their own state under German influence. In addition, some countries profited from their own territorial ambitions being

19 Cf. Lukia Drulia, ed., Von Lidice bis Kalavryta: Widerstand und Besatzungsterror. Studien zur Repressalienpraxis im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 1999) and Oliver von Wrochem, ed., Repressalien und Terror. “Vergeltungsaktionen” im deutsch besetzten Europa 1939–1945 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2017). 20 Cf. Arndt Bauerkämper and Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, eds., Fascism without Borders: Transnational Connections and Cooperation between Movements and Regimes in Europe from 1918 to 1945 (New York: Berghahn, 2017). 21 Fleischer, “Nationalsozialistische Besatzungsherrschaft im Vergleich: Versuch einer Synopse,” 262 f.

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approved of by Nazi Germany. Countries which collaborated politically also had enough room to maneuver to avoid German demands regarding the deportation of the Jews and other areas of collaboration, particularly when their own national interests were at stake. The behavior of each local population should be seen in relation to the actions of their governments. The line between voluntary and forced collaboration was often very thin. Some people became involved out of necessity, they collaborated for fear of deportation and reprisals; others did so for the opportunities for personal advancement, an improvement in living conditions, pragmatism, corruption, personal gain or ideological conviction. Alternatively, they remained passive, went about their daily lives as usual and thus supported the criminal activities in their country with their indifference. It can be assumed that without the aid and abettance of the local authorities and the conformist behavior of the local population, the German occupying machinery could not have functioned as it ultimately did. The most tragic effects of collaboration were seen in the persecution and murder of six million Jews and those classified as Jews. Anti-Semitism in all its manifestations was prevalent all throughout Europe; it was present in all social classes and now underwent a political and criminal radicalization. Collaboration with the Germans fell on ears already fertile with anti-Semitism, which, in some countries had already been enshrined into law before the German occupation, like in Hungary (in 1920) and in Yugoslavia (in 1940). In allied and cooperative countries, discussions about the execution of the persecution measures dealt only with formalities and the division of tasks to complete the deportation. There were, however, also regimes, such as the Croatian Ustaša, which also acted autonomously in the extermination of Jews. They did not require instructions; they acted on their own initiative accordingly.

About this Book and its Topics Most of the contributions in this volume range between country-specific overviews and micro-historical studies. The present volume will try to show facets of the complexity of the history of collaboration from different perspectives. These facets range between decisions of state and reactions to Nazi proposals, national and economic interests, country-specific aspirations of hegemony, pragmatic decisions and Nazi pressure. The local cooperation and assistance with Nazi Germany in the handing and implementation of the Holocaust takes a central place in this book, especially since the “extermination” of the entire Jewish population was an expressly stated

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goal of the Nazis. In order to carry this out, special Judenberater (Jewish advisors) were made available to some countries. Anti-Jewish laws formed the basis for discrimination and deportation. In addition, military units and local police forces were set up to implement the deportation and annihilation of the Jews. Moreover, there was an enormous level of participation from governments, political players and “normal” people in the process of exterminating the Jews and in receiving expropriated Jewish property, motivated by anti-Semitism and other factors. The clarification of this European readiness to contribute to the Holocaust, which played into the Germans’ hands, has in retrospect led to the demythification of the still widespread perception of German sole responsibility and/or guilt. The fact that this guilt does not correspond to the historical overview of collaboration is already made clear in the first chapter of the present volume “Western Countries between Collaboration, Neutrality and Resistance”, in which Lars Dencik describes and analyzes the various forms of collaboration in the Scandinavian countries. Valentina Sommella concentrates on the political-military collaboration of the Vichy regime and the French involvement in the persecution of the Jews, highlighting the interaction between Generals Pétain and de Gaulle, who divided the country into those who collaborated and those who took up armed resistance against the German occupying forces. In the second chapter “Aspects of Collaboration in Central Europe: The Cases of Poland and Hungary”, in his country study of occupied Poland, Stephan Lehnstaedt focuses on the political and administrative collaboration along with the (military) cooperation of ethnic Germans, while Alessandro Vagnini illustrates German-Hungarian relations primarily on the basis of the anti-Semitism already pervasive and enshrined by law in Hungary before the German invasion in March 1944. In the chapter “Countries of Eastern Europe: Political Interests, Anti-Semitism and Military Support”, Olaf Glöckner’s overview of the situation reveals some facets of Ukrainian collaboration in the military involvement in the war against the Soviet army and the murder of the Jews through mass violence. Giuseppe Motta focuses on political, economic and ideological anti-Semitic collaboration in the case of Romania. In his country analysis of Lithuania, Joachim Tauber concentrates particularly on the political-administrative level, taking into account the ghettos in Vilnius, Kaunas and Šiauliai run by local authorities and their participation in the Holocaust. In the chapter “Collaboration in Slavic and Balkan Countries”, Martina Bitunjac illustrates the persecution and murder of the Jews in the Slovak State and the Independent State of Croatia, both of which cooperated with Nazi Germany. Björn Opfer-Klinger analyzes different political aspects (i.e. diplomacy, the economy) of the Bulgarian collaboration with the Third Reich, both before

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and during the war, while Meinolf Arens and Katerina Kakasheva deal with two special regions of the Balkans, occupied Vardar Macedonia and West Banat – scenes of German, Bulgarian and local terror with particularly aggressive persecution of the Jews and mass violence. The following chapter “South European Case Studies: Greece, Italy and Portugal” begins with Ioannis Zelepos’ examination of Greek military formations, the security battalions, within the framework of German occupation politics. In her micro-historical study, Ester Capuzzo illuminates the effects of the Italian “racial laws” on the Jewish community in Fiume (Rijeka) on the territory of what is now Croatia, which fought to survive the at times collaborating, at times competing Italian, German and Croatian forces. Fernando Clara demonstrates that collaboration also encompassed the cultural sphere in neutral European countries, using the example of the various ways the Portuguese Secretariat of National Propaganda in the Estado Novo had room to maneuver. In the final chapter “Reflections on Jewish ‘Cooperation’ with the Nazis in Western and Eastern Europe”, Julius H. Schoeps devotes himself to the forced cooperation of the Judenräten (Jewish Councils) and individual Jewish informers, the so-called Greifer, who were fighting to survive and after World War II found themselves confronted with accusations of having betrayed their fellow Jews, thereby making themselves culpable. The present volume is thus intended as a contribution to the still current and in many countries emotionally charged debate about the motivations, forms and possible leeway in collaboration with the Nazis. This is particularly true in the chapters dealing with how collaboration was treated in Germany, France and the countries of the former Yugoslavia, in Ukraine and Hungary in the context of today, illustrating the associated problems of a differentiated historical treatment and an adequate memory culture. New forms of right-wing populism, nationalism and growing intolerance of Jewish fellow citizens and minorities have made such historically sensitive studies considerably more difficult in many countries today. Instead, Fascist holidays are being celebrated and war criminals are enjoying growing popularity in some places. Contradictory memories of Nazism, Fascism, occupation and the Holocaust collide. The discussion about what was then right and wrong, about victims and perpetrators is at times emotionally charged and, particularly in post-Communist Eastern Europe, accompanied by a political polarization. Against this background, a further goal was to shed light the current political and social perceptions of collaboration and collusion, which had been taboo in many countries after the war. Krisztián Ungváry criticizes and analyzes the myth of only the Germans being responsible for the crimes of World War II and the Holocaust, which has recently been cultivated even by official German foreign policy.

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Serge Klarsfeld distances himself from mythologizing publications about World War II in France and – from the perspective of a Holocaust survivor – makes Vichy France’s complicity in the Holocaust clear. Trvtko Jakovina examines the distorted historiography in the countries of the former Yugoslavia, particularly in Croatia and Serbia, where collaboration is still partially a taboo and unmentionable. Franz Sz. Horváth and Imre Szakál critically examine the partially revisionary memory politics in Hungary and Ukraine, respectively. For making the conference at the La Sapienza University possible, we would like to thank our friends and colleagues in Rome: Giovanna Motta, Antonello F. Biagini, Alessandro Saggioro, Giuseppe Motta and Roberto Sciarrone. We would like to thank Elke-Vera Kotowski from the Moses Mendelssohn Center in Potsdam for revealing a humane aspect of World War II, which she presented in the exhibit “Rescuers, Helpers, Unsung Heroes. Rescue Resistance during the Nazi Period in Europe” in cooperation with the Jewish community of Rome at the Italian Institute for German Studies as part of our conference. Many thanks go to Margaret-Ann Schellenberg for the thorough editing and translation of some contributions and essays. We also owe our thanks to the librarians of the Moses Mendelssohn Center, Karin Bürger and Ursula Wallmeier, as well as Felix Lohmann for their help in the preparation of the extensive bibliography. We thank Andreas Toscano del Banner for creating the maps published here. Finally, we would like to thank all of the authors who have enriched this book with their scholarship and sociocritical analyses. To commemorate the victims of the Holocaust, who were at the mercy of a systematic policy of extermination, in times of resurging anti-Semitism, we have selected a photograph showing a Jewish man whose beard is being forcibly removed by young members of the Hlinka Guard in the Slovak town of Stropkov for our cover. According to the Yad Vashem Archives, this shows Lipe Baum, owner of a large farm. Amused and laughing, these members of the paramilitary defense organization of the Slovak government posed for several pictures with their deliberately chosen Jewish victims. The main focus of the photos is not, however, the five perpetrators as intended, but rather the Jewish man who is looking directly at the camera. Lipe Baum had to suffer the violence, but they could not take away his dignity. The photo was taken shortly before the Jewish man, his family and the Jewish residents of his town were deported. He was later murdered in the German extermination camp Sobibór.22 22 Cf. the information about Lipe (Leib) Baum in the Central Database of Shoah Victim’s Names in the Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem, accessed August 18, 2020, https://yvng.yadva shem.org/index.html?language=en&s_lastName=Baum&s_firstName=Lipe&s_place=&s_da teOfBirth=&cluster=true.

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Public humiliation, dehumanization, intimidation and the public display of Jews were seen on the streets every day in the 1930s and 1940s – whether in Germany, Austria, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine or Lithuania. The discrimination ranged from the humiliating cleaning of sidewalks, Jews being made to hang a sign with anti-Semitic content around their necks, the removal and burning of sidelocks and beards of Orthodox Jews to the public undressing of Jewish men and women and brutal lynchings on public squares (particularly in Eastern Europe). The victims were defenseless, completely at the mercy of the initiators of the violence, the spectators and onlookers. The photographic recording of these cruelties represented an additional violation; it was part of the crime and was to serve the perpetrators as proof of a successful demonstration of power over the exterminated Jewish population. Today these photos are not only historical testimonies of European antiSemitism and the Holocaust, which – as this book shows – was greatly facilitated by the close collaboration between Nazi Germany and other European countries. They also serve as a timeless wake-up call and admonition against anti-Semitism, Holocaust relativism, hate and racism – phenomena that no society, then or now, was or is immune to. Martina Bitunjac and Julius H. Schoeps Potsdam 2020

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Part I Western Countries between Collaboration, Neutrality and Resistance Lars Dencik Considerate Collaborationism: If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them. On Rationales behind Four Nordic Countries’ Very Different Forms of Collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II 5 Valentina Sommella France between Collaboration and Resistance. The Armistice Decision, the Montoire Meeting and Vichy’s Ambiguous Stand between the Axis and the Allies 33

Aspects of Collaboration in Central Europe: The Cases of Poland and Hungary Stephan Lehnstaedt A “Land without Quislings”. Collaboration in Poland

53

Alessandro Vagnini The Hungarian Anti-Jewish Laws and Relations between Hungary and Germany 69

Countries of Eastern Europe: Political Interests, Anti-Semitism and Military Support Olaf Glöckner The Collaboration of Ukrainian Nationalists with Nazi Germany

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Giuseppe Motta Between Ideological Affinity and Economic Necessity. Romania and Nazi Germany before and during World War II 99 Joachim Tauber Collaboration in Lithuania

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Collaboration in Slavic and Balkan Countries Martina Bitunjac Between Racial Politics and Political Calculation. The Annihilation of Jews in the Slovak State and the Independent State of Croatia 137 Björn Opfer-Klinger Bulgaria’s Collaboration with the Axis Powers in World War II

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Meinolf Arens and Katerina Kakasheva War and Collaboration in Occupied Vardar Macedonia and West Banat 1941–1944 193

South European Case Studies: Greece, Italy and Portugal Ioannis Zelepos Collaboration in Greece 1941–1944

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Ester Capuzzo Italian “Racial Laws” and the Jewish Community of Fiume

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Fernando Clara “Collaborating Neutrality”? Portuguese Collaboration Networks at the Secretariat of National Propaganda 241

Reflections on Jewish “Cooperation” with the Nazis in Western and Eastern Europe Julius H. Schoeps Between Collaboration, Betrayal and Coercion. A Nightmarish Chapter of European-Jewish Relations under the Nazis 263

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Part II Krisztián Ungváry The Thesis that only Germans are to Blame – Well-Intended, but Unsustainable 281 Serge Klarsfeld The Most Extreme of all of the French State’s Collaboration: The Surrender of the Jews 289 Tvrtko Jakovina Being in Love with Traitors. Views on Collaboration during World War II in Several Balkan Countries after the End of the Cold War 295 Franz Sz. Horváth Traumas that do not End? Not Dealing with History in Hungary

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Imre Szakál The Question of Collaboration and the Politics of Memory in Ukraine About the Authors

315

Bibliography Categorized by Country Index of Persons Index of Places

341 347

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Part I

Western Countries between Collaboration, Neutrality and Resistance

Lars Dencik

Considerate Collaborationism: If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them On Rationales behind Four Nordic Countries’ Very Different Forms of Collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II This article deals with the four Nordic countries Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden and how they related to Nazi Germany during World War II. In certain paragraphs the position of the fifth Nordic country, Iceland – at the time part of the Kingdom of Denmark – to Nazi Germany, will also be considered. I will sketch out the relationships between the Nordic state authorities and Nazi Germany as well as between civilian organizations in these countries and the Nazi German cause. My main focus will then be on what rationales the respective country acted vis-à-vis Nazi Germany. What were their rationales with respect to collaboration with Nazi Germany? A special focus will also be on how policies and actions of and in these five Nordic countries affected their Jewish inhabitants, in particular to what extent these policies and actions directly or indirectly contributed to the Holocaust. Two underlying questions that will be more directly addressed by way of conclusion are: under what conditions is resistance to the “devil” warranted and not just heroic? Under what conditions may collaborationism be a fruitful option and not per se condemnable? It should be said in the outset that this article will not present all the variations of resistance to, and collaboration with, Nazi Germany that took place in the countries I deal with. In all of these countries different kinds of opposition and resistance to the ambitions and presence of Nazi Germany took place, and in all of them various forms of cooperation with Nazi Germany also took place. Readers who seek insights into the complexities of how each of the countries more specifically related to Nazi Germany during World War II are referred to the many very careful and detailed empirical research studies there are in each of the countries on both their respective resistance movements and collaborationism.1

1 See e. g. Richard Petrow, The Bitter Years: The Invasion and Occupation of Denmark and Norway, April 1940–May 1945 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975); Robert Bohn, Reichskommissariat Norwegen: “Nationalsozialistische Neuordnung” und Kriegswirtschaft (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2009); Geir Thorsdahl, Quislings biskoper: en norsk kirke i nazismens tjeneste (Oslo: Kagge Forlag, 2017); Marte Michelet, Den største forbrytelsen. Ofre og gjerningsmenn i det https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671186-001

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For the purpose of the present analysis, it will suffice to present a rough summary. Many elements of resistance and collaborationism that – from other perspectives than adopted for the purpose of this article – might be quite salient in the history of the respective nation will not be reported in this article.

Collaborationism: Offensive and Defensive Cooperation Collaborationism refers to cooperation with the enemy against your own country in wartime. Usually it is regarded high treason. “Traitorous cooperation with the enemy” is a term often used with reference to the French Vichy Government, which cooperated closely with the Nazis from 1940–1944. Stanley Hoffman in his classic work on collaborationism in France (1968)2 subdivided collaboration into involuntary, meaning reluctant recognition of the necessity to cooperate, and voluntary. Another distinction can be made between forced and ideological collaborationism. Both of these comprise deliberate services to an enemy. Whereas the first kind is service to an enemy based on perceived necessity for survival or avoidance of suffering, the second kind, ideological collaborationism, is advocacy for cooperation with an enemy power because this is seen as a champion of some desirable domestic transformations. The terms “collaborationism” and “collaboration” in the present essay will be used without any immediate implications of treason. The terms will be used purely descriptively to denote the cooperation of state authorities and of certain civilians in the Nordic countries with Nazi Germany during World War II. When it comes to fighting against an enemy, heroic resistance is mostly what is celebrated. Less attention, at least post hoc, is given to the costs in terms of lost lives through such resistance. Those who manifest active resistance towards an

norske Holocaust (Oslo: Gyldendal, 2014); Carsten Holbraad, Danish Reactions to German Occupation: History and Historiography (London: UCL Press, 2017); Claes Johansen, Hitler’s Nordic Ally? Finland and the Total War 1939–1945 (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military, 2016); Katarina Baer, Nad olid natsid (Tallinn: Post Factum, 2018); Sven Radowitz, Schweden und das “Dritte Reich”. Die deutsch-schwedischen Beziehungen im Schatten des Zweiten Weltkriegs (Hamburg: Krämer Verlag, 2005); Paul Levine, Swedish Neutrality during World War II: A Controversy Still Unresolved (Stockholm: Fakta info direkt, 1999); Klas Åmark, Att bo granne med ondskan. Sveriges förhållande till nazismen, Nazityskland och Förintelsen (Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag, 2016). 2 Stanley Hoffmann, “Collaborationism in France during World War II,” The Journal of Modern History 40, 3 (1968): 375–395.

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overwhelming enemy are often regarded to be men and women of extraordinary civil courage. Passivity might be an alternative to resistance. However, passivity is often deemed as cowardice and lack of civil courage. A particular kind of passivity is to be a bystander. By implication this, in particular post hoc, is deemed as passive support to the aggressor. Another alternative to resistance might be collaboration with the enemy. In most cases, in particular post hoc, those who cooperate are condemned as traitors. Collaboration with the enemy may, however, have different reasons and justifications. There is a need to distinguish between two fundamentally quite different kinds of collaboration. One is collaboration because of sympathy for and active willingness to support the enemy. This could be, e. g. a local Nazi group endorsing and doing services such as giving information about your fellow citizens to the German occupiers. This is referred to as offensive cooperation with the enemy. Such cooperation may be carried out both by state authorities and civilian organizations and individuals. Another kind of collaboration might be caused by concerns to save groups and individuals from reasonably expectable harm that might otherwise follow, f. e. a national government deciding to accept demands by a foreign force in order to avoid the realizations of threats that might cause severe harm to its population. This is referred to as defensive cooperation with the enemy. Such cooperation may be carried out by state administrations as well as civilian groups and individuals. Analytically it may be quite clear what this distinction between offensive and defensive cooperation with your enemy implies. In practice, however, for instance when it post hoc comes to judge to what extent a certain act of cooperation with the enemy was actually in its effect an offensive or defensive act of cooperation may not be easy to sort out. Actions taken in a crisis situation tend to be double-edged and end up with ambiguous consequences. As is well known, the road to hell is sometimes paved with the best intentions. Hence, a further distinction is needed. Any act, including acts of cooperation, may be driven by either an ambition to support the party cooperated with, or, on the contrary, by an ambition to reduce the harm this party might afflict. From this perspective, it is the intention of the actor that decides whether their act of cooperation is offensive or defensive. However, from the perspective of history, it is rather the effects of the cooperative acts that counts. Did they in fact contribute to support the enemy or not? Did they actually help in reducing the harm to their own interests, or more concretely, help in saving the lives of members of their own group?

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If offensive cooperation is generally based on intentions to support the enemy, defensive cooperation is to be judged on the effects the actions taken. Intentions are sometimes openly declared or may be inferred from previous stands and actions by the actor. Effects, however, are to be measured in terms of net utility to the actor.

A Rational Motive for Collaborationism Any occupied country as well as any suppressed population is faced with the question of how to deal with the enemy given the ambition is to minimize the harm, say in terms of causalities, this enemy might cause? One way of handling such a situation might be to cooperate with the enemy because by doing so you may save lives. However, there is often the following complication: the very cooperation with the enemy may also cost lives, if not directly then indirectly and in the long run. In Judaism there is a concept which is actually also a religious rule: Pikuach nefesh (to save a soul/saving a life). It denotes the principle in Jewish law that the preservation of human life overrides virtually any other religious rule or ethical command. It is a religious duty for Jews to preserve their own lives, as well as those of others, at virtually any cost. This moral imperative, however, gives no clear guidance when confronting the following ancient but still quite valid dilemma: How to handle a situation in which you are demanded to sacrifice lives in order to save other lives? The obvious utilitarian solution is “to choose the lesser of two evils”. A utilitarian calculus may seem relatively easy in principle, in real life conditions it is, however, very often overwhelmingly complicated. Often it also takes the long-term side-effects of the choice taken into consideration. What might be a lesser evil from the short-term perspective of one particular actor, say Sweden, might in a longer and broader perspective indirectly inflict greater evil on another actor, say the Allied forces fighting Nazi Germany. Collaboration with and resistance to an enemy like Nazi Germany can easily be regarded from a moral standpoint. However, whether to engage in collaboration with the enemy or not may also be regarded as a question of balancing pros and cons. The same goes for engaging in resistance to an enemy. The question is then not whether it is right or wrong to do so, but rather what can be gained, what will be lost? However, this is more easily said than done in actual practice. One tricky factor is the time dimension: the long-term effects of a given action

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may come to repeal what appeared as a gain or loss in the immediate or shortsighted perspective. Gains and losses in actual life situations typically also occur in several different dimensions at the same time: the political, economic, military, moral and human. Gains in one of these dimensions may occur parallel to losses in one or more of the other, and vice versa. We will not dwell here on how to solve these kinds of mostly extremely complex, and as a matter of fact often unsolvable, calculations. What in the final account is the right thing to do in a real-life situation of occupation and war if taking all dimensions and several different time perspectives into serious account has to largely remain an open question. We can choose to focus on many possible measures, e. g. economic, military or political gains and losses, and on anything from immediate gains and losses to the post-hoc moral judgments actions may invoke. With all this in mind, it will suffice for our purpose in this context to take only one simple, but particularly salient dimension and measure into consideration: the number of lives your own group has lost at the end of the war.

Complexities of Collaborationism and Resistance There are situations where it is not clear whether the attitudes and relations of a party to an enemy is to be judged as collaboration or resistance. You may well collaborate to some degree and in some respects in order to resist or even fight the enemy in other ways. If the aim of the enemy is, e. g. to exterminate all of your kind, resistance may take the form of doing whatever can be done to save some lives. Such “resistance-by-cooperation”, however, could readily be perceived as treason by both victims and observers of these actions. When the effects are summed up post hoc, history’s judgment might, however, turn out differently. Recent European history provides examples of such situations. One is the ghetto of Łódź during World War II. The chair of the ghetto’s Judenrat, Chaim Rumkowski, chose to cooperate and meet the demands of the Nazi rulers in order to try to have as many as possible of the inmates escape extermination. His calculation was to lead the ghetto to be an effective and indispensable production unit for the Nazi rulers. Still he was forced to sacrifice many of the ghetto’s inhabitants to the Nazi murder factories. He then decided to sacrifice as much as possible those who could not be productive. He believed that by staying ahead of the Germans’ thinking, he could keep them satisfied and preserve at least some of the otherwise doomed Jews.

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A survivor of the Łódź ghetto, Arnold Mostowicz, noted in his memoir3 that Rumkowski gave a percentage of his people a chance to survive two years longer than the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto who perished in the Uprising. The Łódź ghetto was the last ghetto in occupied Poland to be liquidated. It is estimated that a total of 210,000 Jews passed through it. In August 1944, about 72,000 Jews were deported from the Łódź ghetto to be killed in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Rumkowski and his family joined the last transport to Auschwitz. There he was murdered on August 28, 1944 by Jewish Sonderkommando inmates, who beat him to death as revenge for his handling of the inmates of the Łódź ghetto.4 History’s judgment might turn out differently, but until now, Chaim Rumkowski and other “Jewish elders” who somehow collaborated with the Nazis are by many regarded as traitors. In dealing with the actions and fate of Chaim Rumkowski, two conventional propositions may become questionable, namely that collaboration with the enemy is per se contemptuous and that resistance to an attacking and occupying force is per se heroic. Of course, collaboration with the enemy may as a matter of fact very often be treacherous and thus also contemptuous – but under certain conditions it may in fact also be heroic. Likewise, resistance to an invading and occupying force is in fact very often heroic. However, if not carefully calculated strategically, it may in effect turn out to be counter-productive and thus by consequence be treacherous to the cause of liberation and saving the lives of family, friends and compatriots. When studying concrete cases of collaborationism, there is the need to specify which actors are relevant to focus on, and also along which dimensions of collaboration and resistance we should look for collaboration and resistance. One necessary distinction is between steps taken by official institutions of the country and actions carried out by actors, groups or individuals who make up the country’s civil society. Collaborationism and resistance can be carried out in many dimensions. It is useful to distinguish between at least four main dimensions: military, economic, political and ideological collaboration/resistance. From these perspectives, I will

3 Arnold Mostowicz, With a Yellow Star and a Red Cross: A Doctor in the Łódź Ghetto, translated from the Polish by Henia Reinhartz. Library of Holocaust Testimonies (Elstree: Vallentine Mitchell, 2005). 4 Source “Łódź Ghetto Deportations and Statistics,” last modified November 26, 2020, https:// kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/Lodz/statistics.html. When the Soviet troops arrived, only 877 surviving Jews were found hidden in the ghetto. It is estimated that in all, up to 15,000 Łódź Jews may have survived the Holocaust in different ways.

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in the following sketch out some of the crucial characteristics and actions taken by state authorities and certain civil society organizations towards Nazi Germany during World War II in the four Nordic countries Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. My main focus will then be to try to grasp what might have been the rationales for collaborationism in each of the countries. In what respects did the cooperation take on the character of offensive cooperation and in what respect as defensive cooperation with Nazi Germany?

Map of the Nordic Countries.

The Nordic Countries in 1939 from a German Perspective Observing the Nordic countries on the map of Europe from a German 1939 strategic perspective, the two most relevant foci are probably not the Nordic countries by themselves, but the location of Great Britain and the Soviet Union respectively. Great Britain was then already defined as an enemy of Nazi Germany and,

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regardless of the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact, so was in fact the Soviet Union as a Communist country populated by Slavic peoples.5 Given that in the summer of 1939 Germany already had plans for military expansion, a key spot in the Nordic region is the relatively narrow piece of land in the north between the Atlantic from where there is open sea and access to Great Britain one the one side, and the Soviet continent on the other. This is where Norway, Sweden and Finland border each other on land. Here, two areas of particularly geopolitical significance should be pointed out: a) The city of Narvik at the northern Norwegian west coast. Narvik is an important port for the export of iron ore from the area of Kiruna in Sweden located about 150 km east of Narvik. Although located far up north in an Arctic area, the port of Narvik is an open port year round due to the North Atlantic Drift (Gulf Stream). There is a direct rail connection called the Iron Ore Line between the iron ore mines in Kiruna and Malmberget in Sweden and the port of Narvik in Norway. Narvik was one of the key targets for the German invasion of Norway on April 9, 1940. The German war ambitions regarded both the port itself and the iron ore from Sweden as highly significant. Immediately after the German invasion, Allied forces were directed towards the German occupiers. On May 28, 1940, the Allied forces succeeded in taking back the city. However, when Norway was forced to capitulate on June 8, Narvik again became controlled by German occupiers. b) Until its independence in 1918, Finland had been a region within the czarist Russian Empire for more than a century. After the Bolsheviks conquered power and established the Soviet Union, there had been constant frictions around the border area between Finland and the Soviet Union. In the wake of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, in October 1939, the Soviet Union demanded to be permitted to locate military bases in Finland and also that Finland should transfer certain of its areas along its border to the Soviet Union, among others the district of Karelia. However, as has been documented in

5 It is true that the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and Communist Soviet Union was agreed to on August 23, 1939. Recent historic research has, however, documented that concrete plans to invade the USSR had begun already on July 30, 1940. Cf. Rolf-Dieter Müller, Der Feind steht im Osten. Hitlers geheime Pläne für einen Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion im Jahre 1939 (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2011), 125; Gerd R. Ueberschär, “Hitlers Entschluß zum Lebensraum–Krieg im Osten,” in Der deutsche Überfall auf die Sowjetunion – Unternehmen Barbarossa 1941, eds. Gerd R. Ueberschär and Wolfram Wette (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1991), 19f.

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subsequent historic research,6 the real ambition of the Soviet Union leadership was to include all of Finland in the Soviet Union the same way as the neighboring Baltic States Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had been. On November 30, 1939, the Soviet Union launched a military attack on Finland. This so-called Winter War ended on March 13, 1940 by Finland being forced to give up significant land areas, among them Karelia. Thus, the land area of Finland was reduced and the Finnish border with the Soviet Union was moved westwards. Looking at Denmark and Sweden through a 1939 German strategic lens, Denmark appears as a potentially important supplier of agricultural products and food, and Sweden of timber, iron ore and industrial products to a war-waging Germany.

Some Basic Data on the Nordic Countries and their Respective Relations to Germany in World War II In this brief overview, I will also include Iceland, now one of the Nordic countries, but at the time of the outbreak of the war, part of the Kingdom of Denmark. DENMARK: 3,8 million inhabitants; 7,000 Jews.7 Invaded by Germany on April 9, 1940. Denmark met this invasion with virtually no resistance. The king and government stayed in the country and collaborated with the German occupiers. FINLAND: 3,7 million inhabitants; 2,000 Jews.8 On June 21, 1941, Finland joins Germany in the war against the Soviet Union. This is an attempt to recapture lands that had been lost to the Soviet Union in the Winter War 1939–40. In this so-called Continuation War, Finnish troops fought side by side with German troops until September 1944.

6 Ohto Manninen, The Soviet Plans for the North Western Theatre of Operations in 1939–1944 (Helsinki: National Defense College, 2004). 7 Cf. Niels Wium Olesen, “9. april 1940 og den tyske fredsbesættelse,” last modified November 26, 2020, https://danmarkshistorien.dk/perioder/besaettelsestiden-1940-45/9-april-1940og-den-tyske-fredsbesaettelse/ 8 Olli Vehviläinen, Finland in the Second World War: Between Germany and Russia, trans. McAlester (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).

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ICELAND: 125,000 inhabitants. Barely a handful of individual Jews.9 At the outbreak of World War II, the head of state in Iceland was the Danish king. When Denmark was invaded on April 9, 1940, all official Icelandic relations to Germany were broken. On May 10, 1940, British troops and later also US military settled on the island and stayed there until the end of the war. Towards the end of the war on June 17, 1944, Iceland broke its official ties with Denmark and proclaimed itself an independent republic. NORWAY: 3,0 million inhabitants; 2,100 Jews.10 On April 9, 1940, Norway was attacked by German invaders. The king and government refused to give in to German pressure. The German invaders met strong Norwegian resistance. When this was broken by the Wehrmacht, the king and government escaped to Great Britain and formed an exile government there. In Norway, a regime lead by Vidkun Quisling took over. A Norwegian resistance movement “Hjemmefronten” (The home front) became active.11 SWEDEN: 6,4 million inhabitants; 7,000 + 3,00012 Jews.13 Sweden stayed neutral during World War II; it was not attacked and did not actively participate in the war. However, due to requests and pressure from Germany, Sweden accepted German troops to be transported through Sweden and also maintained vital export and other trade relations to the Nazi Germany.

In the following, I will present some selected but crucial facts of particular relevance for this study country by country. For each country, I will report on its involvement in World War II, on Nazi affiliations of and within the country, on collaboration, both official and civilian, and finally on the fate of the Jews in the country during World War II.14

9 Cf. “Islandbloggen”, last modified November 26, 2020, http://www.islandsbloggen.com/ 2008/07/400-r-av-judendom-p-island.html. 10 Lennart Oldenburg, Under stöveln: Norge 1940–1945 (Stockholm: Atlantis 2008). 11 At the German invasion Quisling proclaimed himself leader of a national government. He was however soon replaced by the German Josef Terboven as Reichskommissar für die vom Deutschen Reich besetzten norwegischen Gebiete. Later Quisling was made head of the Administatrative Council and further on also installed as Prime Minister. 12 The 3,000 Jews mentioned here are Jews mainly from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia who, in an effort to escape Nazi Germany in 1939/1940, had been admitted entry, mostly by transit visa, to Sweden. 13 Klas Åmark, Att bo granne med ondskan. 14 The sources I have based my general descriptions of each country on are grouped nationwise in the bibliography of this book.

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Collaboration: Denmark Denmark was attacked by German troops on April 9, 1940. At their invasion and occupation of Denmark, the German forces met virtually no effective resistance, neither military nor civilian. After the occupation, most of Denmark’s trade, industrial and in particular, its significant agrarian production was directed towards Germany. The German preparations for the invasion, code name Unternehmen Weserübung, were not unnoticed by the Danish government, but in order not to provoke the powerful German neighbor, no countermeasures were taken by the Danish government. The Danish king stayed in the country and remained head of state during the occupation. The government, the parliament and the local administrations, including the police, continued to function as before.15 This changed on August 29, 1943, when the policy of cooperation and negotiation with the occupier broke down and the Germans introduced military rule and a state of emergency. The breakdown of the policy of collaboration was preceded by a growing belief in the Danish population that the war was approaching an end, which also inspired an increase in illegal strikes and sabotage actions by Danish resistance groups. Given this, Hitler demanded the Danish government to install harsh measures to curb and control the Danish population. The political parties forming the coalition government refused, and as a consequence, the government, parliament and king ceased to function in their roles and the Germans took over the administration of the country – assisted in this by the deputy heads of the different departments of the government. A fight broke out during which 23 Danes were killed. The majority of the Danes had an ambivalent attitude to the collaborationistic policy and to its partial breakdown in August 1943. Except for members of the resistance groups, most Danes felt the official and ongoing collaboration policy provided them protection and a possibility to continue their relatively unharmed private lives. Through the years of the war, approximately 20,000 Danes went to Germany to work in German factories. About 12,000 Danish citizens volunteered for German army duty. There is a legend that during the German occupation and all of World War II, the Danish king Christian X rode his horse through the city with a yellow Star of David on his chest. This, however, never happened. King Christian X, as well as the Danish government, discouraged Danish civilians to carry out

15 Henrik Dethlefsen, “Denmark and the German Occupation: Cooperation, Negotiation, or Collaboration?,” Scandinavian Journal of History 15:3 (1990):193–206; Phil Giltner, “The Success of Collaboration: Denmark’s Self-Assessment of its Economic Position after Five Years of Nazi Occupation,” Journal of Contemporary History 36,3 (2001): 483–506.

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sabotage and encouraged informing on attempts to do so by the resistance movement that emerged in the wake of the occupation. However, according to a secret British report from 1942, the king actually threatened to don the star if this should have been forced upon Danish Jews. In the king’s private personal diary dated September 10, 1942, the following entry can be found: When you look at the inhumane treatment of Jews, not only in Germany but occupied countries as well, you start worrying that such a demand might also be put on us, but we must clearly refuse this due to their protection under the Danish constitution. I stated that I could not meet such a demand towards Danish citizens. If such a demand is made, we would best meet it by all wearing the Star of David.16

Until October 1, 1943, i. e. during the first three and a half years of occupation, the Jews in Denmark were not severely harassed by the German occupiers. Danish Jews, for instance, were not forced to pin a yellow star on themselves and their daily lives were not disturbed significantly more than the daily lives of any other Dane in the country. During October 1943, almost all of the approximately 7,000 Danish Jews were rescued to Sweden by Danish civilians; 472 Danish Jews were caught and deported to Theresienstadt. There they received a relatively ‘benevolent’ treatment compared to Jews from other countries. None were sent to be exterminated. Fifty-three people, mostly old and sick, died in Theresienstadt, all of the others came back to Denmark. When returning home to Denmark from Sweden and Theresienstadt, they for the most part found their apartments well-kept by their Danish neighbors.17

16 Danish original: Naar man saa den umenneskelige Behandling, Jøderne var Genstand for ikke blot i Tyskland, men ogsaa i de besatte Lande, begyndte man at være ængstelig for, at Kravet ogsaa en Gang blev stillet os, men det maatte vi pure afvise som følge af disses Retsstilling inden for Grundloven. Jeg udtalte, at jeg heller ikke vilde gaa med til et saadant Krav overfor danske Statsborgere. Hvis et saadant Krav rejstes, imødegik vi det bedst ved, at vi alle anlagde Davidsstjernen. Finansminsteren indskød, at det var jo altid en Udvej. This quote was released in connection with the 70th anniversary of the rescue of the Danish Jews and published in many daily Danish newspapers. Here quoted from Kristeligt Dagblad from September 23, 2013. Also in Politiken on September 24, 2013. A fuller story is given in the comprehensive book by Bo Lidegaard, Countrymen: The Untold Story of How Denmark’s Jews Escaped the Nazis (New York: Knopf, 2013). A critical account is presented by Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson, “Christian X og jøderne. Hovedrolleindehaver i dansk krigspropaganda,” RAMBAM 19 (2010): 68–85. 17 Hans Sode-Madsen, Theresienstadt – og de danske jøder, 1940–45 (Copenhagen: Lindhardt og Ringhof, 1992); Hans Sode-Madsen, I Hitler-Tysklands skygge. Dramaet om de danske jøder 1933–1945 (Copenhagen: Lindhardt og Ringhof, 2003). Silvia Goldbaum Tarabini Fracapane,

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Collaboration: Finland On November 30, 1939, three months after the outbreak of World War II, Soviet troops attacked Finland. The Finnish met the Soviet invasion attempt with tough resistance but still had to accept a peace agreement on March 13, 1940, implying that they had to give up 10 percent of Finnish territory to the Soviet Union. This had been preceded by negotiations between Finland on the one side and France and Great Britain on the other to obtain their assistance via Norway and northern Sweden. However, in February 1940, the Norwegian, Swedish and Danish governments declared they would refuse French and British troops transit. Without any outside support, Finland had to accept the Soviet claims. Of relevance in this context is that during the fall of 1939, the Soviet Union had pressured the neighboring Baltic States Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to permit Soviet military bases to be located in their territories, and that Soviet expansionism in general had rather free reins in the wake of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. In mid-June 1940, Soviet troops occupied Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. There was an overwhelming fear that the Soviet would also occupy all of Finland.18 At the same time, Germany was secretly planning what has become known as Operation Barbarossa – the German attack on the Soviet Union. A vital part of this plan was for Germany to have access to Finnish land, especially its northern areas and some sea areas as bases for attacks on Murmansk and Leningrad, among others. Operation Barbarossa, the German surprise attack on the Soviet Union, its partner according to the Molotov-Ribbentrop accords, took place on June 22, 1941. However, coordination talks between the Finnish military command and Germany had already started at the end of 1940. On December 30, the Finnish were briefed about the secret German plans to attack the Soviet Union, shortly thereafter, they started building up required infrastructure and coordinate information with the Wehrmacht. German troops began to arrive. After some time, the number of German soldiers in Finland amounted to 200,000.19 In February 1940, the German Reichsmarschall Göring promised Finland they would get back all of the land the country had lost – with interest. In April 1941, Finnish volunteers began to be recruited for a Finnish Battalion of Waffen-SS, the

The Jews of Denmark in the Holocaust. Life and Death in Theresienstadt Ghetto (London: Routledge, 2020). Leni Yahil, The Rescue of Danish Jewry (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1969). 18 Manninen, The Soviet Plans for the North-Western Theatre of Operations. 19 On the Finnish troops see e.g. Lars Westerlund, The Finnish SS-Volunteers and Atrocities: against Jews, Civilians and Prisoners of War in Ukraine and the Caucasus Region 1941–1943. An Archival Survey (Helsinki: Kansallisarkisto, 2019).

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so-called SS-Panzer-Division Wiking, in which 1,408 Finnish soldiers volunteered for Waffen-SS. In May 1941, i.e. one month ahead of the German attack on the Soviet Union, the Finnish Parliament decided to back the German attack on the Soviet Union, realizing that regardless of which way it turned out, Finland would become a battlefield between the German and Soviet superpowers. When on June 22, 1941, Germany finally started Operation Barbarossa by attacking the Soviet Union also from Finnish territories, Adolf Hitler declared Finland to be fighting side by side with the Germany. On June 25, Finnish troops joined the attack on the Soviet Union and what has become known as the Finnish “Continuation War” began. It lasted until September 19, 1944.20 Out of the tiny Jewish community in Finland, several were drafted to fight on the Finnish, and by implication also German, side against the Soviet Union. Approximately 300 Finnish Jews fought in the Continuation War, eight were killed in action. Some of the Finnish Jews who were fluent in German and/or Russian served in Finnish intelligence and as translators between German and Finnish commanders. The Finnish Jewish soldiers were granted leave on Saturdays and Jewish holidays, and the Finnish front had a field synagogue operating in the presence of Nazi troops. Three Finnish Jews were offered the German Iron Cross for their wartime service. All three refused the award. During World War II, approximately 500 Jewish refugees from Europe arrived in Finland. About 350 moved on to other countries, including about 160 who were transferred to neutral Sweden to save their lives on the direct orders of the commander of the Finnish Army, Marshal Carl Gustaf Mannerheim. At one occasion in November 1942, the Finnish police agreed to turn over eight Jewish refugees from Austria to Nazi Germany.21 When it was discovered that seven of these Jews were immediately murdered, it caused strong protest from, among others, the Archbishop, the Social Democratic Party and Lutheran ministers. Members of the government resigned in protest. No more foreign Jewish refugees were deported from Finland. Although SS-Führer Heinrich Himmler visited Finland twice to try to persuade the authorities to hand over the Finnish Jews, he was unsuccessful. Germany’s ambassador to Helsinki concluded in a report to Hitler that Finns would not endanger their citizens of Jewish origin in any situation. Yad Vashem records that 22 Finnish Jews died in the Holocaust – it should, however, be noted that all of them died while fighting for the Finnish Army.

20 Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson, Finland in the Second World War: Between Germany and Russia (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). 21 They were sent from Finland to Estonia, then occupied by Nazi Germany.

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Collaboration: Iceland At the time of the outbreak of World War II, Iceland was not an entirely sovereign state. Although Iceland had been granted some legal autonomy on December 1, 1918, the Danish king was still Iceland’s head of state and Denmark remained responsible for its foreign affairs and defense. As Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany on April 9, 1940, the connections with Denmark broke down and shortly thereafter on May 10, British troops and later US military settled on the island and stayed there until the end of the war. Under the shadow of the war and Denmark being occupied by Nazi Germany, on May 20, 1944 Iceland held a referendum whether to keep the union with the Kingdom of Denmark or to declare Iceland an independent republic. A vast majority voted in favor of the latter and on June 17, 1944, Iceland proclaimed itself a sovereign independent republic. The Icelandic historian Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson, who has focused much of his research on anti-Semitism and Iceland during World War II, concludes that “a large group of Icelanders looked to Hitler’s Germany with interest.”22 An Icelandic Nazi party was founded in 1933. Already in 1934, the party split, and a new constellation naming itself Flokkur Þjóðernissinna (Nationalist Party) was formed. This party cultivated contacts with its German mother party. Its party program called for the total annihilation of “world Jewry”. However, the party never received more than 2.8 per cent support from the electorate – too little to allow the party to enter the Icelandic parliament. During the British and American presence in Iceland, the party and all pro-German activities were forbidden, and politicians from other parties who had been sympathetic to the German cause adopted a low profile. Germans residing in Iceland were transported to internment camps.23 No Icelandic collaborationism took place during World War II except for certain pro-Nazi actions taken by some individuals. There were Icelanders who volunteered for German war duty and some spied for the Germans. One example is Björn Sveinn Björnsson, son of the first president of the republic. Björnsson volunteered for the Waffen-SS in Denmark. Other leading members of Flokkur Þjóðernissinna after the war enjoyed successful professional careers in Iceland. One would become the National Police Commissioner in the capital Reykjavík, while another who had been a leading force in the Icelandic Nazi party, Davíð Ólafsson, became Governor of the National Bank after the war.

22 Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson, “Iceland. A Study of Antisemitism in a Country without Jews,” in Antisemitism in the North. History and State of Research, eds. Jonathan Adams and Cordelia Hess (Berlin: de Gryuter, 2019), 69–105. 23 Ibid., 79.

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There had never been more than a handful of Jews living in Iceland. There has never been a synagogue built.24 Still, conspiracy theories about the Rothschild family were popular also outside the purely Nazi circles. The Icelandic Nazis also directed their race-hatred towards certain selected individuals such as the politician Ólafur Thors who served several times as Prime Minister between 1942 and 1963. With his dark curly hair, Ólafur Thors’ appearance was interpreted by the Icelandic Nazis as a sign of Jewish descent. Incidentally, Thor Jensen’s older half-brother was a member of Dansk Antijödisk Liga (Danish Anti-Jewish League).25 As Nazism grew and spread in Europe, there were Jews trying to escape by seeking a safe haven in Iceland. However, “When Jewish refugees sought a safe haven in Iceland in the 1930s, most of them were rejected by authorities and large segments of society. Among the few who made it to Iceland, many were expelled by the authorities.”26 Örn Vilhjálmsson concludes: anti-Semitism in its ugliest form had made the journey to Iceland faster than the refugees.27 No Icelandic Jews were deported or directly murdered in the Holocaust. However, Iceland’s policy of denying Jewish refuges entry by consequence meant that a number of these refuge seeking Jews fell victim to the Nazi German extermination of Jews.

Collaboration: Norway On April 9, 1940, German troops attacked Norway. The German representative sent a request to Norway’s government to accept being occupied, to which the Norwegian government replied: Vi bøyer os ikke frivillig, kampen er allerede i gang. (We will not submit voluntarily; the struggle is already underway.)28 The armed Norwegian resistance against the German invaders/occupiers lasted two months. On June 10, 1940, the Norwegian forces capitulated. The king, Haakon

24 Ibid., 71. 25 Ibid., 80. 26 Ibid., 71. 27 Ibid., 72. 28 Cf. Prof. Tomm Kristiansen in Aftenposten, 28 September, 2016. The Norwegian government was unprepared and unwilling to capitulate to the ultimatum timed to coincide with the arrival of German troops and delivered by Curt Bräuer, the German representative in Oslo. The German demand that Norway accept the “protection of the Reich” was rebuffed by Halvdan Koht and the Norwegian government before dawn had broken on the morning of the invasion. “Vi bøyer oss ikke frivillig, kampen er allerede i gang”, replied Koht.

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VII of Norway, and the democratically appointed Norwegian government went into exile in Great Britain. Part of the Norwegian population started to engage in passive and also active resistance to the Nazi rule. An administrative council headed by the German Nazi official Josef Terboven was installed by the Germans as a regime under their influence. Vidkun Quisling, a major in the Norwegian army and former minister of defense in the Norwegian government had already the day after the German invasion proclaimed himself Prime Minister. This didn’t last long, but on 25 September 1940, with Hitlers support, he was made leader of the governing State Council.29 The name Quisling has become a synonym for a high-profile collaborator. Quisling encouraged Norwegians to volunteer for service in the Waffen-SS, collaborated in the deportation of Jews and was responsible for the executions of members of the Norwegian resistance movement.30

Members of the Waffen-SS volunteer legion “Norway” (the Norwegian Legion) parading in front of Vidkun Quisling, 1941. Bundesarchiv. No. Bild 101III-Andresen-004-40

Around 45,000 Norwegians joined the Fascist party Nasjonal Samling, about 8,500 of them also enlisted in the collaborationist paramilitary organization Hirden. In addition, a national socialist Norwegian police force, Statspolitiet (STAPO) – independent of the ordinary Norwegian Police –, helped arrest many of the Jews in Norway. Norway was one of the rather few countries where active resistance to the

29 Cf. Magne Skodvin, Striden om okkupasjonsstyret i Norge. Fram till 25. september 1942 (Oslo: Samlajeget, 1956). 30 Cf. Oddvar K. Høidal, Quisling: A Study in Treason (Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1989); Stein U. Larsen, “Charisma from Below?: The Quisling Case in Norway;” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 7 (2006): 235–244.

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German invasion was manifested and widespread even before the turning point of the war in 1942/43. In the course of the occupation, about 35,000 Norwegians were imprisoned, and 1,400 died in Nazi concentration camps. After the war, 92,000 people were accused of having assisted the Germans. 15,000 Norwegians volunteered for Waffen-SS. In 1942, the systematic persecution and arrest of all people of Jewish descent in Norway began. Norwegian Nazis (Hirdmen) organized the deportation of 772 of the approximately 2,100 Jews who lived in Norway, assisted by the Statspolitiet. Through the years 1942 and 1943, these Norwegian Jews were deported to Nazi German death camps. Most of them on a single day, November 26, 1942, when 532 Norwegian Jews were deported from Oslo on the ship DS Donau. Most of them were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau and murdered there – among them all the women and children. Only nine of those deported on the Donau survived. In all, only 26 of the deported Norwegian Jews survived the camps.31 The belongings and homes of the deported and murdered Norwegians Jews, as well as of some of those who had escaped to Sweden,32 were confiscated and partially taken over by local Norwegians.33 Recent research on the Norwegian resistance movement indicates that parts of the Norwegian resistance movement chose to look away when the harassment and deportations of Jews took place in Norway.34 The murdered Norwegian Jews accounted for more than one third of the Norwegian Jewry and constituted more than 50 per cent of all Norwegians killed during the war.

Collaboration: Sweden Like the other Nordic countries, Sweden had declared itself a neutral country. By implication this signaled a wish to stay outside a war, should it break out. As we have learnt, the fact that a country declared itself neutral did not prevent Germany from attacking and occupying Denmark and Norway. Nor did it prevent

31 Cf. Bjarte Bruland, Holocaust in Norwegen. Registrierung, Deportation, Vernichtung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck&Ruprecht, 2019). 32 One account of the escape and its consequences is given in Irene Levin, Vi snakket ikke om Holocaust. Mor, jeg og tausheten (Oslo: Gyldendal, 2020). 33 Cf. the Official Norwegian Reports: Norges Offentlige Utredninger. Inndragning av jødisk eiendom i Norge under den 2. Verdenskrig (Oslo: Statens forvaltningstjeneste statens trykning, 1997). 34 Marte Michelet, Hva visste hjemmefronten? Holocaust i Norge: Varslene, unnvikelsene, hemmeligholdet (Oslo: Gyldendal, 2018).

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Finland, which officially stayed neutral throughout the war, to engage in the war on the German side. Sweden, however, was not attacked by Germany, nor used as a base by the Allied forces and thus managed to stay outside the war and also in actual practice to maintain a position of neutrality throughout the war.35 At least during the first three years of World War II, there was a latent threat of being invaded like neighboring Denmark and Norway hanging over Sweden.36 To maintain staying neutral and outside the war, however, demanded concessions to requests from the German side. Actually, this had already started before the war. In October 1938, inspired by Switzerland, Sweden pressed for marking German passports with a “J” to help block German Jews from entering Sweden. At the time, strong xenophobic and anti-Jewish sentiments in certain sectors of the Swedish public prevailed, not least among certain public office holders and academics, who opposed to “the importation of Jews”, partly “to protect the Swedish stock”, partly because they perceived this as a possible threat to their own positions. On a political level, they also argued that receiving Jewish refugees would increase unwanted anti-Semitism in the Swedish population.37 After the war had broken out, Germany complained on occasion about Swedish press reports. Sweden, to avoid annoying German sensitivity on these points, adapted to some of the German demands and took restrictive measures towards certain elements critical of Nazi Germany in the Swedish press. As part of their warfare towards Norway, Germany demanded access to the transportation of goods and troops through Sweden. After difficult deliberations, on June 18, 1940 and again on July 8 of the same year, the Swedish government gave in to the German requests. The German use of the Swedish railway system successively increased, and Germany also came to control part of the Swedish tele-line system. A special event within the realm of Sweden’s cooperation with Germany occurred around midsummer 1941, when Sweden gave in to German demands to transport large military troop units, Division Engelbrecht, from Norway to Finland through northern Sweden. All through the war, Sweden served Germany as a

35 Cf. Klas Åmark, Att bo granne med ondskan. Sveriges förhållande till nazismen, Nazityskland och Förintelsen (Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag, 2011). 36 Cf. Wilhelm Carlgren, Svensk utrikepolitik 1939–1945 (Stockholm: Allmänna Förlaget, 1973). This fears peaked in the fall of 1941 when the Germans required to transport a division of men and military material to Finland through Sweden, and again in spring 1942 in view of an expected Allied invasion of Norway. 37 Cf. Karin Kvist Geverts, Ett främmande element i nationen. Svensk flyktingpolitik och de judiska flyktingarna 1938–1944 (Uppsala: Acta Univeristatis Uppsaliensis, 2008).

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major supplier of vital goods such as iron ore, steel and bearings to the German war industry.38 Furthermore, about 200 Swedes volunteered for the Waffen-SS. The Swedish immigration policy vis-à-vis Jewish refugees was very restrictive in the mid- and late 1930s until the outbreak of the war and in practice until the Norwegian and in particular the Danish Jews needed a safe haven in October 1943.39 As mentioned before, Sweden tacitly accepted the Nazi “racial” laws by endorsing a “J” stamped into the passports of Germans citizens of Jewish descent so they could be identified and rejected entry to Sweden. Still, at the beginning of the year 1941 Sweden had admitted about 3,000 Jews escaping from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. In 1942/43, Sweden received up to 1,000 Jewish refugees from Norway40 and in October 1943 welcomed approximately 7,000 Jews from Denmark. No Jews living in Sweden were deported to Nazi concentration camps.41

Victims and Survivors How many people in each of the countries were killed because of World War II? How many died because of Nazi German persecution directed directly toward them? How many Jews in each of the countries became victims of the Holocaust, i.e. were murdered by the Nazis? The absolute exact numbers are hard to calculate, but estimated approximate figures based on balancing different sources give enough information to be useful to the present analysis: As can be seen in Table 1, Finland and Sweden stand out in terms of causalities during World War II among the four Nordic countries. Fighting the war on the German side, Finland lost by far more lives both in absolute and relative terms than all of the other Nordic countries taken together, whereas neighboring Sweden, staying neutral during the war, lost “only” a fraction of that sum – for

38 Cf. Gerard Aalders and Cees Wiebes, Die Kunst der Tarnung: Die geheime Kollaboration neutraler Staaten mit der deutschen Kriegsindustrie. Der Fall Schweden (Frankfurt/Main: Zweitausendeins, 1994). 39 Hans Lindberg, Svensk flyktingpolitik under internationellt tryck 1936–1941 (Stockholm: Allmänna Förlaget, 1973). 40 Different sources give varying numbers. Cf. Malin Ekenberg/Anders Mella, Norska flyktingar till Sverige under andra världskriget (Luleå: Luleå Tekniska Universitet, 2007). 41 Cf. Pontus Rudberg, The Swedish Jews and the Victims of Nazi Terror, 1933–45 (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2015).

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Table 1: Approximation of Number of People Killed during World War II. The Nordic Countries COUNTRY

Population Military  causalities

Civilians Jewish Holocaust Total people killed victims killed

Killed % of population

DENMARK

,,

–

,



,

.

FINLAND

,,

,

,

–

,

.

NORWAY

,,

,

,



,

.

SWEDEN

,,



,

–

,

.

The data in the following tables are collected from national sources such as Hvor mange dræbte danskere, Danish Ministry of Education, 2005.

Table 2: Approximate Numbers of Direct Victims of Nazi German Persecution: The Nordic Countries. – DENMARK , Danes were imprisoned by the Nazis.  died in German concentration camps.  Danish Jews died in KZ-camps, approx  due to the Holocaust. – FINLAND No Finnish citizens were killed or deported by the Nazis. – NORWAY , Norwegians were imprisoned by the Nazis. , Norwegians died in German concentration camps.  Norwegian Jews died in KZ-camp, approx  due to the Holocaust. – SWEDEN No Swedish citizens were killed or deported by the Nazis.

the most part sailors who sank with their ships at sea, but also some who voluntered in the German Waffen-SS. An interesting comparison is also to be drawn between lost lives in Denmark and Norway. Both countries had officially declared themselves neutral up to the beginning of the war, both were attacked and invaded by German troops on the very same day, April 9, 1940. Denmark did not put up any significant resistance to the German invasion, the king and government stayed and collaborated with the German occupiers. In Norway, the opposite is true. Norwegian forces fought the

42 This amounts to about 40% of the total Norwegian Jewry.

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invading German troops and tried to hinder the occupation. When this failed, the king and the government left the country and continued to direct the resistance to the German occupation from their exile in London. The costs for this in terms of lost Norwegian lives turned out to be more than twice as high as was the case in cooperating Denmark. Regarding Jewish Holocaust victims, it should be noted that although Finland fought side by side with German troops, no Finnish Jews were rounded up either by German or by local Finnish Nazis and deported to the Nazi concentration and extermination camps.43 The situation was not entirely different in Denmark. Until October 1943, when the politics of collaboration broke down, the Danish Jews were on the whole not physically harmed by the German occupiers because of their Jewishness. When the collaboration policy had broken down, a comparatively small number of Danish Jews, 472 people, were arrested and transported to Theresienstadt, from where none of them – in contrast to Jews from other countries who had been sent to Theresienstadt – were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau or any other of the extermination camps.44 Fifty-three Danish Jews died on the way to or in Theresienstadt, not directly murdered but due to illness, hardships and age. In January 1945, towards the end of the war, when there were already plans to eliminate the camp, the Swedish Count Bernadotte, member of the royal family and vice chairman of the Red Cross of Sweden, succeeded in negotiating with the German authorities, among them Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, to get permission to send buses to Theresienstadt to evacuate Scandinavian citizens, among them the Danish Jews. These busses, called the White buses because they were painted white with large red crosses and Swedish flags on their roof and sides, drove back through war-struck Europe and occupied Denmark to bring them to safety in Sweden. There, the by far largest share of the Danish Jews, approximately 7,000 people, were already located, helped and rescued to Sweden by Danish civilians.45 Sweden had stayed outside the war and no Swedish Jews lost their lives in the Holocaust. In sharp contrast to this stand the events in Norway. In 1942, the systematic persecution and arrest of all people of Jewish descent intensified in Norway. A total of 773 Norwegian Jews were deported to Nazi German death

43 Eight foreign (Austrian) Jews were sent to Estonia, seven were killed, one returned. 44 One (1) Danish man – supposedly by mistake – got included in a transport to AuschwitzBirkenau in March 1944. Cf. H.G. Adler, Theresienstadt 1941–1945. The Face of a Coerced Community (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 45 Cf. Bo Lidegaard, Countrymen: The Untold Story of How Denmark’s Jews Escaped the Nazis (New York: Knopf, 2013).

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camps in 1942 and 1943. Only 38 Norwegian Jews survived the camps. This means that 47.1% of Norwegian Jewry were according to a calculation of Jewish deaths in WWII.46 The murdered Norwegian Jews constituted more than 50 per cent of all Norwegians killed during the war. Before the outbreak of the war, the Norwegian Jews numbered about 2,100. On the census in 1946, the number had been reduced to 556. Most of them had survived by escaping to Sweden. In contrast to the Danish Jews who were generally very well received in Denmark upon their return from Sweden, the Norwegian Jews confronted difficulties at their return home. This could involve problems getting back their apartments, properties and jobs.

Collaborationism and Heroism Re-evaluated As should be clear by now, the Nordic countries pursued very different policies and strategies vis-à-vis Nazi Germany during World War II. What were their rationales for acting as they did? There were certainly many concerns and mixed, even contradicting, motives for the actions taken by the states and national authorities. Still, in the final analysis, one basic question and one overruling rationale for the policy taken in each of the countries may be delineated. The premise is that there is little doubt that the pre-war regimes in all of the Nordic countries regarded Nazi German expansionism as threatening. It was quite clear to them all at the time that the German military force were overwhelmingly strong compared to their own national military capabilities. At the bottom of the challenges facing each of the four neutral Nordic countries at the time of the outbreak of World War II lies the Faustian question: what to do if a by far stronger and malicious party, a “devil”, decides to attack and rule over your life? A question that compels considerations of both strategic and moral character, and not least, how to balance such considerations against each other. One immediate impulse might be to oppose the invader because it would be morally right to do so regardless. The “devil” is the incarnation of evil, and when he attacks you and even takes over your home, you fight back as much as you can to show you do not accept his unjust ruling over you and your country. To you, it is simply the righteous thing to do; others might regard your resistance heroic.

46 Cf. Michelet, Den største forbrytelsen. Cf. also Bjarne Bruland, Holocaust i Norge. Registrering, deportasjon tilintetgjørelse (Oslo: Dreyers, 2017).

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An opposite, and perhaps less immediate, impulse might be to realize your own relative weakness and simply give in to the supremacy of the National Socialists. You cannot do anything about his rampage anyway. To you, this appears as the only sensible option there is, although others might regard your actions as being both cowardly and unworthy. Collaboration in order to gain advantages for oneself is seldom regarded as heroic. On the contrary, the party which engages in this will get their “hands dirty”, their reputation will become tainted. However, a certain degree of collaboration in order to save lives and avoid more harm than unavoidably necessary might very well be the most humane thing you can do, given the circumstances. This collaboration then must not be based in any sympathy or ideological agreement with the “devil’s” political or military aims. On the contrary, it is out of conscious disagreement with these goals, even as a move to prevent from realizing them, that you engage in negotiations with the Nazis. Collaboration from this point of view consists of carefully considered pragmatic actions taken for calculated strategic reasons. I will label this considerate collaborationism. So, let us try to describe the overruling rationale for collaborationism in each of the four Nordic countries.

Denmark: Pragmatic Collaborationism – Courting the Nazis Refraining from fighting back and on the official level de facto accepting the German occupation by engaging in peaceful cooperation, in particular concerning commerce and trade, while at the same time not giving in to Nazi German ambitions to capture and deport Danish citizens of Jewish descent, served to make the German occupation of Denmark comparatively mild. In spite of this, on the civilian level, in particular among university students and Communists, there were some clandestine groups who put up an organized and armed resistance towards the presence of the German occupiers. These groups, however, never really provoked the Germans from continuing their, in comparison to how it went in other Nazi occupied countries, relatively less violent occupation of Denmark. However, after the breakdown of the official collaboration policy in October 1943, this changed drastically. The magnitude of civilian resistance greatly intensified, manifesting itself in, among others, the widespread assistance of Danish civilians, medical personnel, fishermen, individual police officers, priests and so on in helping their Jewish countrymen to escape to Sweden.

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Danish pragmatism with respect to collaborationism seems to have served the Danish society and their citizens, including their Jewish citizens, quite well.

Finland: The Enemy of Your Enemy is Your Friend – Even If He is a Nazi Given the geopolitical reality, having been attacked by Soviet military forces and deprived of vital parts of their land, Finland had a primary goal to gain back what had been occupied by the Soviet Union. The fact the Finland engaged on the German side in their war against the Soviet Union should be understood from this perspective. At the same time, it is noteworthy that although actually not occupied by Nazi Germany, like Denmark Finland refused to let their Jewish citizens be rounded up and deported. Given this, the Finnish military collaborationism appears to have been a pragmatic way of serving national geopolitical interests as well as, strangely enough, also the tiny Jewish portion of the Finnish population.

Norway: Official Ideological Collaboration and Civilian Resistance – Fighting the Nazis and Spilling Blood The Norwegian government, including the king, refused to give in to Nazi German claims. Instead, they supported and organized resistance, both military and civilian, to the German occupation of Norway. There were military battles. The then overwhelming German military force crushed the Norwegian resistance. The government, including the king, had to escape into exile. The Germans installed a Norwegian Nazi puppet regime. The leader of the governing State Council was the notorious Vidkun Quisling. The German occupation of Norway turned out to be relatively harsh. Many Norwegian citizens were imprisoned, among them more than one third of the Norwegian Jews. The Germans, together with Norwegian authorities under Nazi rule, established up to 110 different concentration and detainee camps spread all through Norway. The most wellknown of them, Grini, was primarily used for political prisoners. Thousands of those who, one way or the other, had engaged in resistance to the Nazi rule, and virtually all of the captured Jews, were sent to Nazi German concentration and

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death camps: Auschwitz, Natzweiler-Struthof, Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück. Only a few of them survived.

Sweden: Collaboration in Order to Pacify – Compliance with the Demands of the Nazis Sweden succeeded in not being dragged into the war. Like Denmark and Norway, Sweden had declared its neutrality before the outbreak of World War II, but unlike its two neighboring Scandinavian countries, Sweden was not attacked and invaded by Nazi German troops. The reason for this is still not fully known. It could be that it by the Germans was judged to be unnecessary or too costly from a military-strategic standpoint. It could also be that it was calculated it would serve German political interests well to leave traditionally neutral countries like Sweden and Switzerland as impartial communication hot spots between adversaries during World War II. In any case, in order not to risk becoming attacked and occupied like the neighboring Scandinavian countries, during World War II Sweden gave in to several German demands: allowing German troops to be transported through the country, providing the German military machine with necessary materials such as steel, iron ore and ball bearings and other industrial goods necessary to the German warfare.

A Conclusion We have seen that among the Nordic countries Norway was the only country where military and also armed civilian resistance of any considerable magnitude was raised towards Nazi Germany. In connection with this we noted that among the Nordic countries, it was only in Norway that there was an offensively collaborationist government established, and also that it was only in Norway the Nazis carried out mass killings of civilians and in particular of the Jewish citizens of the country. We have also seen that all of the three other Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland and Sweden, albeit in various ways and to differing degrees, gave in to and cooperated with the Nazi German authorities. In line with our conceptualization in the opening sections of this article, this kind of cooperation can be defined as defensive collaborationism. Finland is a quite special case in this respect. Until

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October 1943 when Denmark broke its clearly collaborationist policy with Nazi Germany, only relatively few Danes, mainly Communists, had been arrested by the Nazis and imprisoned in one of their detainee camps, most of them to the Horserød-camp where also foreign political refugees who had escaped to Denmark were gathered before being sent to Germany and/or one of their concentration camps. In the to various degrees, and in very different ways, defensively collaborating countries: Denmark, Finland and Sweden, only relatively few of these countries’ citizens were murdered by the Nazis. Fifty-three Danish Jews who were deported to the relatively less lethal concentration camp Theresienstadt died while there. However, none of them were sent to any of the special death Nazi camps the Nazis had established, nor were any Jews who were citizens of and living in any of the three Nordic countries Denmark, Finland and Sweden deported to any other Nazi concentration camp. By contrast, we have learnt that in Norway, where, after considerable Norwegian resistance, a clearly offensively collaborating regime had been installed, a considerably higher number of Norwegians were killed by the Nazis, among them more than one third of the total Norwegian Jewry. Is there a connection between the variations of collaborationistic policies in and of the nations and the number of citizens killed by the Nazis in each of the countries? Or are the differences in number of persons murdered by the Nazis in each of the countries in a way “accidental”, or rather, mainly dependent on other factors than the degree of resistance to, respectively kind of cooperation with Nazi Germany? There is no way to give a simple conclusive answer to such questions. History is not a laboratory; we can never achieve clean experimentally induced data to base conclusions on. However, the differences between the Nordic countries in relation to Nazi Germany throughout World War II is perhaps as close to an experimental situation as we can get in the World War II history. Of course, these situations can be examined from several quite different angles. It might be relevant to evaluate the outcome of such an historic “experiment” by very different parameters or measures. One relevant measure, I submit, is to what extent the policies pursued vis-à-vis the “devil” lead to survival or death of your own people. Organized and even armed resistance towards the enemy may at times be the only option, even if it brings many causalities among your own – it may be heroic, without being fruitful. Collaboration is certainly not regarded heroic, still it may be fruitful in the sense of allowing people to survive who otherwise would have become victims of the murderous ambitions. Is it then still contemptuous? I will leave that question open and content myself by stating one empirical conclusion: when looking at the Nordic countries, we find that the stronger the

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resistance to Nazi Germany in the country, the harder the persecution and the higher the number of victims to Nazi atrocities – in particular Jewish victims. When hit by e.g. sabotge actions by the resistance movements the Nazis used to retaliate this on Jews. And the more of a strategic/defensive character the collaboration with Nazi Germany had during World War II, the lower the number of compatriots murdered by the Nazis. Two important comments should be added. Firstly, the empirical conclusion above is by no means generalizable. The Nordic arena during World War II was a very special case – as are all other arenas where history leaves its marks. Secondly, the conclusion above is only one and probably also a one-sided conclusion. Measuring the effects of collaborationism in other terms than just in terms of number of fatalities would of course lead to other conclusions – and most likely, also to different evaluations of collaborationism.

Valentina Sommella

France between Collaboration and Resistance The Armistice Decision, the Montoire Meeting and Vichy’s Ambiguous Stand between the Axis and the Allies In May 1940, in consideration of the rapid advance of the German panzers in Holland and in Belgium – whose king immediately requested an armistice on May 24 – the young general Charles de Gaulle immediately realized the Wehrmacht invasion was imminent even in France, which was already defeated on the Aisne and on the Somme. The collapse of the Grande Armée française left the various representatives of the French government with the difficult choice of either continuing or ending hostilities. If on the one hand President Paul Reynaud and de Gaulle were much inclined towards Churchill’s resistance plan, on the other, Marshal Philippe Pétain, the victor at Verdun, was still focused on traditional war strategies. He believed that France’s entry into the war was a mistake and, together with General Maxime Weygand, seemed more willing to consider an armistice as the only possible solution. In early June 1940, Colonel Charles de Gaulle – appointed pro tempore general – proposed continuing the struggle to the bitter end in France or, if necessary, moving the government to colonial headquarters. However, de Gaulle’s proposals fell on deaf ears and he realized with astonishment that defeatism had spread among his superiors. Churchill also tried to convince the French representatives and flew to France several times urging them to resist, incredulous that the French Army was not prepared to continue the war. Despite Churchill’s efforts and attempts, on June 16, Marshal Pétain, succeeding Paul Reynaud as head of government, asked the Germans for an armistice.1 Pétain’s adherence to the armistice brought many changes in all fields, and involved collaboration with the former enemy. On June 22, the Compiègne armistice imposed disarmament provisions for French ships and the occupation of France’s

1 On the French defeat see, among others, Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, L’Abîme 1939–1945 (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1982); Maurice Vaïsse, ed., Mai-juin 1940. Défaite française, victoire allemande sous l’œil des historiens étrangers (Paris: Autrement, 2000); Christine Levisse-Touzé, ed., La campagne de 1940 (Paris: Tallandier, 2001); Valentina Sommella, Dalla non belligeranza alla resa incondizionata. Le relazioni politico-diplomatiche italo-francesi tra Asse e Alleati (Rome: Aracne, 2008), 15 ff. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671186-002

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northern coast under German command. On July 10, this was ratified in Vichy by France’s National Assembly. The French constitution was amended in order to confer major powers on Pétain, the new premier, who enjoyed a wide consensus among the French population as the trusted hero of Verdun.2 In December, Pétain had the satisfaction of dismissing the hated Pierre Laval and appointing Pierre Flandin as Minister of Foreign Affairs, a man who did not want to be controlled by the Germans, which is why he was forced to resign in early February 1941. Thus, collaboration with Hitler was not amicable and the relationship evolved into actual German command and the looting of an already occupied France. The Germans expected the French administrative officials to follow their bloody methods, but the Vichy officials – among whom were some Jews, such as director of the Trésor François Bloch-Lainé – wanted to protect their fellow citizens.3 In the still free zone of southern France – which would remain unoccupied until the middle of 1942 – the Jewish population was not compelled to wear the yellow star as a means of identification and deportations were less frequent. Therefore, numerous Jews from the occupied zone tried to reach the south by paying the passeurs a high price and then managing to cross the boundary, but even there many Jews, more than 10,000, were deported in 1942, in addition to the more than 30,000 from the occupied zone. In 1943, another 17,000 Jews were deported. The Jewish population was completely unaware of what was in store for them despite the confiscation of all their property and possessions.4 What ensued was a horrific genocide. Not even Jews who had participated in the war and who, like Victor Faynylber, had been mutilated, decorated and had sent their photos with children to Pétain before being deported to Auschwitz, were spared. Yet in a speech in January 1939, Hitler had already expressed the hatred and the will to exterminate the Jewish population in Europe. Moreover, Pierre Laval, who returned to action in 1942, collaborating with the Nazis as a “pacifist”, had received a letter that stated that the Germans intended to exterminate the Jews, yet he took no action.5 Thus, for all these reasons and more, from the very beginning de Gaulle chose to separate himself from his superiors, to remain with Churchill and to represent, 2 On the constitutional amendment of July 10, see Sandro Guerrieri, L’ora del Maresciallo. Vichy, 10 luglio 1940: il conferimento dei pieni poteri a Pétain (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005). 3 See François Bloch-Lainé and Claude Gruson, Hauts fonctionnaires sous l’Occupation (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1996). 4 For the exact figures on the deportation of the Jews of France, it was necessary to wait for Serge and Beate Klarsfeld’s research in the late 1970s, and in particular the publication of Le Mémorial de la déportation des Juifs de France (Paris: Fils et filles de déportés Juifs de France, 1978), listing all Jews deported from France – 76,000 – and classified by deportation convoy. 5 See Stéphane Courtois and Adam Rayski, Qui savait quoi? L’extermination des Juifs, 1941–1945 (Paris: La Découverte, 1987).

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even alone, those who did not accept the armistice and the collaboration.6 Separation from Pétain was not a simple or obvious choice for de Gaulle. They both came from the same conservative background and during his career Pétain was a point of reference for de Gaulle: in 1912, he was second lieutenant in Arras and Pétain was his colonel. During World War I, de Gaulle was taken prisoner by the Germans in Douaumont (in 1916) and presumed dead. It was Pétain himself who gave the eulogy. On his return to France, after nearly three years of imprisonment, de Gaulle was later awarded the Légion d’Honneur. Since 1925, the two had worked together first at the Army General Staff and then at the Défense nationale: from 1932 to 1937, he was seconded (first as a lieutenant colonel, and then as a colonel) to the secretariat de la Défense nationale, where he wrote speeches for Pétain and, on the latter’s suggestion, undertook a study on fortifications.7 Pétain was therefore a kind of mentor for de Gaulle and we can easily understand how difficult it was for him to go against his superior. In his Mémoires de guerre, de Gaulle remembers with emotion his last encounter with the Marshal, in June 1940 in Bordeaux, where the government had fled while the German army was approaching Paris. At the Splendide Hotel in Bordeaux, de Gaulle met Pétain for the last time, dissociating himself from his defeatist approach: “Au maréchal Pétain, qui dînait dans la même salle, j’allai en silence adresser mon salut. Il me serra la main, sans un mot. Je ne devais plus le revoir, jamais”.8 De Gaulle’s esteem for Marshal Pétain is shown by the fact that even after criticizing his defeatist approach, de Gaulle’s judgment of the Marshal still remained partially positive, praising his honesty and the goodness of his intentions: “Pureté de ses intentions – [il] veut le bien de son peuple et de sa patrie. . . . En dépit de la droiture de son caractère, son grand âge est un élément de faiblesse qui peut être exploité par son entourage”,9 thus noting how his age – the Marshal was close to 85 – exposed him to the influence of his collaborators.

6 On the General’s decision see, among others, Jean Lacouture, De Gaulle (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1984); Max Gallo, De Gaulle (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1998); Alain Decaux and Alain Peyrefitte, 1940–1945. De Gaulle, celui qui a dit non (Paris: Perrin, 1999); Alain Peyrefitte, C’était de Gaulle (Paris: Gallimard, 2002); Eric Roussel, Charles de Gaulle (Paris: Gallimard, 2002); Jean-Luc Barré, Devenir de Gaulle 1939–1943. D’après les archives privées et inédites du Général de Gaulle (Paris: Perrin, 2003); Gaetano Quagliariello, De Gaulle e il Gollismo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003). 7 See Charles de Gaulle, Le Fil de l’épée (Paris: Plon, 1932); Charles de Gaulle, Vers l’armée de métier (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1934). 8 Charles de Gaulle, Mémoires de guerre, t. I: L’Appel 1940–1942 (Paris: Plon, 1954), 60. 9 De Gaulle to Churchill, Note sur Vichy, January 5, 1941, in Archives Nationales, Paris, Section XXe Siècle, Archives de Gaulle, dossier 3 AG1/278, pièce 170. The note to Churchill was written by Maurice Dejean, but was revised and integrated by de Gaulle. At the top right appears the indication: “en donner copie au gen Spears”. On the Marshal see Bénédicte Vergez-Chaignon,

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Thus, de Gaulle distanced himself from Pétain and returned to London where Churchill chose to support the lone, unknown general who left France to continue the fight because at the time he was the only dissident voice from France at Churchill’s side. After the famous appeal of June 18, de Gaulle was appointed as Head of all the Free French, but actually he was almost all alone – as he himself confided to Churchill, who answered him with the famous line: “Vous êtes tout seul? Eh bien, je vous reconnais tout seul”.10 Not even the group of illustrious French already in London, such as Jean Monnet, Charles Corbin and Alexis SaintLéger Léger, former General Secretary of the Quai d’Orsay, were enthusiastic about de Gaulle’s appeal. In France, this was even more so and his appeal was not successful. The political class distanced itself from an attitude that was considered extremely dangerous, and only a few personalities, such as Pierre Mendès France and Georges Bernanos, were impressed and sent supportive telegrams. Two days after the appeal, de Gaulle sent a letter to General Weygand saying he was willing to return to France if the capitulation was not signed.11 Otherwise, he would join the resistance as a nucleus of soldiers was forming in London in order to continue to fight, with the possibility of being supported by Churchill. Basically, de Gaulle proposed himself as an intermediary between the British Prime Minister and the French personalities who were willing to form a resistance group. He urged Weygand to leave France and reach the overseas territories to continue the war, concluding with the famous phrase: “il n’y a pas actuellement d’armistice possible dans l’honneur”.12 However, his decision was not shared by Weygand and the French political and military establishment and clearly had important consequences for de Gaulle, putting him outside the law and the established order. In fact, on June 30, 1940 in

Pétain (Paris: Perrin, 2014) who painted a different picture to the one usually portrayed of the “Verdun hero”, showing his authoritarian and cynical side, his tendency to defensive positions rather than military offensive and the error of Vichy. See also Richard Griffiths, Pétain et les Français (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1974); Jean-Raymond Tournoux, Pétain et la France. La Seconde Guerre mondiale (Paris: Plon, 1980); Marc Ferro, Pétain (Paris: Fayard, 1987); Guy Pedroncini, Pétain: La victoire perdue, 1919–1940 (Paris: Perrin, 1995); Sandro Guerrieri, L’ora del Maresciallo. Vichy, 10 luglio 1940: il conferimento dei pieni poteri a Pétain (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005). On the relations between Pétain and de Gaulle see Jean-Raymond Tournoux, Pétain et de Gaulle. Un demi-siècle d’histoire non officielle (Paris: Plon, 1964); Edward Spears, Two Men Who Saved France. Pétain and de Gaulle (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1966). 10 See René Cassin, Les hommes partis de rien (Paris: Plon, 1975), 76. 11 See de Gaulle, Mémoires de guerre, t. I, 269. 12 Ibid. On this issue, see de Gaulle’s letters to Weygand in the note by General de Boissieu, de Gaulle’s son-in-law, Alain de Boissieu, “Ce que Weygand a dit et fait,” Espoir 139 (2004): 146–148.

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Toulouse, he was ordered to surrender himself as a prisoner to be tried by a military court. When he refused to appear, in the following days he was sentenced in absentia first to four years in prison and then to death for the crime of desertion. Therefore, in France, de Gaulle was nothing more than a young and unknown general who defected, while the old Pétain staked all his political prestige on the armistice with Germany, thus sparing the French people the continuation of military activities on French soil. This also explains the consensus of support Pétain enjoyed in France after the armistice: the majority of the French people collaborated most of the time. However, the armistice did not turn out to be bilateral, as the Vichy authorities had hoped. As German leaders oversaw more than a million French prisoners, they demanded 20 million Reichsmark a day as occupation expenses.13 Yet who were those that did not collaborate? As we have seen, de Gaulle was alone at the beginning. Still, despite the initial difficulties, he gradually managed to gather around him all the soldiers and sailors still posted in Great Britain, in Norway, those who embarked at Dunkirk, groups of aviators who fled from North Africa and people somehow arriving from occupied France. The Free French movement was defined as “chaotique et héroïque”, consisting of a great majority of young, enthusiastic people, courageous and conscientious students, without marriage ties or steady employment.14 Therefore, France Libre was essentially formed of young people who were not political and did not know Pétain, unlike their fathers who instead trusted the Marshal. Reaching the UK often in a daring manner, they formed a disparate and heterogeneous group, which was later joined by career soldiers, colonial officers and volunteers determined to continue the war. Lucien Neuwirth, one of the many young people who first entered the Resistance and then answered de Gaulle’s appeal, explained the reasons for many younger people’s participation in the Free French movement: Je ne l’avais jamais vu avant, [mais] pour nous il était la France, . . . c’était nos espoirs . . . Il était tout à la fois, il était l’honneur de la France, il était la promesse de la libération de notre pays, il était l’avenir, pour nous.15

13 Romain H. Rainero, “Gli accordi di Torino tra la Ciaf ed il governo di Pétain sulla Tunisia (Natale 1941),” in Italia e Francia 1939–1945, eds. Jean-Baptiste Duroselle and Enrico Serra, vol. I (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1984), 228 ff. 14 François Broche, “Succès et malheurs de la 1ère Division française libre,” in La France Libre. Actes du Colloque International, Assemblée Nationale, Paris, 15–16 June 2004, ed. Fondation de la France Libre, Fondation Charles de Gaulle (Paris: Lavauzelle, 2005), 256. 15 Avec de Gaulle: témoignages, t. 1: La Guerre et la Libération, 1939–1945, ed. Fondation et Institut Charles de Gaulle, (Paris, Nouveau Monde Editions, 2003), 45. Neuwirth also described the formation of the Espoir group and its dissolution due to the arrests, their escape through France,

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Hence, de Gaulle presented himself as the leader of the opposition to Pétain but the appeal made on June 18 was not supported by most of the commanders of the French army in North Africa. These officers remained faithful to Marshal Pétain from a sense of loyalty and honour. De Gaulle was just a defector in their eyes, a deserter who was sentenced to death by the legitimate government.16 Even the officers who opposed the Germans wished to stay within the law. For example, Charles Noguès, who was Commander-in-Chief in North Africa, did not answer de Gaulle’s call because he thought it was better to abide by the armistice terms that ensured African territorial integrity. Admiral René Godfroy, stationed in Alexandria, despite sympathizing with the Brits, would remain faithful to Vichy until March 1943.17 Admiral François Darlan, Naval Minister from June 1940 and then also Minister of Foreign Affairs from February 1941, was instead a declared opponent of the British and, believing that Germany was going to win the war, thought a collaborationist policy would put France in a position of relative security at the end of the conflict.18 The Anglo-American position was, therefore, very delicate as even though Churchill chose to support de Gaulle from the very beginning, he also aimed at maintaining good relations with Pétain.19 Actually, the Anglo-Americans did not want the Vichy government to allow the Germans to use the French bases in

departing for Great Britain and finally joining the paratroopers. Ibid, 59–63. During the conferences often organized in Paris by the Fondation Charles de Gaulle and the Fondation des Français Libres, the former members of the Gaullist movement reminisced not only about the battles they had fought as soldiers when they were young and joined the organization, but also about the jobs some of them had had in Carlton Gardens in London, where de Gaulle had established his British headquarters. Although sometimes their jobs had consisted of only humble secretarial work, especially in the case of women, these same women usually remembered the experience with pride as the honour of their life, expressing the common feeling of all young people who joined France Libre during the war period. On the London years see also Michèle and Jean-Paul Cointet, La France à Londres, 1940–1943 (Bruxelles: Ed. Complexe, 1990); Jean-Louis Cremieux-Brilhac, La France Libre. De l’appel du 18 juin à la Libération (Paris: Gallimard, 1996). 16 See Robert Belot, “Les non–ralliements au chef de la France Libre en 1940: motivations et impact,” in Actes du Colloque International, Assemblée Nationale, Paris, 15–16 June 2004, ed. Fondation de la France Libre, Fondation Charles de Gaulle (Paris: Lavauzelle, 2005), 41–65. 17 Only at the beginning of May 1943, when the political body headed by General Henri Giraud was already operative, did Admiral Godfroy, under heavy pressure from the British and from Giraud himself, who threatened to cut off his funding, capitulate and join his fleet to that of the Allies. See Harold Macmillan, The Blast of War 1939–1945 (London: Macmillan, 1967), 265 ff. 18 On the French Admiral see Hervé Coutau-Bégarie and Claude Huan, Darlan (Paris: Fayard, 2015); Bernard Costagliola, Darlan. La collaboration à tout prix (Paris: CNRS éd., 2015). 19 See R. T. Thomas, Britain and Vichy, The Dilemma of Anglo-French Relations 1940–42 (London: Macmillan, 1979).

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Meeting between Hitler and Pétain in Montoire-sur-le-Loir, October 1940. bpk/Bayerische Staatsbibliothek/Heinrich Hoffmann. No. 50045895

derogation of the armistice provisions. The existing bond between the Marshal and the officers stationed in North Africa, where the Free French movement had not yet taken root, was quite valuable in the eyes of the Anglo-Americans. For this reason as well, despite the armistice choice, Churchill and Roosevelt tried to prevent Pétain’s full adhesion to Hitler’s plans. After the Montoire meeting between Hitler and Pétain on October 24, 1940, France went through the so-called “collaborationist phase”.20 Pierre Laval was the promoter of this policy, calculating that a German victory was imminent and that France, openly siding against Britain, would be included in the division of the spoils of war. However, this policy was not supported by the other members of the government, who wanted to adhere to the armistice clauses, and only had Admiral Darlan’s full support. As has already been stated, Darlan was a declared opponent of the British and an anti-Gaullist, so he was keeping the fleet ready because in his opinion it was the only way to prevent the installation of an English base right in the Mediterranean, more or less under de Gaulle’s protection. However, the Montoire meeting offered de Gaulle the opportunity to put the Vichy government and the Nazi regime on the same footing, appealing to all the French forces that opposed it. Taking advantage of the handshake that the two leaders exchanged, and that was immortalized by photographers, de Gaulle emphasized the need to organize a well-structured body capable of supporting the efforts of those who opposed the Vichy regime and the Nazis. In October 1940 in

20 On the collaborationist policies see François Depla, Montoire. Les premiers jours de la collaboration (Paris: Albin Michel, 1996); Jean-Pierre Azéma, Paris-Vichy. Les collaborations. Histoire et mémoires (Paris: André Versaille éditeur, 2012).

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Brazzaville, the then capital of French Equatorial Africa, which had been conquered by Colonel Edgard de Larminat, who had joined France Libre, de Gaulle issued the constitutive manifesto of the Conseil de Défense de l’Empire. In the Brazzaville manifesto, de Gaulle declared that “des dirigeants de rencontre”, some leaders happened to be so simply by chance and had compromised with the enemy while millions of French were ready to continue fighting. He stated that there was no longer a French government and that “l’organisme” which took office in Vichy, which was not even worthy of the name of government, was “incostitutionnel et soumis à l’envahisseur”.21 He declared that he would defend that part of the national heritage under his jurisdiction against the enemy, that is the territories of the “ralliées” colonies.22 De Gaulle’s speech aimed to impeach Pétain and his collaborators, proposing himself as the only leader to whom the French still worthy of the name had to refer and suggesting that his actions had the support of the Allies. This step was very important because it reversed the previous situation: de Gaulle was no longer a traitor, but rather Pétain was. With regard to this, the considerations of the Jewish philosopher Avishai Margalit are very interesting. In his latest book On Betrayal, he wonders: if Pétain had the support of the majority of the French population in 1940, why is he considered a traitor? Who exactly did he betray if the majority of the French people in 1940 agreed with the armistice?23 On the one hand, he certainly betrayed the French Jews, depriving them of their French citizenship and allowing the existence of horrific and tragic realities like that of Drancy, the internment camp from which the French Jews were deported to extermination camps between 1942 and 1944 (including 6,000 children).24 However, he also betrayed the shared past, the national heritage, of the French people.

21 De Gaulle, Mémoires de guerre, I, 303. 22 Ibid., 304. 23 Avishai Margalit, On Betrayal (Cambridge – MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), Chapter 6, “Collaboration”. 24 On this issue see Jacques Fredj, Drancy, un camp d’internement aux portes de Paris, préface de Serge Klarsfeld (Toulouse: Privat, 2015); Annette Wieviorka and Michel Laffitte, À l’intérieur du camp de Drancy (Paris: Perrin, 2012); Maurice Rajsfus, Drancy: un camp de concentration très ordinaire 1941–1944 (Paris: Le Cherche Midi, 1996); Serge Klarsfeld, Les transferts de juifs du camp de Rivesaltes et de la région de Montpellier vers le camp de Drancy en vue de leur déportation 10 août 1942–6 août 1944 (Paris: Fils et filles des déportés des juifs de France, 1993); and more generally Serge Klarsfeld, La Shoah en France, le calendrier des déportations (septembre 1942– aout 1944) (Paris: Fayard, 2001); Alain Michel, Vichy et la Shoah. Enquête sur le paradoxe français (Paris: CLD éditions, 2012).

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That was exactly de Gaulle’s point. Preserving the shared past of the French people was precisely the goal of the Conseil de Défense de l’Empire, which resumed sovereignty over the “ralliées” colonies on the basis of French legislation prior to June 23, 1940, until a free and independent French government could be re-established.25 It was intended to be faithful to France, to guarantee its internal and external security and economic activity and to maintain “la cohésion morale” of the French people.26 It also assumed responsibility for the conduct of the war and relations with the Allies in view of the final victory. However, the Brazzaville manifesto did not please the Anglo-Americans, who saw in it de Gaulle’s will to isolate Vichy and banish its actions, to act as the sole interlocutor, head of the opposition forces and to validate his enterprises with the Allies’ approval. Actually, the Allies, as was often the case, were not fully aware of his initiatives.27 The Conseil de Défense de l’Empire thus constituted the “embryo” of the France Libre administrative structure, a military organization which then became a political organization with a territorial base, a political power parallel to that of Vichy, even if the Allies did not want to recognize it as such.28 At the end of 1940, around 35,000 people had joined the Gaullist organization, under the command of the few French officers who had responded to the call: Emile Muselier, Paul Legentilhomme, Pierre Koenig, Philippe Leclerc and Georges Catroux, former Governor of Indochina. At the end of February 1941, in an extreme attempt to convince even the Vichy generals to join the new Conseil de Défense de l’Empire, de Gaulle sent another letter to Weygand – which was transmitted through the British secret services – once again inviting him to join his movement:

25 De Gaulle, Mémoires de guerre, I, 304. On the successive transformations of this organ and on the persons appointed to the various functions, see Duroselle, L’Abîme, 311 ff. 26 De Gaulle, Mémoires de guerre, I, 304. 27 In his memoirs, Macmillan instead interpreted de Gaulle’s initiative favorably. See Macmillan, The Blast of War 1939–1945. On Macmillan’s “francophilia” see René Massigli, Une Comédie des erreurs (Paris: Plon, 1978), 22: “Sous une apparence de nonchalance non dénuée de charme, Harold Macmillan . . . possédait de rares dons d’observation et de finesse dans l’analyse des situations et des caractères. Sa patience, qui n’excluait pas l’obstination, sa sympathie pour les choses françaises . . . firent de lui en maintes circonstances notre meilleur avocat, à Londres d’abord, mais aussi auprès de Robert Murphy . . .”. However, dealing with de Gaulle was not always an easy task even for Macmillan. See Peter Mangold, The Almost Impossible Ally. Harold Macmillan and Charles de Gaulle (London/New York: I. B. Tauris, 2006), 53, 68–69. 28 See Henri Michel, Histoire de la France Libre (Paris: PUF, 19723), 19: “Les Anglais semblent n’avoir été avisés qu’après coup de la création du Conseil de l’Empire. . . . Dans ces conditions, la France Libre cessait d’être uniquement une force militaire. Le passage à la politique était franchi”.

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Pour quelques jours encore, vous êtes en mesure de jouer un grand rôle national. Ensuite, il sera trop tard. Je vous propose de nous unir. Déclarons ensemble que nous faisons la guerre pour libérer la patrie. Appelons – en à l’Empire!29

Overcoming the misunderstandings, de Gaulle proposed to General Weygand, then Commander-in-Chief of the French forces in Africa, to rely on the colonial populations and the army stationed there to organize the resistance forces. De Gaulle underlined that the French people were looking forward to the union of the free forces and the African Army, which would have the Allies’ support. Basically, de Gaulle was ahead of his time, trying to realize the agreement that the Anglo-Americans would make possible two years later, in Casablanca, between de Gaulle himself and General Giraud. Yet in February 1941 it was still too early. Weygand did not respond to de Gaulle’s appeal and, as reported by General Catroux, his comment on the letter was emblematic: “De Gaulle! Douze balles dans la peau, voilà ce qu’il mérite”.30 Actually, de Gaulle already blamed Weygand for not having fully understood “la force que représentaient la Marine . . . et l’Empire intacts”.31 If it was not easy for de Gaulle to convince the French generals based in the African colonies to join France Libre, relations with the Anglo-American Allies were also extremely complex.32 De Gaulle’s protagonism, his reluctance to accept suggestions from the Allies on which his organization depended financially, his obstinacy in putting French sovereignty above all else, considering France an allied country and not a defeated country, all these factors bothered the Anglo-Americans. President Roosevelt tried to get rid of the annoying general by every means, attempting to replace him with other more congenial and 29 De Gaulle to Weygand, February 1941, in Archives Nationales, Paris, Section XXe Siècle, Archives de Gaulle, dossier 3AG1/257. The letter is also reported in General de Boissieu’s notes, “Ce que Weygand a dit et fait,” 148. 30 Ibid. 31 De Gaulle to Churchill, Note sur Vichy, January 5, 1941, in Archives Nationales, Paris, Section XXe Siècle, Archives de Gaulle, dossier 3 AG1/278, pièce 170. 32 On the difficult relations between de Gaulle and the Anglo-Americans see Dorothy S. White, Seeds of Discord: de Gaulle, Free France and the Allies (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1964); Milton Viorst, Hostile Allies: Franklin Delano Roosevelt and de Gaulle (New York: Macmillan, 1965); Marc Ferro, De Gaulle et l’Amérique. Une amitié tumultueuse (Paris: Plon, 1973); Charles Cogan, Oldest Allies, Guardied Friends (London: Praeger, 1994); Ibid., “Sans bienveillance: les relations franco–américaines 1944–1945,” Espoir 109 (1996): 17–27; Paul–Marie de La Gorce, “Le général de Gaulle et les Etats–Unis,” Espoir 136 (2003): 9–22; Pierre Maillard, “Le général de Gaulle et les relations franco–américaines. Entre le mythe et les réalités,” Ibid., 31–41; François Kersaudy, De Gaulle et Churchill, La mésentente cordiale (Paris: Perrin, 20032); Ibid, De Gaulle et Roosevelt, Le duel au sommet (Paris: Perrin, 2004); Valentina Sommella, Un’alleanza difficile. Churchill, de Gaulle e Roosevelt negli anni della guerra (Rome: Aracne, 2005).

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docile generals. Strategic operations not agreed upon, such as the annexation of the Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon Canadian islands in 1941, but also de Gaulle’s press releases, speeches and statements raised Roosevelt’s ire so that he became strongly anti-Gaullist, along with his Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who called the Gaullists “polecats” (skunks) with contempt.33 Particularly before entering the war, the Americans kept looking more favorably on Pétain than on France Libre, especially after Laval’s temporary expulsion from the Vichy government in December 1940. Laval’s expulsion, unpopular with the Germans, was instead warmly welcomed by the other countries because for a while it seemed to mark a return to the phase preceding the Montoire meeting, a return to the French nation’s unity around Pétain and to non-complacency towards Hitler’s claims.34 In fact, German Ambassador Otto Abetz, who was the representative of the German Foreign Ministry to the French military command, exerted a great deal of pressure on the Marshal to have Laval reintegrated and de Gaulle himself later defined Laval “l’homme de la collaboration”.35 Renaud Meltz, who has recently published a monumental biography of Laval, also ascribes to him “l’invention de la collaboration”, identifying him as the co-architect of the establishment of an authoritarian and anti-Semitic regime in Vichy France.36 The British victories in Cyrenaica over the Italian troops in January 1941 also led Churchill to offer Pétain the financial means and military assistance to transfer the government to Africa to resume the war against Germany.37 Churchill’s

33 Simon Berthon, Allies at War: The Bitter Rivalry Among Churchill, Roosevelt, and de Gaulle (New York: Carroll&Graf Publishers, 2001), 149–150. See also Cordell Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull (New York: Macmillan, 1948), 2 vol. 34 See Ferro, Pétain, 291–292: “si le renvoi de Laval et la résistance de la Commission d’armistice à Wiesbaden apportaient assurément une connotation anti-allemande à la politique du Maréchal, celle-ci n’avait pas été . . . la seule donnée de cette politique . . .”. 35 De Gaulle, Mémoires de guerre, t. II: L’Unité 1942–1944, 289. On Abetz’s strategies see Barbara Lambauer, Abetz et les Français (Paris: Fayard, 2001). 36 Renaud Meltz, Pierre Laval. Un mystère français (Paris: Perrin, 2018), 679–680. On the French lawyer see also Fred Kupferman, Laval, 1883–1945 (Paris: Balland, 1987); Jean-Paul Cointet, Pierre Laval (Paris: Fayard, 1993). On the Vichy regime see Robert Aron, Histoire de Vichy (Paris: Fayard, 1954); Robert O. Paxton, La France de Vichy (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1973); Philippe Burrin, La France à l’heure allemande, 1940–1944 (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1989); Michèle Cointet, Nouvelle histoire de Vichy (Paris: Fayard, 2011). 37 See Churchill’s messages of January 11, 1941 in Churchill & Roosevelt, The Complete Correspondence, t. I: Alliance Emerging. October 1933–November 1942, ed. with commentary by Warren F. Kimball (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 127, and especially the message of January 21, 1941, 133: “We have been considering other means of encouraging Marshal Pétain and it occurs to us that it might help him to know that we would give every facility for the mobilisation and departure from Alexandria of the units of the French fleet there in the event

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proposal was addressed to Pétain and not to de Gaulle, who instead had insisted from the very beginning on moving the General Staff to Algeria to organize the resistance. This meant that, despite the armistice, the Allies preferred to maintain good relations with the legitimate French government and with the Marshal who still had a great following in the army and “the genuine support of all the French people”, according to what was also referred by Admiral William Leahy, American Ambassador to the Vichy government.38 On May 28, 1941 in Paris, Admiral Darlan and the German Ambassador Otto Abetz signed some agreements on French North Africa’s status and the possibility for Germany to supply German troops with war material needed to fight the British. These agreements also provided for setting up German military bases in ports such as Bizerte in Tunisia and Dakar in French Equatorial Africa, where German ships were moored. In particular, in Algeria – where at the time Muslims, Europeans and Jews uneasily cohabitated – Hitler was hailed as the “savior” who could emancipate the Muslim population from French colonial rule. In fact, German agents worked to support the independence movements in order to become their allies. Already in October 1940, with the repeal of the Crémieux decree the French Jews in Algeria had lost their French nationality, and persecution, massacres, destruction of synagogues, deportation to concentration camps with subsequent loss of their property and belongings had begun.39 Among the French demands made in the Council of Ministers of June 6, 1941, Darlan proposed a return to French sovereignty, the abolition of heavy occupation costs, the release of French prisoners and freedom for the Army, the Navy and Air Force, but these requests were not accepted by the Germans even in the subsequent meetings until December 1941, when the Vichy authorities made further requests. They called for an effective collaboration, the return of 700,000 prisoners, 1,500 locomotives and 15,000 trains, reduced occupancy costs, the delivery of 200,000 tons of coal per month from the mines of the occupied territories and much more, all of which continued to be rejected by the Germans.40

of the French Government deciding to cross to North Africa and to resume the war there against Germany and Italy”. 38 Ibid., t. I, 185. Still according to Leahy, Darlan did not enjoy the same trust. Therefore, Admiral Darlan represented a real concern for Churchill, who wrote to Roosevelt in March 1941: “Dealing with Darlan is dealing with Germany, for he will not be allowed to agree to anything they know about which does not suit their book”, Ibid., t. I, 147. See also Admiral Leahy’s memoirs: William D. Leahy, I was there (London: Gollancz, 1950). 39 See Vergez-Chaignon, Pétain. 40 Rainero, “Gli accordi di Torino tra la Ciaf ed il governo di Pétain sulla Tunisia (Natale 1941),” vol. I, 231, 236.

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Given the difficult collaboration between Vichy and Berlin, after the United States entered the war when the Anglo-Americans planned the Torch operation (the landing in North Africa), the Allies decided to oust de Gaulle and the Free French from the operation. The Americans feared that the Gaullists’ involvement could compromise their relations with the Vichy government, with which, even still in November 1942, they tried to maintain good relations. This also appears in a draft letter Roosevelt was about to send to Pétain, calling him “dear old friend” and “Verdun hero”, warm expressions which were quite different from those he would have addressed to de Gaulle. Before sending the letter, however, Roosevelt submitted it to Churchill who, repeatedly attacked by the Vichy government, found the President’s message “too kind” given that the Marshal had “used his reputation to do [their] cause injuries no lesser man could have done”.41 He therefore invited Roosevelt to modify it, thinking of the effect it would have on the Gaullists who – as has been mentioned – were ousted from the operation. In the end, the American President listened to Churchill’s suggestion and corrected his message to Pétain. The day before the landing, Roosevelt spoke to all the African broadcasters in French to reassure the residents about the Anglo-American intentions. He began the appeal with a reassuring “Mes amis, mes amis” and continued by saying that the landing’s aim was to regain their freedom and independence by driving out the foreign invaders. He therefore urged them not to resist and underlined his commitment to withdraw the troops as soon as peace and freedom were restored. De Gaulle’s representatives in the US, Raoul Aglion and Adrien Tixier, regretted on behalf of the Free French that they were not invited to join the operation they had been waiting for from the outset.42 The Allied landing in North Africa took place on November 8, 1942 and encountered a certain resistance that Roosevelt had underestimated, which resulted in almost 1,500 American deaths and injuries. Despite the cordial note sent by Roosevelt, Pétain ordered his generals to fight with all available means. Alphonse Juin in Algeria and especially Charles Noguès in Morocco initially showed no intention of giving up.43 Trying to reach an agreement, the American Consul General Robert Murphy immediately got in touch with Admiral Darlan, commander of the French military forces, who reiterated his loyalty to Pétain.

41 Churchill & Roosevelt, The Complete Correspondence, t. I, 657. 42 See Raoul Aglion, De Gaulle et Roosevelt. La France Libre aux Etats–Unis (Paris: Les Editions La Bruyère, 1997). 43 See Christine Levisse-Touzé, L’Afrique du Nord dans la guerre 1939–1945 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1998); José Aboulker and Christine Levisse–Touzé, “8 novembre 1942: Les armées américaine et anglaise prennent Alger en quinze heures,” Espoir 133 (2002): 11–65.

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However, immediately after the American landing, Hitler invaded the unoccupied area of France, Corsica and Tunisia with the aim of securing the French Mediterranean coast. Therefore, Darlan, regarding Pétain as a prisoner of the Germans, considered himself free from Pétain’s instructions and called for a ceasefire. However, not everyone obeyed him: Admiral Jean de Laborde, commander of the French Forces de Haute Mer (FHM), refused to execute Darlan’s orders without Pétain’s authorization, hoping among other things to reach an agreement with Germany. Nevertheless, following a German attack, Admiral de Laborde was forced to give the order to scuttle the 75 ships at anchor in Toulon.44 General Mark W. Clark, Eisenhower’s representative, quickly realized that only Darlan could end the opposition in the African Army, thus saving the lives of many Allied soldiers. On November 10, he then concluded an agreement with Darlan: in exchange for the truce in Algeria and Morocco, Darlan would exercise supreme power in North Africa. Eisenhower arrived in Algiers on the same day, evaluated the situation from the military point of view and ratified the agreement. De Gaulle immediately condemned this agreement and wrote to Churchill that Darlan’s nomination, supported by the Americans and “au nom du Maréchal”, constituted “a fait capital de cette guerre”, a very serious event that would cause more disastrous consequences than the “capitulation de Bordeaux” itself.45 In his opinion, the US had not only recognized “un régime tyrannique d’inspiration nazie” but had joined it by placing a quisling, a traitor, in charge of the freed territories.46 In addition, according to General Catroux, in calling for independence, Darlan was actually continuing Vichy policies, probably agreed upon in the Laval-Hitler meeting and allowing the Americans a regime of military occupation in exchange for their respect for the Vichy sovereignty. Eisenhower would be provided with an operational base and the use of the communication and public services, while the French administrative structure would not change and unarmed military forces would withdraw to certain areas of the territory. Thus, essentially with the Americans’ consent, Darlan would continue to give

44 At this point, Pétain would have left the scene: “‘le héros’ a cédé le pas au personnage ‘principale’ d’une tragédie dont il n’est pas sorti en triomphateur”, Vergez-Chaignon, Pétain, 17. 45 De Gaulle to Churchill, November 14, 1942, in Archives Nationales, Paris, Section XXe Siècle, Archives de Gaulle, dossier 3AG1/257. De Gaulle’s strong irritation can be seen from the beginning of the letter in which the General had personally erased the friendly Mon cher Premier Ministre, replacing it with the more formal Cher Monsieur Churchill. 46 Ibid. Vidkun Quisling had collaborated with the Germans when they occupied Norway. The surname Quisling then came to stand for “collaborationist” and, by extension, “traitor”.

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instructions as High Commissioner in North Africa and the region would stay under the Marshal’s control.47 Churchill himself, like most of his compatriots, shared de Gaulle’s criticisms and told Roosevelt that a large part of British public opinion was shaken by the agreement drawn up with Darlan. Churchill wrote in his memoirs that when the agreement with Darlan became public, a profound sense of disquiet spread in the UK and he was saddened to note that the success of the gigantic amphibious operation and the El Alamein victory were blurred in the eyes of many of his best friends by what seemed to them a low and dirty compromise with one of their most ardent enemies.48 Thus, the British Prime Minister was increasingly convinced that this choice should be seen as “a temporary expedient” determined by necessity.49 They had to be careful about the damage they could suffer to their image if people thought they were ready “to make terms with the local quislings”.50 He expressed his dislike for the French admiral – “Darlan has an odious record” – because he had inculcated anti-British sentiments in French officers and sailors. Furthermore, Churchill insisted Darlan acted as an opportunist: “Darlan plays the turncoat”.51 Moreover, Darlan’s double-cross had already been widely foreseen by de Gaulle and communicated to Churchill almost two years before, when de Gaulle had described him as a skillful and unscrupulous politician, only interested in achieving his own ambitions and in seizing power: Politicien et intrigant plutôt que marin. . . . uniquement préoccupé de succéder au Maréchal à la tête de l’Etat et subordonnant tout à cette préoccupation. Décidé à jouer dans ce but l’atout que représente sa flotte – et à le jouer dans un sens ou dans un autre (pour l’Allemagne ou pour l’Angleterre) dans l’unique intérêt de ses ambitions personnelles.52

As the admiral in charge of the French fleet, he would play this card in one way or another with the sole intention of taking power.

47 Ibid., dossier 3 AG1/296, pièce 198, November 13, 1942. 48 See Winston S. Churchill, The World War II (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1948–1953), vol. 4: The Hinge of Fate, book II: Africa Redeemed, chapter XXXV: “The Darlan Episode,” 565 ff. 49 Churchill & Roosevelt, The Complete Correspondence, t. II: Alliance Forged. November 1942 – February 1944, 7. 50 Ibid. As we can see, Churchill used the same term used by de Gaulle. 51 Ibid. 52 De Gaulle to Churchill, Note sur Vichy, January 5, 1941, in Archives Nationales, Paris, Section XXe Siècle, Archives de Gaulle, dossier 3 AG1/278, pièce 170.

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If Darlan was unpopular, as we have seen, with Churchill53 and the Foreign Office, not even Roosevelt and the State Department liked him. President Roosevelt, in particular, sent a message to Eisenhower, expressing his well-founded perplexities about somebody he considered a fascist and “a collaborator of Hitler”.54 While reassuring General Eisenhower of his support, Roosevelt revealed his deeply hostile feelings about Darlan: We do not trust Darlan. . . . it is impossible to keep a collaborator of Hitler and one whom we believe to be a Fascist in civil power any longer than is absolutely necessary. . . . His movements should be watched carefully and his communications supervised.55

However, the main objective was to end the fighting, saving the lives of French and Anglo-American soldiers and also saving precious time. These considerations prevailed over all the hesitations and ethical concerns.56 Even General Marshall and Henry Stimson were convinced that the solution proposed by Eisenhower was the right one from the military point of view. Therefore, Darlan was appointed High Commissioner for North Africa, while General Giraud became Commander of the land and air forces.57 In any event, Darlan remained in office for only a month. On Christmas Eve of that same year (1942) he was assassinated. Giraud then became the only official

53 Churchill’s judgment of Darlan had always been negative, as we can see from the note transmitted to the Foreign Office on February 17, 1941 on the possibility of appointing Darlan as Pétain’s successor. The Prime Minister stated that even Laval would have been better than Darlan “who is a dangerous, bitter, ambitious man”. In a February 23 telegram to Sir Alexander Cadogan, Churchill said he was sure Darlan was “an ambitious crook” and that “his exposure and Weygand’s weakness will both . . . inure to the credit of De Gaulle”, The Churchill War Papers, ed. by Martin Gilbert (London: Heinemann, 2000), vol. III: The Ever–Widening War 1941, 232 and 254. 54 Churchill & Roosevelt, The Complete Correspondence, t. II, 5. 55 Ibid. 56 See the plain language dispatch of November 17, 1942 from Roosevelt to Churchill in Ibid., t. II, 8–9: “The present temporary arrangement in North and West Africa is only a temporary expedient, justified solely by the stress of battle. The present temporary arrangement has accomplished two military objectives. The first was to save American and British lives on the one hand, and French lives on the other hand. The second was the vital factor of time. The temporary arrangement has made it possible to avoid a ‘mopping up’ period in Algiers and Morocco which might have taken a month or two to consummate. Such a period would have delayed the concentration for the attack from the West on Tunis, and we hope on Tripoli. . . . Temporary arrangements made with Admiral Darlan apply, without exception, to the current local situation only”. 57 On November 22, the Darlan-Clark agreements were drawn up, laying the foundations for an understanding between the French administration and the Allied forces to reorganize the economic and commercial exchange in North Africa.

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Anglo-American interlocutor in North Africa. Giraud had an impressive record of accomplishment. He had fought valiantly during World War I, when he had been seriously wounded and taken prisoner. Having fallen into the hands of the Germans even during World War II, he had managed to escape from the Königstein internment camp in Germany in April 1942. From there he had reached unoccupied France, thus acquiring considerable credit among French non-collaborators. He was then sentenced to death by the Vichy government while his wife was jailed in Lyon and his children were prisoners in Germany. He could not be accused of any connivance with Vichy and he was a great soldier figure. Yet de Gaulle equally reproached the Anglo-Americans for having excluded him not only from the Torch operation but also from the North Africa management despite the fact that from the very beginning his appeal was aimed at the colonies’ liberation and the establishment of a provisional government in Algiers. The French forces under Giraud’s command in North Africa and the Free French would then be reunited in a single Comité Français de Libération Nationale (CFLN) in Algiers in June 1943. Meanwhile, within the Committee, de Gaulle started a long struggle with Giraud to obtain the dismissal and arrest of those generals who had complied with Pétain’s orders, namely General Noguès and the two Governors-general Pierre Boisson and Marcel Peyrouton. Even in this case, however, the Vichy generals were protected by the AngloAmericans for the help they provided to the Allied armies during the difficult peace process in North Africa. The Anglo-Americans therefore strongly resented de Gaulle for having arrested these generals and insisted on their release. Roosevelt sent a telegram to Eisenhower in which he stressed the assistance given by the Generals Boisson, Peyrouton and Flandin during the African campaign and asked Churchill to give identical instructions to Harold Macmillan, the British minister in Algiers.58 He added as an emblematic conclusion: “It seems to me that this is the proper time effectively to eliminate the Jeanne d’Arc complex and to return to realism”.59 Churchill and Roosevelt had alluded to the Joan of Arc complex which afflicted de Gaulle several times during their correspondence. These allusions derived from the answer de Gaulle himself had given to Roosevelt during their first meeting in Casablanca. When Roosevelt declared that he could not recognize him as head of the French liberation movement because he had not been elected by the people, de Gaulle replied that neither was Joan of Arc.

58 See Churchill & Roosevelt, The Complete Correspondence, t. II, 626: “In view of assistance given to the Allied Armies during the campaign in Africa by Boisson, Peyrouton and Flandin, you are directed to take no action against these individuals at the present time”. 59 Ibid.

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De Gaulle would have to wait until October 1944 before being officially recognized as head of the French provisional government, yet it would be precisely the Joan of Arc complex that would allow a defeated France to redeem itself from the humiliation at Rethondes. Despite having signed the armistice with Nazi Germany and being tainted with the shame of collaboration, de Gaulle’s Joan of Arc complex allowed France to take part in Germany’s division into four zones of influence and to obtain one of the five permanent seats in the UN Council, which were indeed two remarkable results for all French people.

Aspects of Collaboration in Central Europe: The Cases of Poland and Hungary

Stephan Lehnstaedt

A “Land without Quislings” Collaboration in Poland Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. During five years of occupation, the country, like in World War I – and like occupations at all times – could not be ruled without the participation of the local population. Local conditions differed fundamentally, depending on which part of the multi-ethnic pre-war Poland comes into view. There were areas integrated into the Reich with a significant German minority in the west; the heartland in the so-called Generalgouvernement, with a Jewish population of about ten per cent, but only a negligible amount of other minorities; or those territories in the east that initially were occupied by the Soviet Union in September 1939 and where Poles were often only a minority among Lithuanians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. This ethnically highly heterogeneous situation (which the administrative units newly created by the Germans corresponded to only to a very limited extent) makes generalized statements about the phenomenon of collaboration in Poland largely impossible. This is particularly true because to some extent imported collaborators also came to the locals, mostly in the form of various foreign fremdvölkische SS formations that were moved to the Polish countryside. These include, for example, the so-called Trawnikis, helpers of the Lublin SS and Polizeiführer Odilo Globocnik, recruited from Soviet prisoners of war, who took on a wide variety of auxiliary activities, particularly in the Holocaust.1 Against this background, collaboration and attempts to seek collaboration by the Germans in the General Government are to be examined, that is, the “neighboring country of the Reich” with its four districts Cracow, Lublin, Radom and Warsaw, to which Galicia was added in the summer of 1941. This article is explicitly limited to the German-Polish relationship; excluded are the mentioned Trawniki units, but also Ukrainian formations, whose members had been Polish citizens before 1939.2 The focus here is on the political premise, collaboration in the administrative area and dealing with the so-called Volksdeutschen, the German minority in Poland, whom the occupiers tried to include in their Volksgemeinschaft (people’s

1 Angelika Benz, Handlanger der SS: Die Rolle der Trawniki-Männer im Holocaust (Berlin: Metropol, 2015); Peter Black, “Foot Soldiers of the Final Solution: The Trawniki Training Camp and Operation Reinhard,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 25 (2011): 1–99. 2 Franziska Bruder, ‘Den ukrainischen Staat erkämpfen oder sterben!’: Die Organisation Ukrainischer Nationalisten (OUN) 1929–1948 (Berlin: Metropol, 2007). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671186-003

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community). In addition, the question is asked how important cooperation with the local population was for the Germans, to what extent they were dependent on it and what intentions they were pursuing. At this point, the partly bitter debate about the moral assessment of collaboration in Poland – and whether or to what extent one can even speak of it – should not be continued.3 Of course, the definition of “collaboration” also has an influence on the number of collaborators. Just from the autumn of 1942 to the summer of 1944, the Polish underground killed almost 11,500 Poles and Ukrainians as collaborators4 – by which it understood cooperation with the occupiers on one’s own initiative, with a certain degree of freedom and beyond the mere earning of bread; it also included spying, blackmail and denunciations.5 In this sense, armaments workers or low-ranking civil servants were not collaborators, but Volksdeutsche, who had an interest in German rule, were. Highly complex special cases present the sexual relationships between female Poles and male Germans, which were in general condemned by the resistance. This condemnation also included women who had to prostitute themselves for food in order to survive. All of this was about national honor, so the behavior of these women was considered a betrayal. Numerous pamphlets and caricatures dealt with the problem and at the same time pointed to the extent to which the definition of “collaboration” was gender-specifically loaded. As a self-proclaimed guardian of national morality, the resistance made numerous stipulations for accepted or simply tolerated behavior towards the occupiers – which of course also included other areas – and sanctioned corresponding deviations, some with high disciplinary measures. In the case of women, punishment mostly consisted of beatings or cutting off their hair, the latter being intended for public display as a

3 Maren Röger and Stephan Lehnstaedt, “Gleiche Muster der Zusammenarbeit unter NS- und Sowjetbesatzung? Individuelle Kollaborateure im ‘Land ohne Quisling,’” accessed January 25, 2020, http://www.perspectivia.net/content/publikationen/lelewel-gespraeche/7-2013. 4 Andrzej Leon Sowa, Kto wydał wyrok na miasto. Plany operacyjne ZWZ-AK (1940–1944) i sposoby ich realizacji (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2016), 674. See also Leszek Gondek, Polska karząca 1939–1945: Polski podziemny wymiar sprawiedliwości w okresie okupacji niemieckiej (Warsaw: Pax, 1988). 5 Klaus-Peter Friedrich, “Polen und seine Feinde (sowie deren Kollaborateure): Vorwürfe wegen ‘polnischer Kollaboration’ und ‘jüdischer Kollaboration’ in der polnischen Presse (1942–1944/45),” in ‘Kollaboration’ in Nordosteuropa: Erscheinungsformen und Deutungen im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Joachim Tauber (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006), 207–249, here 213 (with examples for behaviour persecuted by underground courts). For denunciation of Jews see Barbara Engelking, ‘Szanowny panie gistapo’: Donosy do władz niemieckich w Warszawie i okolicach w latach 1940–1941 (Warsaw: IFiS PAN, 2003); Jan Grabowski, ‘Ja tego Żyda znam’: Szantażowanie Żydów w Warszawie 1939–1943 (Warsaw: IFiS PAN, 2004).

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collaborator; occasionally, however, even a death penalty was imposed and executed.6 In addition to the differences mentioned in the respective occupation areas, there is also the difficulty that the diverse political currents of the Polish underground did not particularly judge behavior towards Jews in a uniform manner. The right-wing nationalists of National Democracy (Narodowa Demokracja, Endecja), for example, showed a lot of understanding for anti-Semitic politics, the “final solution to the Jewish question” and enrichment from Jewish property.7 On this side of the political spectrum, there was also sympathy for the German struggle against the Soviet Union, which was seen as an enemy of Poland. In the fight against the Red Army, the Polish resistance was therefore occasionally willing to make tactical arrangements with the Wehrmacht.8

Official Collaboration? Any examination of collaboration in occupied Poland must first of all state that there were no official offers of collaboration from the Germans to the ethnic Polish population. The exception of the Polish building service (Baudienst) in the General Government, in which volunteers were to build things like roads for the Germans, was notoriously unsuccessful. Food, lodging and the ridiculously low wages of one złoty a day were offered, but instead of the desired 150,000 workers, there never were more than 45,000, almost all of them forced, so that constant escapes were observed.9 The occupiers abolished or forbade and persecuted all organizations of the Polish state at the national and regional levels. Under no circumstances did they want to employ locals in responsible positions. Hitler explicitly rejected such considerations in the summer of 1941 and in the spring of 1943, when both the war against the Soviet Union and the discovery of the Soviet mass murders of Polish officers in Katyn had offered an opportunity for propaganda. In the first case, the Wehrmacht emphasized how helpful Polish soldiers could be,

6 Maren Röger, Kriegsbeziehungen: Intimität, Gewalt und Prostitution im besetzten Polen 1939 bis 1945 (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 2015), 128–136. 7 Friedrich, “Polen und seine Feinde (sowie deren Kollaborateure),” 223–231 and 238–243. 8 As an example: Stephan Lehnstaedt, “Historischer Antisemitismus im heutigen Polen: Das Beispiel der Narodowe Siły Zbrojne,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 67 (2019), 497–517, here 507. 9 Mścisław Wróblewski, Służba Budowlana (Baudienst) w Generalnym Gubernatorstwie 1940–1945 (Warsaw: PWN, 1984).

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later it were Governor General Hans Frank and Heinrich Himmler who suggested this separately, but did not find the Führer’s approval.10 In the spring of 1944, the head of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), Ernst Kaltenbrunner, tried to promote the idea of a White Eagle Division (Division Weißer Adler) as a Polish SS unit. At the same time, the occupation policy in the General Government became somewhat milder, there were fewer mass executions and the repressions for the first time were officially given a “reason”: necessities for war. However, Hitler insisted that Ukrainians, Belarusians, Estonians and Latvians were the only Eastern Europeans he wanted to serve because his distrust of Poland was too great. It was not until the end of 1944, when the war was obviously lost, that he approved to form a unit of Polish volunteers. The Army High Command once again pushed for this, supported by Hans Frank. Appropriate recruitment guidelines were available on November 4, 1944, and initially 12,000 men were to be recruited. By December, however, only 471 “volunteers” had come, most of whom from forced labor and concentration camps. They had been promised a release when enlisting for war service. However, in the areas of Poland annexed to the empire, there was no recruitment for the White Eagle Division.11 In contrast to Japan, for example, which successfully campaigned for the cooperation of local populations in East Asia, the Nazis largely refused to use this political instrument in Eastern Europe and waived any opportunities for state cooperation.12 The Third Reich was not the first empire to be built on the basis of nationalism – one might think of France or the United States – but Nazi ideology made it impossible for the conquered peoples to ever become citizens; it did not even allow this as a kind of reward for assistance or cooperation. Instead, in August 1944, it was already considered a courtesy to issue not only German but bilingual banknotes in the General Government: Multilingualism of the notes can be used to externally document the strengthening of the German regulatory powers in the Vistula region after the uprising was suppressed [in Warsaw in the summer of 1944] and strengthening the front against the advancing

10 Jerzy Kochanowski, “‘Selbst mit dem Teufel, Hauptsache in ein freies Polen’: War während des Zweiten Weltkriegs ein gemeinsames Vorgehen von Polen und Deutschen gegen die UdSSR denkbar?,” in ‘Kollaboration’ in Nordosteuropa: Erscheinungsformen und Deutungen im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Joachim Tauber (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006), 289–323, here 296 f. 11 Ibid., 300–303. 12 Mark Mazower, Hitlers Imperium: Europa unter der Herrschaft des Nationalsozialismus (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2010), 540. For Poles serving in the German Wehrmacht, especially from the Western parts of Poland: Ryszard Kaczmarek, Polacy w Wehrmachcie (Cracow: Znak, 2010). See also: Jerzy Kochanowski, “Polacy do Wehrmachtu? Propozycje i dyskusie 1939–1945: Zarys problemu,” Przegląd Historyczny 93 (2002), 307–320.

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Bolshevism. The German language on the note would express that the area is and will remain German, the Polish language would show that Polish people willing to cooperate will be respected in their nationality, and the Ukrainian language would indicate that we are not permanently giving up the Ukrainian territories occupied by the Russians, but will regain them, and that the Ukrainian people living there are no longer forced to use Polish-labelled notes only.13

Given the military situation and the millions of dead civilians, such minimal concessions no longer had any effect.14 This turned out to be all the more counterproductive since there were initially individual voices in Poland that pleaded for cooperation with the Germans. In Warsaw, for example, Ludwik Landau, a precise observer of his time, wrote in July 1940 that the city was hoping for a joint action against the Soviet Union soon. This common enemy in particular could have offered a basis of understanding in the first years of the war, which would have been attractive for at least some Poles. As early as September 1939, Władysław Studnicki, a publicist and politician who had campaigned for cooperation with the Germans during World War I, pointed to the conflict between Communism and Nazism as the basis of common interests. On November 20, 1939, he submitted a “Memorandum on a Polish Army and the Coming German-Soviet War,” which addressed German military personnel. In it, he pleaded for a small Polish army without heavy weapons, which would primarily be used as an occupying army for the areas up to the Dnieper. Although Frank had the memorandum banned, Studnicki continued to propagate his ideas to various Nazi leaders, – which they sharply rejected. In 1941, his insistence even took him to a German prison, but in 1940, he had already protested the murderous occupation policy.15 The Germans did not take up any of these options. However, despite the non-existent collaboration at the state level, they could not do without Polish help in the General Government. Conversely, hundreds of thousands of Poles could not simply quit work without risking impoverishment or reprisals. There was a co-dependency despite all reservations. That was also true in the area of business. For example, the occupiers retained the Polish system of chambers of commerce. Although their competencies were curtailed, the originally planned

13 Archiwum Akt Nowych Warsaw, 111 / 9c–14. Denkschrift über die Notwendigkeit des Umtausches der Noten der Emissionsbank in Polen, August 14, 1944. 14 Mazower, Hitlers Imperium, 20. 15 Kochanowski, “‘Selbst mit dem Teufel, Hauptsache in ein freies Polen’,” 291–294. For Studnicki see also: Mikołaj Kunicki, “Unwanted Collaborators. Leon Kozłowski, Władysław Studnicki and the Problem of Collaboration among Polish Conservative Politicians in World War II,” European Review of History 8–2 (2001): 203–220.

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abolition could not be realized, as the Germans simply lacked the staff to take on tasks such as, in particular, contacting local companies. On the contrary, additional central chambers were created at the level of the governorate to supervise them from above. There were also other chambers in the districts, which were divided into the four areas of industry and transport, agriculture, forestry and employment.16 Cooperation in the social system was also essential. State social security systems continued to exist, but their help was far from sufficient in view of the hunger, poverty and the illnesses resulting from the occupation. Since the Nazis’ plans initially did not aim for a systematic mass extinction of the Polish population, there was a certain interest in maintaining their supplies. At the same time, German material and human resources were to be protected. This was why the Polish welfare organizations, which provided non-profit aid and thus relieved the occupiers of some tasks, were looked upon favorably. For example, since January 1940 the Main Committee for Welfare (Rada Główna Opiekuńcza) had existed, which referred to an institution during World War I with the same name and a service that had already been successful at that time. The Committee received monthly payments from the General Government, which in 1942 amounted to 2.4 million złoty (2 złoty officially equaled 1 Reichsmark, but the black market exchange rates differed up to the factor of 10:1); in addition there were donations from the population in the amount of 900,000 złoty, as well as further grants from the city administration of Warsaw (also 2.4 million złoty). Under the chairmanship of Adam Graf Ronikier, who had already held this position 25 years earlier, and with the support of the Catholic Church, extensive services could be carried out. In Warsaw alone, there were about 75 soup kitchens and 45 other care facilities, clothing stores, medical aid, food distribution and services for relocated and refugee families. Up to 900,000 people a day benefited from the food distribution alone.17 There was a separate welfare facility for the Jewish population, the “Jewish Social Self-Help” (Yidishe Sotsyale Aleynhilf /Żydowska Samopomoc Społeczna),

16 Robert Seidel, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Polen: Der Distrikt Radom 1939–1945 (Paderborn et al.: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2006), 95–96. 17 Werner Präg and Wolfgang Jacobmeyer, eds., Das Diensttagebuch des deutschen Generalgouverneurs in Polen 1939–1945 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1975), 514–515: Meeting in Cracow, June 19, 1942; Bogdan Kroll, Opieka i samopomoc społeczna w Warszawie 1939–1945: Stołeczny Komitet Samopomocy Społecznej i warszawskie agendy Rady Głównej Opiekuńczej (Warsaw: PWN, 1977); Ibid., Rada Główna Opiekuńcza 1939–1945 (Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 1985). And as a local study: Janusz Kłapeć, Rada Główna Opiekuńcza w dystrykcie lubelskim w latach 1940–1944 (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej, 2011).

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headed by Michał Weichert. Based in Cracow, it had also existed since 1940 and organized support for the Jews in ghettos and especially in labor camps, mainly financed by donations from abroad, such as from the Joint Distribution Committee in the United States. After the occupiers’ temporary closure of the Self-Help in July 1942, they allowed a new institution to be founded a short time later under the name “Jewish Support Agency” (Jüdische Unterstützungsstelle), which, however, only existed until December of that year. Weichert then had to do forced labor, but was able to reopen the Support Agency in March 1943. In post-war Poland, this commitment, which had saved him from being murdered in an extermination camp, brought him the charge of collaboration. Even though Self-Help had contributed significantly to providing the Jewish population with necessary supplies, Weichert had to face trial in 1946 in which the prosecution argued that working with the Germans had brought him significant personal benefits. Weichert was acquitted and immigrated to Israel in 1958, but remained controversial there due to his wartime involvement.18 The charities were useful for the occupiers, saving them work. However, there was obviously no real German interest in them. This tendency marked all cooperation. Yet, this was often unavoidable, because “hardly any Ukrainian is capable of running any kind of agricultural or other economic activity. One is therefore forced to hire Poles again here.”19 Even though German staff was far from sufficient to forego local support, Jews were out of the question for cooperation in principle and Poles had to be monitored continuously.

Local Cooperation At the local and regional level, it was simply a question of economic deployment of personnel when Germans resorted to using Poles. For example, there were about as many Polish “blue policemen” (Policja granatowa, named after their uniform color) as the 12,000 German law enforcement officers. The Poles were sometimes used as helpers in the Holocaust and played an inglorious role

18 See Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg, “Der Kollaborationsvorwurf in der polnischen und jüdischen Öffentlichkeit nach 1945 – das Beispiel Michał Weichert,” in ‘Kollaboration’ in Nordosteuropa: Erscheinungsformen und Deutungen im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Joachim Tauber (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006), 250–288; Annalena Schmidt, (Selbst-)Hilfe in Zeiten der Hilflosigkeit?: Die ‘Jüdische Soziale Selbsthilfe’ und die ‘Jüdische Unterstützungsstelle’ im Generalgouvernement 1939–1944/45, Diss. Phil. Giessen 2016. 19 Präg and Jacobmeyer, eds., Das Diensttagebuch, 398. Meeting of the government, September 5, 1941.

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in the hunt for Jews who had gone into hiding, but were otherwise exclusively responsible for Poland and for administrative offenses and petty crime.20 In terms of numbers, those areas of the municipal bureaucracy that Poles – under German supervision – were allowed to administer themselves, were significantly more important. This was especially true for primary care, which was viewed as apolitical and which was previously provided for Poles, and among other things included public transport, garbage disposal, electricity, water and the like. At the end of 1942, for example, the Warsaw district still had almost 64,000 Polish employees, including 78 in the State Archives and 330 in the theater, while 33,646 worked for the city of Warsaw alone. These figures did not include Polish railway (Ostbahn) or post office personnel working in the district.21 At the end of 1939, a total of 51 Germans – including secretaries – worked in the Lublin district main administration; they were responsible for a quarter of the General Government. Just a little less than three years later, only twelve German tax officials worked in the financial management of this district, although they oversaw 800 Poles who did the actual work.22 At the beginning of the occupation, the fiscal authorities had taken over 125 Polish tax offices and later combined five to six of them, which were now headed by a German tax inspector – in the Lublin district, these were the twelve men mentioned above. The medium-level administrative authorities no longer existed, and their responsibilities were transferred to the local offices in which the previous Polish employees continued to work.23 Even small offices such as the Wehrmacht’s arms inspection (Rüstungsinspektion) under General Max Schindler could not do without Poles: around half of the 111 employees in September 1942 were non-Germans.24 The further down in the

20 Włodzimierz Borodziej, Terror und Politik: Die deutsche Polizei und die polnische Widerstandsbewegug im Generalgouvernement 1939–1944 (Mainz: von Zabern, 1999), 34–35. Also Jan Hempel, Pogrobowcy klęski, rzecz o policji ‘granatowej’ w Generalnym Gubernatorstwie (Warsaw: PWN, 1990). For the participation of the blue police and the Baudienst in the Holocaust see the partially polemic study by Jan Grabowski, Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 2013). 21 Archiwum Państwowe Warsaw, 482 / 85, 24. Statistics on the non-German personnel of District Warsaw, 1942. 22 Bogdan Musiał, Deutsche Zivilverwaltung und Judenverfolgung im Generalgouvernement: Eine Fallstudie zum Distrikt Lublin 1939–1944 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2000), 40. 23 Präg and Jacobmeyer, eds., Das Diensttagebuch, 71–72 Meeting of the department heads in Cracow, December 1, 1939. 24 Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv Freiburg, RW 23/1, Bl. 3 ff. Geschäftsverteilungsplan der Wehrwirtschaftsinspektion im Generalgouvernement/Rüstungsinspektion des Reichsministers für Bewaffnung und Munition, November 1, 1942.

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bureaucratic hierarchy, the greater the proportion of local employees. On the other hand, around 150 former scholars from the local Jagiellonian University conducted research at the newly founded Institute for German Eastern Labor (Institut für Deutsche Ostarbeit) in Cracow. Based on their work, the institute was able to publish the propaganda magazine Die Burg, among others. Polish journalists were also active elsewhere in German services, although they were responsible almost exclusively for the regional and local sections of magazines and newspapers.25 Since the occupiers attached great importance to agricultural exploitation, their involvement in this area was also noteworthy. For instance, the counties held courses for so-called village and community agronomists who then had to act as local contacts and persons responsible for the occupiers. In January 1942 alone, the county Warschau-Land trained 655 people who learned about cultivation, stable manure, silage and its production, poultry farming, but also agricultural cooperatives and other duties.26 The Chamber of Agriculture provided the Polish speakers, and the training intensified during the war, so that in August 1942, 1,100 village and community agronomists received further training in the Roma theatre in Warsaw.27

Members of the Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz (ethnic German self-protection paramilitary militia) in Poznan (Posen) were trained by the German police to serve as auxillary police. Bundesarchiv. No. Bild 183-E11861

25 Lars Jockheck, Propaganda im Generalgouvernement: Die NS-Besatzungspresse für Deutsche und Polen 1939–1945 (Oldenburg: Fibre, 2006), 119–124. 26 AP Warszawa, 486/1800, Bl. 1. Monatsbericht des Amts für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft im Kreis Warschau-Land, Januar 1942. 27 Archiwum Państwowe Warsaw, 486/1800, 41, Monatsbericht des Amts Ernährung und Landwirtschaft im Kreis Warschau-Land, August 1942.

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All in all, the course of the war showed the Germans the limits of their – rather small – efforts not only because of the steadily increasing resistance. Again and again, they observed how Polish or Ukrainian security officers voluntarily and involuntarily supplied “bandits” with weapons. In the fall of 1944, the conclusion was clear: “Non-German factory security in foreign countries [is] inappropriate . . . it would be appropriate to form a security corps made up of German people”.28 Therefore, it was also unfavorable if the few ethnic Germans and Reichsdeutsche were all drafted into the Wehrmacht, because then the Germans would be even more dependent on Poland.

Volksdeutsche Around 1.2 million people lived on the territory of the Republic of Poland in 1938 who were classified in the Volksdeutsche category,29 most of them in the western parts of the country, which were incorporated into the German Reich as Reichsgau Wartheland or Reichsgau Danzig-Westpreußen. For the territory of the General Government, exact numbers are much more difficult to calculate. An estimate from 1931 for the area of the former Russian Congress Poland around the capital city of Warsaw, which largely coincided with the General Government geographically, surmised that there were around 310,000 ethnic Germans.30 The central political problem concerning the Volksdeutschen in 1939 and 1940 was registering them. From 1941 onwards, with the creation of the Deutsche Volksliste, numerous questions of definition were added. The occupiers created four categories to organize the Volksdeutschen. These should reflect the alleged “racial quality” of those listed, but above all the system was characterized by its dubious selectivity.31 The first two groups were granted German

28 Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv Freiburg, RW 23/18, Bl. 104 ff. Kriegstagebuch des Rüstungskommandos Radom, 3. Vierteljahr 1944. Report by the detachement head. 29 For the problematic definition of the category “German”, which included also the forced incorporation into the Volksgemeinschaft Norbert Götz, “German-Speaking People and German Heritage: Nazi Germany and the Problem of Volksgemeinschaft,” in The Heimat Abroad. The Boundaries of Germanness, eds. Krista O’Donnell et al. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 58–81. 30 Valdis O. Lumans, Himmler’s Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German National Minorities of Europe 1933–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 93–94. 31 Robert L. Koehl, “The Deutsche Volksliste in Poland 1939–1945,” Journal of Central European Affairs 15 (1955): 354–366, esp. 360 ff. For the problems of defining categories of Volksdeutschen even among the Berlin government, see Stephan Lehnstaedt, “Der ‘Totale Krieg’ im

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citizenship automatically; in category three, it was only available with the possibility of revocation and to a certain extent on probation, while the last and largest group had to undergo regular naturalization. From the inhabitants of pre-war Poland, it was only the ethnic Germans who did not suffer from the occupation as a group. Many of them watched how their neighbors were discriminated against, persecuted and murdered – and at the same time, they benefited from these measures. Mainly for them, the most important Nazi organizations were active in Poland and established a service that went far beyond the standard at home in the Reich. There were many reasons for this. Firstly, the Volksdeutschen were not as ideologically solid as the Reich Germans because they had lived in Poland for a long time; therefore they should be courted and, to a certain extent, Nazified. Secondly, their material situation was not comparable to that in the Reich, so that a certain social welfare appeared to be necessary. Thirdly, the Volksdeutschen were a justification for the war of aggression against Poland, because this state had supposedly prevented them from maintaining their German way of life.32 However, the Volksdeutschen were more than just passive profiteers. Already belonging to the German People’s List required an active commitment to the Nazi occupiers, which can certainly be called collaboration – especially since there were quite a few ethnically German Poles who rejected this.33 Without these collaborators, who were particularly valuable because of their precise knowledge of local conditions and language, the occupation could hardly have been organized with the same efficiency – the complaints about lack of personnel in the German administration were legion.34 In the city of Czestochowa, for example, SS Oberführer Friedrich Katzmann, commissioned by Heinrich Himmler, made sure that the so-called Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz (self-protection) was established immediately after the invasion.35 Just like in the western parts of Poland, many Volksdeutsche became members

Reichsministerium des Innern unter Heinrich Himmler,” Die Verwaltung 39 (2006): 393–420, here 408 ff. 32 Stephan Lehnstaedt, “Volksdeutsche in Tschenstochau: Nationalsozialistische Germanisierungspolitik für Täter, Profiteure und Zuschauer des Holocaust,” Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung 57 (2008): 425–452. 33 Setting an example was the Evangelisch-Augsburgische Kirche under its bishop Julius Bursche, who, contratry to German expectations, did not regard himself as German, but as a Pole of German origin – together with most of his reverends. 34 Musiał, Deutsche Zivilverwaltung und Judenverfolgung im Generalgouvernement, 83–86; Seidel, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Polen, 43 f. 35 Institut für Zeitgeschichte Munich, Fb 129/1. Chef der Zivilverwaltung Tschenstochau to Landräte and Oberbürgermeister, September 14, 1939. Katzmann was later appointed SS-Gruppenführer

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of the Selbstschutz in their spare time. The organization was responsible for numerous crimes in the General Government and the Reichsgau Wartheland and Danzig-Westpreußen. In the Radom district, were Czestochowa was located, it numbered 4,500 men in April 1940.36 Until its dissolution in August 1940,37 the men were constantly present in the cityscape and a symbol of the New Order, in which the people of Germany were clearly elevated above the Poles. Full-time Selbstschutz members in particular often became perpetrators of the Holocaust. Their units were used as auxiliary troops for deportations and executions and as security guards in the ghettos.38 In addition, there were patrol services, raids and house searches, barrier services and prison and camp supervision. The Selbstschutz members took over activities that were very similar to those of the SS and police forces; however, only 20 % of the Selbstschutz in the General Government met the “racial” requirements for admission to the SS – compared to 40 % in the western Polish regions.39 Nevertheless, anyone who met the requirements was admitted to a group called the “auxiliary police”, which was supposed to compensate for the understaffing of the regular German police.40 In Czestochowa, the city government also employed numerous ethnic Germans. While at the end of October 1939, the first German mayor Karl Drohberg had to make do with nine Reich Germans,41 a year and a half later, his successor Richard Wendler was able to have 34 employees. In addition to the German administrative staff, there were 14 Poles, who mainly did manual labor and simple work.42 In April 1943, the total number of Reich and Volksdeutsche employees had once again doubled and grown to 70;43 and despite the war, the workforce rose to 80 by January 1945.44

and became SS- und Polizeiführer of District Galizien. Christian Jansen and Arno Weckbecker, Der ‘Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz’ in Polen 1939/40 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1992), 78 f. 36 Ibid., 77. 37 Ibid., 195. 38 Doris L. Bergen, “The ‘Volksdeutschen’ of Eastern Europe, World War II, and the Holocaust: Constructed Ethnicity, Real Genocide,” Yearbook of European Studies 13 (1999): 70–93, here 75 ff. 39 Jansen and Weckbecker, Der ‘Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz’ in Polen, 74 f. 40 Institut für Zeitgeschichte Munich, Fb 129/1. Verordnung des Reichsführers SS, September 20, 1939. 41 Ibid., Fb 129/4. Personalstand Tschenstochau, October 23, 1939. 42 Ibid., Fb 129/4. Personalstand Tschenstochau, May 1, 1941. 43 Ibid., Fb 129/4. Personalstand Tschenstochau, April 1, 1943. 44 Ibid., Fb 129/4. Personalstand Tschenstochau, January 1, 1945.

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Around a third of the employees in the Czestochowa city administration were ethnic Germans. Their share rose from around 32 % in 1941 to 35 % in 1945. They made an important contribution to the functioning of the authority, although it must be pointed out that they were unable to advance to leadership positions. The formal reason for this can be seen above all in the fact that they did not have the same training as Reich German employees in higher positions. Of the eleven ethnic Germans who worked in the administration in 1941, ten were employed at the ordinary service level and only one at the middle level. Two years later, only five out of 24 ethnic Germans were employed at the middle level, but 17 were in simple jobs. After all, the city government created two apprenticeships that were later converted into full-time jobs; in 1945, there were already five Volksdeutsche apprentices who completed training with the German authorities. For this year, the statistics do not show the exact number of employees or the payment of the staff, but they do indicate the area of employment. The Volksdeutschen worked primarily where there was contact with the local Polish population, for example, in the NonGerman Residents’ Registration Office (Nichtdeutsches Einwohnermeldeamt). It was precisely their knowledge of Polish that made the Volksdeutschen ideal assistants to the German occupiers, who mostly did not speak any Slavic language and were also unwilling to learn Polish. The ethnic Germans were therefore essential for the administration and oppression of the locals. All in all, they provided the personnel that should have carried the occupation after the war had been won, even though the Nazis continued to fill management positions with Reich Germans.

Results and Comparative Perspectives In comparison to the German approach in occupied Poland during World War I, the lack of personnel is the essential common ground. However, from the same starting point, the approach towards the population developed in a diametrically different way. Already in 1914, Germany and Austria-Hungary showed an interest in Polish soldiers and wanted to win over the locals as allies. This intention became the engine of the “Polish question” and finally led to the proclamation of the Kingdom of Poland in 1916, which was linked to the promise of independence after the war had been won.45 The associated

45 For the comparative perspective addressed here: Stephan Lehnstaedt, Imperiale Polenpolitik in den Weltkriegen: Eine vergleichende Studie zu den Mittelmächten und zu NS-Deutschland (Osnabrück: Fibre, 2017).

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role of the country and its people in a Central Europe dominated by the Central Powers could not be more different from Hitler’s concept. The Allies of World War I became “subhumans” in World War II, whose presence in their own country was only tolerated temporarily until victory made extensive expulsions and resettlements possible. Nevertheless, there was cooperation, but it remained characterized by clear hierarchies. For Poles there was no possibility of influence, all the tasks that they had to perform for the Germans were of an auxiliary nature, were ordered and monitored by the Germans and any mistakes were severely punished. A Polish State Council, elected Polish mayors and city councils or even deputies in the Reichstag, as had existed in the two empires, were inconceivable to the Nazis and incompatible with their ideology. Even though even their occupation turned out to be dependent on Polish cooperation, after 1939 it became a purely utilitarian, one-sided, brutal relationship of dependency, which forced submission and obedience. It seemed obvious to the Central Powers that the country would have to be integrated vertically and horizontally if this was to be permanent – and successful. The Nazis never arrived at this insight. It was not until the end of 1944, when they had long since gambled away any credibility and their imperial ambitions had clearly failed, that they wanted to include Poles in their vanishing empire. However, even then, the process remained more than ambivalent and in no way represented real participation in power. Jews remained completely excluded from cooperation under the Nazis because they were the main enemy from an ideological point of view. In contrast, the Central Powers had relied heavily on their help in World War I. They also wooed the Poles, even competing with one another, seeking the consent of the locals and actually wanting to relinquish responsibility. This was not always done with full conviction and was by no means a smooth process, but rather often only a pragmatic requirement and a consideration of purpose and means. However, despite all the dissatisfaction and the given hierarchies, it was always absolutely clear that the Poles should be (junior) partners and were needed as such. The Nazis granted such status, in some cases going far beyond this, only to the German minority in Poland. They sought this collaboration on the one hand for practical reasons, and on the other for ideological reasons because this ethnic group was to spearhead the planned Germanization. The Volksdeutschen were largely mobilized for the purposes of the occupation. Again, the difference to World War I could not be greater. At the end of 1917, the German governor general

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in Warsaw, Hans von Beseler, recommended the resettlement of the German minority from Poland to Germany.46 Even if he found the Poles difficult and ungrateful, the need for cooperation was obvious to him. In view of the actions of the Central Powers, the term “collaboration” would be an entirely inappropriate defamation of all actors.

46 Ibid., 267.

Alessandro Vagnini

The Hungarian Anti-Jewish Laws and Relations between Hungary and Germany In post-war Hungary, the “Jewish question” was already part of the political debate, especially after the collapse of the Communist regime of Béla Kun, when a series of reprisals against Hungarian Jewry occurred during the so-called White Terror. In 1920, Prime Minister Pál Teleki introduced the Numerus Clausus and between 1938 and 1941, the Hungarian Parliament approved three different antiJewish laws. The third anti-Jewish law represented a decisive step towards an acceptance of anti-Semitic and nationalistic demands, opening a serious debate in the Hungarian Parliament about the “Jewish question”. It was discussed in the summer of 1941 between heated debates at the Upper House, with opposition from the Catholic clergy and the Calvinists. Nevertheless, the opposition was often free from moral motivations, revealing elements of a more complex balance of power within Hungarian society. In that sense, Nazi Germany was a main actor, and Berlin’s influence was dramatically evident after 1940. This paper will focus on the key role played by Germany in encouraging Hungarian “racial” legislation and its overall attitude toward the “Jewish issue” between 1940 and 1944. To better understand German-Hungarian relations and the role played by antiSemitism in the country, we should first recall some important moments of Hungarian history following the end of World War I. Between March and August 1919, Hungary experienced a Soviet government that desperately tried to fight against Romanian-Czechoslovak forces. The collapse of the Communist government caused a series of reprisals against Hungarian Jewry accused to have supported the regime. In 1920, the Teleki government introduced the Numerus Clausus, the first legal provision intended to limit Jewish presence in Hungarian universities and professions.1 Though the text of the law did not use the term “Jew”, it was nearly the only group overrepresented in higher education and thus the only possible target of the new legislation. In 1928, at the request of liberal segments of society and the League of Nations, a less explicit version of the law was passed.

1 Carlile A. Macartney, Hungary. A Short History (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1962); Antonello Biagini, Storia dell’Ungheria contemporanea (Milan: Bompiani, 2006). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671186-004

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Anti-Semitism was in fact a common element in Hungarian society. During the 1930s, the growth of the Nazis inspired the different extremist groups in Hungary.2

Hungarian Anti-Jewish Legislation In 1938, the first anti-Jewish law was approved by the two chambers. It limited the proportion of Jews in the professions to 20% and recognized the validity of baptism only in case it had occurred before August 1, 1919. Jewish identity was considered primarily to be religious and discrimination on a biological basis was not contemplated. Accordingly, a wave of new christenings soon followed. This first intervention for specific legislation aimed at limiting the rights of the Jewish community was not favored by Nazi Germany. The various groups of the Hungarian far right were also dissatisfied. Between 1938 and 1941, Hungary benefited from an extensive process of boundary revision. Therefore, the presence of Jews in the country significantly increased. They now comprised over eight percent of the Hungarian population. In May 1939, a second anti-Jewish law was approved. It introduced more discrimination but still lacked a clear differentiation based on race, as required by the Germans. Nazi influence grew dramatically in these months due to the active role played by Berlin in Eastern-Central Europe and the support that Germany and Italy had in granting the annexation of the new provinces to Hungary. By 1940, the problem of Jewish participation in national life and the socalled “strengthening of the Magyar nation” had led the Government to consider an organic amendment to the legislation on marriage and “defence of the race”. The Nazis’ growing influence and the need to align with German racial policy were essential in pushing Hungary to adopt anti-Jewish legislation, but these were not the only reasons. Since neither nationalism nor eugenics had fixed definitions, they assumed their values within their usage in local circumstances. This was also the case for Hungary, where the “Jewish question” coincided mostly with Teleki’s second premiership, and it was linked to the consolidation of the country’s welfare program aimed at reducing social and ethnic conflicts as well as economic poverty and poor health conditions. On the other hand, resurgent anti-Semitism was one important reason why the Hungarian government introduced discriminatory measures against the Jews, but it was Teleki’s

2 János Gyurgyák, A zsidókérdés Magyarországon. Politikai eszmetörténet (Budapest: Osiris, 2001); Mária M. Kovács, Törvénytől sújtva. A Numerus Clausus Magyarországon, 1920–1945 (Budapest: Napvilág Kiadó, 2012).

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eugenic worldview and the related prospect of a healthy and numerically strong nation to bolster specific anti-Jewish legislation.3 Teleki’s successor, László Bárdossy would have simply continued along this line.4 In those years antiSemitism lurked in the background of most discussions of social and biological engineering, often accompanied by the rhetoric of “racial defilement”.5 Yet medical and social reforms adopted at the time were not just racial, but also eugenic, aiming to protect the “physical body” and promote the “racial health” of the Magyar nation.6 The third anti-Jewish law (Act XV/1941) represented a final step towards the acceptance of anti-Jewish demands. It integrated the two previous measures undertaken in this field in 1938 and in 1939, linking them to the above-mentioned need for a healthy nation in order to transform the biological definition of the national community corresponding to a new idea of a Greater Hungary. The second part of the text introduced the most significant elements, providing for the prohibition of marriage between Jews and Christians – the Magyars were not considered properly “Aryans” and accordingly Hungarian legislation used different the terms to distinguish Gentiles and Jews –; this provision necessitated an amendment to the definition of Jew, which caused a noticeable tightening of Hungarian legislation.7 The draft law was submitted to Parliament on June 11, 1941, although it only began to be discussed on July 1. There was initially strong opposition by the Catholic clergy and the parliamentary left. There was resistance within Magyar society as well. Even the radical right challenged the new measure as being inadequate to solve the “Jewish problem”, thus requiring more radical legislation. Opposition to the bill appeared immediately in the Lower House, but it was in the Upper Chamber that the opposition proved strongest. The Liberals, in agreement with the Catholic Church, opposed to the norms that would exclude over 200,000 converted from the national community. Among the most prominent opponent of the new legislation was Cardinal Jusztinián Serédi. In 1934, he had already distinguished himself vis-à-vis “Jewish

3 Róbert Vértes, ed., Magyarországi zsidótörvények és rendeletek, 1938–1945 (Budapest: Polgar, 1997). 4 Teleki committed suicide in April 1941, protesting Hungarian participation in Axis invasion of Yugoslavia. 5 Marius Turda, “In Pursuit of Greater Hungary: Eugenic Ideas of Social and Biological Improvement, 1940–1941,” Jounrnal of Modern History, 85(3), (2013): 558–591. 6 This was also the case of Act VI of 1940 on the Prevention of Tuberculosis and Venereal Diseases and Act XXIII of 1940 on the National Fund for the Protection of Family and Nation. 7 Mosca Rodolfo, “Diritto matrimoniale e difesa della razza nella legge XV/1941,” Rassegna d’Ungheria, I, 7 (1941): 489.

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question”, stating that no Catholic priest could support the principles of Nazism. Nevertheless, as a member of Hungary’s Upper Chamber he voted in favor of anti-Semitic legislation first passed in 1938. He opposed the exclusion of the converted from the Christian community and openly challenged the interference of the new law in ecclesiastical affairs. Calvinist bishop László Ravasz was the toughest critic of the new law. He considered the concept of race inadequate to explain psychological and spiritual phenomena. As it can be seen – perhaps for tactical reasons – criticisms did not concern humanitarian principles but areas that the church believed were its exclusive competence. Noteworthy was the near absence of resistance on moral grounds. Act XV/1941 proved to be a difficult terrain for Prime Minister Bárdossy, arousing criticism from almost all parties and opening for the first time a real debate on the “Jewish question”. Despite criticisms, a bicameral committee finally agreed on a joint text, which the Upper House eventually approved by on July 24, 1941. The following day, the Chamber of Deputies approved it as well. However, until 1944 the Hungarian authorities continued to resist executing the plans for the exclusion and elimination of the Jews proposed by the Germans. Though the Germans were still unsatisfied with Hungarian anti-Jewish legislation, Hungarian Jewry was progressively involved in repressive policies which struck first at those stateless or in possession of foreign citizenship, then those resident in the provinces and finally in Budapest.

World War II and German-Hungarian Relations Hungary gained much by cooperating with Germany and Italy, but as far as Germany was concerned, Budapest was always a recalcitrant ally.8 The Hungarians were only partly interested in a war with Soviet Union and absolutely opposed to one against Great Britain and the USA. Notwithstanding, in April and June 1941 Hungary joined the Axis forces in the invasion of Yugoslavia and Soviet Union.9 In fact, the model Budapest aimed to follow had always been Great Britain, not Nazi Germany, and this was reflected in its political approach to the war.

8 György Réti, Hungarian-Italian Relations in the Shadow of Hitler’s Germany, 1933–1940 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003); Alessandro Vagnini, L’Ungheria nella Guerra dell’Asse (Cosenza: Periferia, 2007). 9 Gyula Juhász, A háború és Magyarország, 1938–1945 (Budapest: Akademiai Kiadó, 1986); Krisztián Ungváry, A magyar Honvédség a második világháborúban (Budapest: Osiris Kiadó, 2005).

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German-Hungarian relations were indeed often tense as the Hungarian governments were usually unwilling to increase their contribution to the war effort. Budapest was focused on securing the new provinces and was not friendly to Romania, another member of the alliance, and one of a very significant strategic value for Germany. Not surprisingly, Berlin and Rome had to constantly mediate between their two Danubian allies in order to avoid an open confrontation. This was a fact that no official declaration or treaty could solve. It must be added that Hungarian anti-Jewish legislation did not conform to Nazi standards and the practical implementation of an effective anti-Semitic policy in the country was considered far from being achieved. These were other serious reason for Berlin to complain, even though there were cases of concrete cooperation in this field between the two countries. These cases were the result of very specific conditions and were usually not the consequence of Budapest’s political will. The most striking cases were those of Kamyanets-Podilsky and Újvidék (Serbian Novi Sad).

Mass arrest of Jewish residents in Budapest, summer 1944. bpk. No. 30018915

During the winter of 1941 until 1942, the bulk of the Hungarian forces on the Eastern front were deployed with garrison duties in occupied Ukraine, where Hungarian soldiers usually maintained an attitude favorable to the Polish population, from which they also drew auxiliary personnel. The Germans contested this policy and the SS openly complained about the decisions of the Hungarian Headquarters in this respect. Particularly important for the SS was the possibility to leave a free hand to the Einsatzgruppen, which barely tolerated the Hungarian occupation authorities. Nonetheless, it must be added that during that winter, the activities of these units actually took place apace across the area under Hungarian occupation. Particularly well known is the massacre of about

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17,000 Jews at Kamyanets-Podilsky, which was a direct consequence of the expulsion of approximately 20,000 Jews from Hungary. Immediately after the invasion of Soviet Union, an operation was initiated to expel refugees of uncertain nationality from Hungary. Miklós Kozma, then Commissioner for Kárpátalja, had welcomed the project. On July 12, 1941, directives were issued concerning the expulsion of all individuals of uncertain nationality, who were subsequently sent to eastern Galicia.10 As of August 19, thousands of Jews were transferred to the control of the SS. In the following days, the refugees were moved to Kamyanets-Podilsky, where mass executions took place. The activities of the Einsatzgruppen also continued in the following months and the total number of victims of the Nazis in the area controlled by the Hungarian Royal Army probably reached 80,000. The other infamous episode was in Délvidék, the new southern province which Hungary had annexed in April 1941. On January 4, 1942, the Hungarian Gendarmerie surrounded the village of Zsablya, carrying out a house-to-house search. During the operation, some partisans opened fire, causing the death of six gendarmes. The commander of the Fifth Corps, General Ferenc FeketehalmyCzeydner, was charged with providing support to the Gendarmerie. Three infantry battalions under the command of Colonel László Deák were sent to the area. On January 21–23, 1942, Hungarian forces unleashed a terrible retaliatory action against the population of Slavic and Jewish origin. The city of Novi Sad was divided into eight operational sectors and security forces proceeded to arrest thousands of suspects, many of whom were held hostage. During the next three days, Hungarian gendarmes killed more than 1,200 people in Novi Sad alone, among them hundreds of Jews, and threw their corpses into the icy waters of the Danube. The total death toll was around 2,500.11 Although the government initially accepted the version of the facts provided by the army, the violence of the action was such as to prompt Parliament, reacting to a vast protest movement, to demand a thorough investigation of the facts. Subsequently Miklós Horthy ordered an official investigation into the massacres and charges were brought against the officers involved.12 These were only two episodes, which, however bloody, do not sufficiently illustrate the reality of Hungarian Jews during the conflict. The fate that awaited

10 Randolph L. Braham, The Politics of Genocide. The Holocaust in Hungary (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000), 32–34; Vagnini, L’Ungheria nella Guerra dell’Asse, 166. 11 Raul Hilberg, La distruzione degli Ebrei d’Europa (Turin: Einaudi, 1999), 829–831; Braham, The Politics of Genocide. The Holocaust in Hungary, 35–36; Vagnini, L’Ungheria nella Guerra dell’Asse, 171–172. 12 Those charged fled to Germany and returned only after Hungary was occupied in 1944.

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most male Hungarian Jews in the course of the conflict was forced enlistment in the Labor Service (Munkaszolgálat). Politically unreliable and Jewish men performed this forced labor after they were prohibited from serving in the army by passage of anti-Jewish legislation. Labor units were stationed all over the country, and about 130,000 men were deployed in occupied Ukraine. 13 The commanders often treated their men with extreme cruelty, abuse and brutality. Due to poor nutrition, unsuitable clothing and frequent atrocities, most units were almost entirely destroyed. The other central element of this paper is the level of collaboration between the Hungarian and German authorities. As István Deák pointed out in one of his articles, because Hungary remained an ally of Nazi Germany even after the country was occupied in March 1944, one must distinguish between those who cooperated with the Germans on the one hand, and those who cooperated with successive and more or less legitimate Hungarian governments on the other.14 Properly speaking, collaborationism in Hungary intensified in March 1944. Nonetheless, many Hungarians were well disposed towards Nazi ideology. Among the many political movements that aligned themselves to Nazi ideology were Béla Imrédy’s Party of Hungarian Renewal (Magyar Megújulás Pártja), the Hungarian National Socialist Party (Magyar Nemzeti Szocialista Párt) led by Fidél Pálffy and Ferenc Szálasi’s Arrow Cross Party (Nyilaskeresztes Párt). Szálasi’s party was the strongest among these political movements but, like the others, it was just a marginal force in Hungarian policy. The party subscribed to the Nazi ideology of “master races”, which, in Szálasi’s view, included Magyars and Germans. Szálasi also supported what he called a “brutally realistic étatism”, the concept of an order based on the power of the strongest. However, the Arrow Cross’ territorial claims of a Greater Hungary based on national values, known as Hungarizmus, clashed with Nazi ambitions in Central Europe; a fact that inevitably delayed Hitler’s endorsement of that party by several years.15 Instead, Berlin supported the pro-German Hungarian National Socialist Party. The Arrow Cross obtained most of their support from a disparate coalition of young military officers, nationalists and workers, by resorting to traditional

13 Randolph L. Braham, The Hungarian Labor Service System: 1939–1945 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977); Szabolcs Szita, Halálerőd. A munkaszolgálat és a hadimunka történetéhez 1944–1945 (Budapest: Kossuth Könyvkiadó, 1989). 14 István Deák, “Collaborationism in Europe, 1940–1945: The Case of Hungary,” Austrian History Yearbook 15 (1979): 157–164. 15 Rudolf Paksa, Szálasi Ferenc és a hungarizmus (Budapest: Jaffa Kiadó, 2013).

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stereotypes and prejudices. Before the war, the Arrow Cross were not proponents of racial anti-Semitism. In the May 1939 elections, the party won 29 seats in the Lower Chamber, but Horthy banned the party on the outbreak of World War II, forcing it to operate underground. The successive Hungarian governments were not actually particularly cooperative towards Germany. It is therefore not surprising that in an important meeting between Hitler and Horthy at Klessheim on April 16–17, 1943, the Führer complained – once again – of Hungary’s lack of commitment to the war effort, openly accusing the Hungarian government of ambiguous behavior. The attitude of the Kállay government towards the “Jewish question” certainly played a significant role in the crisis between Germany and Hungary.16 The Germans, supported by the Hungarian extreme right, continued to require a greater commitment from the Government and considered the measures taken so far in this field insufficient. The Magyars, however, understood the risks inherent in a prolonged confrontation. On May 20, Prime Minister Miklós Kállay, receiving the Italian ambassador, announced the decision to introduce some concessions. A tightening of measures against the Jews and the breakdown of diplomatic relations with Chile, which Berlin had repeatedly requested, would follow. On May 29, during a ceremony at the National Stadium, the Prime Minister publicly reaffirmed his loyalty to the Reich.17 In the summer of 1943, however, the defeat of the Axis seemed inevitable and Hungarian politicians were determined to avoid the end of their regime because of an unnecessary continuation of the resistance. Budapest thus started looking for contacts with the Allies. The end of the Mussolini government and the subsequent armistice between Italy and the Allies only bolstered these tendencies.18 By 1944, Hitler had lost patience with the reluctance of Horthy and his moderate Prime Minister to participate to the war effort. It was no secret that the Hungarian government was moving towards an armistice with the Allies. In March, the Germans broke through the inertia and occupied Hungary. Kállay fled but he was arrested and sent first to the concentration camp in Dachau and then to Mauthausen. General Döme Sztójay, the former Hungarian ambassador to Berlin, replaced Kállay. Sztójay governed with the aid of a Nazi plenipotentiary, Edmund Veesenmayer. In this difficult and confused situation, the German minority and some groups inside the army were willing to collaborate with the Nazis. Meanwhile, the Arrow Cross’ fortunes were reversed to toe the Nazi line fully. One

16 Miklós Kállay, Hungarian Premier (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954). 17 Vagnini, L’Ungheria nella Guerra dell’Asse, 245. 18 Gyula Juhász, Magyar-brit titkos tárgyalások 1943-ban (Budapest: Kossuth Könyvkiadó, 1978); Laura-Louise Veress and Dalma Takacs, eds., Clear the Line. Hungary’s Struggle to Leave the Axis during the Second World War (Cleveland: Prospero Publications, 1995).

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of Sztójay’s first acts was in fact to legalize the Arrow Cross. At this point antiJewish measures were implemented and the roundups began. During the spring and summer of 1944, hundreds of thousands of Jews were herded into centralized ghettos and then deported from the Hungarian countryside to death camps. The Hungarian Interior Ministry and its Gendarmerie (Csendőrség) willingly cooperated to this end. The Jews of Budapest were concentrated instead into so-called Yellow Star Houses, approximately 2,000 single-building mini-ghettos. László Endre and László Baky must be included in a list of notorious collaborators. The first joined the governing party of Béla Imrédy in 1938 and became noted for his anti-Semitism. He rose to national prominence only in 1944. When Sztójay became Prime Minister, Endre was appointed state secretary in Andor Jaross’ Ministry of the Interior and he was given far-reaching powers to ghettoize and deport the Jewish population. Endre also argued that the anti-Jewish legislation was not harsh enough, and, on his own initiative, he imposed further restrictions on Jewish life. Endre was the head of Department XXI. His office was directly involved in the roundup, internment and deportation of the Jews. Among Endre’s closest associates were Zsigmond Székely-Molnár and later Albert Takács. László Baky was a former general in the Gendarmerie. In 1939, he was elected as a deputy for the Hungarian National Socialist Party. After Germany occupied Hungary in March 1944, Baky became state secretary in the Ministry of the Interior and, along with Endre, he eagerly accepted responsibility for deporting Hungarian Jews to the extermination camps. Baky directed Department XX and in this capacity acquired control over both the Gendarmerie and the police. Responsible for the implementation of the ghettoization and deportation program was Lieutenant Colonel László Ferenczy.19 The Interior Ministry became a personal fiefdom under Jaross, Endre and Baky. They used the Ministry to eliminate their enemies, while also favoring the spreading of German influence. These excesses were frowned upon by Horthy, who personally called for their removal from the Interior Ministry, before he finally succeeded in bringing the deportations to a halt. Endre was removed from power in September 1944; Baky was instead removed from his positions and arrested after conspiring, unsuccessfully, to lead a coup against the Regent. Nevertheless, Baky, Endre and Jaross successfully helped the major organizer of the Holocaust, SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, amass and deport to Auschwitz more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews between May and July 1944.20 Eventually, Endre served as Commissioner of Civil Administration in Ferenc

19 Braham, The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary, 69. 20 Ibid., 257.

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Szálasi’s government, where he, together with Baky, continued to coordinate deportation and mass murder. As the summer progressed and Soviet troops closed in on Central Europe, the ability of the Nazis to devote themselves to Hungary’s “Jewish solution” waned. Moreover, as already mentioned, in August 1944, before the deportations from Budapest began, Horthy used his influence to stop them and force the radical anti-Semites out of the government. Sztójay was then replaced with General Géza Lakatos. The situation changed again in October 1944 when the Soviet Army already occupied the eastern part of the country and Horthy negotiated a ceasefire. In response, Germany launched Operation Panzerfaust, a covert operation that forced Horthy to abdicate, after which he was taken into custody in Germany, while the Hungarian Army – now fighting to protect Hungarian territory – stayed loyal to the Germans.21 A Government of National Unity was soon established and Szálasi was declared Leader of the Nation and Prime Minister. In fact, the new government effectively controlled only a limited and evernarrowing band of territory in central Hungary and around Budapest. The Arrow Cross rule, short-lived as it was, was extremely brutal.22 Among the Arrow Cross leadership, Minister of the Interior Gábor Vajna distinguished himself for his ruthlessness. In less than three months, death squads killed almost 40,000 Jews in Budapest and its surroundings. Arrow Cross members helped Eichmann reactivate the deportation proceedings from which the Jews of Budapest had thus far been spared. Virtually all Jewish males of conscription age were already serving as slave labor for the Hungarian Army’s Forced Labor Battalions; it was therefore not difficult to make them work to death or execute them on the spot.23 In citing the episodes of collaborationism in Hungary we cannot overlook the 25th Grenadier Division of the SS “Hunyadi” (1st Hungarian) and the 26th Grenadier Division of the SS (2nd Hungarian). These were short-lived infantry divisions of the Waffen-SS, established in November 1944 with conscripts and volunteers drawn from the Royal Hungarian Army. They illustrate the level of involvement of Hungarian soldiers in the German cause even when the fate of the conflict was clearly defined.

21 About Horthy’s role see Miklós Horthy, Memorie: Una vita per l’Ungheria (Rome: Ed. Corso, 1956); Thomas L. Sakmyster, Hungary’s Admiral on Horseback: Miklós Horthy, 1918–1944 (New York: Columbia University Express, 1994). 22 About the Arrow Cross terror see Braham, The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary, 184–189. 23 Ibid., 188; Szita, Halálerőd. A munkaszolgálat és a hadimunka történetéhez, 84–89.

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At this point, the Hungarian state was close to falling apart. The Red Army reached the outskirts of Budapest in December 1944 and the siege of the capital began. As order collapsed, Arrow Cross members continually sought to raid the ghettos and Jewish concentration buildings. The government fell at the end of January 1945, when the Soviets took Pest, while Arrow Cross members and German forces continued to fight a rear-guard action in Western Hungary until the end of the war.

Conclusion Hungary gained the most from collaboration with Germany and Italy, but it was always a recalcitrant ally. This element must always be taken into due consideration to understand Hungary’s actions in World War II. There were two different levels of collaborationism in Hungary. The first one was inside and within the administration, a vast group of public functionaries well represented in the gendarmerie, part of the Officer Corps, and by 1944 the Ministry of Interior, where there was a general sense of support of Germany’s war aims and a shared classic anti-Semitism. The second level was represented by a limited part of the political spectrum among the various pro-Nazi groups, where an ideological support was granted to anti-Semitism with a lack of a clear national interest, like the various Naziinspired parties, the German minority and the Arrow Cross. Collaboration in Hungary had tremendous consequences for many: hundreds of thousands lost their lives because of officials whose loyalty to far-right ideology and German allies was greater than that to the state. To these were added the many gendarmes and soldiers who willingly engaged in the destruction of the Hungarian Jewry. Nor can we mention particular cases of resistance to the anti-Jewish drives that were spreading in Hungarian society and of which the laws passed between 1938 and 1942 were a dramatic demonstration. Anti-Jewish legislation reached its goal, marginalizing what had been an important and well-integrated community, gradually depriving it of its rights. Discrimination that evolved from limitations in schools and professions to total exclusion, which then led to segregation in the ghettos and finally – thanks to active collaborators – to deportation and extermination. Anti-Jewish laws were only the beginning of a process of aligning the country to Nazi politics. It was a progressive alignment which was often opposed by most Hungarian authorities but which was ultimately inevitable. In this sense, collaboration after March 1944 was the last terrible step.

Countries of Eastern Europe: Political Interests, Anti-Semitism and Military Support

Olaf Glöckner

The Collaboration of Ukrainian Nationalists with Nazi Germany Both the Ukrainian state and its society have undergone dramatic changes since the beginning of the new millennium. With the “Orange Revolution” in 2004 and even more with the “Revolution of Dignity” (Euromaidan) in the winter of 2013/ 14, a slow and difficult process of inner liberalization, democratization and modernization took shape that might finally result in the integration of the country into the European Union. Alongside these remarkable changes, extremely emotional and conflict-laden debates about the historical past and national legacy are also taking place. This often leads to painful retrospection, taking into account that recent Ukrainian history was battered by two World Wars and also 70 years interlocked with the Soviet Communist regime – a history full of repression, violence, ethnic conflicts and paternalism. It is the narrative of a repeated national awakening and keen fights for freedom, but also of aggression against vulnerable ethno-cultural minorities in similar circumstances. A Ukrainian feeling of national cohesion arose in the 19th century, firstly in the arts, language and intellectual ideas. Poets like Taras Shevchenko, musicians like Mykola Lyssenko and painters like Oleksandr Murashko planted the seeds of Ukrainian culture and character. As in many other ethno-cultural groups of the centenary, national patriotism also gained traction, along with the vision of an independent Ukrainian state. These efforts have been stunted twice, first of all by external forces in the course of both World Wars (and more than ever in their results.) Moreover, the Ukrainian fight for independence has regrettably twice turned into political and military radicalization, not least at the expense of minorities like the Jews. It is possible to retrace this ambivalence surrounding idolized heroes bravely and somewhat successful fighting for freedom in both World Wars, while at the same time unable to prevent mass crimes committed by their own followers. This is true, for example, in the case of Symon Petljura, the highly esteemed governmental head of the short-lived independent Ukraine at the end of World War I, and similarly true in the case of Stepan Bandera, the leader of the Ukrainian nationalist organization OUN-B in the 1940s. Petljura was assassinated in Paris in May 1926 by the Jewish activist Salomon Schwarzbart, who avenged his family killed by Petljura troops in the Russian Civil War years before. Bandera was murdered in Munich in 1959 by a Soviet KGB (Комитет государственной безопасности/Committee for State Security) agent. However, he could also have shared https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671186-005

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Petljura’s fate 33 years before, possibly facing requital for anti-Jewish massacres in World War II, supported by OUN-fighters and other nationalists with strong anti-Semitic backgrounds. All efforts to establish an independent and viable Ukrainian State failed until 1991, when the Communist ruled Soviet Union (the USSR) crumbled from the inside. After 70 years of Communist dictatorship, a nation in flux began re-examining its own roots. On the way to a new national narrative, the search for unerring, fearless, devoted and visionary freedom fighters and patriots had begun. First of all, public and society (re-)discovered Stepan Bandera, in fact one of the most enigmatic leading Ukrainian nationalists up from the late 1920s until his assassination in the late 1950s. In recent decades, dozens of monuments and plaques have been erected across the country honoring this “son of the Ukrainian people”.1 Critics stress to the fact that Bandera and his fellow combatants were not only self-sacrificing freedom fighters, but also clear proponents of the radical use of violence and of terror. They argue, Bandera and his comrades would have aimed for Ukrainian independence at all costs. It is not the pretension of this article to retrace or assess the Ukrainian nationalist movement from the 1920s to the 1940s – a period of time when people were extremely oppressed and existentially threatened by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and his regime.2 This paper rather focuses on a very narrow sector of history under Nazi occupation (1941–44/45), mainly dealing with Ukrainian nationalists’ ties to the German occupiers, their forms of collaboration, the self-serving interests in the background, expectations and disillusionments, final rebellion against all occupiers, but also the dubious costs of conspiring with evil. Nationalist efforts and activities to protect, strengthen and rescue the Ukrainian people in the early 1940s were simply some fragments in the fast moving and mostly dreadful proceedings of that time. Mass violence and extremely brutal warfare by almost all warring parties became “normal”, with disastrous impacts on local life and ordinary people. The historian Timothy Snyder points out that some 3.5 million inhabitants of Soviet Ukraine – mostly civilians – became victims of German killing policies between 1941 and 1945. In addition, about three million Ukrainian Soviets died as soldiers in the Red Army, or died

1 From the Ukrainian declaration of independence in 1991 till 2014, 46 monuments und 14 plaques have been erected in honor of Stepan Bandera. On Bandera and the cult of his personality, see e.g. Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, Stepan Bandera. The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist: Fascism, Genocide, and Cult (Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag, 2014). 2 On Ukrainian nationalism see Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, “Der europäische Faschismus und der ukrainische Nationalismus: Verflechtungen, Annäherungen und Wechselbeziehungen,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 65, 2 (2017): 153–169.

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indirectly as a consequence of the war.3 It is important to have the latter number in mind when approaching the problem of Ukrainian collaboration with Nazi Germany in World War II. In fact, as Snyder states, many more Ukrainians died fighting against the Wehrmacht than fighting on the side of German troops and forces – a relation that is even not true for some countries and states considered part of the anti-Hitler coalition.4 Ukraine was one of the most blood-soaked battlegrounds of World War II, on the one hand strongly marked by the adamant fight between German Wehrmacht and the Soviet Red Army – with, as we know, turning “fortunes” of war; on the other hand also marked by a whole series of subliminal and open inter-ethnic conflicts and fights, likewise demanding numerous human victims. All historians face extreme difficulties in re-constructing the truth of the incidents of that period of time in detail. It seems hardly less complicated to prevent single occurrences or fragments of this extremely conflict-ridden Ukrainian history between 1941 and 1944/45 being misused or exploited for nefarious political purposes.

Historical Excursus Ideas and concepts of Ukraine as a national entity go back for centuries. However, a distinct nationalist movement gained traction only in the 19th century, inspired from other national movements in Europe. When the tsarist regime was dispossessed in the February revolution of 1917, a small window of opportunity opened, shortly relieved by a certain political liberalization in the whole Empire. In June 1917, the Central Rada (parliament) in Kiev declared the autonomy of the Ukraine, and in November 1917, it proclaimed a Ukrainian People’s Republic. Shortly thereafter, not only the Bolsheviks invaded the territory of the young republic. Other warring powers fought for their interests here with similarly immense armed force. In the outcome of the Polish-Russian War, Western Ukrainian territories came completely under Polish, Romanian and Czechoslovak rule, while central, eastern and southern Ukraine were captured by the then assurgent Soviet Russia. Finally, the Bolshevist regime made “its” part of Ukraine a founding member of the Soviet Union in 1922, from now on called the “Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic”.

3 Timothy Snyder, “Germans must remember the truth about Ukraine – for their own sake,” Eurozine, July 7 (2017), accessed August 27, 2020, https://www.eurozine.com/germans-mustremember-the-truth-about-ukraine-for-their-own-sake/. 4 Ibid.

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For patriots, this end was considered a serious blow. Ukrainian aspirations of independence and the dream of a free nation had suddenly come to an end. The populace itself was aware of the richness of the country not at least by the huge reservoir of natural resources, grain and similar foodstuffs. A love of homeland, a specific sense of national pride and collective self-assertion remained, even under the hammer and sickle. Finally, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin became determined to break any remaining ambitions of independence in Ukraine at the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s. His regime took comprehensive action in order to kill large swaths of the Ukrainian intelligentsia and clergy. Stalin was also interested in weakening the farming community to the maximum extent. By using special troops and security forces, he ordered extremely repressive measures against all traditional large farmers, which resulted in the “Holodomor” in 1932 and 1933. At least four million Ukrainians lost their lives as peasants’ food stocks were forcibly removed by Stalin’s regime via the NKVD secret police.5 In face of these tragedies, it appears more than understandable that many Ukrainians developed a strong inner enmity against the regime in Moscow and readiness to use any opportunity for getting rid of the Communist plague.

Participation in Operation Barbarossa While especially Soviet Ukrainians were extremely oppressed already in the 1920s, nationalist resistance formed in countries and places with a more or less guaranteed freedom of speech and action, also for “foreigners”. In 1929, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists/OUN (Організація Українських Націоналістів) was founded in Vienna, from now on spearheading the fight for an independent republic. The OUN was mainly based on militarist groups and distinctly right-wing organizations, clearly stressing a nationalist agenda. The organization performed on the political stage, but was also ready to use violence against perceived enemies “within and without”, first of all addressing the Soviet regime, but also Poland. Eleven years later, in 1940, OUN split into two separate branches: OUN-M, led by the highly decorated officer Andriy Melnyk and comparatively moderate; OUN-B, led by Stepan Bandera. Surprisingly, this split did not substantially weaken the movement. From the very beginning, OUN leaders had been interested in close ties to German politicians and institutions. Obviously, there was a basic belief that Ukrainians and Germans were fellow

5 Regarding the Holodomor and its dimension and impacts, see Anne Applebaum, Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine (London: Penguin, 2017).

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sufferers both deprived by the victorious powers of World War I (and for Ukraine also by Poland), factually bereft of a progressive future by the Treaty of Versailles. Ukraine had indeed, after a short period of independence from 1918–1921, again lost its national sovereignty. Instead, its territory was separated into four parts, ruled by the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania respectively.6 Germany, for its part, had to concede to considerable territorial losses after World War I, while strong and seminal forces hoped for a revision in the foreseeable future. Thus, a pragmatic alliance with Ukraine was also valued by German protagonists, and close, even absolutely secret connections remained when Hitler and the Nazis took power in Berlin in 1933. After the outbreak of World War II, both antagonized OUN-leaders, Bandera and Melnyk, were eager to collaborate and ready to offer military assistance for the moment German troops would actually invade the Soviet Union. Based on a secret agreement with the head of German military defense (Abwehr), Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, special combat units were recruited of hundreds Ukrainian nationalist fighters on (already) German-occupied Polish territory (Generalgouvernement). This was the moment when the battalions Nachtigall and Roland took shape. Both units were intended to support advancing German troops in the framework of Operation Barbarossa, the raid on the Soviet Union scheduled for June 22, 1941. When Operation Barbarossa indeed started, seeing German troops gaining ground, many local inhabitants welcomed them as rescuers and liberators. Numerous preserved photographs show Ukrainian countrywomen and farmers in traditional costumes, standing at the roadsides and serving motorized German soldiers with bread and salt. People dressed for the occasion when seeing German Wehrmacht and Ukrainian units like Nachtigall and Roland as brothers in arms. In these summer days, the OUN leadership expected substantial progress regarding its own planning of an independent Ukrainian national state after the expulsion of the Soviets. Though at that time, there had been absolutely no German promises or agreements made. Nevertheless, the OUN leaders took the risk of the moment, and when German and Ukrainian troops had seized the city of Lviv on June 30, 1941, the OUN-B immediately proclaimed an independent Ukrainian State. Berlin might have been surprised for a moment. However, a few days later, the German occupied forces were instructed to detain the provisional Ukrainian government and to take radical repressive steps. Some OUN-B leaders who had been directly involved in the sudden state proclamation were deported to the 6 Olesya Khromeychuk, “Ukrainians in the German Armed Forces during the Second World War,” History. The Journal of the Historical Association 100, 343 (2015): 709. Also Franziska Bruder, ‘Den ukrainischen Staat erkämpfen oder sterben!’: Die Organisation Ukrainischer Nationalisten (OUN) 1929–1948 (Berlin: Metropol, 2007).

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German concentration camp Sachsenhausen near Berlin (albeit in dormitories for VIPs), including Stepan Bandera. Others were brought to local jails on site, and again others were even killed at once. Another setback was that the German occupying forces rejected Ukrainian self-government in local places and did not even introduce a unified administration for all Ukrainian territories.7 However, for the time being, the German military administration and OUN-B leaders remained in contact, also on site. It might be difficult to identify at what point of time Ukrainian leaders had to realize that Nazi Germany was not at all interested in an independent state of Ukraine and instead began treating the people of the country as Slavic “subhumans”. However, when the German occupation emerged as openly repressive to the native population, many nationalist Ukrainian fighters defected to partisan groups in the region or simply to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.

The Ukrainian Insurgent Army The rejection of Ukrainian independence, combined with first brutal measures against the native population, came as a shock and a major disappointment for the Ukrainian nationalists. However, at least for the moment, the OUN and its allies avoided an open revolt against Nazi Germany military rule in the area, but instead sounded out alternatives. OUN leaders Bandera and Melnyk now recommended to young Ukrainians, for example, to join the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police forces (see below), on the one hand providing assistance to the German military administration, on the other keeping control over parts of public life and being in close contact with Ukrainian populace, enabled to elicit possible future chances of still anticipated Ukrainian self-determination and autonomy. Other steps taken by the OUN leadership could easily be interpreted as a complete affront and provocation against the German occupying forces. Thus, in

7 Thus, for example, the district Galicia was simply added to the so called Generalgouvernement (on Polish territory), ruled by Hans Frank. The Bukovina and Ukrainian areas northeast from the river Dnistro came under (Fascist) Romanian rule in August 1941. Odessa also came under Romanian rule. Remaining Ukrainian territory, occupied in the summer of 1941, was merged into Reichskommissariat Ukraine, ruled by Erich Koch. In a certain way the “tradition of partition” of Ukrainian territory continued, now managed by the German occupation forces and their allies. See in this context Ryszard Torzecki, “Die Rolle der Zusammenarbeit mit der deutschen Besatzungsmacht in der Ukraine für deren Okkupationspolitik 1941 bis 1944,” in Europa unterm Hakenkreuz. Okkupation und Kollaboration (1938–1945), ed. Werner Röhr (Berlin/ Heidelberg: Hüthig, 1994), 255 ff.

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fall 1942, OUN leadership supported the formation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Українська повстанська армія, UPA), representing a de facto “national army”, even though in practice operating as a paramilitary or partisan formation, fighting the Soviet Army, the Polish Underground Army, Polish communists and, on occasion, also German Wehrmacht troops. The UPA was mainly formed by separate militant formations of OUN-B, other militant national-patriotic formations, some former defectors of the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police, mobilized men from the local populations and others. Numbers of Azerbaijanis, Uzbeks, Georgians, Tatars, Belarusians and Russians also joined the UPA. In the eyes of many Ukrainians in the area, the UPA was their protector. Obviously, this army received instructions from Bandera. According to German intelligence reports, the number of UPA fighters reached 200,000 in 1944.8 Even after the end of World War II, some remaining UPA troops continued their military fight against the Soviet regime – as partisan fighting – until the end of the 1940s. Seen from the military point of view, the UPA became one of the most successful partisan armies in German-occupied Ukraine. Starting in early 1943, there was also combat against the German Wehrmacht troops. Yet in 1944, the UPA and OUN-B even reinforced their cooperation contacts with German forces – against the Soviets and Poles, now again in the hopes of creating an independent Ukrainian state. Considering the fact that the nationalist Ukrainian forces maintained its strategy to collaborate and even to fight together – at least occasionally – with German armed forces until the end of the war, its entanglement in war crimes and in crimes against humanity cannot be denied. However, an appalling first incident of inhuman complicity were the Lviv pogroms in summer 1941, long before the emergence of the UPA.

The Lviv Pogroms Ukrainian nationalists considered Jews less as distinct enemies than, for example, Poles and Russians.9 On the other hand, some of the Ukrainian nationalist leaders were openly anti-Semitic, and of course, they had studied the anti-Jewish politics

8 See Ukrainian Insurgent Army. In Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine, accessed September 15, 2020. http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CU%5CK%5CUk rainianInsurgentArmy.htm. 9 On the pogroms in Ukraine before the Holocaust see Nokhem Shtif, The Pogroms in Ukraine 1918–19. Prelude to the Holocaust (Cambridge: Open Book Publisher, 2019).

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of Nazi Germany starting in the 1930s. At that time in Lviv (German Lemberg) – expected to be the future capital of a Ukrainian nation-state –, 30% of the populace were of Jewish origin,10 and it could be adumbrated that the Jewish inhabitants were already living in fear given the coming German-Ukrainian invasion. Indeed, immediately after the arrival of the German troops and their auxiliaries (including the Nachtigall battalion) on June 30, 1941, the Jewish population of Lviv became the target of irrepressible pogroms for several days. The outbreak of violence directed at the local Jewish population can be interpreted as a result of excessive hatred of Jews among non-Jewish inhabitants, plans of “ethnic cleansing” by the OUN (and other Ukrainian nationalist militants) and systematic mass-killing plans by the German special units of Einsatzgruppen. The anti-Jewish massacres in Lviv in June/July 1941 did not occur by chance, but were the fruits of infamous abetment, and Bandera’s OUN-B had accounted for a heated pogrom atmosphere. Thus, in the first days of the German invasion, the OUN-B had spread special flyers calling the population to use violence promptly: “Don’t throw away your weapons yet. Take them up. Destroy the enemy. . . . Moscow, the Hungarians, the Jews – these are your enemies. Destroy them.”11 On July 1, the spontaneous hate crimes and physical attacks against Jews in Lviv evolved into a barbarous manhunt, and the raging mob stopped at nothing. Jews were taken from their apartments, made to clean streets on their hands and knees, Jewish women were singled out for humiliation, stripped naked, brutally beaten, abused and also raped.12 Some of the Ukrainians offenders “justified” the ongoing pogroms with the assertion that Jews were responsible for the Soviet NKVD prisoner massacres in the city. Indeed, the fleeing Soviets had left behind thousands of dead bodies in three Lviv prisons. The rumor of Jewish responsibility was quickly spread. As a result, there were many casualties, often with fatal consequences. Ukrainian militiamen and civilians chased down Jews, took them to the

10 Before World War II, Lviv was a multicultural city with a population of about 300,000 inhabitants. Ethnic Poles constituted just over 50 per cent, Ukrainians ca. 16 per cent, and Jews slightly more than 30 per cent (almost 100,000 people). On the Lviv Pogrom see John-Paul Himka, “The Lviv Pogrom of 1941: The Germans, Ukrainian Nationalists, and the Carnival Crowd,” Canadian Slavonic Papers 53 (2011): 210, and Eliyahu Jones, Die Juden in Lemberg während des Zweiten Weltkriegs und im Holocaust, 1939–1944 (Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag, 2018). 11 Per Anders Rudling, The OUN, the UPA and the Holocaust: A Study in the Manufacturing of Historical Myths (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 2011), 9. 12 Himka, “The Lviv Pogrom,” 213.

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prisons, forced them to exhume bodies of killed prisoners, mistreated and finally killed them.13 Notably, the following massacres over the next days were already being directed by special German units of Einsatzgruppe C. This unit organized mass killings of local Jewish inhabitants outside of Lviv on July 2, actively supported by local forces and the populace when deporting the Jewish victims to the shooting places outside the city. Between 4,000 and 8,000 of Lviv’s Jews were killed in the pogroms in June and July 1941 alone.14 While the German Einsatzgruppe C did organize systematic mass killings of Jews in Lviv and left almost nothing to chance, the Ukrainian homicides in the days before appeared as rather spontaneous, though extremely bestial.15 The bestiality seems similarly appalling to other spontaneous pogroms against the Jewish population in Baltic cities (Vilnius, Zemgale, Kaunas) and in eastern Poland (Jedwabne) at the same time, shortly after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa and the quick German advance. In all these places, the local population obviously did not “need” any instructions for their plentiful, spontaneous assaults against Jewish neighbors, colleagues and acquaintances. Strong anti-Jewish feelings and stereotypes could be triggered by the German occupation forces without any efforts. The Germans were not necessarily considered liberators by the local populations but regarding the extremely brutal treatment of the Jewish population – identified as “Communists”, “traitors to the nation”, or “alien elements” – there was obviously consent. Along the entire Eastern front, the German Einsatzgruppen A-D were given a free hand, or were even actively supported. And while the systematic annihilation of the European Jews was part of the ideological German war intention (“judenfreies Europa”), local non-Jews started to act out their century-old hatred of Jews and were – and this should not be understated – eager to capture all the properties and belongings of the attacked.16

13 Cf. Christoph Mick, “Incompatible Experiences: Poles, Ukrainians and Jews in Lviv under Soviet and German Occupation, 1939–44,” Journal of Contemporary History 2 (2011): 336–363. 14 Mick, “Incompatible Experiences,” 349. 15 There are no indications that the Ukrainian soldiers “under the German flag” (like Nachtigall) had been directly instructed to kill Jewish civilians in Lviv, or that they were engaged in the spontaneous butcheries against the Jewish population in greater numbers. 16 See also Götz Aly, Europa gegen die Juden. 1880–1945 (Frankfurt/Main: S. Fischer, 2017).

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Ukrainian advertising poster for the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician) with the slogan: “Join the Ranks! Be Brothers in Arms with the Best Army in the World.” Bundesarchiv. No. Plak 003-025-052

The pogroms of Lviv, with the intensive participation of local non-Jewish neighbors, did not remain exceptions. According to historian John-Paul Himka, who analyzed circa 2,000 Jewish survivor testimonies collected after World War II in Poland by the Jewish Historical Commission, troops of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army actively participated in the destruction of the Jewish population of Western Ukraine. Himka states that UPA troops killed Jews even when in open revolt against the Germans.17 In this light, the spontaneous proclamation “Act of Restoration of the Ukrainian State”, signed on June 30, 1941 by Yaroslav Stetsko, the OUN-B head deputy of Stepan Bandera and an avowed anti-Semite, might have caused great euphoria among parts of the formerly strong oppressed Ukrainian population. On the other hand, there is no doubt that his yearning second birth of the Ukrainian nation (after 1917) was simultaneously drenched in the blood of the Ukrainian Jewish population. Three months later, the largest single German mass shooting of Jews in World War II happened in Babi Yar, a huge canyon near the outskirts of the current Ukrainian capital Kyiv. Just within two days, from September 29–30, 1941, 33,771 Jews were killed by several German troops using heavy machine guns against completely unprotected civilians, including women, children and old men.18

17 Himka, “The Lviv Pogrom”. 18 Hartmut Rüss, “Kiev/Babij Jar 1941,” in Orte des Grauens. Verbrechen im Zweiten Weltkrieg, ed. Gerd R. Ueberschär (Darmstadt: Primus Verlag, 2003), 102 ff.

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In general, there seems no doubt that Ukrainian police auxiliaries had been involved at least in the preparations for the Babi Yar massacre.19 The discussion of to what extent the so called Bukovinian battalion, a unit comprised of thousands of Ukrainian fighters of the OUN-M faction (Andriy Melnyk’s faction) actively took part in the mass murder, is still being controversially discussed.20

Ukrainians in the German Armed Forces Despite the fact that the German Governor of Reichskommissariat Ukraine, Erich Koch, was an extremely ruthless and inhumane person, the German armed forces succeeded in recruiting numerous Ukrainian volunteers in the course of the following years. Thus, for example, in 1944, from the then circa 800,000 “Eastern Volunteers” in the German Army, about 250,000 had come from Ukraine.21 The historian Olesya Khromeychuk tries to divide the Ukrainians who fought on the German side into two main categories: those who were recruited under duress (mostly former Red Army soldiers who were taken prisoner by the Germans, usually from the territories of Reichskommissariat Ukraine, formerly under Soviet rule) and those who joined voluntarily (Ukrainian nationalists, mainly from the territories of the General Government, which was part of Poland until 1939).22 At the end of 1942, there were over 150 so-called “Eastern battalions”, at least 70 of which consisted partly or mostly of Ukrainians.23 Again, Khromeychuk, tries to differentiate Ukrainian fighters of that period, separating them into Hilfswillige (Hiwis), or indigenous auxiliary volunteers, and “Schutzmannschaft Battalions” (guard battalions). Hiwis were often comprised of Red Army soldiers, prisoners of war (POWs) who had volunteered to serve in auxiliary units. Schutzmannschaft Battalions, also known as Schuma, were organized by the German Ordnungpolizei. An estimated 35,000 Ukrainians are thought to have served in Schutzmannschaft Batallions.24 Timothy Snyder refers to the important assisting role of the Ukrainian (and also Belarusian)

19 Norman Naimark, “Preface,” in Babyn Yar: History and Memory, ed. Vladyslav Hrynevych and Paul Robert Magocsi (Kyiv: Dukh i Litera, 2016), 10. 20 Karel C. Berkhoff, “Ukraine under Nazi Rule,” in Babyn Yar: History and Memory, ed. Vladyslav Hrynevych and Paul Robert Magocsi (Kyiv: Dukh i Litera, 2016), 61. 21 Khromeychuk, “Ukrainians in the German Armed Forces,” 705. 22 Ibid., 707. 23 Ibid., 714. 24 Ibid., 716.

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police forces serving the German military forces in the Holocaust. Historian Mark Dean concludes: The very presence of the locals thus enabled the completion of the massacres. The rounding up and escorting of large numbers of Jews would have been difficult without the active support of the local police units.25

SS-Division Galicia Despite manifold forms of collaboration, the German military administration was very apprehensive to permit the compilation of armed troops controlled by or consisting mainly of Ukrainian fighters. Additional German skepticism arose when the Ukrainian Insurgent Army took the stage in 1942, an army more or less uncontrollable for the occupying forces. However, also starting in 1942, the German Wehrmacht was constantly losing manpower, not only at the “Eastern front” (Ostfront) but also in endless, arduous battles against partisan troops. The need to replenish the contingents with soldiers became more and more demanding, and an alternative was finally recommended by influential German officers, like the Governor of the District of Galicia, Dr. Otto von Wächter. He recommended the compilation of a Waffen-SS division mostly recruited from Ukrainian volunteers from the area of Galicia, mainly all qualified to fight the Soviet Army at the Eastern front. This was the “birth” of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (first Galician) which came into action and served at several Eastern fronts from the summer of 1943 until April 1945. Apparently, it was still not a problem at that time (1943) to gain substantial Ukrainian support for the intended SS Division, thus, for example, from the Ukrainian Central Committee, a nonpolitical, but influential social welfare and economic organization headed by Volodymyr Kubiyovych.26 He obviously supported the idea, keeping in mind his ultimate goal of achieving an independent Ukrainian national state. SS Division Galicia was formed mainly with recruits

25 Mark Dean, Collaboration in the Holocaust. Crimes of the Local Police in Belorussia and Ukraine, 1941–44 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), 101. Quoted in: Khromeychuk, “Ukrainians in the German Armed Forces,” 717. 26 The Ukrainian Central Committee was the only officially sanctioned Ukrainian political and community organization in the Generalgouvernement, i.e. territory which came under German control already in the fall of 1939. The committee stepped into the shoes of all the closed Ukrainian institutions, and it also acted as a representative body that brought Ukrainian concerns to the attention of the German authorities.

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from ethno-national groups that had suffered enormously under the Soviet rule, not only Ukrainians, but also Estonians, Latvians and even Russians. Finally, the Ukrainian Catholic Church also gave its consent and Catholic chaplains were integrated and allowed to function with the soldiers. Former Ukrainian officers also announced their support. Interestingly, Stepan Bandera and the OUN-B opposed the idea of a Ukrainian SS Division, suspecting that its troops might mainly serve German interests and quickly suffer huge losses. In this case, Bandera was right after all. After several military successes, most of the division troops were annihilated by Soviet troops in the Battle of Brody in July 1944. The Germans started to rebuild the division over two months using reserve units. Starting in the end of September 1944, the division was used against the Slovak National Uprising, and towards the end of the war, it fought against Soviet troops on Austrian territory. In 1944, parts of the SS Division Galicia were also in action against Polish partisans. Mass crimes against civilians with hundreds of victims were verifiably conducted, thus, for example, in the Polish villages of Pidkamin, Huta-Pieniacka und Palikrowy, and this in cooperation with German police troops and the UPA.27

The Trawnikis A very special group of Nazi “collaborators”,28 directly involved in crimes against humanity, were the so-called Trawniki (“voluntary helpers”). This was not only a Ukrainian issue, though a significant number of the Trawniki were of Ukrainian origin, alongside men from the Baltic States, Poland and also ethnic Germans (Wolgadeutsche). The SS made them “henchmen of the Holocaust” directly by appointing them to the death camps on Polish territory, for example in Auschwitz, Stutthof, Belzec, Sobibór and Treblinka. Starting in 1941, the German plans to annihilate the entire Jewish population (and also of Sinti and Roma) of Europe turned into practical realization. While pressurized working on the rapid construction of several industrially organized death camps, the Germans soon realized there was an expectable lack 27 Per Anders Rudling, “‘They Defended Ukraine’: The 14. Waffen Grenadier-Division der SS (Galizische Nr. 1) Revisited,” in The Journal of Slavic Military Studies 25 (2012): 329–368; On SS-Division Galizia see also Frank Golczewski, “Die Kollaboration in der Ukraine,” in Formen der “Kollaboration” im östlichen Europa 1939–1945, eds. Christoph Dieckmann, Babette Quinckert and Tatjana Tönsmeyer (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003), 177 ff. 28 On the role of the “Trawnikis” see e. g. Angelika Benz, Handlanger der SS. Die Rolle der Trawniki-Männer im Holocaust (Berlin: Metropol, 2015).

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of security forces for these camps. These missing forces were to be compensated by Trawniki. In the fall of 1941, the German SS established a special training camp on the territory of an old sugar factory 40 kilometers away from Lublin in eastern Poland. In the following years, about 5,000 men underwent this training program for becoming assistants of the SS, whereas the term “voluntary helpers” is almost completely misleading. Most of those recruited had been former Soviet prisoners of war. After a couple of months, the Trawniki were sent for duty into the big concentration and death camps. They had not only duty as security forces, but were also responsible for forced deportations (of Jews) out of the ghettos, for chasing Jews into the gas chambers and also for shooting Jews. Testimonies of Holocaust survivors show that some of the Trawniki excelled in extraordinary brutality and sadism, and the US historian Peter Black calls them “foot soldiers of the final solution”.29 Part of the story is also that a significant number of Trawniki tried to desert during this time – a possible indication that at least some of the men had simply opted for recruitment in order to avoid pain and death in German prisoner of war camps.

Concluding Remarks As in most of the Eastern European countries which came under German occupation during World War II, the Ukrainian population and society was searching for appropriate ways to survive and pragmatically to come to terms with the (unavoidable) occupation in daily life. The very traumatic pre-history under Soviet rule and especially Stalin’s Holodomor with millions of civilian victims had made the Ukrainian population receptive for any kind of alternative – even a “rescue” by the Nazi German troops. Thus, in not only a few places, German troops were celebrated as liberators when they arrived in the summer of 1941. Despite the fact that the German occupying forces made almost no concessions for Ukrainian self-determination, autonomy, not to mention an independent state, large numbers of young Ukrainian men were ready to join several German armed forces, auxiliary troops or Schutzmannschaften police, the Waffen SS Division Galicia and – in extreme cases – the so-called Trawniki, providing security service in death camps on Polish territory and also actively supporting the

29 Peter Black, “Foot Soldiers of the Final Solution: The Trawniki Training Camp and Operation Reinhard,” in Holocaust and Genocide Studies 25 (2011): 1–99.

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German mass killing machinery against Jews. In addition, Ukrainian auxiliary police forces became strongly involved in the mass killings of Ukrainian (and other) Jews, either by participating in mass shootings, or – more frequently – in guarding and escorting the victims on their way to the execution sites. On the other hand, millions of Ukrainians had to combat the German invaders starting in the summer of 1941, due to the simple fact of having been drafted as soldiers into the Soviet Army. Finally, the nationalist Ukrainian Insurgent Army became a kind of people’s army, consequently fighting for Ukrainian independence (and with some units far beyond the end of World War II) and combating Soviet Army, Polish forces and German Wehrmacht individually, or even simultaneously. All these different (military) activities conducted by Ukrainian fighters in the respective years present sharp controversies about a former “noble, idealistic fight for Ukrainian independence” on the one hand, and on active collaboration with Nazi Germany on the other (including entanglement in the large scale German crimes against humanity in World War II) – and there are arguments and indications for both. Now, recent discussions focus less on whether some pogroms against the Jewish population were carried out by Ukrainians – or just with strong local involvement – but rather to what extent these were frequent. In particular, the question is to what extent had the “insurgent”, “patriotic”, “nationalist” Ukrainians also been involved, and to what extent their political and military leaders? Stepan Bandera has become more and more important for the Ukrainian historic narrative after the gradual detachment from Russia since the early 2000s. In fact, within the past two decades, the heroization and mythologization of Bandera have superseded the necessary debates on the “negative sides” of the OUN and the UPA, especially the mass killings of Jews and Poles (and also the “ethnic cleansing” of some regions formerly densely populated by Polish people). Nevertheless, in 2010 former Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko granted Stepan Bandera the award “Hero of Ukraine”. There are no indications that Stepan Bandera actively supported the Lviv pogroms or any other directed violent activities of Ukrainian nationalist groups against the unprotected Jewish and Polish civilian population. However, it is proven that he was well informed about the situation in Lviv in June and July 1941, and he was presumably well informed about the brutal UPA campaign against Polish (and Jewish) civilians in Volhynia in 1943. Thus, either Bandera was unable or unwilling to instruct Ukrainian nationalist military troops (as Nachtigall, Roland and UPA) to protect vulnerable minorities under their control. It seems that Bandera failed to manage this problem (ethnic and anti-Semitic hatred) inside his forces, just like Symon Petljura failed 25 years before him.

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Today Ukrainian society, especially after the Euromaidan uprising 2013/14 and the subsequent political changes and re-orientations, is in search of new and impartial narratives. This includes a history of a long national struggle for freedom and independence full of sacrifices. It also includes dark chapters of radicalization of nationalist fighters, partially ending in fatal outrages, not least at the expenses of the Jewish and the Polish minorities in Ukraine in World War II. Thus, a vast challenge is approaching Ukrainian academia, politics and overall society to also integrate the problematic occurrences into future historiography and to strike new paths of reconciliation with the aforementioned population groups. Finally, until today historical research has no consensus regarding the extent of Ukrainian collaboration with Nazi Germany in World War II. Obviously, a considerable number of Ukrainians accepted German occupation and also violence and crimes against vulnerable minorities. Political protest against the German politics of annihilation against the Jews was also missing. However, the mass of Ukrainians did not actively take part in the terror of the German occupants, but had to suffer under this terror themselves.30

30 See Andreas Kappeler, Kleine Geschichte der Ukraine (Munich: Beck, 2019), 221 f.

Giuseppe Motta

Between Ideological Affinity and Economic Necessity Romania and Nazi Germany before and during World War II At the end of World War I, Romania and Germany entered the new political scenario from different perspectives. Romania had benefited from extraordinarily good conditions and converted into a “Greater Romania” (România Mare), while at the same time Germany experienced a radical change of internal political structures and a freefall in international status, owing to the strict conditions of the peace treaties (loss of the colonies, territory and control of military policies; war reparations). These different positions would soon lead the two countries into the opposite blocs of revisionist (Germany) and anti-revisionist states (Romania). Germany sought a revision of the treaties, and Romania was clearly interested in defending its territorial integrity against other revisionist states such as Hungary and Bulgaria. The distance between Berlin and Bucharest further increased in the economic field, as after the conflict the Romanian government developed the policy of “through ourselves alone” (prin noi înșine) and carried out a systematic replacement of German and Austrian capital with British and French investments.1 The situation began to change after the economic crisis of 1929, which was rapidly followed by the development of new political conditions. The spread of nationalism in many European countries went hand in hand with the decline of the international security system established after World War I. Romania was obliged to confront strong external forces and to re-adapt its economic and political interests accordingly. This new phase of economic rapprochement in RomanianGerman relations was supported by a simultaneous nationalist radicalization in politics, which was the product of both internal and external factors. Considering the territorial gains Romania made in 1919 and 1920, Romanian collaboration with Nazi Germany in the years preceding and during World War II surely represented a paradox: a composite product of surviving strategies, geopolitical interests, ideological passions and economic needs.

1 Victor Axenciuc, Avuția națională a României. Cercetări istorice comparate, 1860–1939 (Bucharest: Centrul Român de Economie Comparată și Consensuală, Editura Expert, 2001). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671186-006

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The Political Factors Romania well exemplifies the difficulties of the interwar international system, which was gradually undermined by many different factors. These included the punitive approach that humiliated Germany and conditioned the economic reconstruction and development of Eastern-Central Europe, the specter of Soviet Russia, the minority question, the difficult relations between national and international institutions. All these issues were somehow present in the Romanian political scenario. Bucharest anchored its international relations to the powers of the Entente and to the preservation of its territorial enlargement, which was evidently the product of the peace treaties. On the contrary, Germany was called to rebuild its international status and entered the League of Nations only in 1926, officially proclaiming loyalty to the international system, informally aiming to re-discuss the content of the treaties. On the one hand, Berlin signed the Locarno Treaties and in 1926, the politicians Gustav Stresemann and Aristide Briand together shared the Nobel Peace Prize; on the other, the minority question represented the keystone of a new, more aggressive, foreign policy. Though the new role of Germany as a champion of minority rights was not directed primarily towards Romanian Swabians and Saxons, the minority question became increasingly important for international institutions and for Romania, too.2 Thanks to the well-established relations with Budapest – István Bethlen, a Transylvanian nobleman, was Prime Minister between 1921 and 1931 – the Magyars of Transylvania represented a serious problem for Romania’s international image with their invasive petitioning campaign to the League, which seriously affected the Romanian-Magyar relations. The gravity of the minority question radically increased after 1929, when the economic problems favored the growth of nationalist parties, which added

2 Carole Fink, “Defender of Minorities: Germany in the League of Nations, 1926–1933,” Central European History 5, 4 (1972): 330–357; Franz Sz. Horváth, “Minorities into Majorities: Sudeten German and Transylvanian Hungarian Political Elites as Actors of Revisionism before and during the World War II,” in Territorial Revisionism and the Allies of Germany in the World War II: Goals, Expectations, Practices, eds. Marina Cattaruzza, Stefan Dyroff and Dieter Langewiesche (New York: Berghan Books, 2013). See also, Giuseppe Motta, Less than Nations. Central–Eastern European Minorities after WWI, vol. 2 (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013). For the Hungarian case, see Zoltán Pálfy, “The Dislocated Transylvanian Hungarian Student Body and the Process of Hungarian Nation-Building after 1918,” and Zoltán Kántor, “Nationalizing Minorities and Homeland Politics: The Case of the Hungarians in Romania,” in Nation-Building and Contested Identities: Romanian and Hungarian Case Studies, eds. Balázs Trencsényi, Dragoș Petrescu, Cristina Petrescu, Constantin Iordachi and Zoltán Kántor (Budapest/Iași: Regio-Polirom, 2001), 179–196 and 249–274.

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fuel to the fire and stirred up ethnic tensions between the majority and minority populations. The minority question represented the Trojan horse that revisionist powers used to dismantle the international system and a grave threat to Romania. The country was surrounded not only by Hungary and Bulgaria, but also by the Soviet Union, which never ceased to claim Bessarabia, and in the 1930s carried out a policy of diplomatic normalization, supporting the creation of popular fronts as a broad coalition against Fascism.3 In the age of the European Civil War between Fascism and Bolshevism, the decline of international institutions strongly affected those countries, such as Romania, which were caught in the middle of antagonist forces that could be reasonably considered as a direct menace to Romania’s territorial integrity. It was in this context that Nazi Germany pursued a strategy of rapprochement with the countries of the Little Entente, and in general a policy to gain influence in the Balkans, attracting the whole region to the German orbit. This strategy was primarily directed towards Budapest and Belgrade, but, as illustrated in numerous Italian diplomatic documents, Hungary and Yugoslavia were considered as a first step in extending German economic influence on the political field, causing a domino effect that would inevitably affect reluctant countries such as Romania.4 The increasingly aggressive German policy was interested in the reorientation of Romanian foreign policy, which could be more easily guaranteed by a change in Romanian internal affairs. Ideologically, Nazi anti-Semitism found ardent supporters in large sectors of Romanian society and in the radical right, which helped to undermine Romania’s democratic order from within. Furthermore, after 1935, Germany played an active role in the internal conflicts of the German minority in Romania, and from 1938–1940 Berlin succeeded in bringing the ethnic Germans in Romania under its control, supporting and financing the creation of a Nazi movement. The fact that anti-Semitism in Germany had become official state doctrine encouraged anti-Semitism elsewhere, especially in a country with an infamous tradition of anti-Semitism such as Romania.5 3 Enzo Traverso, The European Civil War, 1914–1945 (London: Verso Books, 2016); Carl Levy, “Fascism, National Socialism and Conservatives in Europe, 1914–1945: Issues for Comparativists,” Contemporary European History 8, 1 (1999): 97–126. 4 See for example, Conversation of the Sub-Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Suvich, with the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Austria, Berger-Waldenegg, and Hungary, Kanya (Venice, May 5, 1935); the Minister in Bucharest, Sola, to the Head of Government and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mussolini (Bucharest May 13, 1935); the Minister in Prague, Rocco, to the Head of Government and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mussolini (Prague, June 5, 1935). I Documenti Diplomatici Italiani, ottava serie: 1935–1939, vol. 1, docs. 146, 194, 344 (Rome: Istituto poligrafico e zecca dello Stato, 1991). 5 Cristian Cercel, “The Relationship between Religious and National Identity in the Case of Transylvanian Saxons (1933–1944),” Nationalities Papers 39, 2 (2011): 161–180.

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At the same time, Nicolae Titulescu’s efforts to create a Balkan Entente against Germany proved to be unsuccessful and culminated in his removal from the post of Foreign Minister in 1936. Titulescu was a symbol of Romania’s adherence to the French-backed collective security system, which was rapidly crumbling. This decline was made evident by the rearmament of Germany and the remilitarization of the Rhineland, the Spanish Civil war, the Italian war against Ethiopia and the changes affecting the international context. While the phase between September 1936 and December 1937 under Foreign Minister Victor Antonescu represented a readjustment of Romanian foreign policy, the successive one was an interlude of equilibrium (December 1938– March 1939). Only then, did Bucharest begin to align itself with Germany, and Berlin was finally transformed into a fairy godmother. After the Anschluss, Romania was obliged to take into account the new international status quo. Carol II’s increasing role in the political arena meant a substantial convergence with the German model, as the Romanian king wished to consolidate his predominance into an authoritarian regime, as proved by the establishment of his royal dictatorship in 1938. Hungary joined the Anti-Comintern Pact on February 24, 1939, and some months later, after Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, World War II broke out. At the beginning of the conflict, Romania was still regarded by the Italian chargé d’affaires in Berlin, Massimo Magistrati, as the only survivor of the Versailles system.6 Romanian neutrality was seen positively by Germany, while the possible evacuation of the Polish Army in Romanian and Hungarian territories was seen as a violation of that neutrality. However, tensions mounted and the fear of a possible attack against Romania, together with the Soviet policy of expansion in Poland, Finland and, it was reasonable to expect, in Romania, contributed to the country’s eventual plunge into chaos and terror.7 Actually, the political, geographic and military position of Romania was irremediably threatened by the concomitant menace of all of its neighboring countries. The only choice was between military resistance for the defense of Romanian territorial integrity, or diplomatic compromise under the patronage of Germany. Bucharest chose the latter. Eastern Europe represented a buffer

6 The chargé d’affaires in Berlin, Magistrati, to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ciano (Berlin, September 12, 1939). I Documenti Diplomatici Italiani, Nona Serie 1939–1943, vol. I, doc. 170 (Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1954). 7 The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ciano, to the Ambassador in Berlin, Attolico (Rome, September 17, 1939). I Documenti Diplomatici Italiani, Nona Serie 1939–1943, vol. I, doc. 266 (Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1954). Armin Heinen, “Der Hitler-Stalin-Pakt und Rumänien,” in Hitler-StalinPakt: Das Ende Ostmitteleuropas?, ed. Erwin Oberländer (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 1989), 98–113.

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zone between two powerful dictatorships. The status quo of the area depended on Hitler and Stalin, and Romania was naturally inclined towards Germany, especially after their victories in Holland and Belgium. It was not a zero sum game. The Second Vienna Award, on August 30, 1940, meant the partition of Transylvania, the Treaty of Craiova, on September 7, 1940, ratified the cession of Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria, while the Soviet Ultimatum of June 26, 1940, was rapidly followed by the occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. In September, King Carol II abdicated, and the power was transferred to General Ion Antonescu, who became Romania’s conducătorul (ruler) in the troubled years of war. As Hitler himself confessed to his ally Mussolini, Antonescu clearly realized that the future of his country as well as his personal fate depended by German victory.8 As a consequence, on June 22, 1941, alongside Hungary, Italy and the Axis Powers Romania participated in the German invasion of the Soviet Union, in order to recover Bessarabia and Bukovina, then marching further to the East up to Stalingrad and the Caucasus.

Economic Influence The problem of the economic role played by German capital in Eastern-Central Europe was clearly understood by the British economist John M. Keynes, who participated in the peace negotiations and polemically criticized the Carthaginian provisions of the treaties for failing to consider the perspective of economic reconstruction.9 Keynes underlined the economic solidarity and unity of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which had balanced the resources of many different regions and had given them access to world markets. After 1919, the old economic space was replaced by a sum of various more or less nationalist and protectionist economic policies that did not open sufficient economic horizons.10 All of Eastern-Central Europe had developed its economy thanks to German capital, and it was not possible to find a quick replacement without a consequential decrease in production and stability in economic terms. In conclusion, Keynes saw no possible means of repairing this loss of productivity within any

8 Letter of December 31, 1940. Quoted in Winston Churchill, The World War II, vol. III (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950), 30–31. 9 John M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Howe, 1920). 10 See Ivan T. Berend, “The Failure of Economic Nationalism. Central and Eastern Europe Before World War II,” Revue économique 52, 2 (2000): 315–322.

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reasonable period of time, except through the agency of German enterprise and organization. Keynes’ prediction became particularly relevant after the 1929 crisis shocked the global economy and its effects spread to Eastern-Central Europe. In this context, Germany gradually retook its traditional role, especially after the inauguration of Schacht’s New Plan in September 1934, which represented “considerable incentive for continued and deepening economic links with Germany”.11 The German government tried to limit its trade partners within the German sphere of influence and signed a number of bilateral trade agreements with many Southern and South-Eastern European countries according to the principle of clearing, which meant the settlement of accounts or exchange of financial instruments between special clearing banks. Thanks to this sort of compensation – this process turns the promise of payment into the actual movement of money from one account to another –, Romania found a guaranteed market for agricultural products and raw materials, while Germany could penetrate Eastern-Central Europe in order to gain political influence and create a sphere of economic imperialism thanks to what economist Albrecht Ritschl called the “exploitation of the small”.12 In order to increase political and economic cooperation, Berlin employed numerous official and unofficial agents, who were called to strengthen the image of the Third Reich as a model of political efficiency, modernity and social progress. The economic convergence, in fact, had substantial results in the field of cultural relations, as the supplementary conventions of the trade agreements contained, for example, student exchange programs or tourism projects.13 From 1934 to 1938, German imports from Romania steadily increased, except for a dip in 1937. In 1934, German purchases accounted for 15.5 % of Romanian exports yet 36.8 % by 1938. German exports to Romania followed a similar pattern. In 1934 German goods accounted for 16.6 % of all Romanian imports growing to 26.5 % by 1938. On the other hand, Franco-Romanian trade was difficult to justify in economic terms. France only purchased foreign agricultural products when there was a bad harvest at home, and in order to sell petroleum to France, Romania had to compete with American or Middle-Eastern oil. The Romanian economy was weak, partially as a consequence of measures such as the reduction of minorities’ economic status or the prevalence of consolidated

11 Rebecca Haynes, Romanian Policy Towards Germany, 1936–40 (London: Macmillan 2000), 9. 12 Albrecht O. Ritschl, “Nazi Economic Imperialism and the Exploitation of the Small: Evidence from Germany’s Secret Foreign Exchange Balances, 1938–1940,” The Economic History Review 54, 2 (2001): 324–345. 13 Irina Nastasă–Matei, “Relaţiile culturale româno–germane în perioada 1933–1944,” Acordurile culturale, Anuarul institutului de istorie “George Bariţiu” din Cluj–Napoca LIII (2014): 85–95.

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allies in the sphere of foreign trade. For too many years, political concerns had outweighed economic disadvantages, and after the crisis, it became increasingly difficult to maintain a good level of economic cooperation between Bucharest and Paris.14 The acceleration of German-Romanian economic relations went along with the worsening of international stability. On the one hand, deciding to breach the clauses of Versailles and beginning to rearm, Berlin needed Romanian oil for its military strategies. On the other, when the threat of revisionism became increasingly imminent, Bucharest needed Berlin to reinforce its fragile military apparatus. If in 1938, almost 50% of Romanian exports were directed to Germany, in the following years the exchange was destined to even increase: arms functioned as levers.15 On December 10, 1938, Germany and Romania negotiated a commercial agreement including 14 separate protocols and conventions. The agreement stipulated that the amount of bilateral economic exchange was to reach 250 million marks (10 billion lei) in 1939, and Romania undertook to export oil to Germany to the amount of 60–65 million Reichsmarks. On March 23, 1939, another RomanianGerman Treaty was signed in Bucharest, representing a further step towards Germany’s penetration into Romanian industry and the creation of a German economic space (Wirtschaftsraum). On September 29, 1939, a confidential protocol was signed for the Romanian acquisition of war materials. Through the Provisory Convention of March 6, 1940, Germany undertook to sell 410 cannons to Romania, while the Romanian government authorized the additional export of 200,000 tons of oil products in March and April.16 Finally, on May 27, 1940, the Armament-Oil Pact, the so-called Pactul Petrolului, was signed, setting a fixed ratio between armament and oil prices. The day after, the relevance of this agreement was explained by the Reich’s Special Representative for Economic Questions in Bucharest, Hermann Neubacher: The increase in the petroleum prices . . . about 150% compared with pre-war prices, is thereby rendered ineffective for Germany by special arrangement . . . The Oil Pact by the

14 William A. Hoisington, Jr, “The Struggle for Economic Influence in Southeastern Europe: The French Failure in Romania, 1940,” The Journal of Modern History 43, 3 (1971): 468–482. 15 Gheorghe Buzatu, O istorie a petrolului românesc (Iaşi: Demiurg, 2009); Christian Leitz, “Arms as Levers, ‘Matériel’ and Raw Materials in Germany’s Trade with Romania in the 1930s,” The International History Review 19, 2 (1997): 312–332; Ioan Chiper, România şi Germania nazistă. Relațiile româno–germane între comandamente politice si interese economice. Ianuarie 1933–martie 1938 (Bucharest: Editura Elion, 2000). 16 Gavriil Preda, “German Foreign Policy towards the Romanian Oil during 1938–1940,” International Journal of Social Science and Humanity 3, 3 (2013): 326–329.

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preliminary agreement of March 6, 1940, and in its present final form had already frustrated the attempts of the enemy powers to throttle German petroleum purchases by extraordinary price increases.17

Undoubtedly, the European crisis in the spring of 1939 with the occupation of Prague added a new dimension to the negotiations taking place in Romania. The extent of economic concessions to Germany depended upon the strength of the bargaining power left to the Romanians under those circumstances. The repugnance to collaborate with Soviet Russia, the fear of a German reaction to any such collaboration and the concomitant Hungarian-German collusion pushed Romania towards a policy that Romanian politicians believed could still be described as a perfect equilibrium. In this context, the Romanians reasonably pondered that the conclusion of an economic agreement with Germany implying further concessions but not complete capitulation to the German demands was the best immediate result.18 The Oil Pact, however, did not have exclusively economic consequences, continually increasing the exports of Romanian oil to Germany. Table 119: Exports of Romanian oil to Germany in 1940. Source: Gavriil Preda, “German Foreign Policy towards the Romanian Oil during 1938–1940,” 328. Month

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

Quantity (tons)

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

The path was quite clear, and French capitulation in 1940 made it even more so. Germany’s show of military force, the hostility of adverse neighboring countries and the lack of any French or British help determined that Romania was to choose Germany as the only force that could support Bucharest in defending an increasingly shaky territorial integrity. On October 15, 1940, Antonescu declared his readiness for close political, economic and military cooperation with Germany and sent Valer Pop, a well-known pro-German counsellor, as a special envoy to Berlin. He then invited a German military mission to Romania to train the Romanian army and consolidate border defense.

17 Telegram from Bucharest (May 28, 1940). Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945, Series D (1937–1945), vol. IX, The war years, March 18–June 22, 1940, doc. 338 (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1956). 18 Dov B. Lungu, “The European Crisis of March–April 1939: The Romanian Dimension,” The International History Review 7, 3 (1985): 390–414. 19 Preda, “German Foreign Policy towards the Romanian Oil during 1938–1940,” 328.

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Ideological Affinities. Anti-Semitism In the well-known books of the novelist Gregor von Rezzori (“An Ermine in Czernopol”, “Memoirs of an Anti-Semite”), Romanian anti-Semitism is described as a tic, something the majority of the population, and consequently the majority of politicians, had easily internalized. This fictional image is widely confirmed in scientific literature: for Carol Iancu, Romania was at the forefront of the countries professing a systematic state anti-Semitism; in “Eichmann in Jerusalem”, Hannah Arendt described it as the most anti-Semitic country in pre-war Europe.20 According to the historian Lucian Boia, two characteristics of Romanian history have contributed to the placing of the Other, especially Jews, in a specific light. On the one hand, there were the reactions of a rural and somewhat isolated civilization, and on the other, the massive and uninterrupted impact of foreign rulers and models. The presence of foreigners was clear in the urban environment, where Jews represented almost 15% of the population, sharing with other minorities (Greeks, Armenians) a solid socio-economic position. Before the Great War, the Jews were the most important minority in a country where an antiurban mythology was manifested in a whole range of ideologies and projects.21 Jewish history in Romania is undoubtedly a troubled one. Since the first constitution of 1866, the Jewish presence had been almost unanimously considered a problem of national survival. The denial of citizenship to Romanian Jews animated the negotiations during the Congress of Berlin in 1878, and once again at Versailles in 1919. Far from being solved through international diplomacy, the “Jewish question” remained a controversial political topic during the 1920s, as illustrated by the historian Ezra Mendelsohn in “The Jews of East-Central Europe between the World Wars”. As had happened in the past, the spread of anti-Semitic feelings was not confined to large masses of unsatisfied students and rural peasants but also to the cultural and political elites.22 In fact, the uniqueness of Romanian antiSemitism lies in its link to Romantic nationalism as well as in the stature it gained through the reputation of the cultural leaders proclaiming it.23 20 Carol Iancu, L’Emancipation des Juifs de Roumanie (1913–1919) (Montpellier: Université Paul Valéry, 1992), 32; Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (London: Penguin, 2006), 172. 21 Lucian Boia, History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness (Budapest: CEU Press, 2001). 22 Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of East-Central Europe Between the World Wars (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 203. 23 From this perspective, the cases of Emil Cioran, Mircea Eliade and Nae Ionescu represented the continuation of a historical tradition that had begun with Mihail Kogălniceanu, Vasile Alecsandri, Bogdan Petriceicu Haşdeu, Ion Heliade Rădulescu, Mihai Eminescu, Vasile Conta, Nicolae Iorga and Alexandru C. Cuza, to name only a few. Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine, Cioran,

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According to William O. Oldson, Romanian anti-Semitism was providential, for it derived from the nationalistic self-interest of the Romanians and of the Romanian State.24 Between World War I and World War II, anti-Semitism represented an extension and, in many aspects, an intensification of the mid-nineteenth century sentiment. Although the most virulent form of nationalism became manifest only in the interwar period, the România a Românilor (Romania to Romanians) program had been in existence since the foundation of modern Romania, in a period when the Jewish population grew significantly. It was at that time, when Romania was a compact nation state, that the Jews came to symbolize “Otherness”.25 Romanian anti-Semitism assumed different aspects in different times and circumstances and represented an endemic amalgam of nationalism and xenophobia, of rationalized bias and visceral excess. In the rural countryside, antiSemitism was a consequence of religious beliefs and was traditionally connected to the old bias of Deicide.26 Having suffered “a Counter-Reformation without a Reformation”, Romania had never enjoyed a tradition of religious or ethnic tolerance and this mystical devotion was one of the aspects that strengthened Romanian anti-Semitism.27 In addition, Romanian Jews were attacked as being prototypically foreign “middlemen”, the scapegoats for all the problems of Romania. As explained by Irina Livizeanu and Leon Volovici, popular anti-Semitism naturally spread to the higher classes that were the historical product of Romanian society. The example of the fathers was naturally followed by the new generations of young intellectuals who promoted a right-wing national revolution and highlighted

Eliade, Ionesco: L’oubli du fascisme (Paris: Puf, 2002); William O. Oldson, “Rationalizing AntiSemitism: The Romanian Gambit,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 138, 1 (1994): 25–30. In detail, see Nicolae Iorga, Istoria evreilor in ţerile noastre (Bucharest: Socec & Comp., 1913), 202–203; Emil Cioran, Schimbarea la faţă a României (Bucharest: Humanitas, 1990), 11–15, 104. 24 William O. Oldson, A Providential Anti-Semitism: Nationalism and Polity in Nineteenth Century Romania (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1991). 25 Andrei Oisteanu, The Image of the Jew in Romanian Culture (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2001); Andrei Oisteanu, Inventing the Jew: Antisemitic Stereotypes in Romanian and Other Central–East European Cultures (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009). 26 Georgetta Pana, “Religious Anti-Semitism in Romanian Propaganda,” Religion in Eastern Europe XXVI, 2 (2006): 1–9. William Brustein and Amy Ronnkvist, “The Roots of Anti-Semitism: Romania before the Holocaust,” Journal of Genocide Research 4, 2 (2002): 212. 27 Donald R. Kelley, “Romanian Cultural and Political Identity,” Journal of the History of Ideas 59, 4 (1998): 735–738. See also, Raphael Vago, “The Traditions of Antisemitism in Romania,” Patterns of Prejudice 27 (1993): 107–119.

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the extreme urgency of fighting the Jews in order to preserve the Romanians.28 In the context of a general process of modernization that led to the political emancipation of Jews, Jewish competition elicited fears among many Gentiles, who reacted by increasing their anti-Semitic attitudes. Economic competition and a spirit of narrow-minded exclusiveness converted the inexperienced Christian bourgeoisie into the most persistent enemy of the Jews, who remained holders of major wealth.29 Anti-Semitism was a very useful argument in the hands of Romanian politicians who were confronted with unprecedented problems and could easily justify themselves by blaming foreigners’ oppression. For many centuries, Romania had been oppressed by foreign empires. After 1866, and even after 1918, the struggle against alien powers and their influence became the fight against the enemy within, the foreigners, namely the Jews and other minority groups.30 Moreover, Romanian anti-Semitism was perfectly consistent to the economic policy of ‘through ourselves alone’, which was aimed at removing Jews and minority groups from the middle class and replacing them with ethnic Romanians.31 In the interwar period, anti-Semitic traditionalism was further enriched by new doctrines of regeneration or national awakening, and by a new scientific approach, which was based on eugenics and racism. The most aggressive scientists, such as Iordache Făcăoaru, Nicolae C. Paulescu and Petru Tiparescu, dreamed about a rejuvenation of the Romanian nation, and envisioned a national

28 Irina Livizeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building, & Ethnic Struggle, 1918–1930 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 121 ff. Leon Volovici, Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism: The Case of Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s (Oxford et al.: Pergamon Press, 1991); Leon Volovici, Ideologia naționalistă și problema evreiască: Eseu despre formele antisemitismului intelectual în România anilor ‘30 (Bucharest: Humanitas, 1995); Mariana Hausleitner, “Auf dem Weg zur Ethnokratie: Rumänien in den Jahren des Zweiten Weltkriegs,” in Kooperation und Verbrechen: Formen der Kollaboration im östlichen Europa, 1939–1945, eds. Christoph Dieckmann, Babette Quinckert and Tatjana Tönsmeyer (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003), 78–112. 29 Carol Iancu, Les Juifs en Roumanie (1866–1919): De l’exclusion a l’emancipation (Aix en Provence: Editions de l’Université de Provence, 1978), 71. 30 William I. Brustein and Ryan D. King, “Anti-Semitism in Europe before the Holocaust,” International Political Science Review/Revue internationale de science politique 25, 1 (2004): 35–53. William I. Brustein and Ryan D. King, “Anti-Semitism as a Response to Perceived Jewish Power: The Cases of Bulgaria and Romania before the Holocaust,” Social Forces 83, 2 (2004): 691–708. 31 Henry Roberts, Rumania: Political Problems of an Agrarian State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951); Ion Saizu, Politica economică a României între 1922 și 1928 (Bucharest: Editura Academiei, 1981).

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community based upon the exclusion of all of those deemed to be alien or anti-social.32 While Paulescu, who became famous for the discovery of insulin, stated that the Jews were degenerate because their brains weighed much less than those of “Aryans” as a consequence of genetic malformation, Tiparescu attributed Jewish degeneration to intoxication, infections, and congenital lesions of the brain.33 From this perspective, the scientist Marius Turda traces a parallel between Nichifor Crainic’s ethnocratic state and Alexandru C. Cuza’s and Corneliu Codreanu’s radical ideas about the “Health of the Nation”. In the 1930s, Crainic’s idea of an ethnocratic State was mature and the development of Romanian antiSemitism reached its most complete phase, adding to the traditionalist themes of anti-Judaism and economic competition, an entire set of different elements: the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism, the dreams about a regeneration of Romania and racial bias. The conversion of these racial and ethno-political theories into official policy was granted by Sabin Manuila, who directed Romania’s first Statistical Institute and later rose to prominence as an expert adviser of anti-Roma and anti-Jewish measures.34 Romanian anti-Semitism showed an incomparable variety and intensity and appeared to be a complex combination of all four strains of anti-Semitism: religious, racial, economic, and political. The path towards the final triumph of anti-Semitism as a state policy ended in 1937, with King Carol II appointing the government of Octavian Goga and Alexandru Cuza, whose weak National Christian Party coincided with the King’s personal aspiration to ease tensions in the country through the implementation of an anti-Semitic agenda. Goga clearly explained that his program was based on the concepts of diferenţierii de rasă (differentiations by race) and diferenţierea de religie (differentiation by religion), which were the cornerstones to preserving the Romanian entitate organică (organic entity) from the assault by străini (foreigners). In one of its first official acts in January 1938, approved and enforced

32 Nichifor Crainic, Programul Statului Etnocratic (Bucharest: Colectia Nationalista 1938); Marius Turda, “The Nation as Object: Race, Blood, and Biopolitics in Interwar Romania,” Slavic Review 66, 3 (2007): 13–441. See also, Marius Turda and Paul J. Weindling, eds., Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900–1940 (Budapest/New York: Central European University Press, 2007). 33 Nicolae Paulescu, Degenerarea rasei jidănești (Bucharest: Fundația Culturală Regală Regele Mihai I, 1928), 14; Petru Tiparescu, Rasă şi degenerare. Cu un studiu statistic asupra jidanilor (Bucharest: Tip. Bucovina, 1941). 34 Viorel Achim, “Romanian-German Collaboration in Ethnopolitics: The Case of Sabin Manuila,” in German Scholars and Ethnic Cleansing 1920–1945, eds. Ingo Haar and Michael Fahlbusch (New York: Berghahn, 2005).

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by King Carol II, the new government undermined the position of the Jewish minority in Romania by banning Jewish newspapers, firing Jewish public servants, cutting off state aid to Jewish institutions and invalidating the citizenship of around 225,000 individuals. The US Minister to Romania, Franklin Mott Gunther, was informed by Prime Minister Goga that the anti-Semitic movement was responsive to the wish of the majority of the Romanians, and concluded: “My impression is that the Government is intentionally frightening Jews into leaving the country voluntarily”.35 Then again, the association of Jews and Bolshevism was one of the main themes of Nazism and was well present in Romanian political debates. In 1940, the Jewish minority was clearly perceived as a group supporting a political agenda at odds with the projects of the majority group: With the cession of territory to Russia the Jewish problem in Romania has become more acute . . . In view of the natural national resentment that a Romanian minority should so disloyally welcome the invaders it would be difficult to find grounds for general representations pending specific instances other than to intimate that any violence against the Jews here would only be playing the Russian game as the Russians would probably like nothing better than that excuse for further encroachment.36

Gunther’s perplexities were well justified. In the past decades, beginning with the university riots of the 1920s, the success of anti-Semitic motifs had been enormous. The growth of the Fascist, ultra-nationalist party, the Iron Guard (Garda de Fier), and the idealization of its leader, captain (capitanul) Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, contributed to weaken King Carol II’s leadership no less than the international troubles. Though the political weight of Codreanu’s party did not directly represent a menace to the dominance of the traditional parties, his ideas seeped into Romanian society and were internalized by the latter. In foreign affairs, the Iron Guard – a.k.a. Legion of the Archangel Michael or Everything for the Country – openly advocated an alliance with Germany as the only power capable of counter-balancing the Russian colossus in Central Europe, and after Codreanu’s death, the Legion, headed by Horia Sima, a teacher

35 The US Minister to Romania (Gunther) to the Secretary of State (Bucharest, January 5, 1938). Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers, 1938, The British Commonwealth, Europe, Near East, and Africa, Volume II, doc. 532 (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1954). 36 The US Minister to Romania (Gunther) to the Secretary of State (Bucharest, July 2, 1940). Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers, 1940, General And Europe, Volume II, doc. 891 (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1957).

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from Transylvania, forged links with Rosenberg’s Aussenpolitisches Amt, the SS and SD.37 In the tragic conditions of 1939–40, anti-Semitism could not be dissociated from the alliance with Nazi Germany and the war against Soviet Union. It became the raison d’etre of many European countries and Romania was no exception. The rise to power of Marshal Ion Antonescu and the experience of the National Legionary State, which was suppressed by Antonescu himself after 138 days, coincided with the final passage of Romania to the Axis camp, on November 23, 1940.

The Role of Romania during World War II and the Holocaust It is common for both Romanian and Western historians to set up the discussion about Romanian involvement in World War II following the dichotomy between functionalist and intentionalist interpretations. Respectively, the events following the abdication of King Carol II were interpreted by scholars either as the result of the Third Reich’s instigations, or as a genuine collaboration dictated by a strong commitment to Nazi ideals and by the course of events. Similarly, Marshal Ion Antonescu’s figure has been alternatively described as a tool of the Nazis bringing about Romania’s political, military and economic domination by the Reich, or as a victim of the events cooperating to support a continuation of King Carol’s policies. The discussion regarding Romanian collaboration with German Jewish policies has involved numerous historians.38 Their books widely reflect the contrasting

37 Mihail Polihroniade, Tineretul şi politica externă (Bucharest: Randuiala, 1937); Nicholas Nagy-Talavera, The Green Shirts and the Others: A History of Fascism in Hungary and Romania (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1970); Armin Heinen and Oliver Jens Schmitt, eds., Inszenierte Gegenmacht von rechts. Die “Legion Erzengel Michael” in Rumänien 1918–1938 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2013). 38 Denis Deletant, Hitler’s Forgotten Ally: Ion Antonescu and his Regime, Romania 1940–1944 (Houndmill/New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime, 1940–1944 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000); Vladimir Solonari, Purifying the Nation: Population Exchange and Ethnic Cleansing in NaziAllied Romania (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2010); Jean Ancel, Transnistria, 1941–1942: the Romanian Mass Murder Campaigns, 3 vols. (Tel Aviv: Goldstein–Goren Diaspora Research Center, Tel Aviv University, 2003); Jean Ancel, The History of the Holocaust in Romania (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011); Lya Benjamin, Prigoana si rezistenta in istoria

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views concerning Antonescu’s role in the troubled years of World War II. Was he a puppet of Germany, a willing collaborator or an occasional ally? To what extent did the Third Reich shape Romania’s anti-Semitic policies during World War II, and how much leeway did the Romanian government have in its political options? As suggested by the American author Robert Kaplan, Antonescu was a paradox and Romania undoubtedly exhibits a peculiar case in Germany’s relation to Eastern-Central Europe. Though Antonescu was not strictly a Fascist and purged the Fascist elements from his regime, he had an excellent personal relationship with Hitler, who preferred to deal with authoritarian dictators rather than extravagant messianic Fascists.39 Antonescu represented an important Axis ally and firmly supported German foreign policy, displaying a high level of cooperation, at least during the first phase of war. The apparent contradictions of Antonescu’s policy are evident when dealing with Romanian Jewish policy. On the one hand, the order of extermination in Bessarabia and Bukovina was given directly by the Marshal, who in the Council of Ministers clearly used words such as “cleansing” and “disinfecting” the country.40 Antonescu directly orchestrated the deportations and permitted horrific acts of mass butchery, for example in Iași (June 28–29, 1941).41 On the other, by some statistics Antonescu kept the largest number of Jews away from the “Final Solution” in Axis dominated Europe. From this perspective, Dennis Deletant wonders whether the deportation of Jews and Roma to Transnistria,

evreilor din Romania 1940–1944 (Bucharest: Hasefer, 2001); Alexander Dallin, Odessa, 1941–1944: A Case Study of Soviet Territory under Foreign Rule (Iași: The Center for Romanian Studies, 1998); Andreas Hillgruber, Hitler, Regele Carol şi Mareşalul Ion Antonescu. Relaţiile Româno-Germane. 1938–1944 (Bucharest: Humanitas, 1994). 39 Robert Kaplan, In Europe’s Shadow: Two Cold Wars and a Thirty–Year Journey Through Romania and Beyond (New York: Random House, 2016); Carl Levy, “Fascism, National Socialism and Conservatives in Europe, 1914–1945: Issues for Comparativists,” Contemporary European History 8, 1 (1999): 97–126. 40 Council of Ministers, September 5, 1941, in Problema evreiasca in stenogramele Consiliului de Ministri, ed. Lya Benjamin (Bucharest: Hasefer, 1996), 298–299. 41 In 1941, “Once he returned to Bucharest from Munich, Ion Antonescu – now the commander of the Romanian-German troops in southern Europe – decided to imitate the Nazis and implement his own plan for a “final solution,” which he would call “the cleansing of the land”. Furthermore, “as Mihai Antonescu reminded Ribbentrop, he had reached certain understandings (Abmachungen) with the SS on the policy toward the Jews of Bessarabia, Bukovina, and also Transnistria”. Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania (Iași: Editura Polirom, 2004), chap. 2, 10–11. See also, Matatias Carp, Cartea neagră: suferinţele evreilor din România: 1940–1944, 3 vols. (Bucharest: Diogene, 1996).

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with no food, no medical care, no shelter against summer and winter, in the mind of Antonescu was a tantamount to sending them to death.42

Visit to the Wolfsschanze. Adolf Hitler and Ion Antonescu (second from the left), 1941. bpk/Heinrich Hoffmann. No. 30028901

In the last decades, parts of Romanian public opinion have rehabilitated the Marshal, his patriotism and sense of honor. The most striking example of this was Romanian president Ion Iliescu’s declaration of June 13, 2003.43 For his supporters, Antonescu’s behavior was more than understandable, it was a political necessity to safeguard territorial integrity and carry out a nationalist policy in the internal field. This view is partially justified by non-Romanian authors. Rebecca Haynes of the School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, challenges the assumption that Romania was only a pawn in Great Power diplomacy and underlines that many Romanian politicians had actively promoted rapprochement with Germany well before Antonescu. Haynes focuses on the gradual weakening of Romania’s historic bonds with France and, to a lesser degree, with Great Britain, and the corollary strengthening of ties with Germany even as a consequence of the Franco-Soviet treaty of mutual assistance in 1935.44

42 Deletant, Hitler’s Forgotten Ally, 276. 43 See for example, Alex Mihai Stoenescu, Armata, Mareşalul şi evreii: cazurile Dorohoi, Bucureşti, Iaşi, Odessa (Bucharest: Editura Rao, 1998); Roland Clark, “From Source Collections to Peer–Reviewed Journals: Romanians Write the Holocaust,” Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust 31, 3 (2017): 307–312; Michael Shafir, Între negare şi trivializare prin comparaţie: negarea Holocaustului în ţările postcomuniste din Europa Centrală şi de Est (Iaşi: Polirom, 2002). 44 Rebecca Haynes, “Germany and the Establishment of the Romanian National Legionary State, September 1940,” The Slavonic and East European Review 77, 4 (1999): 700–725.

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During the troubled phase of Carol’s resignation, Antonescu’s appointment and the creation of the Legionary State, German diplomacy, and in particular Hermann Neubacher, who acted as an adviser to the Romanian government, surely regarded Antonescu as the most reliable Romanian public figure to implement the Second Vienna Award (August 30, 1940) and to ensure the withdrawal of the Romanian army from Northern Transylvania, the region to be ceded to Hungary. Yet although the Nazis identified Antonescu as a potential leader through their embassy in Bucharest, it is unclear whether Antonescu had any significant links with Germany at this stage: “When Antonescu came to power in September 1940, it was not obvious that he would be Berlin’s favorite”.45 Historian Larry L. Watts seems to share this interpretation. Antonescu’s alliance with Hitler was a belated geopolitical move dictated by the necessity of extreme measures in a moment when Romania was between two powers such as Germany and the Soviet Union.46 At the same time, the documents reflect a clear image of Antonescu as a loyal collaborator firmly engaged in carrying out Nazi desiderata. It was evident when referring to the racial motifs of his declarations and his pride when reminding his allies of the old, fundamental Romanian hatred against the Jews, which in previous years had given birth to energetic actions against them. This rhetoric was well received by Hitler, who repeatedly declared that Germanic and Latin races needed to work together. Analogous loyalty was evident when discussing about the large autonomy that Romania conceded to the German minority, who erected a “State within the State” in a country where the word autonomy had always sounded like blasphemy. On November 21, 1940, Decree-Law 38877 officially consecrated the German ethnic group as a “Romanian legal entity by public law”. This de facto autonomous entity was built directly by the Reich following the Nazi model, and in 1943, Romanian ethnic Germans were free to join the Waffen-SS instead of being drafted into the Romanian army.47 However, this sort of autonomy generated serious discussions about the confiscations and German and Romanian access to these goods. Romanization did not coincide with “Aryanization” and

45 Ibid., 714. See also, Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, chapt. 2, 5. 46 Larry L. Watts, Romanian Cassandra: Ion Antonescu and the Struggle for Reform, 1916–1941 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993). 47 Vasile Ciobanu, Contribuţii la cunoaşterea istoriei saşilor transilvăneni 1918–1944 (Sibiu: Hora, 2001). See also, Ottmar Traşcă, “Andreas Schmidt and the German Ethnic Group in Romania (1940–1944),” Euxeinos 19–20 (2015): 16–19; Cristian Cercel, Romania and the Quest for European Identity, Philo-Germanism without Germans (New York: Routledge, 2019).

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the “independence” of Romanian policies in distributing confiscated properties was also present in Jewish matters. During the war, the Romanian government adopted a multi-faceted attitude towards German directives. According to Costantin Iordachi, who analyzed the role of German experts working in Romania between 1940 and 1944, Romania’s Jewish policy was marked by underlying contrasts and apparent contradictions.48 In Bessarabia, Bukovina and in the Ukrainian provinces serving as battlefields on the Eastern front, Romania conducted an anti-Semitic campaign that resulted in the deaths of 280,000 to 380,000 Jews. At the same time, despite considerable German pressure, a large number of Romanian Jews (especially from Wallachia and Southern Transylvania) were not deported to Nazi death camps, as in the fall of 1942, with the aggravating military situation on the Eastern front, Antonescu renounced his plan. As Deletant concluded, it was Ion Antonescu’s obsession with the Bolshevik menace that drove also his policy towards the Jews. The vast majority of those living in the provinces occupied by the Soviet Union between 1940 and 1941 (Bessarabia and Bukovina) were deported to Transnistria, where more than 70% of them were murdered or died of disease and starvation.49 When investigating the role of Nazi advisors such as Gustav Richter, who was the Berater für Juden und Arisierungsfragen (Advisor for the Jewish and Aryanization Questions) in the German Legation in Bucharest, Iordachi clearly refers to different phases of collaboration. He first mentions the adherence to the German model in order to enhance Antonescu’s political basis with new anti-Jewish laws, the establishment of the Subsecretariatul pentru Problemele Românizării, Colonizării şi Inventarului (Under-Secretariat for Romanization, Colonization and Inventory Problems), in March 1941, and the overall radicalization of anti-Semitic policies in 1941/1942. This phase culminated in the deportation agreement between Romania and Nazi Germany. Following the formal consent of the German Foreign Office on the inclusion of Romanian Jews into the “Final Solution”, on August 19, 1942, Radu Lecca, the commissioner for the “Jewish question”, and Richter went to Berlin to hold talks with German decision makers about the deportation of Romanian Jews.50

48 Costantin Iordachi, “Ideological Transfers and Bureaucratic Entanglements: Nazi ‘Experts’ on the ‘Jewish Question’ and the Romanian-German Relations, 1940–1944,” Fascism 4 (2015): 48–100. 49 Dennis Deletant, “Ion Antonescu and the Holocaust in Romania,” East Central Europe 39, 1 (2012): 61–100. 50 Viorel Achim, “Romanian German Collaboration in Ethnopolitics: The Case of Sabin Manuila,” in German Scholars and Ethnic Cleasing, 1919–1945, eds. Ingo Haar and Michael Fahlbusch (New York: Berghan Books, 2005).

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However, the agreement on the deportation of Jews from Banat and Transylvania was not implemented. Actually, the anti-Semitic policy of the Antonescu regime suffered gradual but significant changes, due to a combination of internal (intervention of Romanian centers of influence and moderate politicians such as Iuliu Maniu) and external factors. At the end of 1942, when Soviet forces consolidated their positions around Stalingrad, Antonescu began to realize that Hitler might not win the war after all. The Marshal finally gave up his plan to deport Romania’s Jews and started the new course in Romania’s Jewish policy opting for emigration to Palestine as a solution to the “Jewish question”. Antonescu halted the deportation of Jews, approved the repatriation of certain categories from Transnistria and allowed Jewish emigration from Romania. Antonescu’s ambiguity is well documented by the “Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania” that was presented to Romanian President Ion Iliescu on November 11, 2004.51 The Commission was created in 2003, “to honor truth by remembering the dead”, as specified by the Holocaust survivor and professor emeritus of the humanities at the Boston University Elie Wiesel. It worked with recognized historians and public figures from the United States, Romania, France, Germany and Israel and concluded that the intention of extermination was clear from the very beginning. The Romanian authorities were the main perpetrators of the Holocaust in Romanian territories, in both its planning and implementation. This encompassed the systematic deportation and extermination of nearly all the Jews of Bessarabia and Bukovina as well as of some Jews from other parts of Romania to Transnistria, the mass killings of Romanian and local Jews in Transnistria, the massive execution of Jews during the Iaşi pogrom, the systematic discrimination and degradation of Romanian Jews, the expropriation of assets, dismissal from jobs, the forced evacuation from rural areas and concentration in district capitals and camps and the massive utilization of Jews as forced laborers. It was said that nowhere else in Europe has a mass murderer like Ion Antonescu been publicly honored as a national hero. Though not strictly a Fascist, Antonescu adopted the same measures of other Fascist collaborationist countries including the abolition of democratic prerogatives, anti-Semitic laws, confiscations and nationalization of properties, deportations, forced labor and mass killings. Antonescu remained a loyal ally of Germany until his removal after King Michael’s Coup, on August 23, 1944. At the same time, the report recognizes that the Romanian leadership and bureaucracy coordinated with the Germans with difficulty and only for limited

51 Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania.

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periods. The Germans were often angered by Romanian inefficiency and the improvised nature of death marches and mass killings. Paradoxically, after 1942, when the vast German camp system realized its greatest potential for killing, the number of murders committed by the Romanians decreased, as did the determination with which they enforced anti-Semitic laws. As many authors and the Commission’s findings have pointed out, after the fall of 1942, a second phase in Romanian policy began. As the war dragged on, pragmatic and opportunistic considerations became more and more dominant in Romanian decision making. Antonescu did not allow SS or Gestapo units to operate on Romanian territory. The Einstazgruppe D was active in the Romanian operation area but the relations between Romania and the German units were far from ideal. Initially, the government did not hesitate in supporting the total deportation to Poland, but this decision was stopped when German and Romanian interests no longer coincided, as the international situation was changing to the detriment of German military positions. Essentially, from February 1941 to August 23, 1944, the lives of Romanian Jews and Roma people depended solely on the wishes of Antonescu and his assessment of how the Jewish presence could serve Romanian national interests. The nature, timing and span of Antonescu’s policies vis-à-vis the Jews depended exclusively on his own initiatives. According to the Romanian-born Israeli historian Jean Ancel, the Romanians drew a distinction between “their” Jews and other Jews. Though considered foreigners and invaders, the Jews were “Romanian” and only the Romanians could rid the country of them. It was not by chance that the looting of Jewish property was termed Romanization rather than “Aryanization”. The Romanian participation in the liquidation of the Jewish people was predicated on an ideology that preceded Nazi racism and was the result of free choice. Clearly, Germany’s domination of Europe permitted the Romanian allies to realize their long-standing anti-Semitic dream, but anti-Semitism was not imported from Germany, it was a purely Romanian product.52

Conclusion There is no room for doubt about the state-organized participation of Romania in the genocide, since during World War II, Romania was among those allies

52 Ancel, The History of the Holocaust in Romania, 2 f. See also Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace, 1975), and Ivan C. Butnaru, The Silent Holocaust: Romania and its Jews (New York: Greenwood Press, 1992).

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and collaborators of Germany that had their systematic plans for the persecution and annihilation of the Jewish population. Romania remained a sovereign state, not a defeated country, and behaved as such. From this perspective, Romanian-German relations are a case in point about the efficiency as well as the limits of the Nazi domination in East Central Europe. As a consequence, the political impact of the Nazi advisors in Romania and the changes in Romanian Jewish policies are symptomatic for the evolution of the Romanian-German wartime relations.53 As remarked by Holly Case, during World War II, Romania and Hungary and some others treated Germany and Italy in much the same way as they had treated the League of Nations during the interwar period. One Great Power was as good as another so long as it produced the desired results, and the foreign and domestic policies of these small states were consequently focused primarily on national interests, solving the “Jewish question” and annulling the ideological and geopolitical menace of Bolshevik Russia.54 The Romanian role during World War II and the Holocaust was conditioned by a mixture of internal and external factors. The effects of the collective hypnosis that characterized the interwar period paved the way to the rise of racialbased motifs and dreams of Romanization that ideologically adhered to the Nazi model. These factors, together with the economic and military needs of Romania and the fight against Soviet Russia, contributed to strengthen the role of Nazi Germany well before 1938, when the international context consecrated German political influence in East-Central Europe and caused the powerless bewilderment of the Allies facing the Nazi’s aggressive campaign. In 1939–40, all these aspects ended up coinciding, and despite traditionally belonging to the anti-revisionist bloc, Romania accepted revisionism out of necessity, as rightly remarked by Mariana Hausleitner.55 The following events proved that Romania kept a sufficient decision making scope, and from this perspective, the survival of many Romanian Jews was a further evidence of Romanian independence. Since 1866, Romanian governments had confused patriotism with nationalism and nationalism with anti-Semitism. World War II added to these “isms” a certain amount of opportunism.

53 Iordachi, “Ideological Transfers and Bureaucratic Entanglements,” 98–99. 54 Holly Case, Between States: The Transylvanian Question and the European Idea during World War II (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009). 55 Mariana Hausleitner, “Romania in the World War II: Revisionist out of Necessity,” in Territorial Revisionism and the Allies of Germany in the World War II: Goals, Expectations, Practices, eds. Marina Cattaruzza, Stefan Dyroff and Dieter Langewiesche (New York: Berghan Books, 2013), 173.

Joachim Tauber

Collaboration in Lithuania Lithuania’s collaboration with the German occupying force has its own specific historical background. The outbreak of World War II and the spheres of influence agreed on in the secret clauses of August and September 1939 in the German-Soviet Pact had exposed the Baltic States to Soviet influence. In the autumn of 1939, the Soviet Union compelled Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to sign agreements accepting the stationing of Red Army troops as well as to agree to a mutual assistance pact; not long afterwards, in June 1940, the Soviet army occupied the three Baltic States under the pretext that the agreement had been broken, and, in an ultimatum, threatened the use of force. The enactment of this allegedly voluntary accession to the Soviet Union was followed by a complete transformation of the social system along Stalinist lines. A large proportion of the Lithuanian population experienced the loss of independence and incorporation into the Soviet Union as an occupation of their country, and in early June 1941 at the latest, their experience of occupation became traumatic as the Soviet authorities began to arrest entire families as class enemies and to transport them in freight trains to the interior of the Soviet Union. Many people hid in the forests in order to escape the NKVD (Ministry of the Interior and Political Police). The German attack on the Soviet Union coincided with the deportations: the German army occupied the entire territory of Lithuania within five days.1 It is against this background that the following article describes the various forms of collaboration between Lithuanians and Germans. The article focuses in particular on the objectives and motives of the Lithuanian collaborators. In so doing, it is useful to distinguish between the different areas of collaboration. I will begin by examining collaboration on the political-administrative level, the significance of which should not be underestimated in view of the small numbers of German officials and administrative and security staff. I then follow with a discussion of Lithuanian involvement in the mass murder of the Jewish population. This is, of course, an artificial division and is applied here for the sake of

1 These events have been described often. See e. g. Joachim Tauber, “‘Wäre Selbstmord ihrer Meinung nach besser?’. Die letzten Monate der litauischen Republik,” in Die deutsche Volksgruppe in Litauen, ed. Boris Meissner et al. (Hamburg: Baltica, 1998), 46–70; Christoph Dieckmann, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Litauen 1941–1944 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2011), vol. 1, 147–155. Translated by Linda Froome-Döring https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671186-007

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precise presentation: the fact that the ghettos in Vilnius, Kaunas and Šiauliai were placed under the control of the respective local administrative bodies is evidence enough of the interface between the Lithuanian administrative authorities and the Holocaust. From the beginning, the Germans relied on asymmetrical cooperation with the Lithuanian administrative authorities. The General Commission (Generalkommissariat; GK) of Lithuania, together with those of Latvia, Estonia and White Ruthenia, became part of the Reich Commission East (Reichskommissariat Ostland) which was led by Gauleiter Hinrich Lohse from Schleswig-Holstein and headquartered in Riga.2 Adrian von Renteln, a politically weak candidate, was appointed General Commissioner in Lithuania. The Germans did not, however, strive to create their own independent administration. The role of the German staff, who generally came from the middle leadership ranks of Nazi organizations and often had positions in local administration, was simply to supervise and instruct the respective national administrative bodies.3 The so-called General Advisers (Generalräte) were the highest authorities in the Lithuanian administration and more or less managed the former Lithuanian ministries. The Lithuanian district administrative bodies formed the lower, regional level, with their structure remaining as it was in June 1940 when the Republic of Lithuania was occupied. German was the official language; Lithuanian was also used for correspondence within the Lithuanian administration. The autonomy of the General Advisers, particularly regarding staff policies, was severely restricted: right down to the local level, the highest positions, such as heads of the district authorities or mayors could only be filled if approved by the Germans.4 In practice, however, the situation was by no means as the structure would suggest. This was due on the one hand to the lack of staff in the German civil administration, and on the other, to nationalist Lithuanian endeavors. This is particularly evident in Vilnius, a city which only became part of Lithuania as a result of the secret clause of the Hitler-Stalin pact and which had a clear ethnic Polish and Jewish majority. The Germans intervened several times in attempts to constrain the Lithuanian administration. The Task Force A reported as early

2 See Sebastian Lehmann et al., ed., Reichskommissariat Ostland. Tatort und Erinnerungsort (Paderborn et al.: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2012); on Lohse: Uwe Danker, “Geschichten und Geschichtskonstruktionen für Gerichte und Öffentlichkeit: Täternarrationen am Beispiel des Hinrich Lohse,” in Reichskommissariat Ostland. Tatort und Erinnerungsort, ed. Sebastian Lehmann et al. (Paderborn et al.: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2012), 229–250. 3 More detail in Dieckmann, Besatzungspolitik, vol. 1, 453–467. 4 Cf. Dieckmann, Besatzungspolitik, vol. 1, 467–471.

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as July 1941 of attempts to, “. . . give [the city – J. T.] a purely Lithuanian image, for example by large-scale flagging with the Lithuanian national flag.”5 Nor did the new masters allow the Lithuanian administration to get away with everything in the language conflict. For example, the Economic Department of the German administration immediately revoked the instruction that all Poles employed in business enterprises were to learn Lithuanian.6 At the end of July there followed an announcement by the occupying power stating that Lithuanians, Poles and Belarusians all had the same right to use their mother tongue. The security police observed that, whereas the Lithuanians’ reaction was one of dismay, the Poles were gloating in equal measure at this course of action.7 At least formally, German policy in Vilnius consciously treated both ethnic groups as equal in an attempt to thwart any Lithuanian aspirations.8 Lithuanian policy in Vilnius is a clear indicator that cooperation with the Germans was intended as a means of following the Lithuanians’ own agenda. This is one of the aspects that distinguishes it from an unconditional, largely ideological cooperation with the enemy, as I have explained elsewhere.9 In the case of Lithuania, the underlying goals are clearly recognizable, i. e. their own

5 Cited from Joachim Tauber and Ralph Tuchtenhagen, Vilnius. Kleine Geschichte der Stadt (Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau 2008), 197. 6 Incident report No. 29, July 21, 1941: “It was noted . . . that on July 12 the Food Commissioner for the City District of Vilnius sent around a circular to company managers ordering them to make sure that the Poles in their companies began to learn Lithuanian immediately. The Department Manager in the War Administration commented that the suggestion was exceedingly improper and there was no reason for the Poles to learn Lithuanian.” Klaus-Michael Mallmann et al. ed., Die “Ereignismeldungen UdSSR” 1941. Dokumente der Einsatzgruppen in der Sowjetunion (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2011), 160. 7 Incident report No. 32, July 24, 1941: “The notice posted by the German Command Authority in Vilnius stating that Lithuanians, Belarusians and Poles all have the same right to speak their mother tongue has caused a considerable stir in the dispute between Poles and Lithuanians. The Lithuanians view it as a means of stemming moves towards Lithuanianisation.” Mallmann, Ereignismeldungen, 172. Similar incident report No. 43, August 5, 1941. Mallmann, Ereignismeldungen, 233. See also Michael MacQueen, “Polen, Litauer, Juden und Deutsche in Wilna 1939–1944,” in Judenmord in Litauen. Studien und Dokumente, eds. Wolfgang Benz and Marion Neiss (Berlin: Metropol, 1999), 63–65. 8 Incident report No. 54, August 16, 1941: “In Vilnius it was noted further that the Polish intelligentsia makes extremely skilful use of the still unresolved situation as regards the administration of the area. There is a great deal of communication between Vilnius and the Generalgouvernement. The equal status of the Lithuanian and the Polish elements are a good requisite for the Poles’ activities.” Mallmann, Ereignismeldungen, 302. 9 Joachim Tauber, ed., Kollaboration in Nordosteuropa. Erscheinungsformen und Deutungen im 20. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2006), 13–14. Most recent on this topic and with a good summary of the situation in Lithuania and in European comparison Klaus Kellmann,

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national aspirations which had been brought to such an abrupt end by the Soviet Union in June 1940. Even if the majority of protagonists did not expect to be able to create an independent state system again, many of them hoped for the so-called protectorate solution, that is a partial self-administration such as the Nazis had implemented in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia or, still better, for the ‘autonomous’ Slovac Republic under Jozef Tiso. This was also the goal which had been pursued in the largely spontaneous uprising10 against the Soviet Union immediately following the German invasion of Lithuania and in the establishment of the provisional government, which, however, the Germans never recognized, and which was forced into self-dissolution just a few weeks later.11 The intention had been to make an independent anti-Bolshevist move and with the provisional government to present the Germans with a fait accompli. As the German sources clearly show, at no time did this policy stand a chance of becoming a reality.12 Initially, Lithuania was to serve as a resource for the German wartime economy, later, it was to become part of the German Lebensraum, an objective which necessarily implied ethnical and political measures according to Nazi ideology. Any chance of a Protectorate was thus doomed from the start.13 On the other hand, as stated above, the Germans were reliant on Lithuanian staff. In early 1944, only 900 people were employed in the German civilian administration of the GK Lithuania, whereas around 20,000 Lithuanians worked in their own administrative bodies.14 Any attempts at an autonomous administration were worn down by the everyday politics of occupation and the resulting disputes over competencies. One should note, however, as Christoph Dieckmann correctly remarks, that these disputes were not restricted to the individual NS organizations: The reason for the main problems lay in the severe and irresolvable tension which arose from the short-term economic exploitation goals on the one hand and the political cooperation targets on the other,15

Dimensionen der Mittäterschaft. Die europäische Kollaboration mit dem Dritten Reich (Cologne/ Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2019), 11–32. 10 Still a basic work: Valentinas Brandišauskas, Siekiai atkurti Lietuvos valstybinguma̜: (1940 06–1941 09) (Vilnius: Valstybinis Leidybos Centras, 1996). 11 The protocols of the provisonal government were published some time ago. Arvydas Anušauskas, ed., Lietuvos Laikinoji Vyriausybė posėdžių protokolai (Vilnius: Spauda, 2001). 12 Even if the Germans were taken by surprise at the existence of a provisional government. Compare e. g. Dieckmann, Besatzungspolitik, vol. 1, 430–436. 13 Cf. Dieckmann, Besatzungspolitik, vol. 1, 479. 14 Figures are from Dieckmann, Besatzungspolitik, vol. 1, 481. 15 Dieckmann, Besatzungspolitik, vol. 1, 488.

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This constellation led to some surprising events. The raids carried out to procure forced labor for the German Reich were, for example, exploited by the Lithuanian city administration in Vilnius primarily as a means of deporting ethnic Poles from the city and thus strengthening their own ethnicity.16 The distinctive goals of the Lithuanian side are demonstrated even more clearly by the passive opposition of the Lithuanian administration and population, which was largely responsible for the German failure to recruit a Lithuanian SS-Division. The numbers speak for themselves: Of the 77 (!) men mustered in Kaunas, 69 were unfit for service.17 The Germans were well acquainted with such an approach on the part of the Lithuanians, mirroring as it did the examinations carried out at the employment offices to muster people for forced labor in Germany. Many of those described by the Lithuanians as “fit for work” suffered from infectious diseases or were disabled. Carl Nabersberg, head of the Political Department, was clearly irritated when German doctors rejected 96 of these people, and in January 1944 he wrote to Petras Kubiliūnas, the Lithuanian Lieutenant General: I regret to have to report that the Lithuanian doctors, who frequently grant long-term sick leave to persons with the slightest ailments, have declared these people with severe chronic diseases and physical defects to be fit for work in the Reich.18

One interface between the Lithuanian administration and the German occupying forces is evident in the anti-Semitic actions against the Lithuanian Jews who had survived the first wave of murders and were now forced to live in the ghettos of Vilnius, Kaunas and Šiauliai. The Lithuanian urban administrative bodies were responsible for the administration of the ghettos, the Germans preferring not to have any direct contact with the Jewish Councils. Franz Murer, the adjutant to the District Commissioner of Vilnius who was responsible on the German side for Jewish matters (Judenangelegenheiten), emphasized the hierarchy to be observed when he instructed his Lithuanian counterpart, Petras Buragas: “You are to address any ghetto matters passed to you and are to deal with them according 16 MacQueen, Polen, 66. 17 Joachim Tauber, “Litauen,” in Handbuch zum Widerstand gegen Nationalsozialismus und Faschismus in Europa 1933/39 bis 1945, ed. Gerd R. Ueberschär (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2011), 208. 18 Lithuanian Central State Archive (hereafter LCVA), R-614, ap. 1, b. 313, Bl. 21. As unrelenting as the local doctors appeared in this case, they were otherwise just as nonchalant with regard to sick leave. The Germans could only react with black humor, as Medical Officer Obst wrote to the Lithuanian Health Authority in the summer of 1943: “On the basis of the documents available to me, according to these official medical certificates an average of 60 or 70 out of 100 workers are reputedly no longer fit for work. That means that the majority of Lithuanian people are sick or infirm.” LCVA R-614, ap. 1, b. 313, Bl. 42.

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to my instructions. I will thus only negotiate with you and not with individual Jews or with the Jewish Council.”19 The contact persons for the Jewish Councils in Kaunas and Šiauliai were also Lithuanians.20 The Lithuanian administration had early on exerted its influence in the choice of city districts to be used for the ghettos (to the advantage of the non-Jewish population); later, the provisioning and security of the ghettos was also in Lithuanian hands, with the Lithuanian collaborators at times outdoing their German masters in their zealousness. On January 8, 1942, Buragas complained in a letter to the District Commissioner about the conduct of German departments, When checking up on individual Jews walking around the town it was found that the heads of the workplaces and the escorting guards consciously encourage contacts between the Jews and the population by allowing individual Jews out into the town to buy food . . . it is not surprising that columns of workers as well as individual Jews often return to the ghetto laden with food . . . Misunderstandings often arise when the Wehrmacht guards escort the Jewish columns back to the ghetto laden with food supplies and the [Lithuanian – J. T.] guards on the gate want to carry out their inspection: weapons have even been brought out and the guards insulted by certain actions.21

An example from late autumn 1941 demonstrates how skillfully the Lithuanian authorities brought the interests of the local population into play. In his monthly report of November 28, Buragas noted the inadequate supply of food to the ghetto: “Flour, buckwheat and vegetables . . . were . . . not delivered at all. Further, the Jews only received 5 kg of potatoes per food ration card. Meat, fat and sugar were not sold to them at all.” The complete failure of the Lithuanians to supply the ghetto was, however, placed in a context that, from the outset, almost precluded the possibility of a German reaction: “However, as the Aryan population could at times not be supplied quite regularly in November, the above description of supplies to the ghetto population can be considered relatively normal.”22 The surveillance by Lithuanian guards was a particular source of considerable distress to the Jews, as assaults were a regular occurrence.23 In some cases, the Germans lost their patience. In October 1941, the Reserve-Police Battalion 11 banned Lithuanian police from entering the ghetto in Kaunas.

19 LCVA R-643, ap. 3, b. 195, Bl. 189: The District Commissioner of the City of Vilnius to the city administration of Vilnius, Mr. Burogas [sic!], October 16, 1941. 20 Cf. Tauber, Arbeit, 339. 21 LCVA R-643, ap. 3, Bl. 143 (front and back page). 22 LCVA R-643, ap. 3, Bl. 153. 23 Cf. Tauber, Arbeit, 336 f.

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Jewish women being rounded up in Kowno (Kaunas) overseen by armed members of the Lithuanian Activist Front, 1941. bpk. No. 30022475 On October 10 and 11, 1941, two or three policemen, together with a number of civilians, entered the ghetto and were responsible for considerable looting there. They, that is one policeman and one civilian, also raped the Jewess, Charia Tisch, in her flat.24

The powerless Jewish ghetto police documented assaults by Lithuanian criminals who gained access to the ghetto by night, and they passed their report on to the Lithuanian and the German guards.25 For the survivors, then, it was primarily Lithuanians who appeared as their tormentors and perpetrators and who acted as the henchmen of the Germans during mass operations. After the liquidation of Ghetto II in Vilnius, the Lithuanian authorities were responsible for the takeover and for the “cleaning” of the area as well as for the registration of Jewish legacies, whereby the German side demonstrated from the start that they were well able to assess the agenda of their Lithuanian assistants: “Ghetto II will be handed over to the city authorities for further supervision; for the time being, however, the area is not to be inhabited by the local population.”26 The motive behind this cooperation lay not only in a common anti-Communist position, but also primarily in the anti-Semitic stereotype of Jewish communism. It was widely claimed in Eastern Central Europe that Bolshevism was a Jewish “invention” and thus the reason why the Soviet leadership consisted mainly of Jews. The Lithuanian version was based on the supposed experience of the Jewish

24 LCVA R-1444, ap. 1, b. 5, Bl. 252 of October 31 1941 (All translations from the Lithuanian are by the author of this paper). 25 Cf. Tauber, Arbeit, 337 f. 26 LCVA R-643, ap. 3, b. 195, Bl. 171. The District Commissioner of the City of Vilnius to the city administration, November 18, 1941.

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“betrayal” in June 1940 (when Lithuanian Jews allegedly cheered at the arrival of the Red Army) and on the deportations by the Soviets which had developed into mass operations by June 1941 and were perceived as ethnic cleansing of Lithuanian nationals by the Jewish-Soviet NKVD.27 In comparison, the classic anti-Semitic and ideologically based motives of the Nazis, and their racist components in particular, clearly played a subordinate role. The days immediately following June 22, 1941 are the focus of current discussions. Many Lithuanians had viewed an attack by the Wehrmacht as their last hope. An eyewitness in Kaunas described the morning of June 22, 1941, after it had become evident that the German Air Force was attacking the Red Army: It was like thunder resounding over Lithuania: WAR (emphasis in the original – J.T.). What joy, WAR. One person meets another – they congratulate each other with tears of joy in their eyes. Everybody senses that the hour of liberation is close . . . 28

Reports of this kind are, without doubt, an accurate reflection of the sentiment among the Lithuanian population.29 The war diaries of the German divisions are also consistent in their description of the population’s response as friendly, sometimes even euphoric.30 From a German point of view, however, this joy at the supposed liberation went too far as soon as it appeared to be leading to independent political action. This applied in particular to the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF). The Front was actually founded in Berlin and its strategic-military diversion and espionage activities in the realm of tactics and the military were originally welcomed by the Germans; now, however, they expanded their field of action in their attempts to present their “liberators” with a fait accompli. Their principal endeavors included the attempt to take control of Kaunas and Vilnius before the German troops entered and to form a provisional government. Moreover, the insurgents in Kaunas and Vilnius had uniformed and armed paramilitary forces at their command.

27 I have described this development in detail elsewhere: Joachim Tauber, “14 Tage im Juni: Zur kollektiven Erinnerung von Litauern und Juden,” in Holocaust in Litauen. Krieg, Judenmord und Kollaboration im Jahre 1941, ed. Vincas Bartusevičius et al. (Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2003). On this topic, see also Alfonsas Eidintas, “Das Stereotyp des ‘jüdischen Kommunisten’ in Litauen 1940–41,” in Holocaust in Litauen. Krieg, Judenmord und Kollaboration im Jahre 1941, ed. Vincas Bartusevičius et al. (Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2003), 13–25. Among the victims of the Germans there were also very many Jews. 28 Cf. Tauber, “14 Tage im Juni,” 40. 29 Comprehensive documentation is to be found in Valentinas Brandišauskas, ed., 1941 m. birželio sukilimas: dokumentu̜ rinkinys (Vilnius: Lietuvos Gyventoju̜ Genocido ir Rezistencijos Tyrimo Centras, 2000). 30 Dieckmann, Besatzungspolitik, 1, 416.

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The Germans’ approach to the security aspect was to incorporate the spontaneously formed Lithuanian militia into the SS-police system under German command. In September 1941, the 403rd Security Division reported: When the Division staff arrived, there were approximately 5,600 Lithuanian troops in the town . . . The question as to how to deal with these troops was difficult. Completely disbanding them, disarming them or taking them prisoner would have led to a public outcry, and doubtless to open resistance. What was important, then, was to take advantage of their anti-Bolshevist stance and to engage them as security officers and guards, for which they are particularly well suited. As troops they had to disappear. They were thus designated as Aufbaudienst [“Development Service”] and were divided into security, police and labor units.31

The Development or Labor Services very quickly progressed into Lithuanian auxiliary police battalions, which were subordinate to the Commander of the Ordnungspolizei. These battalions consisted largely of volunteers with a background in the military or in the police, and from the start their duties involved not only security, but also ideological matters. Some of the units became nothing more than murder squads and served as the executioners of entire Jewish communities, or as the guards of the ghettos into which the survivors were crammed.32 As mentioned above, The Lithuanian Activist Front was founded in Berlin in the autumn of 1940 in order to strengthen internal resistance and, should the Germans attack the Soviet Union, to ensure an uprising against the Soviets and the rapid installation of a Lithuanian government. The LAF is one of the organizations that has received increased attention in recent research. There is no doubt as to the anti-Semitic orientation of the activists.33 Both the intellectual leaders34 and the statements of the organization itself denied the Jews any affiliation with the future Lithuanian state and even renounced the medieval settlement privilege granted by Grand Duke Vytautas of Lithuania.35 The historical digression was

31 Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv (BA-MA), RH 26–403/4 d, Anlage D zum KTB der 403. Sicherungsdivision, Bl. 3. 32 Research has since produced a relatively concise picture of the activities of the individual auxiliary police battalions. Cf. Dieckmann, Bubnys, summary in Tauber, Arbeit, 54–60. 33 The LAF originally viewed itself as an organization of all political forces, but the more moderate among them found it increasingly difficult to make themselves heard. See Saulius Sužiedėlis, “Lithuanian Collaboration during the World War II,” in “Kollaboration” in Nordosteuropa. Erscheinungsformen und Deutungen im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Joachim Tauber (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006), 148–152. 34 Sužiedėlis, “Lithuanian collaboration,” 148–150. 35 “Jews, your history in Lithuanian land that has lasted for five hundred years is now over. Have no hopeful illusions! There is no place for you in Lithuania anymore!” Liudas Truska, “The Crisis of Lithuanian and Jewish Relations (June 1940–June 1941),” The Preconditions of

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intended as a means of legitimizing their policies at the time, for: “Not only those of us who are living now know the Jews well, but they are known in the long history of the Lithuanians’ state.”36 In a logical conclusion, the provisional government excluded the Jewish population from the restitution of property nationalized by the Soviets and planned to accommodate the Jews in closed camps.37 The impact of the LAF, if one excludes Kaunas and Vilnius, was, admittedly, much lower than suggested, as actions were largely limited to spontaneous opposition to the Soviet powers. Nonetheless, from the very start there were also ‘partisans’ among the freedom fighters who committed murder, rape and robbery which spread fear and terror among the Jewish population. The excesses and pogroms against the Jewish populace, especially in Kaunas, thus stood under the dictum of revenge and retribution for the supposed Jewish crimes during the year of Soviet rule. In some cases, however, this was not the sole motive. In the anarchistic situation at the time of the German attack, some used the opportunity to loot the Jews, and local ‘partisans’ were often involved in the murderous operations in rural areas. This motive should not be underestimated, even for later events. Jewish belongings in the small towns in which they had been murdered were just as popular as the properties and furniture left behind by those Jews forced into the ghettos in the larger towns.38 In the documents of Vilnius City Council there even exists an undated record entitled “List of Those Jews Estimated to Possess More Than 500,000 Rbl or Gold and Furs.”39 There was also great interest in taking over Jewish businesses. Among those who expressed their interest to the Lithuanian administration in Vilnius was the Academy of Sciences, which was keen to take possession of a printing shop and a set of carpenter’s tools. Povylas Muralis, a hairdresser, was a step ahead: he had already begun to pay rent to the city council for a Jewish salon that he had

the Holocaust, eds. Liudas Truska and Vygantas Vareikis (Vilnius: Margi raštai, The International Commission for the evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation in Lithuania, 2004), 196. 36 Ibid., 267. 37 Valentinas Brandišauskas, “Neue Dokumente aus der Zeit der provisorischen Regierung Litauens,” in Holocaust in Litauen. Krieg, Judenmorde und Kollaboration im Jahre 1941, ed. Vincas Bartusevičius et. al. (Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2003), 51–62. 38 On the ghettoization cf. Tauber, Arbeit, 328–329; for the province Dieckmann, Besatzungspolitik, 2, 1022–1027. 39 LCVA R-643, ap. 3, b. 195, Bl. 281–283 (The list is incomplete showing a gap between the letters K and I).

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evidently already taken over.40 By the end of October 1941, a meticulous list had been compiled of Jewish shops and businesses (285 in total) which were to be given to non-Jews.41 In the district of Kaunas, Jewish properties were rented to “Aryan” inhabitants, with the contracts of the previous Jewish owners being openly noted in the records.42 There were even some cases in which Jewish property was auctioned, whereby personal fate and conduct during June and July 1941 were of particular importance in determining who won the bid.43 What is more, Lithuanian businesses profited from Jewish labor.44 The news that Jewish labor was to be exploited had evidently spread like wildfire – as early as August 8, 1941, for example, the chief officer for the District of Kaunas requested 100 Jews from the Business Division to carry out peat work.45 Commissions were often set up to view and distribute Jewish properties and belongings, with everybody involved aware of what had happened to the previous owners. In a protocol relating to the establishment and members of one such commission for the remaining belongings of Jews in the small town of Vilkija there is overt mention of the “Jews who had been taken away/shot.”46 Within just a few months, the Lithuanian authorities had completed the “Aryanization” process and had compiled internal documents listing both the new and the old owners as well as the respective plots of land.47 In so doing, they acted in the interests of the Lithuanian population. On September 18, 1941, for example, the mayor of Seredžius, ordered the head of the District of Kaunas to prohibit members of the Wehrmacht

40 LCVA R-643, ap. 3, b. 11, Bl. 133: List of applicants for workshops and businesses previously in Jewish hands. In September 1941, the head of the Lithuanian administration ordered similar lists to be compiled for the district of Kaunas. Cf. LCVA R-1534, ap. 1, b. 188, Bl. 1. 41 LCVA R-643, ap. 3, b. 11, Bl. 134v–138.g 42 On September 3, 1941, D. Rastemis of the city council in Garliava rented a house which had previously been owned by Faivelis Gyvorskas. Cf. LCVA R-1534, ap. 1, b. 191, Bl. 63 (front and back page). 43 LCVA R-1534, ap. 1, b. 191, Bl. 366: Letter dated September 15, 1941 from the County Commissioner of Kaunas to the chief officer for the locality of Seredžius instructing him to give preference to people with war injuries, partisans and local officials in the sale of Jewish property. Only after that were the local councils, and then any other interested parties, able to make bids. 44 See Tauber, Arbeit, 184–187. 45 LCVA R-1534, ap. 1, b. 191, Bl. 187. 46 LCVA R-1534, ap. 1, b. 191, Bl. 218. (translation from Lithuanian). 47 LCVA R-1534, ap. 1, b. 191, Bl. 312–318. List of sales of farming plots for the planting of potatoes with names of the current and previous owners as well as the size of the plots and the purchasing price for the locality of Seredžius, dated September 12, 1941.

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from pilfering Jewish property, as the belongings were to be distributed among the local Lithuanian population.48 A final point to consider when assessing Lithuanian collaboration is the time factor. There is no doubt that the large majority of the Lithuanian population welcomed the Germans, whereby the beginning of mass deportations by the Soviets on June 14, 1941 were instrumental in forming opinion. By this time at the latest, any hopes some people might have had in Soviet reality had been obliterated. The euphoria which had originally met the Germans waned as early as the autumn of 1941 with the solemn realization that the Lithuanian General Commission presented no prospect of partial autonomy or other forms of selfrule. Another turning point can be chronologically linked to the Battle of Stalingrad. German defeat was now looming, and with it, the likelihood of a return to Soviet rule. At a conference of top administrative staff in March 1943, the First General Adviser again presented the reasons why Lithuania stood beside the German Reich. Despite some historical references to the glorious history of the Lithuanian Grand Duchy, Petras Kubiliūnas was very pragmatic and emphasized one sole motive: I have already mentioned that our choice is determined by our geopolitical position and the Bolsh.[evist – J. T.] threat. I think that, in view of the threat facing our country, we must all understand that we have the moral duty to fight alongside [the Germans] . . . All Lithuanians who are, or will be, called to assist must comply without delay. I admit that this is a difficult duty, which will call for sacrifices. However, this duty stems from the objective circumstances in which we find ourselves: Bolshevism must be destroyed. I believe that the truth of this is much clearer and closer to us as Lithuanians than it is to other western European peoples.49

In the entire speech there was no mention of the alleged “Jewish” Communism or other hints at the “Asian” hordes threatening Europe from the East. It is evident that the Lithuanian objectives only partially concurred with those of the Germans. This is clearest when one considers the units the Germans termed Lithuanian Special Organizations (Litauische Sonderverbände), whereas the Lithuanian term evokes quite different connotations – Vietinė rinktinė could be best translated as local selection. The interest in joining these organizations was great. On February 16, 1944, Lithuania’s National Holiday, General Povilas Plechavičius appealed for volunteers to combat, “the banditry which is becoming

48 LCVA R-1534, ap. 1, b. 191, Bl. 421 (German translation), Bl. 424. 49 LCVA R-1549, ap. 1, b. 1, Bl. 27.

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more and more proliferate in Lithuania”:50 Just a few days later 19,500 Lithuanians had registered, in stark contrast to an earlier attempt to found an SS Division. In his radio address on the same day, Plechavičius had pointed out that the term bandits was to be understood to mean Bolshevist partisans and that it was a matter of defending the freedom, honor and existence of Lithuania. Because of the nature of this task, the units would only be deployed on Lithuanian territory and would be under Lithuanian command. The pathos of Plechavičius’ speech culminated in the first verses of the Lithuanian national anthem and the appeal, “Thus, to arms, men.”51 Even if the Lithuanian Special Organizations never achieved military significance, became involved in armed skirmishes with the Polish Home Army and were ultimately forcefully dissolved by the SS, causing loss of life on the Lithuanian side, they nevertheless demonstrate the particular forms of Lithuanian collaboration. Firstly, there were negotiations between the German and the Lithuanian side, and secondly, not only did the Lithuanian national resistance support the call to register with Vietinė rinktinė, but they also advised against retaliation for the brutal dissolution of the units by the Germans on the grounds that this would weaken their own power to oppose the Red Army.52 In conclusion, then, Lithuanian collaboration was multi-faceted and dependent on the respective circumstances. In the public administration bodies, the Lithuanian staff under the General Advisers had a certain degree of freedom that they used to pursue an ethnic-national policy which was not always congruent with German objectives. This is best seen in Vilnius with its ethnic controversies, as well as in the formation of the Lithuanian Special Organizations in the spring of 1944. Particularly after the turn in the tide of war in 1942/43, their main objective was often simply to consolidate their own strength for the fight against the Soviet Union. The German card had lost its anti-Bolshevist significance and appeal, thus removing the central reason for cooperation. Anti-communism as a common ground was certainly of greater ideological significance in the Lithuanian police units53 than it was in the administrative 50 Antanas Martinionis, Vietinė Rinktinė (Vilnius: Kardas, 1998), 13. 51 Martinionis, Rinktinė, 15–16. In the same tone an advertising poster for Vietinė Rintinė ibid., 41. 52 Cf. Dieckmann, Besatzungspolitik, vol. 2, 1487–1496. On the tactics of Lithuanian resistance cf. Joachim Tauber, “Der deutsche Widerstand gegen Hitler – ein ‘weißer Fleck’ in der litauischen Perzeption,” in Der deutsche Widerstand gegen Hitler. Wahrnehmung und Wertung in Europa und den USA, ed. Gerd R. Ueberschär (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2002), 278–285. 53 May it be permitted to remark that not all Lithuanian police units were involved in the Holocaust in Lithuania and Belarus in the same measure. This is true in particular of the units

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sector, as witnessed by the fact that the former were subordinate to the Ordnungspolizei and thus the SS. Here, collaboration meant being directly involved in or being an accomplice to murders of Jews as well as having an overt antiSemitic conviction that the Jews aspired to world hegemony. Lithuanian collaboration with the Nazis has been well researched. Nevertheless, the topic has political implications to this day. These are connected on the one hand with the continuity between Lithuanian freedom fighters and patriots who fought against, and became the victims of, the Soviet Union after 1944, but who made pacts with the Germans during the war; and on the other hand they have to do with an ever-attentive western European public which – without taking account of the transformations in the country – is keen to follow alleged scandals and continues to foster the stereotype of an anti-Semitic Lithuanian society uninterested in the truth.54

formed after 1943, since by this time the Lithuanian Jews had been murdered and the ghettos largely liquidated. 54 For the latest developments see the contributions under the heading “Erinnerungskonflikte in Litauen” in Osteuropa 68/6 (2018).

Collaboration in Slavic and Balkan Countries

Martina Bitunjac

Between Racial Politics and Political Calculation The Annihilation of Jews in the Slovak State and the Independent State of Croatia Foreign policy under the Nazis sought to create an unbalanced in terms of power politics New Order in Europe. So-called Germanic peoples, including the Scandinavians and the Dutch, were to form the backbone of the New Order as the “master race” under German supremacy, while most Eastern Europeans, the Slavs in particular, were to be subjugated and exploited through forced labor and starvation. The Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH) and the Slovak State (Slovenský štát)1 were spared relatively speaking from the destructive Lebensraum politics and were on friendly terms with Hitler and Nazi Germany in several ways. After the breakup of Czechoslovakia (1938/1939) and Yugoslavia (1941), the newly founded, young states officially acted autonomously, yet they were not equal partners to the German Reich. The creation of both states was possible thanks to direct German influence, which meant that they were somewhat dependent on the Germany. Nevertheless, they exploited their political leeway and selfinterest as much as possible. Both countries shared a similar political orientation: They both had authoritarian systems whose politics were based on the Führer Principle and whose ideology was based on racism and anti-Semitism, as well as fanatical clero-nationalism. Since the founding of the autonomous Slovak State, which came about as a result of the Munich Agreement and the separation of the Sudeten territories from Czechoslovakia, Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party, (Hlinkova slovenská l’udová strana, HSL’S), founded by the clergyman Andrej Hlinka, established a single-party system under the leadership of Jozef Tiso, a Roman Catholic priest. While Tiso is often falsely described as belonging to the “moderate” wing of the party in historical writings, Prime Minister Vojtech Tuka and Alexander Mach, Minister of the Interior, supported the idea of a Slovak National Socialism based on the German model. However, Hitler preferred the “moderates”, i. e. the nationalist-conservative wing of the party, as its Führer, President Tiso, was highly regarded by Slovaks

1 “Croatia” and “Slovakia” will be used instead of the complete version of the official country name for the reason that both countries were referred to as such in contemporary documents. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671186-008

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and therefore wielded a great deal of influence over a wide range of people. Immediately after coming into power, Hlinka’s party severely restricted minority rights (except for Germans), particularly for Czechs, who had to leave Slovakia by the thousands, and for Jews, who were made to take the blame for the cession of the southern part of Slovakia to Hungary, and after pogroms in November 1938, were banished to the areas ceded to Hungary. The Hlinka Guard2 (Hlinkova Garda, HG), commandeered by Alexander Mach, was the paramilitary organization of the HSL’S and made a name for itself with atrocities against Czechs, Jews and Roma already in this early period. In April 1941 in Croatia, on the other hand, a moderate government could not be established. There the lawyer, parliamentarian and founder of the fascist Ustaša movement Ante Pavelić rose to power – he was Hitler’s second choice. Pavelić and his radical movement, which had been founded in Italian exile, were more or less unknown amongst the Croatian populace after their longstanding absence. Therefore, Hitler preferred Vladko Maček, the head of the Croatian Peasant Party (Hrvatska seljačka stranka, HSS), which was the largest Croatian party in Yugoslavia at the time. However, Maček refused to collaborate with the Germans and was placed under arrest by the Ustaša. The German delegation quickly discovered that the Ustaša movement did not enjoy deep support among the Croatian people, but was rather “just a group founded by people who simply overrated their political mission”.3 In contrast to Slovakia, which was bound to the Third Reich through a “Protection Treaty”, the Independent State of Croatia was divided into an Italian and a German zone by a demarcation line. The Italian and German militaries were stationed in their respective zones.4 The German army was originally deployed just to take part in measures to build up Croatian troops and to secure “order” according to Germany’s interest. However, this was difficult to restore in the Balkans as there were several different groups simultaneously fighting each other (the Partisans, the Ustaše, Serbian Četniks, German, Italian and Bulgarian troops) and violence was quickly met with more violence. In addition, it was difficult to get an overview of the military situation because some of these groups, for example the Germans 2 For more on the Hlinka Guard see Peter Sokolovič, Hlinkova Garda 1938–1945 (Bratislava: Ústav pamäti národa, 2009); Yeshayahu Jelinek, “Storm-Troopers in Slovakia: The Rodobrana and the Hlinka Guard,” Journal of Contemporary History 3 (1971): 97–119. 3 Bundesarchiv Berlin, NS/30/173, Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, December 14, 1943. 4 For more on the cordial relations between Croatian and Slovakia see Pavol Petruf, Zahraničná politika Slovenskej republiky 1939–1945 (Bratislava: Historický ústav SAV, 2011), in particular 241 f. and the comparative study by Jan Rychlík, “Croatia and Slovakia during the World War II,” in Hrvatska i Slovačka. Povijesne paralele i veze (od 1780. do danas) / Chorvátsko a Slovensko. Historické paralely a vztʼahy (od roku 1780 po súčasnostʼ), eds. Željko Holjevac, Martin Homza and Martin Vašš (Zagreb/Bratislava: FF Press, 2017), 152–157.

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and the Četniks, would sometimes join forces and fight alongside each other on the front against the Partisans, which led to discontent among the anti-Serbian Ustaše. However, Hitler was not interested in a chaotic war in the Balkans and told Pavelić so, stating that other than securing the railroad line between Zagreb and Semlin and the greatest possible amount of bauxite to be sent to Germany, his third war demand would be “the establishment of peace”, so that “the German troops can be withdrawn from Croatia as soon as possible.”5 Despite their minor geopolitical status, both Slovakia and Croatia fulfilled their economic and geopolitical purpose. Croatia, which at the time included the territory of present-day Bosnia-Herzegovina and Syrmia, served to secure wartime supplies to Thessaloniki and North Africa. These countries in turn delivered local resources, minerals and agricultural products to the German Reich. Croatia had bauxite6 and supplied Germany with food, yet it was still not classified as a “surplus country”. About 135,000 Croatians had been sent as workers to Germany by mid-1943, while there were 100,000 Slovaks working in Germany by 1941. Just like Croatia, Slovakia was to be adapted to fit Germany’s supply needs. Slovakia supplied Germany with iron and copper ore, manganese, precious metals, natural gas, food, weapons, ammunition and wood. There were 26 companies working for the German war economy.7 The alliance with Germany also required providing Slovak and Croatian troops who fought together against “Bolshevism” on the Eastern Front under the command of their own officers. Slovakia had already sent troops in the campaign against Poland; later a 50,000 strong Slovak army fought in Ukraine in the German-Soviet war.8 The Croatian air force participated in air raids on Moscow in 1941/1942 and the Croatian navy secured the coast on the Sea of Azov.9 Hitler

5 Report from the German ambassador to the Independent State of Croatia Siegfried Kasche on April 20, 1943, Politisches Archiv Auswärtiges Amt (hereafter PA AA), Nachlass Siegfried Kasche, 23. 6 In 1942, 200,000 tons of bauxite were delivered to the Reich, 93,000 tons were delivered in 1943. See Kasche’s report: PA AA, Nachlass Siegfried Kasche, 2, June 16, 1943. By 1943, Croatia had provided Germany with 75,000 tons of ore from Prijedor for German weapons production; 15,000 tons were sent to Hungary. In 1942, 60,000 tons of wood were sent to Germany. Report from Kasche on April 29, 1943, PA AA, Nachlass Siegfried Kasche, 23. 7 Cf. Tatjana Tönsmeyer, “Kollaboration als handlungsleitendes Motiv? Die slowakische Elite und das NS-Regime,” in Kooperation und Verbrechen. Formen der “Kollaboration” im östlichen Europa 1939–1945, ed. Christoph Dieckmann et al. (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003), 338 ff. 8 Rolf-Dieter Müller, An der Seite der Wehrmacht. Hitlers ausländische Helfer beim “Kreuzzug gegen den Bolschewismus” 1941–1945 (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2007), 100–105. 9 Müller, An der Seite der Wehrmacht, 108 f.

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seemed to be particularly satisfied with the Croatian military. In April 1943, he expressed to Pavelić, “Thanks and appreciation for the excellent campaign of the Croatian troops in Stalingrad”.10 Through the inclusion of Croatian and Slovak troops on the Eastern Front, they became witnesses to and perpetrators in the war of exploitation and annihilation, which was directed primarily at Soviet civilians. Divisions of the Waffen-SS also formed within Croatia, such as the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar, which was largely made up of Muslim soldiers.11 Even if Hitler did not originally have specific foreign policy goals in Croatia and Slovakia, the Germans emphatically wanted the “Jewish question” to be “solved” in close cooperation with the regional authorities as smoothly and quickly as possible. This crime could not be committed by one country by itself, but required close international cooperation. The administrative processing of the crimes required local bureaucrats in the ministries to document the economic status of every single Jew in the course of the upcoming “Aryanization”, the local police departments took part in property confiscation, house searches and the deportation of the Jews, while, as in the case of the countries examined here, nationalist antiSemites of the Hlinka Guard and the Ustaša contributed to the “Final Solution” by abusing and killing Jews. Both Slovakia and Croatia proved to be willing to cooperate with the Germans in depriving their own Jewish citizens of their rights and of their lives. In October 1941, the Foreign Office in Berlin declared with satisfaction that concerning the deportation of Slovak and Croatian Jews living in Germany “to the East”, both the Slovak and the Croatian government were employing the harshest measures against the Jews on their own initiative.12 The Nazis did not have to try very hard to convince anyone because the ruling politicians in Slovakia and Croatia were anti-Semitic and were able to profit from their criminal cooperation with Germany. In the following it will be examined to what extent these two countries cooperated with the Nazis in the worst form of collaboration – the annihilation of the Jews, which methods were used and which options to act existed in order to assert their national interests. This will be explored on the basis of the thesis that the

10 Report from Siegfried Kasche on April 29, 1943, PA AA, Nachlass Siegfried Kasche, 23. 11 For more on the Handschar Division see Xavier Bougarel, La division Handschar: Waffen-SS de Bosnie, 1943–1945 (Paris: Éditions Passés composés, 2020), and Jennie Lebel, The Mufti of Jerusalem Haj-Amin el-Husseini and National-Socialism (Belgrade: Čigoja štampa, 2007), 174–203. 12 Letter from Franz Rademacher, legation councillor and head of the Judenreferat in the Foreign Office, dated September 28, 1941, Yad Vashem Archives, 0.10 – Yugoslavia Collection, File Number 113.

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foundations of a solid, yet not uncomplicated, cooperation between the countries existed due to the fact that Croats and Slovaks fulfilled the Nazis’ racial-ideological classifications and demands. Both peoples belonged to the “more qualified” Slavs, had “Aryan” elements in the Nazi sense and would be able to adapt to the prophesized “Greater Germanic Reich”. The Nazis’ long-term goal was the gradual dissolution of identity and the assimilation of the Croats and Slovaks into the German “people of culture”. In order to avoid any discord with their Axis pact allies, the Nazis did not openly communicate this envisaged process; however, this intent can be reconstructed in diplomatic papers from the Foreign Office and the German legations. Along with the racial politics aspect, the basis of cooperation was built on the pre-existing anti-Semitism in both countries and therefore, the annihilation of the so-called “non-Aryan sub-humans”, the Jews. The Nazis did not have to force anyone into anti-Semitism, it existed in its various forms in both countries already before they became “independent” states. However, both the Ustaše as well as the HSL’S used their legislative leeway to spare those Jews from deportation who were economically important and useful to them for the time being. As the public reaction to the persecution of the Jews varied, as will be shown in this country-specific comparison, it was only in Slovakia that the deportation of the Jews to the extermination camps was discontinued until German occupation in the summer of 1944.

Collaboration on the Basis of Racial Politics. The Approved Slavs as Political “Partners” of the Nazis As oppposed to the Poles, Czechs and Russians, the Croats and Slovaks (and the Bulgarians) were not defined in the Nazis’ racial ideology as useless “subhumans” unfit to live or as “slave material”,13 even though they were Slavic. It does not appear that the Slavic identity of the Croats and Slovaks played any particular role in German foreign policy. In fact, Croatia and Slovakia were to be included in the postwar European New Order.

13 Tatjana Tönsmeyer, Das Dritte Reich und die Slowakei 1939–1945. Politischer Alltag zwischen Kooperation und Eigensinn (Paderborn et al.: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2003), 338. Hitler often referred to Slavs as “slave material”, see for example his statements on September 17–18, 1941 in Adolf Hitler. Monologe im Führer-Hauptquartier 1941–1944, ed. Werner Jochmann (Hamburg: Albrecht Knaus, 1980), 62.

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It was Hitler’s personal attitude, partially revealed already in “Mein Kampf ”, that served as the main basis for racial categorization. The Nazis’ approach towards the different peoples in Europe followed accordingly. In a conversation with the Croatian-Herzegovinian Ustaša leader Ante Pavelić, Hitler declared that there was “no homogenous Slavic race”, “which can be clearly seen in the obvious differences between Poles, Czechs, Dalmatians and so on”.14 He had gotten to know the Croats as a loyal people (to the Habsburg crown) during his youth in Vienna.15 In order to secure a place in the European New Order, in a conversation with Hitler, Ustaša leader Pavelić offered that the Croats had “Gothic ancestors” and were therefore “Aryan”. Panslavism was something that had been artificially forced onto the Croatians.16 Hitler appears to have accepted this incorrect interpretation motivated by racial politics, as he shortly thereafter “upgradingly” declared that the Croats were “certainly more Germanic than Slavic”.17 Like the Ustaša, the Slovak nationalists defined themselves as “Aryan” in their racial legislation. In the case of the Slovaks, this pandering to the Germans was rather superfluous because according to the Nazi race concept, the “racial substance of the Slovak people” was to be considered “largely the same as that of the Germans” which the Nazis attributed to “a previous Germanic colonization and a thousand-year-long German settlement”. There had been “infiltration between Germans and Slovaks” so that on this basis Slovakia was part of German Lebensraum and so the Nazis were not expected to have any reservations about its population.18

14 Recording of the conversation between Hitler und Pavelić on June 7, 1941, Akten zur Deutschen Auswärtigen Politik, Serie D: 1937–1941, Band XII.2, Die Kriegsjahre, vol. 5, document 603, 816. 15 Ibid., 813 f. Cf. Hitler’s aversion to Czechs in Brigitte Hamann, Hitlers Wien. Lehrjahre eines Diktators (Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1996), 437–466. 16 Recording of the conversation between Hitler und Pavelić on June 7, 1941, Akten zur Deutschen Auswärtigen Politik, Serie D: 1937–1941, Band XII.2, Die Kriegsjahre, vol. 5, document 603, 816. See Ivo Bogdan, Dr. Ante Pavelić riešio je hrvatsko pitanje (Zagreb: Naklada Europa, 1942), 16. 17 Hitler on July 11–12, 1941, in Adolf Hitler. Monologe im Führer-Hauptquartier 1941–1944, 42. For interpretations of the Croatian “race” see in particular the study by Nevenko Bartulin, The Racial Idea in the Independent State of Croatia: Origins and Theory (Boston/Leiden: Brill, 2013) and Nevenko Bartulin, “Slavs, Goths and Iranians: The Theory of the Nordic ‘Herrenschicht’ and Croat Racial Origins in the NDH,” Zbornik Janković. Ogranak Matice Hrvatske Daruvar 4 (2019): 275–306. 18 Head of the SS Main Office Gottlob Berger to the Reichsführer SS and Chief of Police, Bundesarchiv Berlin, NS 19/2042, Politischer Lagebericht über die Slowakei from February 19, 1943, 8 f. According to the race theorist Heinrich Rübel, who undertook a “research” trip through Slovakia in 1941, the area around the towns of Čadca and Žilina in northwestern Slovakia and the area around Prešau in the east were among the “most racially pleasing”, as supposedly Nordic and

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This racial acceptance did not entail treating these allies as equals. However, the superiority of the German “master race” to the Croats and Slovaks was not to be spoken of openly for tactical reasons. Instead, German diplomats were always careful “to show other peoples respect” even when these were considered dependent because it was thought, “it is easier to inspire loyalty to us [the Germans] through expressions of courtesy than by a clumsily flaunted false mastery.”19 As was to become apparent, German foreign policy was following a two-pronged approach: on the one hand, it continued to demonstrate its leadership in Europe; on the other, the “national character” and the “material well-being” of its allies were not to be restricted.20 However, Germany’s strategy for this foreign policy was to expand bilateral cooperation on all levels (education, culture, economy, military) through “skillful control” so that the goal of completely eradicating all “Slavic elements” in these people could be reached in a few decades.21 As an assimilation of the Slavic fellow Axis allied peoples into “Germanness” was planned for the future, the Germans considered Panslavism, which emphasized the solidarity of Slavic people, as the “main threat” to their political goals. “Slavic solidarity” and a “new Panslavism” were therefore to be “radically” and “silently” suppressed.22 This attempt was not always successful, as Croats and Slovaks (as other Slavs) had indeed enjoyed long friendly relations to other Slavic nations and were linked on many levels while publically expressing their Slavicness. The SS Obersturmbannführer Viktor Nageler, “advisor” to the Hlinka Guard in Bratislava, criticized that Slovak officers were also present for the Croatian Founding Day in Zagreb in April 1942, “who repeatedly referred to their common heritage when dealing with Croatian and Bulgarian officers and expressed this spirit in rousing speeches”.23 It would seem that the Germanization of the Slavs was still a long way off; Pavelić’s claim that the Croats were Goths was a farce meant to secure a safe place alongside Germany. There had been a Slovak

Baltic “racial characteristics” were found there. See Bundesarchiv Berlin, NS 19/2042, Politischer Lagebericht über die Slowakei, 1943, 50 f. 19 Report from Siegfried Kasche on December 3, 1943, PA AA, Nachlass Siegfried Kasche, 23. 20 Siegfried Kasche to Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop on November 5, 1943, PA AA, Nachlass Siegfried Kasche, 23. 21 See Siegried Kasche’s thoughts regarding this question on December 3, 1943, PA AA, Nachlass Siegfried Kasche, 23. 22 Gottlob Berger to the Reichsführer SS and Chief of Police, Bundesarchiv Berlin, NS 19/2042, Politischer Lagebericht über die Slowakei, 1943, 9 f. 23 Memorandum from SS Obersturmbannführer Viktor Nageler, Bundesarchiv Berlin NS19/ 2042, Politischer Lagebericht über die Slowakei, February 12, 1943, 30.

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minority in Croatia and a Croatian minority in Slovakia for centuries, which only strengthened their cordial relationship even more.24 During World War II, the bilateral cooperation between Croatia and Slovakia continued, particularly in the areas of politics, culture and political youth work between the Hlinkova mládež and the Ustaška mladež (Hlinka Youth and Ustaša Youth) – to the extent that this was possible during the war.25 The fact that Croatia and Slovakia had been part of the Habsburg monarchy until 1918 made it easier for the Nazis to gain access to these countries, although this did not mean that the historical ties to German-speaking Austria should be restored. The sole aim was to create a new Europe under German leadership. After all, the point was, “that in Europe the peoples must come more closely together to assert themselves and their Lebensraum in the future.”26 Others, including Jews, Roma, homosexuals and Freemasons, were excluded from this community. The sense of solidarity of these self-proclaimed “new Europeans” was made of two components: the political rapprochement of Slovak and Croatian nationalists to the Nazis’ racist idea of peoples and the Nazis’ acceptance of these special “Slavic races”. The lack of traditional, historical hostilities between these Slavs and the Germans (as there were between the French and the Germans) was, from the German point of view, another reason an “assimilation” to Germanness would be possible in due course. These initial conditions, which were positive from a German perspective, initially formed a basis for trust and allowed both Slovak and Croatian politics to have some room to maneuver, which both countries did indeed use. It should be emphasized that the political freedoms of these allies were often fully exploited, unlike in the occupied countries. However, they were in lockstep with the Germans when it came to including local Jews in the Nazis’ extermination policies. Diplomatic discrepancies and conflicts of interest arose, particularly concerning the “Aryanization” of Jewish property and assets.

24 Cf. the report “Slowaken in Kroatien” in the Deutschen Auslandswissenschaftlichen Instituts in Berlin, Bundesarchiv Berlin, R/4902/3863. 25 For more on the cooperation between the two youth groups see Michal Milla, Hlinkova mládež 1938–1945 (Bratislava: Ústav pamäti národa, 2008), 121 f. and Martin Jarinkovič, “Contacts Between the Hlinka Youth and the Ustasha Youth in the Years 1941–1945,” in Hrvatska i Slovačka. Povijesne paralele i veze (od 1780. do danas) / Chorvátsko a Slovensko. Historické paralely a vztʼahy (od roku 1780 po súčasnost)ʼ, eds. Željko Holjevac, Martin Homza and Martin Vašš (Zagreb/Bratislava: FF Press, 2017), 171–182. 26 Report from Siegfried Kasche on December 3, 1943, PA AA, Nachlass Siegfried Kasche, 23.

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The “Solution to the Jewish Question”: Anti-Semitic Measures, Deportation and Extermination In the history of Judaism and anti-Semitism, parallels can be drawn between Croatian and Slovakia: Both Slovakia as well as the northern part of Croatia, the former Croatia-Slavonia, had been Hungarian provinces in the Hapsburg Empire. Jews only settled there after the Tolerance Edict was enacted in the 19th century. As the majority of the Jewish population spoke Hungarian, were wellsituated financially and progress in assimilation had been slow, a nationalistic and economically motivated anti-Semitism began to take hold. In the AustroHungarian Empire, anti-Semitic groups among Slovaks and Croatians characterized Jews as “oppressors” of national minorities, as “exponents of Magyardom” and as “exploiters” of the peasants and middle classes. Panslavism served as a unifying element for Slavic nationalists against Judaism, which was deemed foreign. Anti-Semites were therefore always claiming that the Jewish minority, in their economic dominance, was turning Croatian and Slovak peasants into slaves. Against the backdrop of the worldwide economic crisis Croatian and Slovak nationalists were able to build on the pejorative image of the foreign profiteer robbing the poor peasants in the 1920s and 1930s. This anti-Semisitm, driven primarily by national and economic interests, intensified before and particularly during World War II in both countries. In the course of the “Aryanization process”, it was argued that the Slavs were simply reclaiming that which had been taken from them long ago by the Jews.27 It can therefore be said, that in Croatia and Slovakia anti-Semitism was in no way a Nazi import and that the Ustaša28 as well as members of the HSL’S were anti-Semitic.

27 On anti-Semitic images in Slovakia see Hana Kubátová and Jan Láníček, The Jew in Czech and Slovak Imagination, 1938–89. Antisemitism, the Holocaust, and Zionism (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2018). 28 As early as 1935, Pavelić was referring to Jews “false opportunistic intellectuals” he tried to avoid in Zagreb between the wars, see: Archivio Centrale dello Stato (ACS), Ministero dell’Interno. Direzione Generale, Pubblica sicurezza. Ispettorato generale di Pisa Ercole Conti, box 3, August 16, 1935. In the memorandum “Hrvatsko pitanje” (The Croatian question) sent to the German Foreign Office, Jews were called enemies of the Croatians. On anti-Semitism in the Ustaša movement before 1941 see Ivo Goldstein, “Antisemitizam ustaškog pokreta,” in Spomenica Ljube Bobana, ed. Mira Kolar-Dimitrijević (Zagreb: Zavod za hrvatsku povijest Filozofskog fakulteta Sveučilišta, 1996), 321–332 and Martina Bitunjac, “Anti-Semitism and the UstashaMovement 1930–1941,” in Dall’antigiudaismo all’antisemitismo. Saggi sulla questione ebraica fra XIX e XX secolo, ed. Giuseppe Motta (Rome: Edizione Nuova Cultura, 2016), 159–169.

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Like in many countries in Europe, Croatia29 and Slovakia introduced their own anti-Semitic “race laws” that severely restricted the professional, social, economic and everyday lives of Jews and formed the legal basis for effortless cooperation with the Nazis. These laws were passed with a majority in both countries.30 Jews were also required to wear the obligatory “Judenstern” yellow badge. Coercion from the German side was not necessary for the participation in the extermination of the Jews in Croatia and Slovakia. This was initiated through diplomatic channels as a matter of foreign and security policy. The Germans preferred to have local security forces or the local citizenry carry out the use of violence.31 For example, a representative of the Third Reich noted on October 31, 1944, when Slovakia was occupied by the Wehrmacht as part of the suppression of the Slovak National Uprising, that concerning the arrests of Czechs and Jews made by Slovak security forces in Žilina: With satisfaction we must say that this time, insults were not being flung at the Gestapo or the SD [Sicherheitsdienst], but at the HG and the Slovak police. In the future, it would be advisable to have such arrests carried out only by Slovak forces, so that the Germans can remain on good terms with the Slovaks.32

However, this image of the “good” German ally, which the Germans wanted to spread among the general public, could hardly be maintained. Large segments of the population in most countries in Europe were anti-German. While Slovakia was only overrun by German troops in 1944, they had been committing war crimes and crimes against humanity on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia for four years. This had minimized popular support for the German troops and worsened the image of the Germans and the German minority.33

29 As early as 1940, Yugoslavia introduced two anti-Jewish laws in 1940 that placed restrictions on the economic and professional lives of Jews. 30 Cf. Ladislav Lipscher, Die Juden im Slowakischen Staat 1939–1945 (Munich/Vienna: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1980), 183. 31 The most striking example of this took place in the small Polish town of Jedwabne, where there was a pogrom carried out by Polish citizens in July 1941. The Germans were considered to have initiated the massacre and documented the crime with the intent of presenting this radical anti-Semitism as the general position of Poles towards the Jews. For the first study of this topic see Jan T. Gross, Neighbors. The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001). 32 Without signature, Bundesarchiv Berlin, R 70/30, October 31, 1944, 229. Cf. Lenka Šindelářová, Finale der Vernichtung. Die Einsatzgruppe H in der Slowakei 1944/1945 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2013). 33 See here Thomas Casagrande, Michal Schvarc, Norbert Spannenberger and Ottmar Traşcă, “The Volksdeutsche: A Case Study from South-Eastern Europe,” in The Waffen-SS. A European History, ed. Jochen Böhler and Robert Gerwarth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 209–251.

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Behind the scenes, i. e. when dealing with the “Jewish question” in Croatia and Slovakia, the Germans did not have to use any special tactical maneuvers with the government or ministries. Thus, SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich noted in the minutes of the Wannsee Conference concerning the “evacuation measures” within Europe: “The matter is no longer so difficult in Slovakia and Croatia as the most essential questions concerning this have already been resolved”.34 In order to “solve” the “Jewish question” in Germany’s interest, the Nazis sent “Jewish advisors” to both countries, who were to work together with local authorities. From August 1942 to 1944 Frank Abromeit held this post in Zagreb, while in Slovakia first Dieter Wisliceny (August 1940–1944) and then Alois Brunner (September 1944–1945) served as “advisor for Jewish questions” or “Jewish advisor” (Judenberater) for short.35 Starting already in September 1940, various functionaries were sent abroad (e.g. to France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Bulgaria and Romania) by Adolf Eichmann, head of the Section on Jewish Affairs at the Reich Security Central Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA). Eichmann’s men were not there to advise, however, but simply serve the RSHA’s interests.36 Their duties included assisting in the isolation, arrest and deportation of Jews to various concentration camps in Europe. Slovakia was the first Nazi ally to be provided with a “Jewish advisor” to carry out these tasks in September 1940. Wisliceny was involved in drafting the “Jewish Codex”, whose 270 anti-Semitic laws formed the basis for discrimination, disenfranchisement and deportation. In this legislation, “racial” criteria were used to determine who was to be considered Jewish. With the introduction of the “race laws”, conflicts arose amongst those interested in Jewish property. In 1940, there were 26,000 Jewish-owned companies in Slovakia. By June 1, 1940, 1,800 business licenses had been revoked from Jews and in 67 cases, “Aryanizations” had taken place.37 Slovakia took pains to make sure that the property, companies and valuables confiscated from Jews remain in Slovak hands and not fall to the German minority. However, Germany was interested in beating out Slovak applicants and

34 Undated minutes of the Wannsee Conference, Akten zur Deutschen Auswärtigen Politik, Serie E, vol. 1:2, December 1941–February 28, 1942 (Munich/Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969), document 150, 272. 35 Claudia Steur, “Eichmanns Emissäre. Die Judenberater in Hitlers Europa,” in Die Gestapo im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Heimatfront und besetztes Europa, eds. Gerhard Paul and Klaus-Michael Mallmann (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2000), 403–436, here 404. 36 Steur, “Eichmanns Emissäre,” 403. 37 PA AA, RAV Pressburg, Pol. 4, Judentum, vol. 1, 172, May 8, 1940.

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ensuring a quick liquidation of Jewish assets.38 The Germans complained, “that Slovakia is only interested in Aryanization when it means the same thing as Slovakization”.39 With disappointment it was noted that this intent was recorded in the constitutional committee of the Slovak Parliament: Although the current state of affairs does not permit a complete exclusion of Jews from the country’s economy, the Jewish influence is nevertheless so far removed so that Slovaks and Christians have become the real owners and masters of their economic life.40

As reported in the “Slovák” from March 2, 1940, Jewish businesses were declared to be “fair game”. They could be closed, eliminated and “Aryanized” at any time in order to “help the Christian element . . . to engage in the economy to the extent it is entitled to”.41 Despite these anti-Jewish measures and the racist rhetoric, it was in Slovakia’s interest to keep economically useful Jews, around 20,000 people, in their positions. In order not to completely shut down the Slovak economy, larger Jewish-owned businesses were spared “Aryanization” at first. These economically relevant experts were given so-called “letters of protection”. However, they had to pay a tax of 30,000–50,000 Slovak crowns for the exemption decree.42 The “Grenzbote” reported on April 7, 1940 that Alexander Mach was calling for a “greater tempo in solving the Jewish question”43 in Slovakia as well, following the German model. The “Slovenska politiká” (Slovak Politics) subsequently emphasized that the “Jewish question” had a higher motivation and was mandated by Slovaks’ claim to be able to live freely in their own country.44 The more radical “Aryanization” was sold to the Slovak public as economic progress. For example, in a competitive spirit the “Slovenska politiká” emphasized that since October 1938,

38 Statement by Erich Gebert, commercial attaché to the German Embassy in Bratislava, PA AA, RAV Pressburg, WJ 1, Arisierungsmaßnahmen in der Slowakei, vol. 1, 221, December 21, 1939. 39 Assessment by the commercial attaché Erich Gebert of the “Aryanization of Jewish businesses,” PA AA, RAV Pressburg, WJ 1, Arisierungsmaßnahmen in der Slowakei, vol. 1, 221. 40 PA AA, RAV Pressburg, WJ 1, Arisierungsmaßnahmen in der Slowakei, vol. 1, 221, German translation undated. 41 German translation of the article “Gerechte Lösung der Judenfrage,” in: Slovák, 51, March 2, 1940. PA AA, RAV Pressburg, WJ 1, Arisierungsmaßnahmen in der Slowakei, vol. 1, 221. 42 Memorandum by SS Obersturmbannführer Viktor Nageler, Bundesarchiv Berlin, NS 19/ 2042, Politischer Lagebericht über die Slowakei, February 11, 1943, 29. 43 Article entitled “Rasche Judenregelung verhinderte Chaos,” in: Der Grenzbote, April 7, 1940. PA AA, RAV Pressburg, Pol. 4, Judentum, vol. 1. 44 Press translation of the article “Nicht nachlassen im Radikalismus” appearing in “Slovenská politika” on May 16, 1940, PA AA, RAV Pressburg, Pol. 4, Judentum, vol. 1.

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Slovakia had introduced anti-Jewish measures that “have overtaken older and economically more mature nations in terms of time and speed”.45 The propaganda encouraging the hatred of Jews was effective. Based on the “Jewish Codex”, the deportation of about 6,000 Jews living in Bratislava had begun in late October 1941. With the help of Slovak authorities and security forces, they were deported to local labor camps in Seredʼ, Nováky and Vyhne, where they suffered inhumane treatment at the hands of the Hlinka Guard and had to perform forced labor. Between March 25 and April 5, 1942, around 8,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz and Lublin/Majdanek. In fact, Slovakia was the first country from which a transport filled completely with Jewish women was sent to Auschwitz.46 In some of the cattle cars Jews did try to carry out resistance. For example, one Nazi report states that shouts of “Our star will be victorious in the end!”47 could be heard while the transport train was leaving the town of Kežmarok. The transports were conducted by the Slovak National Railway. Slovakia had also agreed to pay “500 Reichsmark toward expenses for every evacuated Jew”.48 This money actually came from the property that had been confiscated from the deported Jews. Adolf Eichmann made a special trip to Bratislava to oversee the process and the Foreign Office promised Slovakia that the Jews sent away to the East would never return.49 A total of 57 transports in 1942 were used to deport 57,628 Jews from Slovakia to Auschwitz (on 19 transports) or to ghettos in the Lublin district (on 38 transports).50

45 Press translation of the article “Der slowakische Staat und die Juden. Die Wahrheit über die konsequente und systematische Lösung der Judenfrage” on May 25, 1940, PA AA, RAV Pressburg, Pol. 4, Judentum, vol. 1. 46 The first transport to Auschwitz was filled with young women and girls from Slovakia who were told that they were being sent to work in the East for a few months. Only a few survived. See the latest study by Heather Dune Macadam, The Nine Hundred: the Extraordinary Young Women on the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2020). On the deportations in 1942, see Eduard Nižňanský, Nacizmus, holokaust, slovenský štát (Bratislava: Kalligram, 2010), 104 ff. 47 Without signature, Bundesarchiv Berlin R/70/Slowakei – 208, March 25, 1942, 21. 48 Letters by the Foreign Office advisors Martin Luther and Franz Rademacher, Yad Vashem Archives, 0.10 – Yugoslavia Collection, File number 32, August 21, 1942. Lipscher, Die Juden im Slowakischen Staat 1939–1945, 119. 49 Martin Luther to the German Embassy in Bratislava on May 2, 1942, Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933–1945 (hereafter VEJ), vol. 13, Slowakei, Rumänien und Bulgarien, eds. Mariana Hausleitner, Souzana Hazan and Barbara Hutzelmann (Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2018), document 62, 229. 50 VEJ, vol. 13, 34; Lipscher, Die Juden im Slowakischen Staat 1939–1945, 121. See also Wacław Długoborski et al., eds., The Tragedy of the Jews of Slovakia: 1938–1945: Slovakia and the “Final

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Despite the willingness of the Slovak authorities to help in carrying out the transports to the German camps or intern the Jews in Slovak camps, the Germans continued to complain about the remaining 18,648 Jews (as of June 1943)51 moving about freely in Slovakia. These had been deemed to be essential to the economy or had been spared for other reasons. SS Obersturmbannführer Viktor Nageler complained that: It is known that only the poor Jews were affected by the resettlement and the top 20,000 are still sitting in ministries, offices and businesses, seemingly indispensable. Jews who were caught by the Guard while trying to escape and assigned to a concentration camp continue to reappear in their hometowns and are “legally protected” by an official exception “Výnimka” from the president. Depending on the state of the war, they act with more or less impertinence.52

Due to protests from the population and the Church, as well as internal reasons within the party, the deportation of Jews ceased completely in November 1942. The economically useful Jews were spared at first. Only after the German occupation of the country and the suppression of the Slovak National Uprising53 by the Wehrmacht and SS units in October 1944 did the “letters of protection” issued to Jewish people become worthless. With the help of the Hlinka Guard and auxiliary police, the deportation of Slovak Jews resumed and continued until the arrival of the Red Army. SS Hauptsturmführer Alois Brunner took over the command of the camp in Sered’ from Franz Knollmayer. In the last months before the end of the war, about 12,306 Jews were quickly deported to the camps of Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen and Theresienstadt. Of the almost 90,000 Jews from Slovakia, only about 8,000 survived the war.54 The Ustaša propaganda also boasted about completing “Aryanization”. The dispossession of the Jews was presented to the non-Jewish population as

Solution of the Jewish Question” (Oświęcim/Banská Bystrica: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 2002) and Livia Rotkirchen, The Destruction of Slovak Jewry. A Documentary History (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem Archives, 1961). 51 Lipscher, Die Juden im Slowakischen Staat 1939–1945, 137. 52 Memorandum from SS Obersturmbannführer Viktor Nageler, Bundesarchiv Berlin, NS 19/ 2042, Politischer Lagebericht über die Slowakei, February 11, 1943, 29. 53 On the Slovak National Uprising see Martin Zückert, Jürgen Zarusky and Volker Zimmermann, Partisanen im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Der Slowakische Nationalaufstand im Kontext der europäischen Widerstandsbewegungen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017). 54 In a report by SS Untersturmführer Wilhelm Urbantke, there were 95,000 Jews living in Slovakia, of whom 6,000 did not fall under the “Jewish Codex” because they had been baptized or were married to “Aryans”. See Bundesarchiv Berlin R/70/Slowakei – 208, August 22, 1942, 49.

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“modernization” and economic “reparation”. In particular, in the governmentinitiated “informative” exhibit “The Jew” (Židov), the Ustaše used the well-known anti-Semitic stereotypes of the greedy profiteer and the ruthless pimp. The exhibit also showed what “dominance” the Jews supposedly represented and how they were working together with other “enemies of the state” (the Serbs) against the Croatian people. The exhibit aimed to subtly justify the sudden “disappearance” of the Jews by claiming that the “Jewish contamination of the Croatian economy”55 had finally come to an end; Jews had been assigned to “physical labor”, which they supposedly had always avoided in order to enrich themselves at the expense of the Croatian people. In the end, the Ustaša had been taking resolute action when it transferred Jewish property into the hands of the Croatian working people.56 In contrast to Slovakia, in Croatia there was no exception made for economically relevant Jews. This was an unwise decision, as without economic and business experts, the Ustaše plunged the already economically unstable country deeper into ruin. Instead, the complete dispossession was seen as a kind of reward for Croatians returning from exile, which was mainly spent in Italy until 1941. For their loyalty to the Ustaša movement, they received confiscated Jewish or Serbian businesses. Only these Ustaše supporters were inexperienced and unable to continue to run the companies as they should be. Just as in Slovakia, the battle among the interested parties competing for the stolen property of the persecuted in Croatia also included representatives of the German minority who felt they were being overlooked in the distribution of the stolen goods.57 While the most important property was distributed, the remaining items from the Jews were sold at auctions announced in the papers, where anyone could bid.

55 Bundesarchiv Berlin, NS/S/VI/29153, Article from the “Donauzeitung” newspaper entitled “Kroatiens Juden ausgeschaltet” on May 5, 1942, No. 102. 56 Bundesarchiv Berlin, NS/S/VI/29153, Article from the newspaper “The Croatian People” (Hrvatski narod) entitled “Kroatien hat mit dem Judentum abgerechnet” on May 28, 1942, No. 435. 57 For detailed coverage of this topic see Holm Sundhaussen, Wirtschaftsgeschichte Kroatiens im nationalsozialistischen Großraum 1941–1945. Das Scheitern einer Ausbeutungsstrategie (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1983), 248 ff. See also Hans Safrian, Eichmann und seine Gehilfen (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer Verlag, 1995), 214. On the plundering of the Jews see also Ivo Goldstein and Slavko Goldstein, The Holocaust in Croatia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016), 161–181.

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Woman in Zagreb with the Judenstern stamped with the letter Ž (Židov/Jew). Ullstein Bild/Roger Violett. No. 00578857

While representatives of the Reich in Slovakia complained about the exemption shown to economically important Jews, in Croatia they criticized the state granting “honorary Aryan rights”.58 Since there were even functionaries in the Ustaša movement with Jewish ancestry, like Eugen Dido Kvaternik, the Chief of Police, or who were married to Jewish women, such as the Ustaša youth leader Ivan Oršanić and General Milovan Žanić, or whose wives had Jewish ancestry like Ante Pavelić and General Slavko Kvaternik, a special article was included in the “race law” from April 30, 1941. This stated that “all people who had rendered great service to the Croatian people before April 10, 1941, in particular to its liberation, as well as their closest family members will receive all of the rights of people of Aryan descent”.59 About 100 Jewish people, including family members around 500 people, were granted “Aryan rights” according to Article 6 of the “race law” in the Independent State of Croatia.60 The special regulations motivated by economics (in Slovakia) and politics (in Croatia) had little to do with empathy in either Christian country, but rather served to assuage self-interests. Moreover, both countries reserved the right to define “Jewishness” according to the well-known motto of Karl Lueger, mayor of Vienna from 1897 to 1910, “I decide who is a Jew”. Above all, however, it is

58 Report on the “Solution to the Jewish Question” by the police attaché Hans Helm on April 18, 1944, in which he writes: “The Croatian government should also be encouraged to enact stricter standards when granting the honorary Aryan rights and to re-examine this matter using more rigid conditions.” VEJ, vol. 14, Besetztes Südosteuropa und Italien, eds. Sara Berger, Erwin Lewin, Sanela Schmid und Maria Vassilikou (Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2017), document 195, 511. 59 Narodne novine, 16 (April 30, 1941): 1. 60 VEJ, vol. 14, document 195, footnote 9, 511.

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clear that both Slovakia and Croatia were able to act independently regarding the “Jewish question” without having to fear negative consequences from the Germans. Both profited from their status as Axis countries and ignored German complaints about their respective exemptions. Shortly after the Independent State of Croatia was proclaimed by the military commander Slavko Kvaternik on April 10, 1941, “race laws” modeled after those in Germany were introduced which excluded Jews from professional, social and cultural life. The returning exiled Ustaše did not want to waste any time and immediately proceeded to use harsh violence against the Serbian and Jewish civilian population, hating the Serbs even more than the Jews for political reasons. The mass murder of these groups, as well as of Roma and political opponents was carried out by the Ustaše in their own concentration camps, overseen by the Ustaša Supervisory Service (Ustaška nadzorna služba, UNS) and located on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia. To learn how a camp system should function, Vjekoslav Luburić, who oversaw the running of all of the camps, visited the concentration camp Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg outside of Berlin. In the largest Ustaša camp in Jasenovac, between 1941 and 1945 at least 83,145 people were killed, mostly Serbs and Roma, including 13,116 Jewish men, women and children. The Ustaše also carried out massacres directly where their victims lived. In addition, Eichmann’s confidant Franz Abromeit implemented the deportation of the Jews from the German zone in Croatia as part of his duties as “Jewish advisor”. In August 1942, he organized numerous deportation trains with around 4,927 Jews onboard who were dragged off to Auschwitz. In order to profit from Jewish assets, Croatia was also prepared to pay Germany a small processing fee for their deportation. Siegfried Kasche telegraphed Berlin: “On 9 October 1942, Finance Minister Košak agreed to provide the German Empire with 30 Reichsmark for every deported Jew.”61 The measures against the Jews were more difficult to enforce in the areas of Croatia occupied by Italy. According to a status report written by Raffaele Casertano, the Italian envoy to Croatia, after a meeting with Siegfried Kasche, Mussolini decided, “that the Jews in the Italian-occupied parts of Croatia be treated in the same way as in the rest of Croatia, specifically in the areas occupied by German troops”.62 In September 1942, Martin Luther, Undersecretary in the Foreign Office, confirmed in a memo to the Foreign Minister that the Croatian

61 Siegfried Kasche to the Foreign Office, Yad Vashem Archives, 0.10 – Yugoslavia Collection, File number 43, October 14, 1942. 62 German Embassy in Rome to the Foreign Office on August 25, 1942, PA AA, Inland IIg, Judenfrage in Jugoslawien, Kroatien und Serbien, R. 100.874.

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government had agreed to deport the Jews out of the Italian zone.63 The Foreign Minister deemed the logistical execution of the deportations to be a matter for the Croatians and the Italians and that the Germans should keep out of it for the time being.64 Meanwhile, according to an official query to the Italian Foreign Office, the Germans saw that although Mussolini had ordered the Jews to be handed over to the Wehrmacht and that the Italian military was informed of this, this order was not being carried out by the Italians. On the contrary, the Germans were forced to acknowledge that the Italians were not acting accordingly when the Croatian Foreign Minister Mladen Lorković informed them that the Italians had demanded a note verbale from the Croatians stating that the Jews in the Italian zone were to be handed over to Italy. The German legation criticized this Italian demand as “thwarting the Pan-European Jewish policy”.65 In order to confiscate Jewish property and fortunes, Croatia even risked a diplomatic conflict with their Italian ally Mussolini, who had granted the Ustaša political exile and supported them financially. As part of the Dalmatian coast fell to the Italians in 1941 and Jews were fleeing to this area en masse to seek protection by the Italian authorities, Croatia sent Italy a note verbale in November 1942 containing the following: The Croatian government has reached an agreement with the German government about the transfer of the Jews from Croatia to Germany with the condition that all assets revert to Croatia. . . . However, in case the Italian government unequivocally wants to participate in solving the Jewish question in Croatia, the Croatian government agrees to the relocation of the Jews in the coastal region to the territory of prewar Italy only under the same conditions . . . namely, that the Croatian State become the owner of their assets and that the Jews lose Croatian citizenship.66

This is another example of the inhumanity which placed all economic profit above the human right to life. Only after Italy’s capitulation in September 1943 and the reorganization of territory in the area of Yugoslavia was the final deportation of the Jews in the Dalmatian area carried out by German and Croatian troops. 63 PA AA, Inland IIg, Judenfrage in Jugoslawien, Kroatien und Serbien, R. 100.874, September 11, 1942. 64 Martin Luther to the German Embassy in Zagreb on September 19, 1942, PA AA, Inland IIg, Judenfrage in Jugoslawien, Kroatien und Serbien, R. 100.874. 65 Siegfried Kasche to the Foreign Office in October 1942, PA AA, Inland IIg, Judenfrage in Jugoslawien, Kroatien und Serbien, R. 100.874. For detailed coverage of this topic see Karlo Ruzicic-Kessler, Italiener auf dem Balkan. Besatzungspolitik in Jugoslawien 1941–1943 (Berlin/ Boston: de Gruyter, 2017), 172–208 and Sanela Schmid, Deutsche und italienische Besatzung im Unabhängigen Staat Kroatien, 1941 bis 1943/45 (Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2020), 170–191. 66 Martin Luther to the German Embassy in Rome on the expulsion of the Jews from Croatia, Yad Vashem Archives, 0.10, Yugoslavia Collection, File number 49, November 18, 1942.

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Of the approximately 39,000 Jews living on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia, more than 30,000 were killed, most of them in Ustaša camps. In December 1943, Kasche noted that not only the “elimination of non-European forces . . . had been recognized as necessary” by Croatia, but that Judaism and Free Masonry were “already abolished” in Croatia. “There are no Gypsies left here anymore with the exception of a few ‘musselmen’”,67 Kasche continued. Thus, the Independent State of Croatia was considered to be “Jew-free” at the end of 1943.

Between Denunciation and Resistance: Reactions to the Politics of Extermination Like in the rest of Europe, there was a barrage of denunciations from non-Jewish citizens in Slovakia and Croatia. Beyond the official state support, German security forces were dependent on the cooperation of the local population, who in their betrayal of Jews sought to personally benefit financially from the plundering of the Jewish population. For example, when it was announced that apartments where Jewish people had been living were now vacant, then private individuals would write the relevant authorities asking if these apartments were ready for reoccupancy. The local population committed denunciations for financial gain, but also for ideological and private reasons. There are countless examples of Jewish acquaintances, relatives or co-workers being betrayed not because the betrayer was under duress or coerced, but rather acting on his/her own free will. For example, a dentist from the Croatian town of Osijek denounced his Jewish wife Iva Woger, née Wollner, for slander and considered it to be his “civic duty” to request that the Interior Ministry not grant her “Aryan rights”.68 Meanwhile in April 1942, a soap manufacturer in Čadca appealed to the Slovak Interior Ministry to deport his Jewish employee Eduard Ehrenthál and his wife to a concentration camp because he did not require the Jew at work anymore.69 Some Jews were able to buy their freedom by bribing officials and police officers. Corruption was flourishing during this time; bribery and threats towards Jews were commonplace even just to snatch some money or valuables. If Jews were to make a deal with a corrupt person, they might be able to save their lives. For

67 Report Siegfried Kasche from December 3, 1943, PA AA, Nachlass Siegfried Kasche, 23. 68 Croatian State Archive (Hrvatski Državni Arhiv), Zagreb, Ministarstvo unutrašnjih poslova, Odjel za Židove – 223, box 104, August 6, 1941. 69 The Jewish soap manufacturer and his wife were then deported and did not survive the Holocaust. See VEJ, vol. 13, document 58, 221.

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example, there are reports that a man named “Tyroler, an exceptional Jew who worked at the Fiat company in Preßburg (Bratislava)” had been receiving threats from an intelligence officer that he would strip Tyroler of his citizenship. Tyroler offered to get the officer’s wife a fox fur or a new dress. Finally, the men agreed on a sum of 1,500 Slovak crowns.70 That this was not an isolated case can be seen in the numerous German reactions to corrupt dealings of employees at the Slovak State Security Headquarters (Ústredňa štátnej bezpečnosti, ÚŠB) and in the Slovak police force, who were issuing authentications with the seal of being economically necessary on a large scale – even if the people were not – in exchange for a large sum of money. They were also sparing Jews from being deported in other ways.71 The deportation and abuse of Jews did not go unnoticed in either Croatia or Slovakia. Against the background of the occupation and the collaborationist terrorist regimes, an armed resistance under the communist leadership of Josip Broz Tito had already formed on Yugoslavian soil by July 1941. In this “people’s liberation movement”, although Jews were recognized as a victimized group, the mass movement did not care to emphasize one particular group of people or religious minority in its propaganda, as the war made people of all nationalities and creeds victims of violence in their own country. In August 1944 in Slovakia, there was an armed rebellion against the government carried out by soldiers in the regular Slovak army and communist partisans. However, it was not the Slovak National Uprising that put an end to the deportation of Jews from Slovakia. As continually noted by the Germans, a large percentage of Slovaks seemed to have been against the inhumane treatment and expulsion of their Jewish fellow citizens: The Slovaks generally condemn the fact that the Jews are to be expelled from Slovakia and particularly condemn the abusive treatment of the Jews at the hands of the HG. It should be emphasized that the darkest elements of the HG have requested to supervise the Jews. It has caused bad blood even among the soldiers that the Guards have been given so many rights to beat defenseless Jews so often. The Slovaks also say that what has been done to the Jews will not remained unavenged and that they will all have to pay for it one day. These moments show that the entire Jewish action was not greeted with enthusiasm and joy but with curses and curses to all those who instigated it.72

Already in March 1942, Catholic, Protestant and Greek Catholic bishops in Slovakia reacted to the general feeling of discontent in the population caused by the

70 Without signature, Bundesarchiv Berlin, R 70/30, March 31, 1943, 166. 71 See here the reports from May 2, 1944 and June 20, 1944 on “Jew-friendly staff” in the security forces, Bundesarchiv Berlin R/70/208, 98 ff. and 120 ff. 72 Report on the expulsion of the Jews by SS Untersturmführer Wilhelm Urbantke, Bundesarchiv Berlin R/70/208, March 28, 1942, 19.

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persecution of the Jews with a pastoral letter to the government, putting pressure on the Catholic priest Tiso. In response, Tiso directed his Interior Minister, Mach, to continue the deportations that had already begun without informing him. According to a German report, Mach threatened he would have all bishops arrested if the president were not a priest.73 He suspected that Tiso, who in August 1942 had still been repeating the chant that it was a Christian act to get rid of all the Jews, or “pests” as Tiso called them74 would not be able to resist the pressure from the bishops for long, which later proved to be true. For reasons to do with internal policy affairs and disputes between the two factions within the party,75 the deportations were stopped in September 1942; however, the anti-Semitic laws still remained in force. In contrast to Slovakia, there was no discontinuation of the deportation of Jews or other persecuted people in Croatia. The Archbishop of Zagreb, Alojzije Stepinac, did intervene on behalf of the Jews with the Croatian, German and Italian authorities, saving hundreds of lives. He also denounced the regime in his sermons,76 however, he does not appear to have had sufficient influence among the Croatian clergy or to have sought to establish a protest movement involving the entire church which could have put more pressure on Pavelić, as he considered this to be hopeless anyway. In any case, there were anti-Semites among the clergy, the laity and the Catholic press, which was loyal to the regime, spread propaganda supporting the extermination of the Jews. The radicals associated Judaism with Bolshevism and were not willing to accept Jews who had converted to Catholicism. For example, the Croatian newspaper “The Catholic Family” (Katolička obitelj) republished a “report” from the Hlinka Guard paper “The Guardist” (Gardista) claiming that Jewish gangs – including many baptized Jews – were spreading blasphemy among the Slovak youth. The article openly threatened murder: “If their (the Jews’) neck itches, there’s a knife to scratch it. Don’t forget that a wolf will never become a lamb, and a Jew never a Christian.”77

73 SS Untersturmführer Wilhelm Urbantke to the Sicherheitsdienst Leitabschnitt Vienna III B, Bundesarchiv Berlin R/70/Slowakei – 208, March 25, 1942, 22 ff. 74 Speech given by Jozef Tiso in Holič on August 16, 1942, VEJ, vol. 13, document 74, 243. 75 See here Lipscher, Die Juden im Slowakischen Staat 1939–1945, 129–136. 76 On Archbishop Stepinac’s resistance see Esther Gitman, When Courage Prevailed. The Rescue and Survival of Jews in the Independent State of Croatia 1941–1945 (St. Paul: Paragon House, 2011), 93–126. On the controversy surrounding him see Martina Bitunjac, “Widerstand in Zeiten der Kollaboration. Erzbischof Alojzije Stepinacs Hilfe für Verfolgte während des Zweiten Weltkriegs,” Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 4 (2019): 412–424. 77 Katolička obitelj 6 (1943): 92.

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One chance for Jews to survive in Croatia, other being hidden by non-Jews, was fleeing to the Italian zone (until September 1943) or joining the mass resistance movement, which included around 5,000 Jews from Yugoslavia. While the first (and last) Jewish combat unit of Yugoslavia was formed after the liberation of the Italian camp on the Croatian island of Rab after the capitulation of Italy, a Jewish combat unit formed in Slovakia after the dissolution of the camp in Nováky in August 1944. In contrast to the Croatian-Jewish unit, the Slovak-Jewish unit was not dissolved due to lack of fighting experience, but continued to be active in the Slovak national struggle until the very end. Of the roughly 16,000 partisans who fought against the German and Slovak armies, around 10 % were Jewish, significantly more than in the anti-fascist struggle in Yugoslavia.

Conclusion Without having to exert pressure, the Nazi’s goal of exterminating European Jewry was accepted by the political elite in Croatia and Slovakia as a governmental duty that they willingly carried out. Both countries were provided with “Jewish advisors”, or organizers of the “Final Solution”, to help them with this task. These were all Eichmann’s confidants who became radicalized over time, like Alois Brunner, who later oversaw the concentration camp in Sered. As this was not enough, Jews were also held in camps run by their own countries. In Croatia, there was mass murder of Jews and other minorities taking place in several independently run Ustaša camps. On closer inspection, it can be said that diplomatic differences with the Germans only arose when the regulations of distributing Jewish property were unclear or when the German minority felt that they were not getting their fair share of the stolen property. Both the “more moderate” faction of the Slovak party and the radical Ustaša movement used their political leeway to spare economically or politically relevant Jews. The exceptions introduced in both countries clearly show that this room for maneuver could be exploited without any reprisals from the Germans in these fellow Axis countries, which cannot be considered passive puppet states. It can also be supposed that a clever “stalling policy” could have saved more Jewish lives. This was only initiated by the Slovaks after the majority of the Jews living in Slovakia had already been deported. Those who remained were mainly only those Jews who were considered to be important for the economy. However, they were to have been “eliminated” after the war. Unlike in Slovakia, the deportations never stopped from the territory of the Independent State of Croatia. Indeed, the

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murder continued in the largest concentration camp in the Balkans, in Jasenovac (and in other camps) up until its violent disbandment in April 1945. Occasionally it was the political cliques who had their eye on Jewish property and could then quickly enrich themselves personally in the “Aryanization” process. Together with the Nazis, they bear the greatest, but not the sole, responsibility for the persecution and murder of the Jews. Just as in the rest of Europe, denunciations by anti-Semitic private individuals were part of the cruel everyday life in both countries. These individuals did not spare even close friends, colleagues, neighbors and relatives and knew full well that the worst fate awaited those they denounced and that they would most likely never return. The anti-Semitism among the political elites and in the general public that had taken root in both countries certainly played a role in the collective willingness to support the Holocaust. However, it is not the only explanation for the annihilation of the Jews in Croatia or Slovakia. There were radical nationalistic forces of varying degrees in power who were extremely grateful to Hitler for the creation of their long awaited “independent” Slovak and Croatian states. Their goal was to never again lose their “sovereignty” and become independent, but to contribute as small countries to the “New Europe” after the war. In order to consolidate what they had achieved politically as independent countries, both countries accepted the German demands regarding the “Jewish question” – although this should be once again emphasized – without any sense of remorse or fear of completely failing to protect their citizens as the responsible political authority should guarantee. On the contrary, both regimes were very much focused on profiting from the exploitation of the murdered Jews in the hope that the chaotic time of war would erase the evidence of their crimes. Not even the religion propagated in the countries curbed their regime’s criminal activities. Both countries were instead united by a radical clero-nationalism, which had nothing to do with the Christian values of loving thy neighbor or compassion, but was misused in the context of political interpretation and used to mobilize the Christian majority. Racially motivated anti-Semitism had less of a pull for Croatian and Slovak nationalists, as they could not really identify with the idea of a “master race” in their geopolitically weak countries in Europe, even if this was presented differently in their Nazi inspired legislation and propaganda. Both defined themselves as belonging to the “Aryan race”. Rather it was economic and social motives that came to the fore in both countries with the argument that the poor and “betrayed” local populations were only reclaiming their due from the “money and power hungry” Jews, the “foreign elements”. Moreover, the Jews were accused of entering into political “pacts” with the enemy, i.e. the Czechs or the Serbs (in the Baltics it was the Soviets) respectively.

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At the state level, participating in the Holocaust meant vying for Hitler’s favor, which had begun to fade since the defeat in Stalingrad. Afterwards, both countries slowly made contact with Allied forces in order to remain on the “good” side of history. This was unsuccessful. After he had annihilated almost 80 % of the Jewish population in the Independent State of Croatia, Pavelić suspended the “race laws” in May 1945 and fled to Argentina via Italy. Jozef Tiso was put on trial after the war. He received the death penalty. After World War II, Croatia and Slovakia were reintegrated into totalitarian state structures: Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The communist leadership in both countries propagated the myth of German sole responsibility for all the crimes committed in World War II, including the Holocaust. Until today, this myth continues to be cultivated in revisionist historiography.78

78 See f. e. Nina Paulovičová, “Holocaust Memory and Antisemitism in Slovakia: The Postwar Era to the Present,” Antisemitism Studies 1 (2008): 4–34, and Martina Bitunjac, “Das Märchen vom guten Faschismus. Revisionistische Holocaust-Interpretationen und Geschichtsfälschungen am Beispiel des Ustaša-Vernichtungslagers Jasenovac,” in Massengewalt in Südosteuropa im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Motive, Abläufe, Auswirkungen, eds. Meinolf Arens and Martina Bitunjac (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2021), 137–159.

Björn Opfer-Klinger

Bulgaria’s Collaboration with the Axis Powers in World War II By joining the Tripartite Pact on March 1, 1941, the Tsarist Kingdom of Bulgaria entered World War II openly on the side of the Axis Powers. It thus joined the ranks of states collaborating with Berlin and Rome, such as Hungary or, a little later, Slovakia, Romania and Finland. Nevertheless, Bulgaria took on a certain special role among the collaborating states. In 1944, like Italy before it, it was even supposed to change sides and in the Bulgarian culture of remembrance after World War II, its own image as the “savior of the Bulgarian Jews” from the German policy of extermination was cemented. It is not without reason that historians like Hans-Joachim Hoppe described Bulgaria as “Hitler’s headstrong ally”. To this day, interpretations of the character of the Bulgarian alliance with the Axis Powers still diverge. This is aggravated by the fact that many in-depth, detailed studies, for example, of the central political and social actors, organizations and authorities in Bulgaria during the tsarist dictatorship of Boris III, are still to be written. In dealing with this question, the following will first take a look at BulgarianGerman relations before 1941 and the political developments immediately after Bulgaria’s accession to the Tripartite Pact.

Bulgaria and Germany – Brothers in Arms since World War I? At the beginning of World War I, the Tsarist Empire of Bulgaria was one of the ambitious emerging states of South-Eastern Europe, aiming to become a great regional power. From a German perspective, Bulgaria was of little importance to German foreign policy at that time. It focused more on Romania and Greece and increasingly on the Ottoman Empire, which was ruled by young Turks. Although Bulgaria was ruled by a German dynasty, Ferdinand I of Saxe-CoburgGotha, there was no close relationship between Berlin and Sofia. A growing number of Bulgarians studied in Germany, especially in Leipzig and Halle. Particularly in the fields of technology and agricultural economics, the German Empire was considered a role model. Nevertheless, France and Russia exerted a

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much greater cultural attraction for the Bulgarian elite.1 Only World War I led to an alliance of convenience between the Reich and Bulgaria. In 1915 the Ottoman Empire, which had been fighting alongside Germany and Austria-Hungary since the autumn of 1914, was threatened with defeat. In order to support it and thus protect its long-term interests in the Middle East, the German Empire needed a direct land connection through South-Eastern Europe and thus the support of Bulgaria. A bourgeois-liberal government coalition was ruling in Sofia at that time. This coalition saw the chance for a revision of the peace treaties of 1913, after the lost Second Balkan War. Since its alliance with the Reich promised greater benefits, it entered the war on the side of the Central Powers in the summer of 1915. Although in the following three years the idea of German-Bulgarian brotherhood of arms was intensively propagated, the mutual relationship remained a purely functional alliance. In 1917/18, antipathy grew even on the Bulgarian side. Bulgarian military officers and politicians saw themselves as not receiving enough support from Germany in their own expansion interests, in the difficult supply situation and in the fighting on the Thessaloniki front. Towards the end of the war, this displeasure was directed even within Bulgaria against Tsar Ferdinand himself.2 After the defeat in 1918, the abdication of Tsar Ferdinand in favor of his son Boris and the hard peace of Neuilly-sur-Seine, German-Bulgarian relations reached a low point. Nevertheless, in 1919 many former Bulgarian leaders, including Tsar Ferdinand, but also military men such as Commander-in-Chief General Nikola Žekov, emigrated to Germany, fearing that they would be tried as war criminals. In this way, mutual contacts in the military and right-wing national spectrum were maintained. This also applied to relations at the university level. Although France remained the cultural model for Bulgaria’s upper social class, the number of Bulgarian students at German universities was now increasing. Many of them were later to take on important functions during World War II. These included Ivan Bagryanov and Aleksandăr Belev.3 Both played a significant role in Bulgaria’s later collaboration policy. Since the late 1920s, the German student body had always been clearly influenced by Nazi ideology. To what extent

1 Oliver Stein, “Die deutsch-bulgarischen Beziehungen seit 1878,” Zeitschrift für Balkanologie 47 (2011/2): 222. 2 Nikola Nedeff, Les opérations en Macédoine l’épopée de Doïran 1915–1918 (Sofia: Armejsko Izdateslvo, 1927), 211–215 and Stilijan Nojkov, “Waffenhilfe des österreichisch-ungarischen Armeeoberkommandos für das bulgarische Heer nach dem Durchbruch der bulgarischen Verteidigungsfront in Makedonien,” Miscellanea Bulgarica 12 (1998): 55. 3 On Ivan Bagryanov see Tašo Tašev, Ministrite na Bălgarija 1879–1999 (Sofia: Izdatesli na Akademijata, 1999), 41–42 and Michail Gruev, Preorani slogove. Kolektivicazija i sozialna promjana v bălgarskija severozapad 40-Te–50-Te godini na XX vek (Sofia: Siela, 2009), 45.

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this also affected the Bulgarian guest students and thus Bulgaria’s later academic elite, however, is still a scientific desideratum. What is certain is that personal contacts between actors of right-wing nationalist and Fascist organizations in Bulgaria and Germany were established at an early stage. Examples were Ivan Dočev and General Christo Lukov, leader of the “Union of the Bulgarian National Legionnaires”, but also including the founders of the Fascist organizations Otec Paisij and Ratnici, Asen Kantardžiev and Petăr Gabrovski.4 Nevertheless, until the 1930s, the main focus of Bulgarian foreign policy relations was mainly on France, Great Britain and Italy.5 This changed only after the devastating effects of the Great Depression, which plunged Bulgaria into dramatic difficulties. At the same time, however, the increasingly influential Central European Business Day industrial lobbying association, founded in 1931, was propagating in Germany the goal of making the whole of South-Eastern Europe an economic complement to the needs of German industry. Even though the more resource-rich states of Yugoslavia and Romania were clearly in the foreground, this foreign trade policy also affected Bulgaria. This country was faced with insolvency due to its high national debt. The German-Bulgarian trade treaty concluded in 1932 offered it the only realistic chance to revive its foreign trade. This was not least due to the clearing procedure applied, which did not require foreign exchange payments and offset the value of the goods exchanged against each other.6 By the end of the 1930s, the Reich had become by far the most important trading partner and, thanks to the exchange of goods without foreign exchange, paid Bulgaria better prices than would have been possible on the world market. In 1939, about two thirds of imports and exports were transacted with Germany, which was three times as much as in 1930.7 The trade imbalance

4 Werner Haas, Europa will leben. Die nationale Erneuerungsbewegung in Wort und Bild (Berlin: Batschari Verlag, 1936), 81–88 and Nikolaj Poppetrov, “Flucht aus der Demokratie. Autoritarismus und autoritäres Regime in Bulgarien 1919–1944,” in Autoritäre Regime in Ostmittel- und Südosteuropa 1919–1944, ed. Erwin Oberländer (Paderborn et al.: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2001), 379–402. 5 Bulgarian relations with fascist Italy have not yet been the subject of a comprehensive study. Although Tsar Boris III married a daughter of the Italian King Victor Emmanuel III in 1930, the relationship with Mussolini remained rather distant. Cristina Siccardi, Giovanna di Savoia. Dagli splendori della reggia alle amarezze dell’esilio (Milan: Paoline, 2001), 177–179. 6 Markus Wien, Markt und Modernisierung. Deutsch-bulgarische Wirtschaftsbeziehungen 1918–1944 in ihren konzeptionellen Grundlagen (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2007), 69. 7 Deutsch-Bulgarische Handelskammer. Handbuch der bulgarischen Wirtschaft unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der deutsch-bulgarischen Handelsbeziehungen, ed. Andrey Piperow (Berlin: Süd-Ost Verlag, 1942), 243.

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increased. The German economy imported more and more South-Eastern European raw materials and agricultural goods, without, however, exporting its own goods of the same value. As a result, the German Empire became increasingly indebted to Bulgaria and the other South-Eastern European states.8 The economic integration of the two economies in the 1930s coincided with the now noticeable increase in cultural relations between the two countries. This was expressed in the form of a rapidly increasing number of publications and exhibitions as well as exchange and cooperation programs.9 On May 31, 1938, Eugen Rümelin, Germany’s long-standing envoy to Sofia, reported with satisfaction to the Foreign Office that pro-German sympathies were growing noticeably in the country. In the event of a conflict between the Reich and other powers, Rümelin said, Bulgaria’s benevolent neutrality could be expected.10 At that time, Tsar Boris III had already ruled for about three years in a largely authoritarian dictatorship. Boris had come to the throne in 1918 due to the resignation and emigration of his father Ferdinand. As tsar, for a long time he remained a rather reserved monarch who did not openly intervene in politics, although he was networked and exerted influence in the background, especially in the conservative spectrum. This became apparent, for example, during the coup of June 9, 1923 against the agrarian-revolutionary Peasant Union government of Stambolijski and the subsequent right-wing conservative government at Aleksandăr Cankov. Some of the putschists of 1923 formed the Organization Sveno. This demanded the dissolution of the parliamentary party system and the transformation of Bulgaria into a corporative state following the example of Fascist Italy. Even the tsar was not averse to such ideas. In 1930, Boris III married the fourth daughter of the Italian King Victor Emmanuel III, Giovanna of Savoy. Later Boris said that in his politics he drew on the experience of “great Italy”, as Fascism showed “the right way to save the people”.11 To what extent this primarily served good relations with Italy

8 Wien, Markt und Modernisierung, 319–324. 9 Krassimira Stoyanova, Bulgarian-German Relations. Tradition, Priorities and Perspectives (Sofia: Intela, 1995), 48–51 and Antoaneta Rimpova, “Geschichte und Kultur Bulgariens in der deutschen Literatur (1878–1944),” Bulgarian Historical Review 13 (1985): 100–101 and Zvetana Todorova, “Zur Frage der bulgarisch-deutschen kulturellen Beziehungen nach 1878,” Bulgarian Historical Review 11 (1983): 88. 10 Politisches Archiv Auswärtiges Amt (hereafter PA AA), Pol IV. 632 R 103891, Rümelin to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, May 31, 1938. 11 The quotation was used by the renowned Italian cultural journalist Antonio Spinosa in his biography of the Italian King Victor Emanuel III, but without adding a source reference. Antonio Spinosa, Vittorio Emanuele III. L’austuzia di un re (Milan: Mondadori, 1990), 294.

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or how strongly Italian Fascism really influenced the political thinking of Boris III has not yet been clearly worked out. The officers organized in the Sveno revolted on May 19, 1934, dissolving the parliament, all parties and unions and forming a government of professionals and officers. The autonomy of the internationally well-connected University of Sofia was also largely abolished.12 The connections between the Sveno and the royal court have not been extensively researched. What is certain, however, is that the Sveno putschists paved the way for the tsarist dictatorship. On January 22, 1935, officers loyal to the king then overthrew the Sveno government. From then on, cabinets of high state officials and officers loyal to the royal family ruled. However, Boris III was not strong enough to establish an open dictatorship with a new authoritarian constitution. Although many questions remain unanswered about Bulgarian society in the 1930s, it can be said that the overall social and domestic political situation was as unstable as in most of the states of South-Eastern Europe. This enabled Tsar Boris to present himself as a necessary factor of stability and order by skillfully integrating various currents into his system of rule. The situation of the largely impoverished rural population of small and medium-sized farmers and small businesses remained precarious. Although the Communists had no mass base, they were closely linked to the Soviet Union through the Comintern. It was always unclear to what extent the widespread pro-Russian sympathies in Bulgaria were also related to the Soviet Union. The Anglo- and Francophile Liberals and Democrats had quantitatively little support in the country, but were strong in urban economic and social life. At the same time, the fragmented and divided nationalist and Fascist scene gained in popularity. The tsarist regime had to take all these forces into account, including these foreign policy preferences, and to accommodate them to a certain extent. Accordingly, a new parliament was elected in October 1937 on the basis of a revised election law. This allowed only elected individuals to enter the National Assembly, which was the Săbranie. Political parties remained banned, but in the end, almost all of them were more or less represented in parliament by individual candidates, even the Communists. In his Realpolitik, Boris III kept his distance from the leading representatives of the extreme right, such as General Christo Lukov, who strove for a totalitarian mass party based on the Italian or German model. Although Lukov was initially still involved in the government as Minister of War, he was dismissed when he tried to exert too much influence on government appointments and

12 Ivan Ilčev et al., University of Sofia St. Kliment Ohridski – The first 120 years (Sofia: St. Kliment Ohridski University Press, 2008), 106–112.

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was suspected of embezzling funds from his ministry.13 After 1935, Boris relied primarily on the bourgeois-conservative and moderate nationalist forces in the various security organs (police, secret service) and the state administration as well as parts of the officer corps.14 Nonetheless, members of the Fascist Ratnici organization under Asen Kantardžiev, a professor of economics, gradually rose to important positions in the state bureaucracy. This became evident, for example, in 1938, when violent riots broke out against Jewish businesses in Sofia, in which the Bulgarian police intervened only with extreme restraint.15 However, the perpetrators of the violence were subsequently prosecuted, at least partially.16 The immediate circle of advisors in the tsar’s entourage was of great importance in this structure of rule. Many of these confidants came from the right-wing nationalist or ultra-orthodox milieu, such as his confessor Lulčo Lulčev and the architect Jordan Sevov.17 However, there is no clear evidence of an obvious sympathy for Italian Fascism or German Nazism. His wife, Giovanna of Savoy, daughter

13 Christo Nikolov Lukov (1888–1943) was co-founder of the extremist Union of Bulgarian National Legionnaires, which was founded in 1933. He advocated radical anti-Semitism, nationalism and anti-Communism and advocated close foreign policy ties with the Fascist Axis powers. As Minister of War he was involved in planning for potential military conflicts with one of the neighboring states. During the war, he advocated the direct participation of Bulgarian troops on the side of the Wehrmacht in the war against the USSR. At times in 1942, rumors surfaced in Sofia that he was considered a “strong man” by the German side who could become the new head of government if necessary, should Tsar Boris III pursue an excessively anti-German policy. Rossitza Ivkova, Rettung und Mord in genozidalen Entscheidungsprozessen: Bulgarien 1941–1943 (Bielefeld: Dissertation University Bielefeld, 2004), 66–67. On February 13, 1943, he was the victim of an assassination attempt. After the turn of the millennium, he was “rediscovered” by the right-wing extremist scene in Bulgaria. Since 2003, the nationalist right of the country has organized the annual “Lukov March” through the center of Sofia. Frank Stier, “Der Lukov-Marsch und die bulgarischen Nationalisten,” Telepolis, February 23, 2017, accessed April 19, 2020, https://www.heise.de/tp/fea tures/Der-Lukov-Marsch-und-die-bulgarischen-Nationalisten-3633300.html. 14 Michele Rallo, L’epoca delle rivoluzioni nazionali, vol. V: Bulgaria e Macedonia (1919–1945) (Rome: Edition Settimo Sigillo, 2004), 95. 15 PA AA, R 103.284, Bericht des deutschen Gesandten in Sofia 9.12.1938. See also David Benwenisti, Die Rettung der bulgarischen Juden 1941–1944 (Sofia: Sofia Press, 1988), 5. 16 Esther Benbassa and Aron Rodrigue, Die Geschichte der sephardischen Juden (Bochum: Winkler, 2005), 232. 17 Hans-Joachim Hoppe, Bulgarien – Hitlers eigenwilliger Verbündeter. Eine Fallstudie zur nationalsozialistischen Südosteuropapolitik (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1979), 41 and Stephane Groueff, Crown of Thorns. The Reign of King Boris III. of Bulgaria 1918–1943 (London: Madison Books, 1987), 255–258, and Petko Mangačev, Zagadkite v upravlenieto na Zar Boris III v perioda 1. III. 1941 g.–28. VIII. 1943 g. (Sofia: Kolbis, 2015), 72–74.

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of the Italian King Victor Emanuel III, also numbered among the influential people, but was not considered a sympathizer of Mussolini or Hitler.18 Boris III was a man deeply affected by Bulgaria’s heavy defeats in the Second Balkan War and World War I, which had brought his father to the throne and in 1919, monarchy-skeptical agrarian revolutionaries to the government. He therefore always tried to avoid great adventures and risks. Accordingly, his domestic and, above all, his foreign policy was characterized by a constant balancing of power and a maneuvering between the power blocs. This was one of the reasons why he appointed the experienced diplomat and Court Marshal Georgi Kjosseivanov to the head of the government in 1935, who made a special effort to maintain good relations with the Western powers and neighboring states. The ever closer cooperation with the German economy slowly, but soon noticeably, improved the situation of larger sections of the population. Nevertheless, the radicalization was unmistakable in the right and left spectrum. Boris III remained dependent on further stabilization of domestic economic conditions, but also on foreign policy successes in terms of the revision of the military and territorial peace conditions of 1919. Not only in view of the close relations of the neighboring states with France and Great Britain it became increasingly clear that such a territorial revision was only possible with the support of the German Empire. The German Empire itself was very successful in testing the new international scope. In March 1938, Austria was “annexed” and in the following months, Czechoslovakia was completely destroyed. It must have registered in Sofia that in the slipstream of this policy neither Hungary nor Poland profited territorially. At the same time, this increased Germany’s importance as a trading partner. Trade relations expanded accordingly. In addition, German companies began to invest specifically in the modernization of the Bulgarian economy, which was important for them.19 This indirectly stabilized the position of the tsarist regime. In addition, the regime also achieved its own foreign policy successes. These included the conclusion of the Thessaloniki Agreement of July 31 1938, which enabled Bulgaria to openly arm itself. In return, a non-aggression pact

18 Archiv der Republik Wien (AdR), NPA 525 Liasse Bulgarien 4/I–5/I, Österreichische Botschaft Sofia, Zl. 27/pol. 8.4.1935 and 22.2.1936. See also Kirill P. Doreff, Bulgarien im südöstlichen Paktsystem (Limburg/Lahn: Limburger Vereinsdruckerei, 1941), 87–88 and Klaus Sohl, “Die Kriegsvorbereitungen des deutschen Imperialismus in Bulgarien am Vorabend des Zweiten Weltkrieges,” Jahrbuch für Geschichte der UdSSR und der volksdemokratischen Länder Europas 3 (1959): 112. 19 Wien, Markt und Modernisierung, 171–260.

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was concluded with the neighboring states.20 This had already been preceded by a treaty of friendship between Bulgaria and Yugoslavia in January 1937, which at that time was already much closer to the Reich.21 On the other hand, the growing German influence and the domestic political weakness, especially of France in the 1930s, reduced Bulgaria’s foreign policy leeway. German diplomacy was pushing for a closer alignment with the Axis Alliance, including in foreign policy. This was also being increasingly advocated by right-wing nationalist and Fascist forces in Bulgaria. On the other hand, the still strong bourgeois-liberal opposition demanded distance from Germany and the cultivation of good relations with the Western powers. The appeasement policy of the Western powers, however, also had an impact on Bulgarian domestic politics. The unimpeded German policy of expansion towards Czechoslovakia and Lithuania, and the Italian invasion of Albania, also gave a boost to the proFascist forces in Bulgaria. Added to this were the consequences of the GermanSoviet non-aggression pact of August 23, 1939, which led to the Communists in Bulgaria adopting a benevolent attitude towards a rapprochement with Germany. At the same time, the pact ended the isolation as USSR in the circle of the great powers. From then on, Stalin’s government took a much more determined and energetic stance in the pursuit of its own foreign policy goals.22

Bulgaria’s Policy at the Beginning of World War II New elections held on December 24, 1939 led to a significant strengthening of the pro-German forces in parliament. This led to the replacement of the rather pro-Western Prime Minister Georgi Kjosseivanov on February 15, 1940, as well 20 Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht, vol. 8 (1938), 788–189. (https://www.zaoerv.de/08_1938/vol8.cfm, accessed April 19, 2020). In this context, the German envoy in Sofia, Eugene Rumelin, reported that many leading Bulgarian military officers rejected the agreement. In their opinion, the previously secret armament could continue even without the agreement, without giving up the protection of the demilitarized zone on the border with Turkey and Greece. AA PA, Pol IV. 632, R 103891, Rümelin to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs August 17, 1938. 21 Plamen S. Cvetkov, Kolektivna sirgurnost ili neutralitet. Srednite i malkite dăržavi v evropejskata politika oktomvri 1935–mart 1938 (Sofia: Cheron Press, 1999), 117 see also Alberto Basciani, “Un archeologo al servizio della monarchia bulgara. La parabola politica di Bogdan Filov (1940–1944),” in Intellettuali versus democrazia. I regimi authoritari nell’Europa sudorientale (1933–1953), ed. Francesco Guida (Rome: Carocci, 2010), 111–157. 22 Claudia Weber, Der Pakt. Stalin, Hitler und die Geschichte einer mörderischen Allianz 1939–1941 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2019), 70.

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as to the exchange of many Bulgarian envoys, among others in Athens and Moscow.23 In his place, Boris III appointed the previous Minister of National Education, Bogdan Filov, who was known to be pro-German.24 The former Minister of Transport and leader of the Ratnici, Petăr Gabrovski, now received the important post of Minister of the Interior under Filov. This further increased the already strong influence of Fascist currents in the security apparatus. Under Gabrovski, an initially still small sub-authority “Section for Jewish Affairs” was established in the Ministry of the Interior. A few months later, he brought the “Law for the Protection of the Nation”, which was modelled on the German “Nuremberg racial laws”, through parliament.25 Bulgaria began to orient itself more strongly on the German model. An important actor in the preparation of these legislative measures was Alexandăr Belev, who like his protégé Gabrovski, belonged to the Fascist organization of the Ratnici and received the new office of the “Jewish Commissioner” in the Ministry of the Interior.26 Three other department heads of the commissariat were also Ratnici.27 Clearly anti-Semitic measures had, however, already been initiated under the Kjosseivanov government since the end of 1939, even if these were initially directed exclusively against foreign Jews in Bulgaria who had fled to Bulgaria from Nazi persecution. At the beginning of 1940 at the latest, anti-Semitic measures were also directed against Bulgarian Jews with Greek or Turkish roots. These were now deported across the border into Greece and Turkey or forced to

23 In the election, the supporters of the tsar dictatorship won 142 of 160 seats. The ten Communist deputies remained the strongest opposition force. Dimităr Ch. Popov, Žestoki Vremena. Bălgarija 1914–2014. Tom 2 Ot Vremenna stabilnost kăm novi prevratnosti (1934–1944) (Sofia: Tip-top Pres, 2016), 155 and Dieter Nohlen and Philip Stöver, Elections in Europe: A data handbook (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2010), 368–369. For the exchange of envoys see: Dimităr Sirkov, Vănšnata politika na bălgarija 1938–1941 (Sofia: Izdatelstvo Nauka i Izkustvo, 1979), 206–207. 24 Erhard Forndran, Innen- und Außenpolitik unter nationalsozialistischer Bedrohung: Determinanten internationaler Beziehungen in historischen Fallstudien (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1977), 171–172. 25 David S. Wyman and Charles H. Rosenzweig, The World Reacts to the Holocaust (London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 264 and Ivkova, Rettung und Mord, 37. 26 Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933–1945, Vol 13: Slowakei, Rumänien und Bulgarien, ed. Mariana Hausleitner et al. (Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2018), 622. 27 It should be noted that the Ratnici were among the most energetic critics of the government from the right political spectrum. It can be assumed, that this was an attempt to integrate the Ratnici into the tsar’s royal dictatorship in order to neutralize them. On the other hand, a bastion of anti-Semitic extremists within the state bureaucracy was created in this way. Frederick Chary, The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution 1940–1944 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972), 56.

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leave the country by ship.28 Anti-Semitism was not a social mass phenomenon in Bulgaria, but had increased noticeably since World War I.29 This was another area in which the Reich and the tsarist dictatorship came closer together. One of the clear guidelines of Bulgarian diplomacy since the beginning of World War II had been to avoid any foreign policy adventure in the form of participation in the war. Furthermore, a good relationship was sought with all major powers. Nevertheless, the pressure grew on the tsar’s regime to participate in the reorganization of many borders that had already begun. This pressure of expectations on the part of Bulgarian nationalists increased after the German-Soviet non-aggression pact and the beginning of World War II had created a new dynamic. The Parisian peace order was shattered. Romania, which had been one of the great winners of the post-war territorial order of 1919/20, became the focal point in South-Eastern Europe. It had grown considerably at the expense of Hungary (Transylvania, Banat, etc.), Russia (Bessarabia) and Bulgaria (South Dobrudža). Since then, all the neighboring states had been striving to revise the borders of the resulting Greater Romania. From the perspective of Bulgarian nationalists, the “repatriation” of South Dobrudža was one of the core objectives of Bulgarian foreign policy. Bulgarian refugees and displaced persons from South Dobrudža played a very tangible role in Bulgaria. Romania for its part also pursued a very repressive policy towards the large Bulgarian minority in the Dobrudža.30 On the eve of the World War, the Kjosseivanov government had already intensively sounded out the various powers to mediate with Romania, albeit without success.31 Only after the beginning of the war and the division of Poland between the Reich and the USSR was there movement with regard to 28 Ana Karlsreiter, König Boris III. von Bulgarien und die bulgarische Außenpolitik 1938–1943 (Munich: Dissertation Universität München, 2001), 317 and Iva Arakchiyska, Kann ein Mensch dabei untätig bleiben? Hilfe für verfolgte Juden in Bulgarien 1940–1944 (Berlin: Lukas Verlag, 2016), 22–23. About Turkey’s policy regarding Jewish refugees from Bulgaria, see also: Corry Guttstadt, Die Türkei, die Juden und der Holocaust (Berlin: Assoziation A., 2008), 257–260. 29 Stefan Troebst, “Antisemitismus im ‘Land ohne Antisemitismus’: Staat, Titularnation und jüdische Minderheit in Bulgarien 1878–1993,” in Juden und Antisemitismus im östlichen Europa, eds. Mariana Hausleitner and Monika Katz (Berlin: Harrassowitz, 1995), 117. 30 In 1939, about 366,000 Bulgarians lived in Romania. Hans-Joachim Hoppe, “Die Balkanstaaten Rumänien, Jugoslawien, Bulgarien – Nationale Gegensätze und NS-Großraumpolitik,” in Innen- und Außenpolitik unter nationalsozialistischer Bedrohung, ed. Erhard Forndran et al. (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1977), 161–175, here 163 and AA PA Pol IV. 632 R 103891, Bericht der deutschen Außenstelle für den Außenhandel November 17, 1938. See also Andrea Schmidt-Rösler, Rumänien nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg: Die Grenzziehung in der Dobrudscha und im Banat und die Folgeprobleme (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 1994), 112–160. 31 AA PA Pol IV. 632 R 103891, Report from Ernst von Weizsäcker, Berlin January 18, 1939 and Telegram German Embassy in Warsaw, June 20, 1939.

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the territorial question of the Dobrudža. This was encouraged by the Soviet efforts to extend its own influence on the Turkish straits. This in turn led to Romania’s willingness to compromise on the Dobrudža question for the first time, without, however, leading to concrete results.32 A real opportunity seemed to arise when the Soviet Union issued an ultimatum to Romania to cede northern Bucovina and Bessarabia on June 26, 1940. This measure also came as an unpleasant surprise to the German government, which saw its economic interests there threatened.33 The situation arose when the Bulgarian government received strong encouragement from the Soviet side, and through it also from the domestic Communist opposition, to become active in the Dobrudža question. There were even rumors circulating that the government’s restraint was a “betrayal” of the Dobrudžan Bulgarians.34 At the same time, the Reich urged Sofia to exercise restraint.35 After Romania was forced to cede Bessarabia and northern Bucovina to the Soviet Union on June 28, 1940, this was automatically also a signal to the revisionist forces in Hungary on the Transylvania question and Bulgaria on the Dobrudža question to take advantage of Romania’s weakness. The Reich tried to act as a mediator in order to maintain its own influence in the region. Italy also tried to act. Both Axis powers thus intervened as mediators. There were negotiations between Romania and Hungary as well as with Bulgaria. In the so-called Second Vienna Arbitration Award, Romania had to agree to the cession of large areas to Hungary on August 30. In the Treaty of Craiova of September 7, it ceded the southern third of the Dobrudža to Bulgaria. Connected with this was a Bulgarian-Romanian population exchange. On that occasion, the resettlement of the Dobrudža Germans was also agreed on within the framework of the “Home to the Reich” campaign.36 German influence in Bulgaria increased further as a result. Other decisive events were the capitulation of France on June 22, 1940, the entry of Italy into the war on the side of Germany and the beginning of the air battle over England in preparation for a German invasion of the British Isles. On the other hand, the Soviet Union also tried to expand its influence in Bulgaria, which also gave a

32 Bundesarchiv Militärarchiv (hereafter BA MA), RW 5/v. 353, Report of the German Embassy in Sofia February 10, 1940 and Report of the German Embassy in Ankara February 20, 1940. 33 Weber, Der Pakt, 178–179. 34 Akten zur Deutschen Auswärtigen Politik (hereafter ADAP), vol. 10, 45, Report of the German Embassy in Sofia, June 29, 1940. 35 ADAP, vol. 10, 32, Report from Ernst Woermann, the head of the political office of the Foreign Office, June 27, 1940. 36 Schmidt-Rösler, Rumänien nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg, 164–168.

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boost to the Communists in the country.37 The foreign policy leeway of the cautious Boris III became smaller and smaller. As much as the tsar’s dictatorship was partly oriented towards the Italian-fascist state model and had become ever more closely linked to the Reich in terms of foreign trade policy, he was not interested in the dominance of pro-German radical-nationalist and Fascist forces. Even if this cannot be clearly proven by sources according to the current state of research, the pitiful political role of his father-in-law, the Italian King Viktor Emanuell III, may have been an additional deterrent to him. Boris III himself coined the phrase: “My army is pro-German, my wife Italian, my people proRussian, and I am the only one in this country who is pro Bulgarian.”38 However, this may have been accompanied by a calculated degree of coquetry as the central mediating force in his country. The already shrunken scope for foreign policy was further reduced when Italian-Albanian troops invaded Greece on October 28, 1940. Ten days earlier, Mussolini had proposed joint action against Greece, which Boris III had rejected.39 Mussolini’s attempt, in the shadow of the German war of conquest, to expand his own sphere of power in South-Eastern Europe had many consequences. From the German perspective, South-Eastern Europe was intended to be a supply area for raw materials indispensable to the war economy. The Balkan countries were to be closely tied to the German Reich. In view of the uncertain ambitions of the USSR in the region, German troops occupied the important Romanian oil fields at Ploiești on October 12, 1940. With the Italian invasion of Greece, the whole region was now in danger of being drawn directly into the war. In fact, in response to the Italian attack, Great Britain sent air force units of the Royal Air Force to Greece and later also ground troops to Crete and the Athens region. The British Air Force thus came within reach of the Romanian oil fields. At the latest when the Italian attack came to a halt in mid-November 1940 and a Greek counteroffensive began, the Wehrmacht was threatened with intervention. This, in turn, was contrary to Soviet interests, as it would have brought the German military close to the Turkish straits. However, Stalin’s government regarded this as its own zone of influence.40 To what extent Stalin really believed in 1940 that he could tie Bulgaria closely to himself is controversial. Many Soviet files on this subject are still not accessible. It can be assumed with certainty, however,

37 Andrew Zapantis, Greek-Soviet Relations, 1917–1941 (New York: Boulder, 1982), 390–391. 38 Hoppe, Bulgarien – Hitlers eigenwilliger Verbündeter, 44. 39 MacGregor Knox, Mussolini Unleashed 1939–1941. Politics and Strategy in Fascist Italy’s Last War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 218–219. 40 Heinz Höhne, Der Krieg im Dunkeln. Macht und Einfluß des deutschen und russischen Geheimdienstes (Munich: Bertelsmann, 1985), 335.

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that Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov used such claims against Bulgaria as leverage in his meeting with Ribbentrop and Hitler in Berlin on November 12. At that time, German foreign policy tried to achieve a shift in Soviet expansion policy from Europe to South Asia. Stalin, however, insisted on Finland as his sphere of influence and at the same time openly courted Bulgaria. In this situation, Boris III was anxious to keep all options open and not to be drawn into a firm alliance. At that time, he still believed in the possibility of a British-German compromise peace with the mediation of the United States. This would have restored a greater balance of power in Europe and thus created the framework for a continuation of Bulgaria’s previous pendulum policy.41 However, such a peace failed to materialize and the room for maneuver narrowed further when, at the end of November 1940, first Hungary, then Romania and Slovakia joined the Tripartite Pact. A few days earlier, on November 17–18, Boris III visited the Berghof in Berchtesgaden. At the same time, Molotov offered the Bulgarian envoy in Moscow a border guarantee and support for Bulgarian territorial aspirations towards Turkey (Eastern Thrace), Greece (Western Thrace) and Yugoslavia (Macedonia).42 This offer was repeated a week later by the Soviet envoy in Sofia to Boris III. In return, Bulgaria was to become part of the Soviet “security zone” within the framework of a mutual assistance pact, whereby Bulgaria’s state sovereignty was to remain completely untouched. However, in return for financial and economic aid and support to achieve territorial expansion in Turkish Eastern Thrace, the Soviet Union demanded the right to establish two naval bases in Varna and Burgas and an air base in Plovdiv.43 Indirectly, the Soviet Union thus pushed Bulgaria into open conflict with Turkey. It can be assumed, that in doing so it wanted to give itself a reason to intervene in the straits. For the Bulgarian government and Tsar Boris, however, the Soviet assurance that Bulgaria’s sovereignty would be guaranteed was probably not very credible anyway in view of the Soviet actions against the Baltic states in June 1940 and Finland. They rejected the Soviet offer, but stressed that Bulgaria was still interested in close and friendly relations with the USSR.44 The Soviet Union continued to 41 Marin Pundeff, “Two Documents on Soviet-Bulgarian Relations in November 1940,” in Journal of Central European Affairs, vol. XV (January 1956): 374. 42 Staatsmänner und Diplomaten bei Hitler. Vertrauliche Aufzeichnungen über Unterredungen mit Vertretern des Auslandes, vol. I, ed. Andreas Hillgruber (Frankfurt/Main: Bernard & Graefe, 1967), 363–364. 43 Elisabeth Barker, British Policy in South-East Europe in the World War II (London: Macmillan, 1976), 59, also compare Christian Hartmann, Halder. Generalstabschef Hitlers 1938–1942 (Paderborn et al.: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1991), 255. 44 PA AA, R 29873, Telegram from the German Minister in Sofia, Herbert Freiherr von Richthofen, November 30, 1940.

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exert pressure on Bulgaria, supported by the Communist domestic political opposition there, repeatedly emphasizing the strong Russian sympathy for the Bulgarian “brother nation”. On several occasions in December 1940, the Soviet envoy warned the Bulgarian government against joining the Tripartite Pact.45 The Soviet Union also emphasized to the Reich its claim to include Bulgaria as part of a Soviet security zone on the Black Sea.46 This attitude towards Sofia was probably primarily part of the policy towards Nazi Germany, rather than the serious belief that the Bulgarian tsarist dictatorship would accept this offer. With reference to Soviet pressure, the Bulgarian government did indeed succeed in avoiding joining the Tripartite Pact for the time being. Whether this was a sign of good will or part of the authoritarian orientation of the Bulgarian state is not clear. What is certain is that at the end of 1940, the internal transformation of the Bulgarian state along the lines of the Axis powers increased significantly. For example, on December 29, 1940 a law was passed to establish the state youth organization Brannik (“Defense”). The Brannik was clearly oriented towards the German Hitler Youth and the Italian Balilla. It carried out open propaganda against Communism and western liberalism. Within three years, Brannik’s membership grew to around 450,000.47 This was followed in January 1941 by the introduction of anti-Jewish legislation (“Law for the Protection of the Nation”), as mentioned above. In view of the military development in the Greek-Albanian theater of war, the Bulgarian government could no longer have any illusions at that time that the German Reich would not intervene militarily in Greece. There were already Wehrmacht units stationed in Romania, and so at the end of November, the Bulgarian government had to grant the right of passage for German troops to Greece. In January 1941, the first German units crossed the Romanian-Bulgarian border.48 Bulgarian diplomacy continued to emphasize to the German envoy the danger of military intervention by Turkey if Bulgaria were to actively support the Axis powers. However, a little later, with German mediation, a Bulgarian-Turkish friendship agreement was concluded on February 19, 1941, which averted the

45 PA AA, 29873, Telegram Richthofen December 7, 1940 and Documents on German Foreign Policy (DGFP), vol. XI, Document 468 and 536. 46 Weber, Der Pakt, 196 f. 47 Nikolaj Poppetrov, Socialno naljavo, nacionalizmăt – napred: programni i organizacionni dokumenti na bălgarski avtoritaristki nacionalističeski formacii (Sofia: Gutenberg, 2009), 805–848. 48 ADAP, Serie D, vol. XI, 406 and 496 and Staatsmänner und Diplomaten bei Hitler. Talk Draganov-Hitler November 23, 1940, 367 and Kriegstagebuch des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht (Wehrmachtführungsstab), vol. 1, (Frankfurt/Main: Bernard & Graefe, 1965), 995.

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danger of confrontation with the neighbor.49 At the latest when the German government of the Reich promised Bulgaria territorial gains at the expense of Greece, the latter finally joined the Tripartite Pact on March 1, 1941. The British envoy in Sofia, George Rendel, had also tried in vain to prevent the Bulgarian government from taking this step. The possibility of British bombing attacks on Sofia in the event of an invasion of Bulgaria by German troops was also mentioned.50 Finally, Rendel left Sofia on March 12, 1941 without success. However, an open declaration of war by Great Britain had not yet been made. Barely two weeks later, there was an officer coup in Belgrade, which overthrew the pro-German Yugoslav government. The impetus for this was the signing of the three-power pact, which had been executed two days earlier.51 The new government under General Dušan Simović declared the accession invalid. Instead, the coup government concluded a friendship pact with the Soviet Union on April 5. At that time, the decision had already been made in Berlin to intervene militarily not only in Greece, but also in Yugoslavia. This made Bulgaria even more strategic, as did the prospects of territorial gains. Now, the prospect of winning back not only Western Thrace in Greece, and thus access to the Aegean Sea, but also the Yugoslav part of Macedonia was in sight. After World War I, the Inner Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), in the Bulgarian Pirin Mountains, had de facto established a state within a state and waged a bloody guerrilla war against Yugoslavia over Macedonia. In the process, it was in close contact with Fascist Italy and right-wing nationalist forces around the aforementioned politician Aleksandăr Cankov. In the spring of 1934, it was dissolved and banned by the pro-Western Bulgarian Sveno government.52 Nevertheless, even in 1941 there were still many followers and sympathizers of the IMRO in Bulgaria, organized in various associations and organizations such as the Macedonian Scientific Institute, the organization Ilinden or the Macedonian Women’s Union. These joined the large, albeit fragmented, right-wing

49 Staatsmänner und Diplomaten bei Hitler, 362 and 415 and PA AA R 29.873, Telegram Richthofen February 26, 1941 to the Foreign Office. 50 Martin L. van Creveld, Hitler’s Strategy 1940–1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 118. 51 Sabrina P. Ramet and Sladjana Lazić, “The Collaborationist Regime of Milan Nedić,” Serbia and the Serbs in World War Two, eds. Sabrina P. Ramet and Ola Listhaug (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 18. 52 Stefan Troebst, “Ivan Michajlov im türkischen und polnischen Exil (1934–1939/40). Fragmente zur politischen Biographie des Chefs der Inneren Makedonischen Revolutionären Organisation,” in Das makedonische Jahrhundert. Von den Anfängen der nationalrevolutionären Bewegung zum Abkommen von Ohrid 1893–2001. Ausgewählte Aufsätze, ed. Stefan Troebst (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2007), 182–183.

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scene in the country, which Boris III had to take into account. Ever since a revision of the Bulgarian border with Romania became apparent in the summer of 1940, these Macedonian actors had also been increasingly present in public. Minister of the Interior Gabrovski did nothing to suppress these voices and tolerated such manifestations rather benevolently.53 Boris III himself had addressed the Macedonian question in a letter to Hitler.54 Even after that, Bulgarian members of government, such as the aforementioned Minister of Agriculture Ivan Bagryanov or Prime Minister Bogdan Filov, had repeatedly raised the issue with their German counterparts.55 Berlin reacted with restraint. The Filov government repeatedly emphasized that Bulgaria could not take part in military action, if only because of the poor level of armament of the Bulgarian armed forces and the obvious rejection of military engagement by the population. As long as Yugoslavia was considered part of the German sphere of influence, such diplomatic advances by Bulgaria were not an issue for the German leadership. This was still true during the Bulgarian-German negotiations on accession to the Tripartite Pact, in which Berlin merely held out the prospect of territorial expansion to Bulgaria at Greece’s expense.56 Only after the coup in Belgrade did Hitler signal to the Bulgarian envoy in Berlin, Petăr Draganov, that the Macedonian question could now also become an issue.57

Bulgaria’s Entry into World War II in 1941 and its Role as “German Gendarme of the Balkans” Even though Bulgaria was not officially at war with any country after its accession to the Tripartite Pact, this step is rightly regarded as entry into World War II. On April 6, 1941, the Wehrmacht launched its offensives against Yugoslavia and Greece. Bulgaria was an important base for German troops in both campaigns. Even now, however, the Bulgarian government, unlike Hungary, had succeeded in becoming directly active as a military partner of the Axis powers. In the

53 Nikolaj Genčev, Vănšnata politika na bălgarija 1938–1941 (Sofia: Izdatelsvo Vektor, 1998), 149–152 and Makedonija. Istorija i političeska sădba. Tom III, ed. Petăr Petrov (Stara Zagora: Izdatelstvo Znanie, 1998), 7. 54 Hoppe, Bulgarien – Hitlers eigenwilliger Verbündeter, 97–100. 55 Sirkov, Vanšnata politika na bălgarija 1938–1941, 252 and Marshall Lee Miller, Bulgaria during the World War II (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975), 37. 56 Miller, Bulgaria during the World War II, 45. 57 ADAP, Serie D, Band XII/1, Doc.-No. 216, 306–307.

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end, the German Reich had not exerted any further pressure, as the German envoy in Sofia, Herbert von Richthofen, and the German ambassador in Ankara, Franz von Papen, had also advised against Bulgaria’s direct participation.58 Moreover, the German foreign secret service had already reported at the end of January that there was great reluctance among the Bulgarian population to participate in the war.59 In addition, there were concerns that an active participation of Bulgarian troops in the campaign against Yugoslavia, in Turkey, would be seen as a case of alliance of the Balkans. Only shortly before the looming capitulation of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria officially broke off diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia on April 15. On its own initiative, the Filov government offered the German High Command Bulgarian troop units to secure the hinterland in Macedonia and Western Thrace. In this way, it wanted to secure its claims to these areas, knowing that at least in Macedonia it was in competition with Italy’s expansionist interests. However, this was also due to domestic political pressure. The news that Ohrid, an important city for Bulgarian nationalism, had been occupied by Italian troops led to noticeable resentment among the country’s right-wing forces.60 Yet it was not until April 17, the day of the Yugoslav capitulation, that Berlin permitted the invasion of Bulgarian troops into the eastern part of the Yugoslav area of Skopje as well as into the Greek territories east of the river Strymon (Struma), including the Greek islands of Thasos and Samothrace. An exception was the Evros border strip on the Greek-Turkish border (Demotika area), which remained under German control in order to rule out possible complications between Bulgarian and Turkish border troops. Macedonia was divided between Italy and Bulgaria on April 25. Ohrid was eventually also assigned to Bulgaria. The German Empire also left the raw material-rich Lyuboten massif to Bulgaria, knowing that this would make it easier to gain access to the molybdenum ore deposits there. However, the Macedonian cities of Tetovo, Gostivar, Kićevo and Struga fell to Italy. In compensation, Bulgaria was also allowed to occupy the old Serbian region of Vranje-Pirot. Nevertheless, the division of Yugoslavia in the following years remained a permanent bone of contention between the occupying powers. This was also the case in Greece, where Bulgaria would have liked to occupy the cities of Thessaloniki (Bulgarian Solun), Florina (Bulgarian Lerin) and Edessa (Bulgarian Voden), but this was denied for the time being. The Reich officially regarded this occupation by Bulgarian troops as provisional and always pointed out that final territorial arrangements should only be

58 Karlsreiter, König Boris III. von Bulgarien, 251. 59 BA MA, Wi Ic 5,35, Stimmungsbericht January 21, 1941. 60 Hoppe, Bulgarien – Hitlers eigenwilliger Verbündeter, 121–122.

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made after the war. In April 1941, however, it received assurances from the Bulgarian government that German companies would be given preferential access to the raw material deposits, especially ore deposits, in the designated areas. The Bulgarian authorities adhered to this, but otherwise the Bulgarian government began to create facts.61 The occupied territories on the territory of Greece and Yugoslavia were unceremoniously treated as parts of the Bulgarian state by establishing provincial administrations and introducing Bulgarian legislation. In addition, a Bulgarian school system was developed, combined with extensive propaganda activities, in order to strengthen Bulgarian national feeling among the Slavic population there or to promote the development of such feeling.62 In 1943, a Bulgarian university was founded in Skopje. The plan for a second university in Ohrid was rejected for financial reasons. The Bulgarian State Youth Brannik and other state institutions also became active there, as did nationalist organizations such as the Ratnici, Otec Paisij and the Legionaries. However, the success of this commitment was very limited.63 Another important Bulgarian actor was the Bulgarian Orthodox Exarchate, which established its own eparchies in the occupied Macedonian and Thracian territories. However, their influence also remained limited, not least because of a considerable shortage of priests. The consequences of Bulgarian nationality policy were more serious, especially after a new Bulgarian citizenship law was introduced in the occupied territories in June 1942. The Bulgarian policy aimed at removing all “foreign elements” from the public and economic life of the “new territories”.64 This policy inevitably had to lead to friction with the Axis powers. Similar to the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska), which was established in 1941, Bulgaria also began early with targeted deportations and expulsions, especially of the Serbian population. This affected well over 120,000 Serbs who were deported to the German occupied territory of Serbia. Further tens of thousands were expelled to the Italian occupied territory

61 Kalogrias, Makedonien 1941–1944, 95–96. 62 Vanče Stojčev, Bugarskot okupaciski sistem vo Makedonija 1941–1944 (Skopje: Grigor Prličev, 1996), 183 and Rastislav Terzioski, Denacionalizatorskata dejnost na bugarskite kulturno-prosvetni institucii vo makedonija (skopska i bitolska okupaciona oblast) 1941–1944 (Skopje: Institut za nacionalna istorija, 1974), 56–58. See also: Ivan Chadžijski, Vtoroto bălgarsko upravlenie văv Vardarska Makedonija (april 1941–septemvri 1944) (Dupnica: Edition Valentin Bokov-Art Media pljus, 2016). 63 Ģorģi Malkovski, Profaštičkite i kolaboracionističkite organizacii i grupi vo makedonija 1941–1944 (Skopje: Institut za Nacionalna Istorija, 1995), 58–59 and 63–65 and Stojčev, Bugarskot okupaciski sistem, 91–94. 64 Poppetrov, Flucht aus der Demokratie, 399.

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in the western part of occupied Yugoslavia.65 The latter additionally burdened the very cold Italian-Bulgarian relationship, as both competed for influence in Macedonia. Although a semblance of a harmonious alliance was maintained to the outside world, this was hardly more than superficial. From a report of the delegated German training staff at the Bulgarian High Command, for example, it was reported to the Oberkommando des Heeres in Berlin on August 3, 1942, that the Bulgarian population was clearly averse to Italy and that all Bulgarian officers with whom the training staff had been in contact spoke rather contemptuously of the Italian ally.66 No less repressive was Bulgaria’s presence in the occupied Greek territories, which it officially annexed on October 9, 1942 as the new Belomorije province. There, the repressive Bulgarianization policy towards the Greek population caused tens of thousands of deaths. In the first five months of Bulgarian rule in Western Thrace alone, at least 25,000–30,000 people fled in the direction of the German and Italian occupied territories.67 In 2008, the historian Vaïos Kalogrias described the Bulgarian occupation of Western Thrace in his dissertation as one of the “most terrible occupation regimes in South-Eastern Europe during World War II”.68 Even a German situation report described the Bulgarian rule there as “a regiment of terror that can only be described in Balkan terms”.69 The fact that this led to the first Greek uprising a short time later did not arouse enthusiasm in Berlin and Rome. In the course of the war, particularly in view of Italy’s increasing weakness or eventual withdrawal in September 1943, Bulgaria was nevertheless granted additional territories to occupy. The Wehrmacht was happy to have any unit it could draw from the Balkans to other fronts, but this became increasingly difficult in view of the longstanding local resistance of nationalist or Communist partisans. The German Reich needed a gendarme to provide security in the conquered territories of Yugoslavia and Greece and to guarantee the undisturbed exploitation of the raw materials necessary for war there. For the Bulgarian

65 Elisabeth Barker, Macedonia its Place in Balkan Power Politics (London: Royal Institut of International Affairs, 1950), 79. 66 BA MA, RH 31/II/ 1, German training staff at the Royal Bulgarian High Command May 15, 1941–February 1, 1944, Report from the German training staff in Sofia to the Oberkommando des Heeres in Berlin, August 3, 1942. 67 Rainer Eckert, Vom “Fall Marita” zur “wirtschaftlichen Sonderaktion”. Die deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Griechenland vom 6. April 1941 bis zur Kriegswende im Februar/März 1943 (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 1992), 72. 68 Vaïos Kalogrias, Makedonien 1941–1944. Okkupation, Widerstand, Kollaboration (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2008), 96. 69 Hoppe, Bulgarien – Hitlers eigenwilliger Verbündeter, 126.

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government, this offered the chance to achieve perhaps the national maximum program of a Greater Bulgaria as a regional hegemonic power after all. At the beginning of July 1943, Bulgarian troops took over the military protection of the Greek Central Macedonia, with the exception of the port city Thessaloniki and the peninsulas of Chalkidiki. However, the direct administration remained in German hands. Bulgaria’s condition was that all Greek police forces were to be withdrawn or disarmed in these areas.70 In addition to the deployment of Bulgarian troops, volunteers from local Slavic collaborators called Ochrana (defense) had been recruited in the Italian occupied territory in Greece since March 1943. Some of them were former IMRO supporters. These collaborators, most of whom came from the Kastoria region, used to fight Greek partisan units. The Ochrana militias, which numbered some 2,000–3,000 men, advocated the long-term annexation of the Central Macedonian region to the Bulgarian Tsarist Empire.71 To an even greater extent, Bulgaria was assigned the role of gendarme in Serbia. In January 1942, an assembled Bulgarian support corps of over 20,000 soldiers took over security duties in central Serbia (Niš, Leskovac, Kruševac counties, Zaječar and the Morava region). This enabled the Wehrmacht to withdraw an infantry division to the Eastern front. Here too, Bulgarian troops were placed under the control of the German occupying forces. The occupation administration also remained in German hands.72 Until mid-1943, the Bulgarian support mission was extended further and further into western and northern Serbia to replace German troops. As a result, Bulgaria became the most important military occupying power in Serbia with about 31,000 soldiers. In view of strong anti-Bulgarian resentment in Serbia, however, the deployment of Bulgarian military personnel probably contributed to the fact that the partisan movement there became even more popular. For the Bulgarian leadership, these support operations primarily had advantages. It was able to increase its weight for a later reorganization of the former Yugoslav territories. Another advantage was that it strengthened its position by not actively participating in the German-Soviet war. Unlike the other German allies, Bulgaria managed to avoid direct military participation in Operation Barbarossa. Apart from a few minor clashes of Bulgarian ships with the Soviet Navy, active participation was limited to the dispatch of some

70 Kalogrias, Makedonien 1941–1944, 111–112. 71 Ibid., 117–127. For the Ohrana see also Dobrin Mičev, Bălgarskoto nacionalna delo v jugozapadna Makedonija (1941–1944 g.). Promacedonia, accessed April 19, 2020, http://www.proma cedonia.org/mpr/ohrana.html. 72 Boro Mitrovski et al., Das bulgarische Heer in Jugoslawien 1941–1945 (Belgrade: Medjunarodna politika, 1971), 52–63.

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observing officers and a Bulgarian ambulance train to support the Wehrmacht in the Soviet Union in 1942.73 The Bulgarian government also prevented the establishment of a volunteer legion similar to the Spanish Blue Division or the French Légion des volontaires français contre le bolchévisme. According to the Bulgarian newspaper Trud, some 1,500 volunteers from right-wing organizations are said to have registered with the German legation in Sofia for deployment on the Eastern front.74 Bulgaria had an exceptional position among the collaborating states on the side of the Axis powers. Even after the German invasion of the Soviet Union began, the Soviet legation in Sofia remained in place. The Bulgarian-Soviet exchange of goods also continued at a low level via Turkey.75 To this day, it is not conclusively clear why the Reich allowed this to happen. The argument that the Bulgarian population was too Russophile to be able to use the Bulgarian army against the Soviet Union cannot have been decisive. Bulgarian and Russian troops had already clashed during World War I in 1916/17. It is probable, however, that an advantage was seen in maintaining a direct channel of communication with the Soviet legation in Sofia with the most important opponent of the war. To what extent this possibility had been used and played a role has not yet been sufficiently explored. The non-participation in the war against the Soviet Union, with simultaneous territorial gains at the expense of Greece and Yugoslavia in 1941/42, probably brought the tsarist regime of Boris III its highest popularity since 1935. A contributory factor was also the fact that Bulgarian troops were not involved in battles with the British and American armed forces, although Bulgaria, following the German declaration of war on the USA on December 11, 1941, like other members of the Tripartite Pact, now declared war on the USA and Great Britain. This certainly contributed to the fact that it was not until 1943 that tangible armed resistance was formed in Bulgaria itself. In addition, in 1943/44 the Western Allies launched ever larger bomb attacks against Bulgarian cities, against which the weak Bulgarian air defense and air force could not prevent.76

73 Compare Oleg Beyda, “Wehrmacht Eastern Tours’: Bulgarian Officers on the German-Soviet Front, 1941–1942,” The Journal of Slavic Military Studies 33,1 (2020): 136–161. 74 Georgi Markov, Zar Boris III: Po-dobre čeren chljab, otkolkoto černi zabradki. bg-Voice.com, February 6, 2014, accessed April 19, 2020, https://bg-voice.com/po-dobre_cheren_hlyab_ otkolkoto_cherni_zabradki/. 75 BA MA, Wi IC 5,23, Report of the German economic officer in Sofia, December 31, 1941. 76 Marin Kalonkin, Bălgarija văv vtorata svetovhna vojna 1939–1945 godina (Sofia: AskoniIzdatelstvo, 2010), 90–93.

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Domestic Political and Economic Development 1941–1943 As mentioned above, the tsarist regime initially benefited from the fact that Bulgaria was able to stay out of direct combat and was able to expand its territory by a third in 1940/41 without direct involvement in the war. The fact that there was no conflict with Turkey further reassured the public. The right-wing forces recorded a noticeable increase. For example, the alliance of national legionnaires under Ivan Dočev increased from just under 10,000 members in 1934 to about 75,000 at the beginning of 1942. The bourgeois-liberal forces saw themselves marginalized for the time being. The Communists were condemned to keep quiet as long as the Stalinist Soviet Union was still formally allied with the Reich through the mutual friendship pact. After the war, the opposition journalist in exile Wolfgang Bretholz, who before 1933 had headed the domestic affairs section of the Berliner Tageblatt and after 1933 had lived in Romania, Bulgaria and finally Turkey via various exile stations during the war, expressed himself retrospectively about the mood among the Bulgarian population in 1941: We were all intoxicated by the idea that for the first time in history we were being granted the justice we had long demanded in vain. Certainly, at times something like a guilty conscience stirred in us because we had not fought and conquered our new territories but had received them as a gift, something like an eerie feeling that one day there might be a cruel awakening from the beautiful dream. But basically, we were all, from the most extreme nationalists to the communists, satisfied with the successes that Hitler’s ‘New Order’ had brought us in the Balkans.77

Even in view of this comparatively broad consensus, Boris III continued to take care to maintain the best possible balance of domestic political power. Although the influence of the political right continued to increase, none of the important leaders in the right-wing camp, such as Aleksandăr Cankov, Ivan Dočev or General Lukov, were appointed to public office. Interior Minister Petăr Gabrowski remained an exception. Nor were any of the new mass organizations oriented towards Fascist models, such as Brannik, developed to the point where they could have become a domestic power factor. A naturally important step was the invasion of the Axis powers and their allies by the USSR. Even though Bulgaria did not take part in the war and, as mentioned, maintained diplomatic relations with Moscow, the Bulgarian Communists began to organize active resistance in the summer of 1941. This was answered by the royal dictatorship with a repressive action against any form of 77 Wolfgang Bretholz, Ich sah sie stürzen (Vienna: Desch, 1955), 46.

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opposition. The “Law for the Protection of the Nation” was further tightened in September 1941, and in the following months employees suspected of being close to the Communists or other opposition forces were removed from the state administration on a large scale. In addition, a wave of repression against leftist circles began, with hundreds of arrests.78 An increasing number of political associations were banned. A much bigger problem developed for the royal dictatorship in the economy. After 1939/40, when more and more relevant trading partners had disappeared, the country had become largely economically dependent on the Reich. This also meant that Bulgaria had to orient itself more and more comprehensively to the economic needs of the German “partner”. This was accompanied by a transformation of the state economic policy along the lines of that of Italy and Nazi Germany. Thus, the “Law for Civil Mobilization” had already been enacted on May 4, 1940. A little later, a state foreign trade directorate was also set up.79 This enabled the state to intervene in economic life to a considerable extent. From then on, the government was also able to call on Bulgarian citizens between the ages of 16 and 70 to work in industry or agriculture. Wages and prices could now be regulated, and materials and raw materials essential to the war were subject to distribution by the state. However, these measures became increasingly necessary to meet the needs of the German war economy. Since 1939, the Reich had begun to enforce ever better trading conditions for German industry. Bulgaria had to enter into ever greater delivery commitments from year to year, while German compensation payments, for example in the form of agricultural machinery, were often considerably delayed. For the modernization of the Bulgarian armed forces alone, Germany supplied war material in large quantities, primarily Czechoslovak and French booty.80 As a result, Bulgaria’s economic room for maneuver became increasingly restricted during the war. This affected not only the access to raw materials and agricultural products but also the finally complete German access to the most important mines in Bulgarian-occupied Macedonia. The German historian Markus Wien rightly assesses Bulgaria as a German economic satellite

78 BA MA, RW 29/77, Status report from the German Consul in Sofia, September 30, 1941. 79 Otto Schulmeister, Werdende Großraumwirtschaft. Die Phasen ihrer Entwicklung in Südosteuropa (Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1943), 171–172. 80 The German Reich had been supporting the Bulgarian armed forces since the summer of 1940. This included special training courses in Germany, the dispatch of military advisers to Bulgaria and the establishment or expansion of the Bulgarian tank forces and air force. Popov, Žestoki Vremena, 155 and Björn Opfer-Klinger, “Die bulgarische Wiederaufrüstung 1923–1944,” Zeitschrift für Heereskunde 47 (2003): 10–16.

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for the period after 1940.81 This included the fact that the Bulgarian taxpayer had to pay considerable costs of the German military mission against Greece. In addition to the rapidly rising costs of armament, Bulgarian government spending in 1941 doubled compared to the previous year.82 Serious supply shortages soon became apparent in Bulgaria. These were accompanied by repeated crop failures due to severe drought, which in turn resulted in the emergency slaughter of livestock in 1942. In addition, the increasing conscription of Bulgarian soldiers from 1941 onwards caused a noticeable shortage of labor in several economic sectors. Despite this, the Bulgarian government agreed to repeatedly allow the Reich to recruit workers both in Bulgaria and in occupied Western Thrace and Macedonia.83 As early as November 1942, the Bulgarian Directorate of Civil Mobilization complained of growing bottlenecks in the supply of iron and steel. As a result, the efficiency of Bulgarian factories and mines was noticeably impaired. In the end, this in turn had a negative effect on German wishes, as Bulgarian production declined due to the shortage of raw materials.84 This made the German negotiators all the more harsh, as they took it for granted that all allies had to subordinate themselves to German needs in the fight for “final victory”. At the end of 1942, German authorities complained on the occasion of the protracted weeks of negotiations on a new German-Bulgarian trade treaty. Angered, they reported to Berlin that they felt that Bulgaria was pursuing the sole goal of maintaining stocks in order to ensure the supply of its own population under all circumstances, rather than making concessions to Nazi Germany.85 The growing deployment of Bulgarian troops in the occupied Greek and Yugoslav territories, but also the evacuations as a result of the increasing Allied bombing of Bulgarian cities, absorbed most of the available transportation capacity in 1943/ 44. Meanwhile, the food situation, but also the supply situation in many other areas, deteriorated more and more dramatically. Corruption and the black market spread noticeably. This certainly contributed to the fact that the Bulgarian government did not hinder Berlin’s request to resettle the small German minority, which 81 Wien, Markt und Modernisierung, 305–308. 82 Götz Aly, Hitlers Volksstaat. Raub, Rassenkrieg und nationaler Sozialismus (Frankfurt/Main: S. Fischer, 2005), 258–259. 83 BA MA, RW 29/86, Status report Wehrwirtschaftsoffizier (W. O.) Sofia June 4, 1941–February 28, 1942, W. O. Sofia status report August 31, 1941, RW 29/87, W. O. status report November 1, 1941–December 31, 1942, status report W. O. Sofia February 28, 1942, RW 29/77, report from the German economic officer October 31, 1942 and RW 29/80 war diary W. O., Sofia April 1–June 30, 1943, status report No. 21 W. O. Sofia April 30, 1943. 84 BA MA, RW 29/78, war diary W. O., Sofia October 1–December 31, 1942, entry dated November 12, 1942. 85 Ibid., entry dated November 30, 1942.

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had only been living in Bulgaria since the 1890s, as part of the “Heim ins Reich” campaign. The German population group, which numbered about 2,150 people, was deported to the new eastern territories in 1943. These conditions naturally strengthened the opposition in Bulgaria. Added to this was the growing armed resistance, initially in the occupied territories, but also in Bulgaria itself. This resistance was met with ever greater harshness and brutality, with close cooperation with the German military and secret service. Concentration and internment camps for tens of thousands of people were set up in the occupied Thracian and Yugoslav territories, but also in Bulgaria.86 The number of people who died in them in 1941–1944 is unknown. Pressure came initially from oppositional military circles. Officers who came to the Sveno structures of the 1930s and were partly in contact with the Soviet representation. When rumors of coup preparations were finally uncovered, Boris III had to lean more heavily on the German ally. On April 15, 1942, six out of ten ministerial posts were filled and the stationing of more German military in Bulgaria was accepted. One of the leading opposition generals, General d. R. Vladimir Zamov was executed for high treason on June 1, 1942. While there were less than 4,000 German soldiers on Bulgarian soil at the end of 1941, this number had risen to over 22,000 by the summer of 1944.87 However, this military presence did not prevent the slowly increasing Communist resistance; in fact, it probably encouraged it. Nevertheless, estimates of the extent of the Bulgarian partisan movement vary widely. In the 1960s, the Hungarian-Swiss military historian Péter Gosztony quoted a former Bulgarian general staff officer as saying that the Communist resistance was hardly noticeable. There were hardly more than 1,500–2,000 active Partisans.88 In contrast, socialist historiography about early 1944 spoke of 18,300 active Partisans and about 200,000 liaison officers and helpers, which can be considered to be greatly exaggerated.89 The German historian Oliver Schmitt put the figure for the summer of 1944 at about 10,000, but only in the last months before the coup did he attribute any noteworthy significance to them.90 It is undisputed that, by 1943 at the

86 Stojčev, Burgaskiot okupaciski sistem vo makedonija, 199 and 205–206. 87 Rumen Nikolov, “Njakoi aspekti na bălgarsko-germanskite voennoikonomičeski otnošenija prez perioda maj–dekemvri 1942 godina,” Voennoistoričeski Sbornik 4 (1986): 166. 88 Péter Gosztony, “Der Krieg zwischen Bulgarien und Deutschland 1944/45,” Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau 4 (1967): 25. 89 Eberhard Wolfgramm, “Bemerkungen zur bulgarischen Partisanenbewegung,” Jahrbuch für Geschichte der UdSSR und der volksdemokratischen Länder Europas 8 (1964): 516. 90 Oliver Jens Schmitt, Der Balkan im 20. Jahrhundert. Eine postimperiale Geschichte (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 2019), 155.

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latest, armed resistance had increased noticeably in the Bulgarian occupied territories, but also in Bulgaria itself. The Bulgarian army cooperated closely with the German military in fighting the partisans. German-Bulgarian special units were formed in areas with major partisan activities. In a German report in July 1943, it was stated that these so-called K-troops, made up of Bulgarian and German soldiers, but also local collaborators from the occupation areas themselves, were commissioned: The K-troops “have the task of systematically investigating the area in civilian clothes for the presence of gangs and to fight them down in the most ruthless way”. Radio communication is in place for cooperation with the police forces. After the “gangs” have been overwhelmed or defeated, these K-troops disappear after securing the enemy weapons, without having to bury the dead. KO expects this kind of action to have a strong psychological effect on the population and the “gangs”.91 Until the coup in September 1944, the armed resistance did not reach a level that could have been really dangerous for the Bulgarian government.

Collaboration through Participation in the Holocaust? The question of Bulgarian participation in the Holocaust is still a highly emotionally charged issue in Bulgaria today and still causes resentment with Northern Macedonia. To this day, the official account is that Bulgaria was forced to hand over the Jewish population of the Bulgarian occupied territories to the Reich due to excessive pressure and in view of the allegedly large German military presence in the country. The Jewish Bulgarians in Old Bulgaria, however, had been saved from the Holocaust by the tsar, the Bulgarian government and by protests from the Bulgarian population. Very similar to Germany, the Jewish religious community in Bulgaria formed a small minority of less than 1%. However, anti-Semitism in Bulgaria was only weakly developed and rather concentrated in social elites. There were no leading Jewish politicians, nor high-ranking Jewish civil servants or military officers.92

91 BA MA, RW 29/81, war diary W. O. Sofia July 1–September 30, 1943, memorandum Wehrwirtschaftsoffizier Sofia, July 15, 1943. 92 Benbassa and Rodrigue, Die Geschichte der sephardischen Juden, 157 and Jan Rychlík, “Zweierlei Politik gegenüber der Minderheit: Verfolgung und Rettung bulgarischer Juden 1940–1944,” in Solidarität und Hilfe für Juden während der NS-Zeit, ed. Wolfgang Benz and Juliane Wetzel, Regionalstudien 4 (Berlin: Metropol, 2004), 63.

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Anti-Semitism in public was first identified in the aforementioned violent riots by right-wing groups in Sofia in 1938. After Gabrovski was appointed head of the Ministry of the Interior in February 1940, the state began to pursue an increasingly openly anti-Semitic policy. It is difficult to assess in each individual case whether these measures were a consensus among the political elite of the tsarist dictatorship, a concession to the right-wing forces in the country, or a reaction to the growing influence of Nazi Germany. It is a fact that from January 1941, public discrimination against the Jewish population by the state authorities increased noticeably.93 At the beginning of 1942, several Jewish associations and organizations were banned and their property confiscated.94 Similar to the other triple power states, the financially strapped Bulgaria enriched itself with Jewish assets.95 At that time, the German Reich had decided on the final and systematic extermination of the Jewish population in the German sphere of power and that of the allies. The fact is that by June 1942 at the latest, the Foreign Office urged the Bulgarian government to agree to the deportation of all Bulgarian Jews.96 It is also certain that only two months later, the Bulgarian Ministry of the Interior set up a new sub-authority, the “Commissariat for Jewish Affairs”, with 160 employees, whose leadership was taken over by Alexandăr Belev.97 Corresponding sub-departments were set up in the “new areas”, for example in Skopje in September 1942. Also in the territories occupied by Bulgaria, Jews living there were now forced to exchange their papers for a new, differently colored Judenpass. While Jews had previously been defined as a religious group, there was now talk of Jewish “descent” and thus ethnic interpretation based on the German model.98 Jews were also not allowed to marry non-Jews.99 As far as the relevant files have been evaluated, there can be no question of resistance on the part of the Bulgarian state administration

93 Ana Luleva, “Die Zwangsarbeit in Bulgarien 1941–1944,” Hitlers Sklaven. Lebensgeschichtliche Analysen zur Zwangsarbeit im internationalen Vergleich, ed. Alexander von Plato et al. (Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2008), 172–173. See also Nedju Nedev, Car Boris III. Dvorezăt i tajnijat cabinet (Plovdiv: Izdatelstvo Kăšta Chermes, 2009), 372–380. 94 BA MA, RW 29/77, war diary appendices May 8, 1941–September 30, 1942 W. O. Sofia, status report No. 6, January 31, 1942. 95 Aly, Hitlers Volksstaat, 261. 96 Hans-Joachim Hoppe, “Bulgarien,” in Dimensionen des Völkermords: die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus, ed. Wolfgang Benz (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1991), 282. 97 Paul Mojzes, Balkan Genocides: Holocaust and Ethnic Cleansing in the Twentieth Century (Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), 102. 98 Chary, The Bulgarian Jews, 54–55. 99 Aleksandar Matkowski, A History of the Jews in Macedonia (Skopje: Macedonian Review Edition, 1982), 219.

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to the anti-Jewish measures. The conduct of Tsar Boris, who continued to maintain personal contacts with the Chief Rabbi of Sofia, can also be described at best as passive in the question of his government’s policy on Jews.100 The Italian literary scholar and cultural journalist Cristina Siccardi claims in her book about Tsarina Giovanna in 2001 that she made efforts to enable Bulgarian Jews to emigrate to Argentina by obtaining Italian passports, but does not cite any source evidence.101 The German envoy in Sofia, Adolf-Heinz Beckerle, reported to Berlin on December 14, 1942, that the Bulgarian authorities were generally less vigorous in their actions against the Jewish population. He attributed this to the fact that the Bulgarian population in general was rather unsympathetic to the “fight against Judaism”.102 On the other hand, on April 15, 1943 in a conversation with the most important leaders of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, Tsar Boris III said that the Jews represented a “historical problem” and that the “present world catastrophe” was due to their “speculative spirit”.103 In January 1943, the German government sent the deportation expert Theodor Dannecker to Sofia as “advisor” for the Bulgarian “Commissariat for Jewish Questions”.104 Together with Belev, in the following weeks the plan to initially deport the Jewish population from the Bulgarian-occupied territories to the German Generalgouvernement in Warsaw for “settlement” was worked out. All in all, they planned with an initial total of 20,000 Jews, even though Belev and his colleagues were aware that there were less than 12,000 Jews living in the “new Bulgarian” territories. The planned figure of 20,000 was to be filled with Jews from Old Bulgaria. In mid-February 1943, the Bulgarian government gave its approval. Shortly after the invasion of Bulgarian troops, all Jews had to register. Unlike other population groups, they were denied Bulgarian citizenship. One year later, all Jews had to mark their houses, apartments, shops and businesses with Stars of David as “Jewish”. From September 1942 onwards, Jews older than ten had to buy the yellow Star of David and wear it on their clothes.105 At first, the Bulgarian government finally deprived the Macedonian and Thracian Jews of their economic basis by imposing ever greater restrictions. The Bulgarian Ministry of

100 Miller, Bulgaria during the World War II, 104. 101 Siccardi, Giovanna di Savoia, 185–187. 102 Arakchiyska, Kann ein Mensch dabei untätig bleiben?, 34. 103 Ivkova, Rettung und Mord, 68. 104 Claudia Steur, Theodor Dannecker. Ein Funktionär der “Endlösung” (Essen: KlartextVerlag, 1996), 97. 105 Kristina Birri-Tomovska, Jews of Yugoslavia 1918–1941. A History of Macedonian Sephards (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 2012), 282 ff.

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Finance imposed a special tax on them amounting to 20 % of their property. A little later, all Jewish craft and trade shops were forcibly closed, Jewish businessmen were forced to sell their property to non-Jewish citizens and to deposit their assets in designated banks. Immediately afterwards, the Bulgarian authorities blocked these established accounts, which was tantamount to confiscating the deposits.106 During the night of March 3–4, 1943, the Bulgarian occupation authorities began preparations for the arrest of the Jewish population in occupied Thrace and their subsequent deportation to the Bulgarian Danube port of Lom.107 The deportation in Vardar-Macedonia was similar. On the night of March 10–11, the Bulgarian police, supported by members of the state-run Brannik Youth in Skopje, Bitola and Štip, sealed off the Jewish residential areas.108 Jews with Spanish, Italian or Albanian citizenship were deported. If not a few of them managed to escape, all interned Jews were transported to Treblinka between March 22–29.109 The Jews in the Bulgarian occupied Serbian territories suffered the same fate.110 In both occupation areas there were a few cases in which Bulgarians actively tried, sometimes with success, to save Jews from deportation.111 In addition, between March and August 1943, the deportation of about 48,000 Jews from Germanoccupied Thessaloniki took place via the Vardar railway. Although the Bulgarian government had handed over control of the railway in the “New Territories” to the

106 Aleksandar Matkovski, “The Destruction of Macedonian Jewry in 1943,” Yad Vashem Studies III (1959): 214–215. 107 Martin Gilbert, The Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust (New York: Routledge, 2002³), 150–151. 108 For the deportation procedures, see Ivan Stoilov Hadžijski, Sădbata na evrejskoto naselenie v Belomorska Trakija, Vardarska Makedonia i Jugozapadna Bălgarija prez 1941–1944 (Dupnica: Devora MarBi, 2004) and Deportiraneto na evreite ot Vardarska Makedonija, Belomorska Trakija i Pirot, mart 1943 g. Dokumenti ot bălgarskite archivi. Tom 1–2, ed. Nadja Danova and Rumen Avramov (Sofia: Obedineni Izdatelstvo, 2013) as well as excerpts of contemporary witness reports on the homepage of the Jewish community of Bitola http://www.jewishcommuni tybitola.mk/bitola/40-bitola/59-bitola.html?start=2, accessed April 19, 2020. 109 The Austrian registered association “Zentrum zur Erforschung und Dokumentation jüdischen Lebens in Ost- und Mitteleuropa” published a documentary film about the deportation of Macedonian Jews in 1943 on the basis of contemporary witnesses and testimonies on its platform Centropa (Bulgarien und der Holocaust): http://www.centropa.org/de/centropa-cinema /history-bulgarian-jewry-during-holocaust, accessed April 19, 2020. 110 Borbata na bălgarskija narod za zaštita i spasjavane na evreite v Bălgaria po vreme na vtorata svetovna vojna 1941–1944. Dokumenti, ed. David Koen et al. (Sofia: Izdatelstvo na Bălgarskata Akademija na Naukite, 1978), 203. 111 Arakchiyska, Kann ein Mensch dabei untätig bleiben?, 73–74 and 144–159.

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Reich in 1941, it indirectly supported the deportation of the northern Greek Jews by granting them a transit permit.112 Parallel to the deportation measures in the occupied territories, the Commissariat for Jewish Affairs also prepared the internment and deportation of several thousand Jews from Old Bulgaria. However, these were not carried out. Public protests that occurred in the country may have been one of the reasons for this.113 How widespread the rejection of the anti-Jewish measures since 1941 and the internment and deportations that took place among the population was has not yet been conclusively researched. To this day, however, it is firmly anchored in national collective memory that Bulgaria protected its Jewish population from extermination. It is a fact, however, that very soon after the end of the war, the vast majority of Jews from Bulgaria emigrated to Israel. It is to be assumed, however, that the turning point in the war, which began in 1943 to the disadvantage of the Axis powers, was a significant moment for the leadership of Tsar Boris III.

The Bulgarian Collaboration after the Death of Tsar Boris III until the Breakdown of Diplomatic Relations on September 5, 1944 Starting in the summer of 1943, the Bulgarian government gradually began to adopt a more cautious policy towards German influence. The setbacks in the North African and Soviet theaters of war suggested that the course of the war was about to change. Added to this were the growing supply shortages in Bulgaria itself, which increased domestic political pressure on the government. In addition, there were the noticeable Partisan activities, which were responded to with counter-terrorism, which in turn brought a growing number of people to the resistance. In the summer of 1943, Nazi Germany was in debt to Bulgaria to the extent of almost half a billion Reichsmarks in mutual clearing procedures. Whether this debt would ever be cleared became increasingly uncertain. As early as 1941, Bulgaria had accepted that the accumulated debts would be converted into German

112 On the deportation of the Jewish population of Thessaloniki see Georg Bossong, Die Sepharden. Geschichte und Kultur der spanischen Juden (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2008), 111 and Erhard Roy Wiehn, Juden in Thessaloniki (Konstanz: Hartung-Gorre, 2001), 29. 113 Arakchiyska, Kann ein Mensch dabei untätig bleiben?, 130–143.

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war bonds. If the German Reich lost the war, these war bonds would be worthless.114 The Bulgarian government was therefore less and less willing to accept further unilateral sales and urged that the German clearing debts be converted into goods. As a means of pressure, the Bulgarian government deliberately even delayed the transfer of German remittances to the Bulgarian National Bank, through which the employed workers of the Organization Todt in the economically important molybdenum mines in Macedonia were to be paid. As a result, thousands of workers had to be laid off in the mines and molybdenum mining came to a standstill.115 In the summer of 1943, the Germans were defeated at Kursk and Allied troops landed in southern Italy. The German Reich government increased the pressure on Bulgaria to become more militarily involved. Bulgaria should send troops to the Eastern Front. On June 3, 1943, Boris III met Hitler in Berchtesgaden, but refused to enter the war against the USSR. A little later Mussolini toppled and Italy changed fronts. At this point at the latest it must have been clear to the Bulgarian government representatives that Nazi Germany would lose the war. A deep cut was made when Boris III died on August 28, 1943 after a hike in the Rila Mountains. He was succeeded as new tsar by his son Simeon, who was only six years old. A provisional regency council was appointed, consisting of the late tsar’s brother Prince Cyril, Prime Minister Filov and War Minister Michov. The most important representative of the pro-German course, Minister of the Interior Gabrovski, was allowed to take over the office of Prime Minister for a few days, but was then dismissed by the Council of Regency. Although a new right-wing and pro-German minister of the interior, Ratnici Dočo Christov, succeeded him, he had much less political influence. In November 1943, a new government under Dobri Božilov was appointed. The regency council and the new government continued a distanced policy towards German wishes, but did not dare to show a clear willingness to change to the Allies. Instead, the Bulgarian leadership quickly lost its already low level of popular support in the face of major economic problems and the now vehement Allied bombing raids on Bulgarian cities. When Soviet troops approached Romania, the German government again urged Bulgaria to become more involved. As a concession, the Bulgarian general staff promoted more young, German-friendly officers. Soviet pressure to open consulates in Ruse and Burgas, however, led to the fall of the Božilov 114 Aly, Hitlers Volksstaat, 259. 115 BA MA, RW 29/81, war diary W. O. Sofia July 1–September 30, 1943, overview of the defense economy situation in Bulgaria and the activities of the German defense economic officer in Sofia in the 3rd quarter of 1942 and memorandum W. O. Sofia, September 30, 1943.

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government. In its place, the former Minister of Agriculture Ivan Bagrjanov was appointed new Prime Minister on June 1, 1944. Although he was not completely rejected by the left-wing opposition, he did not succeed in forming a coalition of bourgeois and left-wing forces. Three weeks later, the Bagryanov cabinet attempted to establish contact with the Western Allies regarding possible peace conditions. They, however, demanded an immediate break with the German Reich, the internment of all Germans in Bulgaria and the withdrawal from all occupied territories. The Western Allies did not want to promise military protection against an expected Soviet invasion.116 The Bulgarian government was unable to come to any real decision. Further attempts at secret negotiations did not produce any results. When Soviet troops finally advanced into Romania and there was a coup d’état in Bucharest on August 23, even the Bagryanov cabinet could no longer hold out. The cabinet under Constantine Muraviev, which followed on September 2, was short lived. On September 5, the USSR declared war on Bulgaria. One day later, the Muraviev government broke off relations with Nazi Germany. On September 8, an alliance of officers, Communists and other leftist forces staged a coup, while at the same time Soviet troops invaded Bulgaria. One day later the putschists declared war on Germany. In this way, the attempt to profit as much as possible from World War II as a headstrong partner in a pragmatic alliance with the German Reich sealed the fate of tsarist rule in Bulgaria. As a “gendarme in the Balkans”, the royal dictatorship had participated in the exploitation and oppression of the shattered Yugoslavia and Greece. More than 11,000 Jews had been handed over to certain death. In the summer of 1944, Bulgaria was an economically depressed and socially deeply torn country. The Bulgarian troops pushed the Wehrmacht out of Yugoslavia alongside the Soviet army, leaving almost 32,000 soldiers dead or wounded. To this day, many questions about the Bulgarian tsarist dictatorship and its collaboration with the Axis powers remain unanswered and await even more detailed studies.

116 Mitrovski, Das bulgarische Heer, 229–230.

Meinolf Arens and Katerina Kakasheva

War and Collaboration in Occupied Vardar Macedonia and West Banat 1941–1944 In recent years, the history of World War I and its consequences has aroused great attention in the historical disciplines in many European countries. In addition, there have been many public exhibitions and documentaries of all kinds on this subject that have reached large audiences.1 Again and again, different perspectives related to these historical events are compared and considered with regard to current history, as well as to the long-term consequences after a century. Many of the key points arising from the peace treaties of the victorious countries of the Entente powers in the period 1919–1923 made it soon clear that neither the balance of power nor the inner peace between the affected states and within their societies could be guaranteed. The open problems, in the first place the unresolved territorial conflicts, the central constitution of many countries based on the French model and the unresolved, or in many cases now even intensified ethnic conflicts in the years around 1930 offered a solid ground for totalitarian extreme right ideological agendas and those were very cruel and violence based.2 If a treaty is judged on what it produces, then the Treaty of Versailles was a failure.3 In South-Eastern Europe, the establishment of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croatians and Slovenians (or Kingdom SCS) in 1918, which in 1929 became the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, represented a new regional power, based on the concept of uniting all southern Slavs of South-Eastern Europe in one country. It must be taken into account that including all these groups in the newly founded state required considerable territorial claims as well, such as creating a land bridge through Burgenland between Czechoslovakia and the Kingdom SCS – which failed at the peace conference in 1919/1920.4 The idea of uniting all southern

1 Arnold Suppan, The Imperialist Peace Order in Central Europe, St. Germain and Trianon 1919–1920 (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Science Press, 2019). 2 Arnold Suppan, Hitler – Beneš – Tito. Konflikt, Krieg und Völkermord in Ostmittel- und Südosteuropa (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2017). See also Jens Oliver Schmitt, Der Balkan im 20. Jahrhundert. Eine postimperiale Geschichte (Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 2019). 3 Cf. the Bulgarian case: Björn Opfer-Klinger, Der Friedensvertrag mit Bulgarien in Neuilly-surSeine am 27. November 1919 (Hannover: Friedrich Verlag/Ernst Klett Verlag, 2019), 291–307. 4 Suppan, The Imperialist Peace Order in Central Europe, 68–79, 102–114. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671186-010

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Slavs, which had been initiated by small intellectual circles in many variations since the 19th century, was now implemented in a form that proved to be highly conflictual. The military, bureaucratic and diplomatic elites of the Kingdom of Serbia, victorious in World War I, occupied most of the key positions in the newly founded state. Representatives of the Bosniaks, Montenegrins, Macedonians and Bulgarians who were not recognized or no longer recognized as independent southern Slavic nations were completely underrepresented. However, neither before 1918, nor in the interwar period could one of the numerous and often contradictory national movements be clearly established or gain support by large parts of the population within these mentioned groups.5 In addition to the three-level “hierarchy” within the southern Slavs, the politically dominant Serbians, the subordinate Slovenians and Croats, and not fully recognized Macedonians, Bosniaks and Montenegrins, large groups of non-Slavs lived in the newly founded state. The following groups represented around onefifth of the total population in Yugoslavia: Albanians, Germans, Hungarians, Romanians, Vlachs, Jews, Italians, Slovaks, Czechs, Turks, Ruthenians and Roma. In some regions of the country such as in Kosovo, or in the former Hungarian regions Banat or Bačka, some groups represented as a single group or together a majority in relation to the southern Slavs. Until 1941, there was basically no formulated place for them and no permanent right for them to exist as a separate group in the concept of Yugoslavia. In the interwar period, the discourse about their future in Belgrade’s decision-making centers varied between assimilation, marginalization, tolerance and resettlement. In many of these regions, Belgrade pursued an active settlement and economic policy that structurally can be assessed as a colonial policy.6 The members of the non-Slavic groups, i. e. the indigenous southern Slavic nationalities (e. g. Macedonians and Bosnians) were consciously displaced from economic and social life in cities and villages. They faced expropriation, association bans, prohibitive language policies in schools and public areas as well as the settlement of Serbs who were provided with financial support. Many of these groups such as the Germans, Italians, Hungarians, Albanians, Romanians, Turks, Czechs and Slovaks had a “motherland” that was involved with their co-nationals in

5 This was only changed after 1944 through the forcible reorganization of Yugoslavia under the Communist model with the establishment of six separate states and two autonomous regions whose competencies were further formulated by the Constitution in 1974. Schmitt, Der Balkan im 20. Jahrhundert, 150–157, 170–174, 180–185; Nada Boškovska, Das jugoslawische Makedonien 1918–1941. Eine Randregion zwischen Repression und Integration (Cologne/Weimar/ Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2009). 6 Boškovska, Das jugoslawische Makedonien 1918–1941, 38–164.

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Yugoslavia at different levels and was sometimes contacted by minority representatives and on a case-by-case basis, by the government in Belgrade, such as for the planned relocation projects of Albanians and Turks to Turkey in 1934. Hardly any actions were taken from the side of the state to gain the loyalty of these groups. In fact, the discriminatory language and school regulations, as well as the nationally motivated agrarian reform in the years 1919–1921 led to latent distancing from and opposition to the state, especially among the Germans, Italians, Romanians, Hungarians and Albanians. For the first time since late Antiquity, after 1918 the Kingdom SCS united an area with differently shaped cultural landscapes between the Alps and the gates to Thessaloniki. On one side there were the post-Ottoman regions such as Macedonia and Kosovo that had been liberated by its direct influence only a few years earlier, and on the other side the sub-regions of Inner Austria that were mostly inhabited by Slovenians and some Germans (e. g. Carniola and Lower Styria) which until 1866 were part of German Confederation and whose representatives were sent to the Paulskirche in Frankfurt during the revolution in 1848–1849. These extremely different political, mental, cultural, but also economic and social backgrounds were hardly possible to maintain within the state, therefore considerable tensions were to be expected. An attempt was made to keep the society as a whole, through creating a common umbrella, a politically and culturally founded Yugoslavism, that was supposed to at least merge all the southern Slavic speaking population within the state. Apart from intellectuals and a small group of young, urban southern Slavs, this Belgrade-financed movement did not reach large parts of the population. The very weak resistance to the invasion of Germans, Italians, Hungarians and Bulgarians in April 1941 that was in many cases, if not everywhere, received with enthusiasm, satisfaction or at least indifference, can also be understood as a visible sign of the failure of the overall concept of the state. From an historic perspective, there were very few regions in the former Yugoslavia with such different characteristics as Macedonia and Banat. Yet the developments in both regions during World War II and the immediate post-war period offer a solid ground for a comparative analysis with regard to thematic collaboration. The arbitrary, externally determined composition of borders in South-Eastern Europe also continued to exist in these two cases.7

7 Michael Schwartz, Ethnische “Säuberungen” in der Moderne. Globale Wechselwirkungen nationalistischer und rassistischer Gewaltpolitik im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2013).

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Vardar Macedonia Vardar Macedonia, which had been part of the Ottoman Empire since the late 14th century until 1912, fell to the Kingdom SCS after World War I. In the meantime, most of the region was under Bulgarian occupation and annexed in the period 1912–1913/1915–1918. The Bulgarian national movement (Bulgarian Renaissance), which had slowly developed since the 1830s, consisted of a large number of small and ideologically highly divided circles. The majority were intellectuals; often they were Orthodox clerics, monks or sons of priests who established a set of Bulgarian speaking schools of all kinds in the entire southern Slavic settlement area, on the line south of Niš via Skopje to Thessaloniki, Edirne, Istanbul and then on the Black Sea to Russian Odessa. At the same time, a formation of violent groups undertook guerilla actions against the Ottoman rulers and established themselves as the Inner Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) in 1893. In March 1878, the preliminary Treaty of San Stefano between the victorious Russia and the Ottoman Empire foresaw the formation of a Greater Bulgaria from the Black Sea to the Aegean Sea and almost to the Adriatic Sea. Although this treaty has never been implemented, it was considered the guiding principle and vision of almost the entire Bulgarian political spectrum until the end of 1940s and again after 1989.8 The interconnections between the entire Macedonian and Thrace regions and Bulgaria, which was formed in 1878, has another central aspect. After 1878, there were several large waves of displaced and refugee southern Slavs to Bulgaria. They were drives by the Ottomans, and after 1912 also by Greeks and Serbs, that affected several hundred thousand people in the period 1878–1945. It was very difficult to integrate them in the economically weak Bulgarian state. They formed an important basis for the newly established IMRO in the 1919 that was considered a national Bulgarian terrorist organization which in the period 1919–1934 and again in 1941 proceeded with partisan warfare and attacks against the Yugoslavian state organs, which in turn terrorized the civilian population. Belgrade neither defined the people from this region as Bulgarians, nor as a separate nation, Macedonians, but classified them as southern Serbs.9 In

8 Björn Opfer-Klinger, Im Schatten des Krieges. Besatzung oder Anschluss – Befreiung oder Unterdrückung? Eine komparative Untersuchung über die bulgarische Herrschaft in Vardar Makedonien 1915–1918 und 1941–1944 (Münster: LIT-Verlag, 2005). 9 On Serbianization and colonial politics in interwar period cf. Boškovska, Das jugoslawische Makedonien, 208–228; Stefan Troebst, Das makedonische Jahrhundert: Von den Anfängen der

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addition, the radical right wing of IMRO around Ivan Mihajlov, which the German Reich built up in 1943–1944 as an option for the Great Macedonia in the new restructuring of Europe after World War II and against the Bulgarian efforts to pull out of the war from the side of Berlin, had quite a small following.10 Macedonia was largely impoverished due to the latent internal violence and the long wars between 1912–1918. Many of the middle and upper classes, Turks, Jews and Aromanians had fled, been killed or expelled. The traditional economic orientation of Bitola, Prilep or Strumica to the west, south and southeast, i.e. to Thessaloniki, Plovdiv, Istanbul and Edirne, had stopped completely after 1912. The same applied to the contacts in the Greek and southern Slavic Christian educational centers in these urban areas of South-Eastern Europe. Serbia and the growing metropolis of Belgrade did not play an essential role either economically or culturally for the people in Macedonia until 1912.11 From the side of the German Empire and Italy in the short, planned war against Yugoslavia and Greece, for its participation, Bulgaria was promised occupation and the de facto annexation of most part of Vardar Macedonia, parts of southern Serbia around Pirot and Vranje and further parts of Aegean Macedonia, however without Thessaloniki and a large part of the Greek-Thrace region. Without any significant battle, the Bulgarian Army was able to occupy these regions in April 1941. The attitude of the population in the occupied areas of Yugoslavia could be defined as indifferent, observant and in some cities partly welcoming. In Aegean Macedonia, there was a little support from the Slavic speaking Macedonians and Bulgarians. In Vardar Macedonia, there was no group among the vehement and active opponents of Bulgaria that significantly stood up for the reconstruction of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and felt solidarity for the Četniks, the Serbian nationalists who were under the commando of Draža Mihailović. The small Communist party, whose leader Dimitar Vlahov had obtained the first official recognition of a Macedonian nation by the Comintern in Moscow in 1934, emphasized its independence within the Communist movement of Josip Broz Tito. The Bulgarian side, which could count on the support of part of the population, lost this opportunity largely through a brutal occupation policy based on the economic exploitation and by treating the people in the occupied areas

nationalrevolutionären Bewegung zum Abkommen von Ohrid 1893–2001 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2007), 45–59. 10 Stefan Troebst, “Die Innere Makedonische Revolutionäre Organisation als Gewaltakteur 1893–1951,” in Massengewalt in Südosteuropa im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Motive, Abläufe, Auswirkungen, eds. Meinolf Arens and Martina Bitunjac (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2021), 59–72. 11 Schmitt, Der Balkan im 20. Jahrhundert, 15–34.

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Division of Yugoslavia.

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as second-class citizens.12 A key event in these years for the complex BulgarianMacedonian relations was the history of the persecution of the Jews in Bulgaria.

The History of the Jews in Macedonia with Regard to Bulgarian-Macedonian Relations The complex relations between Macedonia and Bulgaria with regard to World War II also has its roots in the one of the cruelest periods in human history, which affected the Jews in Macedonia, as well. This tragic event continues to have a huge impact and repercussions in the current history while both neighboring countries try to build good relations and to overcome the disputes related to their history. The anti-Semitism issue in the Kingdom SCS started to spread immediately after its founding in 1918. The young Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian bourgeoisie wanted to grab the largest capital, but the Jewish community was considered to be a major obstacle. The anti-Semitic ideas coming from Germany and Austria through Croatia spread throughout Yugoslavia. The anti-Jewish legislation in prewar Yugoslavia had support from the print media. One of the first texts with racist and anti-Jewish content in was published in the daily newspaper “Balkan” in 1938.13 At the beginning of October 1940, the Belgrade newspaper “Vreme” started a campaign against the Jews and many articles with anti-Jewish content were published daily.14 In this way, anti-Semitism was widely spread throughout the territory of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In 1940, the Jews in Vardar Macedonia were mostly situated in the bigger cities: in Bitola there were 737 families with 3,246 members, in Štip 140 families with 550 members and in Skopje 1,181 families with 3,795 members. In the occupation period, the number of Jews in Macedonia (Vardar Region) reached around 8,000 from those escaping the Germans, including those from Belgrade.15 The invasion of Yugoslavia and the April War was a German-led attack on the Kingdom of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers in April 1941. As was previously

12 Opfer-Klinger, Im Schatten des Krieges, 188–306. 13 Martin Trenevski, Holocaust of the Macedonian Jews. Crime that Should Never be Forgotten (Skopje: Nampress, 2018), 14–17. 14 Ženi Lebl, Plima i Slom. Od istorijata na Evreite vo Vardarska Makedonija (Skopje: Holocaust Fund for the Jews from Macedonia, 2013), 293. 15 Jamila-Andjela Kolonomos, The Resistance Movement and the Jews from Macedonia (Skopje: Holocaust Fund for the Jews from Macedonia, 2013), 9.

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agreed, the Germans, Italians and Bulgarians divided Vardar Macedonia. The Bulgarian Army occupied most of the territory of Macedonia, the western areas of Tetovo, Gostivar and Debar with the surrounding villages and Albania were occupied by the Italians and Aegean Macedonia was occupied by the Germans. The Bulgarian government attempted to show that the occupation of Macedonia was a returning of its national territory to “Mother Bulgaria”. Apart from administrative-political measures, they took immediate action to deny the existence of the Macedonian nationality. In the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the educational system had not been very well established in the previous years, so in the period 1941–1942 Bulgaria opened around 800 primary schools, 180 middle schools, 17 high schools and in 1943–1944 a new university. The educational institution had one purpose: to prove that Macedonia is a Bulgarian state and that Macedonians are Bulgarians.16 This has not significantly changed since and was especially emphasized after the declaration of the independence of Macedonia in 1991. The leading body of the Communist party urged all people to come together against the Germans and their allies. Although at the beginning people were not fully decided whether they should join the Bulgarian or Yugoslavian resistance against the occupation, they finally decided to join the Yugoslavian. This would be a very important decision in the fight for an independent Macedonia at the later stage of the war,17 which was when the resistance movement gained its importance. The time period from occupation until the formation of the resistance was very short, so there was no possibility to develop an anti-Semitic atmosphere among the Macedonians, and they all were united against the occupation. The strongest feeling among all nationalities in Macedonia was for a recognized, independent state and was the driving force in the resistance against the occupation. On January 21, 1941, the Law for Protection of the Nation was adopted, which aimed to protect the Bulgarian nation from the Jews, who were considered enemies of the state. Anti-Jewish laws and other acts by the Bulgarian Fascists clearly show the evolution of the Bulgarian attitude towards the destruction of the Jews in the Bulgarian Kingdom, economically and politically, with the final goal of physically destroying them.18 As a part of the agreement and implementation of their duties, Bulgarian authorities established a Commissar for Jewish Affairs in

16 Lebl, Plima i Slom, 300, and Aleksandar Stojanovski, Ivan Katardziev, Dancho Zografski and Mihailo Apostolski, Istorija na makedonskiot narod (Skopje: Makedonska Kniga – Kultura Misla – Nasha kniga, 1988), 315. 17 Kolonomos, The Resistance Movement and the Jews from Macedonia, 11–13. 18 Trenevski, Holocaust of the Macedonian Jews, 30–33.

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Bulgaria in August 1942 and a special fund from the financial means of the Jewish municipalities.19 Negotiations related to the surrender of the Macedonian Jews were initiated by the German Ambassador in Sofia, Adolf Heinz Bekerle, and the Bulgarian Minister of Interior, Petar Gabrovski. Later, Theodor Dannecker, a former German Consul General in Skopje who was appointed as a special envoy for Jewish affairs in the German Embassy in Sofia, succeeded to convince the Bulgarian allies to surrender 20,000 Jews from the newly liberated territories.20 They knew, however, that on the territory of Macedonia there were around 7,800 Jews and around 4,200 in Bulgarian occupied northern Greece,21 meaning that there were an additional 8,000 Jews anticipated from “Old Bulgaria”, but were not involved at the later stage of the war in 1943 when the Axis powers started to lose their position. The darkest day in the Macedonian Jews’ history is March 11, 1943. The camp Skopje Monopole where the Jews from Skopje, Bitola and Štip were gathered before their transportation to Treblinka, is witness to a great tragedy, in which 98 % of the Macedonian Jews lost their lives. History notes the dates March 22, 25 and 29, 1943 when the Macedonian Jews were deported to Treblinka in Poland. According to the sources, it was confirmed that 7,144 Macedonian Jews were deported and murdered in the German concentration camp Treblinka, which is 98 % of the Jews who lived in Macedonia. Based on research by the World Jewish Congress, it was stated that no other Jewish community in Europe suffered such a large loss and amount of destruction as the Jewish community in Macedonia.22 The Jews whose lives were saved by the Bulgarian authorities were doctors, pharmacists and other relevant categories considered important during the war. Additionally, those who were already in prison for their activities against the occupation avoided the bitter destiny of their families and friends. Very few Jews managed to escape the camp Skopje Monopole and many of them joined the Partisans in the resistance movement.

19 Viktor Gaber, Feniksot na nepokorot (Skopje: Holocaust Fund for the Jews from Macedonia, 2019). 20 Trenevski, Holocaust of the Macedonian Jews, 20 f. 21 On the history of Greece, see: Ioannis Zelepos, Kleine Geschichte Griechenlands. Von der Staatsgründung bis heute (Munich: C.H. Beck Verlag, 2017); Hagen Fleischer, Im Kreuzschatten der Mächte. Griechenland 1941–1945. Okkupation, Resistance, Kollaboration (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 1986). 22 Gaber, Feniksot na nepokorot, 41.

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Because of their solidarity in the resistance movement, Jews are represented in the official documents of the regional Committee of Communist Party of Yugoslavia for Macedonia before the occupation, during the war and in the attempt to save them from deportation. Due to the weak organization and internal conflicts, the Macedonian Communists were not able to organize an efficient action to protect the Jews. In August 1944 with the Anti-Fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia, the Jews who survived received assurance that Macedonia is their country as well.23 Bulgaria has been defined as “part murderer, part persecutor, part savior” of the Jews in World War II by the history professor Michael Bernbaum.24 The Bulgarian argument that it was the only country in Europe who opposed Hitler with regard to deportation of the Jews from their territory can be easily rejected, not only because the Macedonian Jews were deported by the Bulgarian authorities, but also when we consider the development of the historic events and the turning point that happened soon thereafter. There were not many Jews in the western part of Vardar Macedonia that was under Italian occupation. Those who lived in this region were not obliged to wear the Star of David, nor to mark their houses and shops. Based on historic evidence, there was no law or regulation issued by the Italian occupying powers with anti-Jewish content. If there were arrests, they were due to participation in the resistance movement or because they were Communists.25 The Jews from Aegean Macedonia were strongly affected by the Bulgarian and German occupation. During World War II, 4,200 Jews from Thrace were deported to Treblinka, and from Thessaloniki, which represented the best established Jewish community in the Balkan area, around 45,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz, or 94% of the Thessaloniki Jews.26 The Law on Denationalization from 2000 restituted the property of the Jews from Macedonia who left their properties after deportation. Funds of the Holocaust fund of Jews in Macedonia are intended for the construction of the Holocaust Memorial Center in Skopje. It was opened on March 10, 2009, 68 years after the deportation of the Macedonian Jews to the Treblinka extermination camp and is located in the former Jewish Quarter in Skopje. Today, there are around 200 Jews living in North Macedonia, mostly based in Skopje.

23 24 25 26

Ibid., 52. Ibid., 47. Trenevski, Holocaust of the Macedonian Jews, 64–67. Gaber, Feniksot na nepokorot, 41.

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Bulgaria in World War II.

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Banat The military coup of the pro-British Serbian officers against the government of Yugoslavia in March 1941, which was directed against state’s accession to the Tripartite Pact, contributed to Berlin’s decision to attack the country and completely destroy it. In return for Hungary’s support for this plan, Hitler promised them the regions of Bačka and Baranya as well as Banat, which had historically been part of Hungary until 1918/1920. In contrast to the first two regions with relatively dominant Hungarian populations and which were annexed by Hungary in April 1941, the Banat was occupied by German troops and not transferred to Budapest. The reason behind this were the sharp protests from Romania, which also raised territorial claims to some parts of Banat. In order to prevent a military conflict between Hungary and Romania regarding this region, and also with regard to the imminent planned attack on the Soviet Union, Berlin placed the Banat region under German administration as a special zone within the Old Serbian occupation territory. The decision regarding territorial control of Banat was postponed by Hitler to the time of the expected final victory.27 Despite the ideologically motivated and economically failed agrarian reform in favor of the Serbian colonists and war veterans in 1919–1921 and an ineffective administration in 1941, the fruitful agricultural land of Banat was one of the most prosperous regions in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and of the entire Danube-Carpathian regions with a relatively large middle class, especially in the rural areas. The ethnic composition of the population in Banat was heterogonous. According to native language, the following groups were living in the region in 1931: around 270,000 Serbs, 120,000 Germans (Danube Swabians), 95,000 Hungarians, 62,000 Romanians, 18,000 Slovaks, 4,100 Jews, 3,500 Banat Bulgarians, 3,000 Croats and a few thousand Ukrainians, Russians, Roma and Czechs among others. The Serbian population was divided into two major, yet distinct groups: the vast majority were the so called imperial Serbs, i. e. those who had lived in the region before 1918, in the Habsburg monarchy, and the group of military colonists and civil servants from Old Serbia and Belgrade who came to the region after 1918 and held all important positions in the administration, military and police. Apart from the latter group, Belgrade had hardly won the loyalty from the population – this also applied to the Jewish population, and therefore the majority of the population hoped for an improvement in their living

27 Ekkehard Völkl, Der Westbanat 1941–1944. Die deutsche, die ungarische und andere Volksgruppen (Munich: Trofenik Verlag, 1991); Mariana Hausleitner, Die Donauschwaben 1868–1948. Ihre Rolle im rumänischen Banat (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2014).

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conditions in April 1941, or at least at no further degradation. Romanians, Slovaks, Czechs and imperial Serbs saw in the German occupation at least the lesser evil, compared to a possible takeover by Hungary, because of the fear of rigorous Magyarization measures. The German occupation allowed them to have schools in their native language for the entire period until the autumn of 1944 and tolerated the practice of the various Christian denominations. Only the selectively accepted or real misconduct against the orders of the occupation authorities from the side of the clergy or other church superiors was penalized.28 On the other hand, the Hungarian population and the pro-Hungarian Banat Bulgarians were extremely dissatisfied with the German occupation because they had expected annexation to Hungary. The arbitrary demarcation of the Tisza separating the dominant Hungarian towns and villages was seen as a temporary solution. The Hungarians in Banat were financially supported by Budapest in the period 1941–1944 as far as possible and also ideologically “coached”. A series of conflicts followed between the occupation authorities and the representatives of the Hungarian population, especially between the association of the Danube Swabians, which had been obeying Nazi policy since 1938 and the representatives of the Hungarians of Banat with regard to the distribution of the property of the dispossessed Serbian colonists and the murdered Jews. The German occupation also left the schools and churches to the Hungarians, but prevented them from being included in the gendarmerie and the local administration. In addition to the Danube Swabians, they relied on collaborationists from the ranks of Romanians, Slovaks, Czechs and long-established Serbs who were considered loyal, in contrast to the Hungarians.29 The German minority of Banat welcomed the invasion of the German troops. Compared to the German minority in Hungary, within Yugoslavia, despite the many restrictions, it had better opportunities for development, was more organized and had been supportive of the Nazi policy of repression of non-Nazi officials since 1938. The Swabian-German cultural association monopolized the political and cultural life of the German population. In addition to the Serbian language, the German language was decreed an official language by the occupation authorities, and not Hungarian, which Budapest and the Hungarian representatives in Banat violently protested against. The German population was disappointed about the division of the region into Hungarian (Bačka and Baranya), Croatian (Syrmia) and German (Banat) areas. Some of them were hoping for establishment of independent German territory with a base in Belgrade, Novi Sad or Pécs. Since the end of

28 Völkl, Der Westbanat 1941–1944, 93–129. 29 Ibid., 100–129.

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World War I when a Banat Republic was proclaimed, various plans and projections in this direction had reappeared and were being discussed in small circles. These plans made Budapest, Bucharest and Belgrade continually sit up and take notice, and at times there was a certain fear of such plans. This was not in accordance with the goals of the Nazi rulers in Berlin, where the complete resettlement of Germans from Hungary, the Independent State of Croatia, Romania and Banat was expected in the long term and also intended within the general plan for the East. Nevertheless, the idea of creating an independent German state or autonomous territory on the Danube or Sava was not as impressive from the contemporary perspective as it seems today. All successful and proven efforts to found states in South-Eastern Europe in the 19th century usually faced diffuse debates, national projects and simulation games. Often these small groups only succeeded in founding a state through the intervention and support of a great power. From a contemporary point of view from around 1940, the arising question is why should the Germans of Yugoslavia not succeed in what Albanians, Macedonians or Bulgarians and other had already achieved at the same time or before? Quickly it also became clear that the leadership under Josef “Sepp” Janko, the Volksgruppenführer of the Danube Swabian Germans in the Banat and in Serbia, had only limited functions and was completely bound by the instructions in relation to the wishes and orders from Berlin and the administrative officials on site, who were Reichsdeutsche. The struggle between the officials of the SS and the Foreign Office for dominance over the German population did not change the fact that the region was considered and used as a supplier of raw materials for the German war economy and that the Danube Swabians served as objects for recruitment to the Waffen-SS. In three waves between 1941–1944, almost the entire male population was incorporated mostly in the Waffen-SS. Their losses were very high, especially those of the SS division of Prinz Eugen, which was composed of Germans from the entire South-Eastern Europe, mainly from the Banat. The division was responsible for numerous mass murders and war crimes in Bosnia, Dalmatia and Serbia.30 The vast majority of the German population in Banat considered themselves as a part of the German nation. In Bačka, however, there was still part of the population among the older generation with an affinity for Hungary and the prenational Natio Hungarica concept. The stop of the Magyarization policy in this region after 1918 meant the breakthrough of national German identity patterns in

30 Cf. Thomas Casagrande, Die volkdeutsche SS Division Prinz Eugen. Die Banater Schwaben und die nationalsozialistischen Kriegsverbrechen (Frankfurt/Main: Campus Verlag, 2003).

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the interwar period. Compared to the Germans in Hungary or the Sathmar Swabians, there were much greater numbers of Nazi supporters among the Germans in Banat and Bačka.31 The high number of victims, especially of Swabians from Banat in Tito’s camp after 1944, is also explained by the fact that, due to ideological reasons, the ethnic group leadership was too late to give its permission to the occupation administration to evacuate and therefore around 90 % of the Swabians fell into the hands of the Red Army and Tito’s partisans. In contrast, around 50 % of the German population from Bačka was evacuated by the Red Army and around 90 % of those from the Independent State of Croatia. Around one third of the perpetrators responsible for the murder of the Jews were caught and brought before a court and were mostly sentenced to execution, another third served minor sentences much later in the Federal Republic of Germany and were at least prosecuted and one third never held responsible.32 Despite this overall complex situation, the occupation authorities had no difficulties in obtaining support from the vast majority of the local population until September 1944. This also applied to all measures involving expropriation and forcible displacement of the Serbian colonists who arrived in the country after 1918, the Dobrovoljci. With some exceptions, this behavior also applied to the actions of the Serbian Četniks, who were brought to the country from Old Serbia in the summer and autumn of 1941. This also applied to the ghettoization, plundering, expropriation and almost complete extinction of 4,100 Jews in the country by the German police and the armed forces in the period between April 1941 and May 1942. The principle of ignorance, looking away, being silent, openly cooperating with the perpetrators or also the hope of prayer, determined the behavior of the population. The wave of anti-Semitic propaganda spilled over from Germany through the German language press reports and visitors from Nazi activists within the German minority in Banat in the second half of 1930s. Yet the Holocaust functioned smoothly here as well, with the participation of local people such as the mass shooting in Pančevo.33 At the end of September/beginning of October in 1944,

31 Cf. Norbert Spannenberger, Der Volksbund der Deutschen in Ungarn 1938–1944 unter Horthy und Hitler (Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2002); Gerhard Seewann, Geschichte der Deutschen in Ungarn. 1860–2006 (Marburg an der Lahn: Verlag Herder Institut, 2012). 32 Hausleitner, Die Donauschwaben 1868–1948, 356–362. 33 Cf. Walter Manoschek, “Die Massaker in Pančevo und Kragujevac im Herbst 1941. Zur deutschen Repressionspolitik gegenüber der Zivilbevölkerung im besetzten Serbien,” in Repressalien und Terror. “Vergeltungsaktionen” im deutsch besetzten Europa 1939–1945, ed. Oliver von Wrochem (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2017), 89–102.

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Banat was occupied by the Red Army and given to the Communist government of Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito.34 The subsequent mass violence against the predominantly non-evacuated German civilian population and their collective detention in the camp resulted in around 64,000 deaths all over Vojvodina by 1948. In addition, thousands of people were murdered randomly among the rest of the population. The displacement of the Germans and the flight and emigration of many members of other nationalities in the region and the influx and settlement of Serbs, Montenegrins and other residents from the rest of Yugoslavia resulted in a considerable shift in the ethnographic and ethnic composition of the population in favor of the Serbian side who build over 80 % of the population in Banat today. A real debate about the behavior of how one’s own group related to the German occupation in the period 1941–1944 exists only in small intellectual circles. Each side and especially the official representatives of the Danube Swabians in Germany and in Austria see themselves primarily as victims and not on the side of the perpetrators.35

Conclusion In the spring of 1941, the “new masters” in Banat and Macedonia experienced almost no direct resistance from the local population. In many places, the German and the Bulgarian troops received an enthusiastic welcome. In Banat this was the majority of the Banat Swabians, in Macedonia part of the urban population. Even those who did not intend to accept the situation for a longer period for various reasons did not find a reason to defend the endangered Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which in their eyes after 1918 and 1929 had expressed nothing but the coveted idea of Greater Serbia. The new rulers, i. e. the German Reich and the Kingdom of Bulgaria, could easily establish their new authority. In the three and a half years of their rule, it was obvious that they were neither willing nor able to use and develop this positive attitude. The unknown

34 Zoran Janjetović, “Massengewalt in Serbien und der Vojvodina 1941–1948,” in Massengewalt in Südosteuropa im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Motive, Abläufe, Auswirkungen, eds. Meinolf Arens and Martina Bitunjac (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2021), 103–117. 35 Hausleitner, Die Donauschwaben 1868–1948, 356–362; Georg Wildmann, Donauschwäbische Geschichte. Flucht – Vertreibung – Verfolgung – Genozid. Der Leidensweg ab 1944 (Munich: Verlag Donauschwäbische Kulturstiftung, 2015).

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from the German Reich was expected, and Bulgaria took almost all key positions in both regions, meaning that the Belgrade decision-makers were replaced by those from Berlin and Sofia. It was soon obvious that these regions were mainly raw material suppliers for the needs of the Third Reich and Bulgaria. Terror, a state of emergency and violence had been “normal” conditions in Macedonia since 1870; in Banat on the other hand, the mass violence in 1941/ 1942 against the Jewish population and then after 1944 by the Tito partisans had been an unknown phenomenon for almost 100 years. In both regions, the small Jewish population was concentrated in several larger towns. Neither the mass shooting of around 4,100 Jewish people in Banat in 1941 and 1942, nor the deportation of the Jews of Vardar Macedonia caused any large cross-national resistance or protest. The topic of the “silent enrichment” by the assets and goods of the Jews killed has not yet been adequately documented. This means that the ethnic groups who were also disadvantaged during the years of the German and Bulgarian occupation, such as Romanians, Hungarians, Slovaks and Serbs in Banat, or Turks and Albanians in Macedonia, apart from some individual exceptions, did not stand up for the Jews in the region. The German occupation of Banat in the period 1941–1944 was generally welcomed, primarily by the Danube Swabians. The other nationalities living on the territory of Banat considered it either as the lesser evil compared to the possible Hungarian occupation (Romanians, Slovaks, Croats and many Serbs), or were distant and considered it as a temporary measure (Hungarians, Banat Bulgarians). The breach of civilization also took place in Banat with the almost complete annhilation of the Jewish population. Apart from the attacks, battles and massacres in the summer and autumn of 1941, the region was not directly affected by the partisan resistance. However, many Danube Swabians served in formations, especially in the SS, and took part in their war crimes in Bosnia and Dalmatia. The idea of creating an autonomous Danube Swabian “district” soon turned out to be a chimera. The result was a complete displacement of the Danube Swabians and the murder of tens of thousands civilians by the Communist dictatorship, as well as marginalization, expulsion, deportation and murder of the entire middle class of the region in the period 1944–1948. The violent breaches in the years 1941–1948 severely changed the well-established cultural landscape of Banat. German troops stayed in Macedonia for only a very short time; in April 1941 when they marched in and then in September/October 1944 when they withdrew from Greece. The Bulgarian rule in this region between April 1941 and September 1944, which the majority of the population considered brutal and

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unjust, left deep consequences in society that continue to have repercussions even today.36 Around 16,000 people were murdered during the war. Apart from these, the tragic murder of around 7,200 Jews was a direct consequence of the collaboration between the Bulgarian occupation and Nazi Germany. In addition to the members of the occupation administration, local collaborators benefited from their assets. The execution of the majority of the Bulgarian political elite, including almost all decision makers, after show trials by the new Communist in rulers in Sofia in 1945, was based only on the pretense of their actual responsibility for these crimes. The severe dispute regarding the classification of these years, the responsibility for the Holocaust and the question of the real acceptance of Macedonian identity, especially in these years, are a result of the occupation years from 1941 to 1944.

36 In the post-war period, an acceptance of an independent Macedonian nation and state followed; therefore, many Bulgarophiles left the country.

South European Case Studies: Greece, Italy and Portugal

Ioannis Zelepos

Collaboration in Greece 1941–1944 As in every country with occupation experience during World War II, collaboration with the Axis powers in Greece remained taboo for a long time. Its systematic, large-scale historical analysis has only begun since the turn of the millennium and continues until today. A kick-off to this was given by a conference held in July 2004 on the island of Samothrace entitled “The ‘Enemy’ from within. Aspects of Collaboration in Greece during Occupation” and an eponymous collective volume published in 2006.1 In the same year, an important regional study on collaboration in northern Greece was also published,2 followed by various works on the legacies of collaboration in the post-war period,3 as well as articles and special chapters in handbooks on the history of Greece in the 20th century.4

1 See Iakovos Michailidis, Ilias Nikolakopoulos and Hagen Fleischer, eds., “Εχθρός” εντός τειχών. Όψεις του Δωσιλογισμού στην Ελλάδα της κατοχής [The ‘Enemy’ from within. Aspects of Collaboration in Greece during Occupation] (Athens: Ελληνικά Γράμματα, 2006). One of the editors is also the author of the first essential monograph on the German occupation of Greece, published twenty years before, see Hagen Fleischer, Im Kreuzschatten der Mächte. Griechenland 1941–1944 (Okkupation – Resistance – Kollaboration), 2 vol. (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 1986). On this topic see also Mark Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece: The Experience of Occupation 1941–44 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). 2 See Stratos Dordanas, Έλληνες εναντίον Ελλήνων. Ο κόσμος των Ταγμάτων Ασφαλείας στην κατοχική Θεσσαλονίκη 1941–1944 [Greeks against Greeks. The World of the Security Battalions in Occupied Salonica 1941–1944] (Thessaloniki: Επίκεντρο, 2006). 3 See Stratos Dordanas, Η γερμανική στολή στη ναφθαλίνη. Επιβιώσεις του δοσιλογισμού στη Μακεδονία, 1945–1974 [The German Uniform in the Moth Box. After-Effects of the Collaboration Phemomenon in Macedonia, 1945–1974] (Athens: Εστία, 2011) (cf. Tasos Kostopoulos, Η αυτολογοκριμένη μνήμη: Τα Τάγματα Ασφαλείας και η μεταπολεμική εθνικοφροσύνη [The Self-Censored Memory: The Security Battalions and Nationalist Ethos in the Post-War Period] (Athens: Φιλίστωρ, 2003), and Dimitris Kousouris, Δίκες των Δοσιλόγων 1944–1949. Δικαιοσύνη, συνέχεια του κράτους και εθνική μνήμη [The Collaborators’ Trials 1944–1949. Justice, State Continuity, and National Memory] (Athens: Πόλις, 2014). French edition under the title L’histoire des procès des collaborateurs en Grèce (1944–1949) (Paris: Inalco Presses, 2017). 4 See, for example, Stathis Kalyvas, “Armed Collaboration in Greece, 1941–1944,” European Review of History 15/2 (2008): 129–142, the collective volume Nikos Marantzidis, ed., Οι άλλοι καπετάνιοι. Αντικομμουνιστές ένοπλοι στα χρόνια της κατοχής και του εμφυλίου [The Other Captains. Anticommunist Armed Men in the Years of the Occupation and the Civil War] (Athens: Εστία, 2008); Dimitris Kousouris, “From Revolution to Restoration: Transnational Implications of the Greek Purge of Wartime Collaborators,” in Dealing with Wars and Dictatorships, ed. Liora Israël and Guillaume Mouralis (Den Haag: Springer Verlag, 2014), 145–161; Kostas Fardellos, “Κατοχικές κυβερνήσεις και έθνος,” [Occupation Governments and Nation] in Ιστορία της Ελλάδας του 20ού αιώνα. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671186-011

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It goes without saying that the critical confrontation with the history of collaboration in Greece is far from being complete and continues to be a challenge for public memory-culture. This is not only due to the principal sensitivity of the topic, namely its susceptibility to moral blanket judgments in retrospect which impede differentiated approaches, but in the present case also due to its close connection with the Civil War following the occupation, which today is the most heatedly debated period in contemporary Greek history. The Civil War thereby easily becomes a reference point for deterministic interpretations of the preceding collaboration, which is methodologically problematic and not always conducive to analysis. Nevertheless, the progress made in the last two decades by historical scholarship on collaboration in Greece has been substantial and provides a valuable basis for the present contribution, which is merely an overview of a multifaceted phenomenon that hardly left any group of Greek society unaffected. The first focus is on the collaboration governments installed by the occupiers, with regard to their institutional structure, their political scope of action and their strategies of self-legitimation. The second focus is on the phenomenon of collaboration in different milieus of Greek society with regard to its underlying motivations and mechanisms. Since it would go beyond the scope of this article to cover all forms of (e. g. economic, technocratic, propagandistic) collaboration, it will concentrate on armed formations in the service of the occupiers. These have become commonly known as “security battalions” (tagmata asfaleias), although this term actually hides a rather heterogeneous conglomerate of groups whose motives ranged from deep ideological convictions to common criminality and therefore cannot be reduced to one single type.5 However, in Greek public perception, the security battalions like no other institution became a symbol of collaboration par excellence, so it seems justified to put them in the center of the following text. Finally, a brief outlook will be given on the aftermath and the legacy of collaboration in occupied Greece during the Civil War 1946–1949 and in the second half of the 20th century.

Γ΄τόμος, Β΄μέρος, Παγκόσμιος Πόλεμος, Κατοχή – Αντίσταση 1940–1945 [History of Greece in the 20th Century, Second World War, Occupation, Resistance 1940–1945], ed. Christos Chatziiosif et al., vol 3/2 (Athens: Βιβλιόραμα, 2007), 153–179; (cf, Raymondos Alvanos, “Οι κατοχικές κυβερνήσεις. Οι διαχειριστές μίας ανέφικτης νομιμότητας” [The Occupation Governments. Administrators of an Unattainable Legitimacy], in Ιστορία του Νέου Ελληνισμού 1770–2000, 8ος τόμος, Η εμπόλεμη Ελλάδα 1940–1949 [History of Modern Hellenism 1770–2000, vol. 8, Greece at War], ed. Vasilis Panagiotopoulos et al. (Athens: Ελληνικά Γράμματα, 2003), 63–74. 5 An example for the latter is the organization of Antonios Dangkoulas (1907–1944), who became notorious as the “Dragon of Salonica” because of his criminal activities under the aegis of the German occupiers, see Dordanas, Greeks against Greeks, 287–322.

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After the occupation of Athens on April 27, 1941, the German military administration immediately provided for the formation of a local puppet government, which was sworn in two days later. It was headed by Georgios Tsolakoglou (1886–1948), an active general whose main qualification for this position was that he had already unconditionally surrendered to the Wehrmacht one week earlier, on April 20, 1941, unauthorized and against the express orders of his Commander-in-Chief Alexandros Papagos (1883–1955). The Germans hurried to form such a government, because at this time the incumbent Greek government and the head of the state, King George II (1890–1947) were on Crete and thus on Greek territory not yet conquered, so that there was an acute need for an institution with a formal claim to state legitimacy. Furthermore, since Greece was only a secondary theater of war in Germany’s strategic plans, the administrative effort for it was to be as limited as possible by including local actors. For the same reason, a generous share in the occupation was given to the Axis partners, so that Germany initially limited its direct control only to areas of strategic importance, i. e. essentially the capital with its surroundings, western Macedonia including Salonica and (since June 1941) western Crete. The entire rest of the Greek state territory came under Italian control with the exception of western Thrace and eastern Macedonia, which went to Bulgaria. For Berlin, this arrangement was only provisional, until a final settlement of the partition of the country would follow after the end of the war, something the two allies had no means to question formally, but systematically undermined in practice. Bulgaria, which regarded its occupation zone as its own national territory, annexed it in May 1941 as the “Aegean Province” (“Byalo More”) and immediately started a brutal Bulgarization policy on its population. Italy for its part integrated the Ionian and the Aegean Islands (it had controlled the Dodecanese already since 1912) administratively into its state territory and made the (albeit unsuccessful) attempt to establish regional satellite dominions in Epirus and Thessaly, neighboring its protectorate of Albania, which was based on the local minorities of Chams and Aromanians.6 6 On the Chams see Eleftheria Manta, Οι μουσουλμάνοι Τσάμηδες της Ηπείρου και ο Β’ Παγκόσμιος Πόλεμος. Από την αλυτρωτική προπαγάνδα στην ενεργό δράση [The Muslim Chams of Epirus and the Second World War. From Irredentist Propaganda to Open Action], in “Εχθρός” εντός τειχών. Όψεις του Δωσιλογισμού στην Ελλάδα της κατοχής [The ‘Enemy’ from Within. Aspects of Collaboration in Greece during Occupation], ed. Ilias Michailidis et al. (Athens: Ελληνικά Γράμματα, 2006), 173–182. On the Aromanians see Stavros Papagiannis, Τα παιδιά της λύκαινας. Οι “επίγονοι” της 5ης Ρωμαϊκής Λεγεώνας κατά τη διάρκεια της Κατοχής (1941–1944) [The Children of the She-Wolf. The “Epigones” of the Fifth Roman Legion during the Occupation (1941–1944)] (Athens: Εκδόσεις Σοκόλη, 1999). The background was that the Aromanians, due to their linguistic relationship, were perceived as Italian brother people and identified with descendants of the ancient Roman Legio Quinta Macedonica.

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In view of these conditions, the Tsolakoglou government faced two central challenges, namely, on the one hand, to establish its own claim of legitimacy against the exiled representatives of the Greek state and, on the other hand, to maintain the country’s territorial integrity at least in formal legal terms. The latter could have been an important lever for the former, but the government, whose competencies were anyway minimal vis-à-vis the civil and military organs of the occupiers,7 failed because it had no own means to counter the policy of de facto annexation pursued by Italy and Bulgaria. At the same time, appeals in this regard to Germany, which since June 22, 1941, was engaged in its war of annihilation against the Soviet Union, remained unheard. Other measures taken by the Athens regime to legitimize itself likewise met with little success. With the official renaming of the occupied country into the “Greek State” (Elliniki Politeia) in April 29, 1941, a formal break with the “Kingdom of Greece” had been declared,8 but the Axis powers refused to give this state any diplomatic recognition in order not to create an obstacle for their future or already implemented partition plans. In order to increase its public acceptance, the Tsolakoglou government, which was dominated by military officers,9 also tried to attract personages from the civilian political sphere of the pre-war period. For obvious reasons, it turned in particular to Venizelists, who had been opponents of the Metaxas dictatorship,

7 Apart from the fact that the German and Italian occupiers reserved an explicit right to intervene even in the appointment of staff, the Athens government had no influence whatsoever on their organs, who turned occupied Greece into an administrative patchwork and caused a confusion of competences that Hagen Fleischer described as “organized chaos”, see Chatziiosif, Ιστορία της Ελλάδας του 20ού αιώνα, vol. 3/1, 101–149. Moreover, in large parts of the country the Athens government was not present at all (Bulgarian zone) or only symbolically (northern Greece respectively “Salonika-Aegean” and “Fortress Crete”). 8 See Nikos Papanastasiou, Δωσίλογοι εναντίον μεταξικών δωσιλόγων και “καταχραστών.” Η θεσμική ασυνέχεια της κατοχικής κυβέρνησης Τσολάκογλου [Collaborators against Metaxist Collaborators and “Abusers”. The Institutional Discontinuity of the Tsolakoglou Occupation Government], in “Εχθρός” εντός τειχών. Όψεις του Δωσιλογισμού στην Ελλάδα της κατοχής [The ‘Enemy’ from Within. Aspects of Collaboration in Greece during Occupation], ed. Ilias Michailidis et al. (Athens: Ελληνικά Γράμματα, 2006), 107–122. 9 Half of the about one dozen ministries were staffed with military officers, including the Defense Ministry, which was set up despite the non-existence of armed forces and which was headed by General Georgios Bakos (1892–1945). (At least in view of the non-existent international recognition, the establishment of a Foreign Ministry was refrained from.) The remaining departments were largely occupied by technocrats such as the businessman Platon Chatzimichalis (finances) or the physician Konstantinos Logothetopoulos (public welfare, education and religion), who was also vice-premier and later succeeded Tsolakoglou (see below).

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notwithstanding the ideological proximity of the latter to the fascist occupying powers. Accordingly, Tsolakoglou declared his “Greek State” as a republic and clearly spoke out against a future return of the king, whom he blamed – by the way, not without reason – to be responsible for Metaxas’ seizure of power in 1936. However, a meeting with prominent pre-war politicians on May 8, 1941 had no result because they refused to take over functions.10 Nonetheless, it remained a central concern of the Athens government’s propaganda to deny any legitimacy to the exiled king and his government. This was founded primarily on the argument that by fleeing the country, they had deserted their responsibility and abandoned their people. Even more, with their close political ties with Great Britain, they had acted as unscrupulous henchmen of the British to the detriment of the Greek nation, and it is not without a touch of irony that the Athens collaborating regime in this context explicitly used the term “collaboration”.11 The demonization of Great Britain had its counterpart in the glorification of the Third Reich and a concomitant trivialization of the occupation. According to the government’s propaganda, the Germans were forced to attack Greece only as a result of the criminal policy of the government which had fled12 and actually were only in the country in order to protect the emerging “New Europe” from the British. Further, with the Greek people themselves, they were on friendly terms and also felt a deep respect for their bravery in the previous defensive war against Italy. This narrative, however, did not have any noteworthy impact, all the more as it was very soon caught up by reality. The conquest of Crete in May 1941 turned out to be an unexpectedly bloody venture for the Germans, not least because the locals had taken part in the defense of their island by using traditional guerrilla

10 Konstantinos Tsaldaris (1884–1970), Georgios Papandreou (1888–1968) and Panagiotis Kanellopoulos (1902–1986) took part in this meetiing (cf. Alvanos, “Οι κατοχικές κυβερνήσεις. Οι διαχειριστές μίας ανέφικτης νομιμότητας,” 66), all of whom were or were to become important personages in Greek politics, and after the war served as Prime Ministers. Papandreou and Kanellopoulos also became key figures in the Greek exile government in Cairo shortly thereafter. 11 See the headline of the daily newspaper Η Πρωΐα [The Morning] of May 7, 1941, on occasion of the arrest of Alexandros Papagos and former ministers and state secretaries as collaborators: “Συνελήφθησαν ως δοσίλογοι οι πρώην υπουργοί και υφυπουργοί και ο αρχιστράτηγος,” [The Former Ministers and State Secretaries and the Field Marshal Arrested as Collaborators], cf. Fardellos, “Κατοχικές κυβερνήσεις και έθνος,” 162. 12 To this end, they also spread the unsustainable legend that occupation of the country could have been avoided if Greece had assured neutrality to Germany. In fact, already shortly after the failure of the first Italian offensive in November 1940, Berlin had decided to invade and began to work out the tactical plans for “Operation Marita”. For its military course see Heinz Richter, Griechenland im Zweiten Weltkrieg, August 1939–Juni 1941 (Bodenheim: Philo Verlagsgesellschaft, 1997).

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tactics. The Wehrmacht thereupon committed massacres of the civilian population, labeled as “expiation measures”, which was the onset for many further war crimes of this kind throughout the country and left little room for illusion about the real nature of the occupier. Apart from that, a problem had already arisen in the summer of 1941 that was to deal an even more severe blow to the Tsolakoglou government’s selflegitimation efforts. The supply situation worsened dramatically because, due to the occupation, Greece was cut off from agricultural imports, which were vital for feeding the population. The food shortage that had already emerged in the previous months as a result of the war efforts was massively exacerbated after the end of the fighting when the Allies imposed a naval blockade on the country, while at the same time, the occupiers began to commandeer supplies for their own needs. In view of this, the famine in the winter of 1941/42, which according to conservative estimates directly caused at least 100,000 deaths nationwide, more than a third of them in the greater Athens area alone,13 can be regarded as pre-programmed. The regime tried in vain to contain the damage by putting the blame for the misery on the black market, which had blossomed immediately, and apart from that, appealed to the patriotism of the farmers to sell their crops legally at the officially set prices. However, this did not meet with any response, especially since due to the systematic plundering of the country’s economy by the occupiers, the drachma as the official currency had been plunged into hyperinflation and had largely lost its purchase value.14 Timid attempts to persuade the occupiers to help contain the humanitarian catastrophe foundered on their intransigence, while negotiations for food imports from neighboring countries or an easing of the Allied sea blockade were ruled out simply because the regime was not recognized by any country, so internationally it did not even actually exist. Inside the occupied country, the regime’s helplessness in face of the famine resulted in an almost complete

13 See Fleischer, Im Kreuzschatten der Mächte, 116–127, and Violetta Hionidou, Famine and Death in Occupied Greece, 1941–1944 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). The high number of victims in the Greek capital was not least due to the fact that the administrative chaos caused by the occupation organs was particularly severe here and blocked supplies from the rural hinterland. In contrast, Salonica as the second largest city of the country suffered significantly fewer deaths from starvation, although at the same time it had to absorb masses of refugees from the Bulgarian occupation zone. 14 See Christos Nikas, “Δωσιλογισμός και οικονομικός παραλογισμός. Παραοικονομία και υπερπληθωρισμός στην κατοχική Ελλάδα” [Collaboration and Economic Irrationalism. Black Economy and Hyperinflation in Occupied Greece], in “Εχθρός” εντός τειχών. Όψεις του Δωσιλογισμού στην Ελλάδα της κατοχής [The ‘Enemy’ from within. Aspects of Collaboration in Greece during Occupation], ed. Ilias Michailidis et al. (Athens: Ελληνικά Γράμματα, 2006), 147–170.

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loss of its claim to authority, as far as such a claim had ever existed. Under such circumstances, the only means of power left would have been the threat of resignation, but the Athens government made no use of it. It remained in office until Tsolakoglou resigned for health reasons on December 1, 1942 and was replaced the following day by Konstantinos Logothetopoulos (1878–1961), a renowned professor of medicine who had previously been Tsolakoglou’s deputy. He was also one of the few distinguished civilians in Tsolakoglou’s cabinet. This fact is likely to have been decisive in his selection, as the occupiers hoped that it would result in a greater acceptance of the collaboration government among the population. In this context, it should be taken into account that the food supply in occupied Greece, although still precarious, had improved in the course of the year 1942 thanks to aid deliveries by the International Red Cross. These had become possible after the Allies eased their sea blockade for humanitarian reasons, so that the acute danger of a renewed famine seemed to have been averted. Furthermore, in order to avoid an imminent total breakdown of the Greek economy, Germany softened its hitherto rigid policy of exploitation and, in October of the same year, even appointed a “Special Agent of the Reich for Economic and Financial Matters in Greece” tasked with taking care of the economic situation.15 This policy change took place against the backdrop of some developments that were somewhat worrying for the Axis powers. Resistance became noticeable from the side of the “National Liberation Front” (EAM), which had been founded in September 1941 under Communist leadership and meanwhile had grown into a mass movement in the cities. In the countryside, partisan groups had been gaining ground since May 1942, and in November of that year, even achieved their first spectacular success with the blasting of the Gorgopotamos railway viaduct.16 Furthermore, Rommel’s defeat in the second battle of El Alamein at the beginning of the same month marked a decisive turning point in the North Africa campaign, which also brought closer the prospect of a possible amphibious landing of the Allies in Greece. The Logothetopoulos government, on the other hand, could not benefit from the relative relaxation of the economic situation starting in the autumn of

15 His name was Hermann Neubacher (1893–1960), see Fleischer, Im Kreuzschatten der Mächte, 174–179, and Carl Freytag, “‘Alles war in wirrer Bewegung auf ein vollkommenes Chaos hin . . .’ Otto Braun, Herrmann Neubacher, die ‘Deutsch-Griechische Warenausgleichsgesellschaft mbH (DEGRIGES)’ und die Wirtschaft Griechenlands 1942–1944”, Südost-Forschungen 73 (2014): 60–89. 16 The blasting was carried out in November 25, 1942 by partisans of ELAS (the military arm of EAM) and the resistance organization EDES under the direction of the British “Special Operations Executive” (SOE), cf. Christopher M. Woodhouse, The Struggle for Greece, 1941–1949 (London: Ivan R. Dee, 2002), who himself played a key role in this operation.

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1942. On the contrary, it was confronted with a steady increase of strikes and mass demonstrations, the most impressive of which took place on February 28, 1943 on occasion of the funeral of the celebrated national poet Kostis Palamas (1859–1943) in Athens. Logothetopoulos was therefore soon dropped and on April 7, 1943, replaced by Ioannis Rallis (1878–1946), from whom the Germans expected a more efficient implementation of their interests in Greece. The scion of an illustrious family of politicians, Rallis had held ministerial posts and parliamentary mandates as a supporter of the Royalists in the inter-war period, but was opposed to the dictatorship of Metaxas and even had taken part in an attempted coup against him in 1938.17 With him, a professional politician came to the head of the Athens collaboration regime for the first time, who indeed fulfilled the expectations placed on him by the occupiers better than his predecessors. For doing that, however, he was given a significantly expanded scope of action. Unlike his predecessors, Rallis was given a largely free hand in appointing his cabinet,18 as well as the right to make regular public radio speeches, which, however, were subject to preventive censorship, as were the government’s press releases. The decisive concession, which was soon to add a completely new dimension to the phenomenon of collaboration in Greece, was, however, the formation of armed troops by the Athens government, something that the occupiers had previously considered a potential security risk and had always strictly rejected. This change can be explained as a pragmatic response to the increasingly stronger resistance movement, which massively intensified after the surrender of Italy in September 1943. Apart from that, it had also a tangible ideological component in form of anti-Communism, in which the occupiers and the collaboration regime found a real common denominator for the first time, which simultaneously served as the central argument for the latter’s self-legitimation. Already on the occasion of his appointment, Rallis had declared the crusade against Communism, which he denoted as a danger to human civilization, as a central goal, and he urged his compatriots, “at least not to hinder the Axis powers, who were fighting a struggle for existence against it, in this extremely difficult

17 This failed coup took place on July 28, 1938 in Chania, Crete, which is why it is also known as the “Revolt of Crete”. The actors belonged to a broad political spectrum, the initiator was the lawyer Aristomenis Mitsotakis (1884–1941); it was the one and only attempt at overthrowing the Metaxas dictatorship. 18 The intervention practice of the German and Italian occupiers in this regard (cf. fn. 7) was reduced to a merely formal veto right on appointments.

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task.”19 This rhetoric was publicly compatible, since anti-Communism had been firmly established in the country’s political discourse in the inter-war period and was shared across party lines by Venizelists and Royalists alike. With the stereotypical coupling of “Communism” and “Slavism”, it was also embedded in late 19th century projections of a hereditary Greco-Slavic enmity and thus provided with alleged historical depth, even exalted to a supposed feature of the Greek national character. Already in the mid-1920s, with the conjuring of the “Communist danger”, a persistent topos had been created which served as a lever for repressive legislation and contributed significantly to the political marginalization of the Left, even before the official ban of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) by Metaxas in 1936. In the meantime, however, the balance had shifted significantly, since the Communist-led EAM/ELAS not only had the strongest mass base and by far the largest share in the partisan war, but was also the only resistance organization that actually operated nationwide. The occupiers therefore viewed it as a serious danger, a perception that in principle was also shared by Great Britain, which for this reason supported competing non-Communist resistance organizations such as the EDES of Napoleon Zervas (1891–1957) as far as possible in order to create a counterweight. The starting point for the creation of Greek security battalions was a law passed in April 1943 to set up volunteer troops for the protection of “public security and order” with the tasks of acting against “Communist terror” and preventing the king’s return from exile. The latter aimed at winning Venizelist officers for participation who had been put out of service by the Metaxas regime in 1936 and was less of an expression of genuine anti-royalist sentiments, although Rallis officially declared this like his predecessors. Much more important was, of course, his desire to have armed forces in order to maintain his own power in the postoccupation period, which became more and more likely after the German defeat at Stalingrad. In May 1943, the 1st Evzones Battalion was established, which emerged from the Guard of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Syntagma Square in Athens (see picture).20 This battalion functioned as a recruitment body for four further Evzones battalions, which were raised in the period from the Italian surrender in September until December 1943 and grouped into two regiments, which were based in Athens and Patras on the Peloponnese respectively. The Evzones

19 See the government gazette (ΦΕΚ) Α 81/1943 of April 7, 1943, “Statement by the Prime Minister Ioannis Rallis to the Greek people,” accessed November 21, 2020, http://www.et.gr/index. php/anazitisi-fek. 20 The establishment of this guard (in continuation of the former Royal Guard) in 1941 was the occupiers’ only concession to the Tsolakoglou government in this regard and of purely symbolic character, cf. Fleischer, Im Kreuzschatten der Mächte, 460.

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battalions were formally subordinate to the Rallis government, which also paid their uniforms and maintenance, but they were armed and trained by the Wehrmacht, swore allegiance to Adolf Hitler and stood under the supreme command of the Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer of Greece, Walter Schimana (1898–1948). Their recruitment base was heterogeneous and consisted not only of committed antiCommunists, but also of volunteers without a pronounced ideological motivation who were attracted by the wages and the relatively good food rations as a way out of sometimes existential hardship, and/or sought other advantages, namely opportunities for personal enrichment through the appropriation of the private property of persecuted persons. There were also people who in this way sought to take revenge for previous conflicts with Communist partisans, such as the surviving members of the resistance organization EKKA in central Greece, which was smashed by ELAS forces in April 1944.

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, with a German infantryman and a Greek Guard on joint guard duty, Athens 1941. Ullstein Bild. No. 00804029

As a regular force, the Evzones formed the core of Greek security battalions, but their scope of action was limited to the southern mainland (Rumeli) and the Peloponnese, while in other parts of the country where the collaboration regime was only ephemerally present anyway such as Crete or northern Greece, they remained meaningless.21 However, they were only one among many types of official and semi-official formations in the service of the occupiers under the slogan

21 In Crete, the recruitment of volunteers found no response, while the planned formation of two more Evzone battalions in Salonica was prevented by the Germans, who in doing so took into account sensitivities of their Bulgarian ally, see Dordanas, Greeks against Greeks, 38.

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of anti-Communism. These included units of the city police such as the Motorized Squadron, founded before the war, under the direction of Nikolaos Bourantas (1900–1981), which became notorious as “Bourantades”, or departments of the gendarmerie such as the “Free Corps Leonidas” formed in November 1943 in the Peloponnese under the leadership of Leonidas Vrettakos (1905–1985), whose brother had previously been killed by ELAS partisans.22 In the northern parts of the country, regionally acting organizations played an important role whose cohesion was based primarily on local and ethno-linguistic ties rather than on ideology. This was the case with the “National Agrarian Alliance of Anti-Communist Action” (EASAD) founded 1944 in Thessaly, which was made up to a considerable extent of former members of the so-called “Roman” or “Wallachian Legion”, set up in 1941 by the Italians as vehicle of an Aromanian autonomy movement.23 Another example is the “Albanian Militia” formed around the turn of 1943/44 under the supervision of the Wehrmacht with Muslim Chams, who as an ethnic minority had also been previously instrumentalized for Italian partition and annexation plans (see above, fn. 6).24 The occupiers were far more reluctant in recruiting ethnic minorities in the case of Slavic Macedonians, because, in view of the burdened pre-history of the Macedonian conflict at the beginning of the 20th century, they feared strong resentment on the part of the Greek population, which would more than nullify the expected benefits of such auxiliary troops.25 Semi-official formations between ideology and provenance ties were generally characteristic for the Macedonian collaboration scene, which was dominated to a considerable degree by refugees from Asia Minor and Pontus, but also from

22 In contrast to the Evzones battalions, these two formations were not under direct military command of the occupiers. However, for the “Free Corps Leonidas” which acted de facto autonomously and was accordingly regarded critically by the Rallis government, the Wehrmacht detached a corporal as liaison named Georg Stadtmüller (1909–1985), who later became professor for History of Eastern and Southeastern Europe at the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich (from 1958 to 1974), cf. Fleischer, Im Kreuzschatten der Mächte, 459. 23 On this organization see Vasiliki Lazou and Dimitris Skaltsis, “Εθνικός Αγροτικός Σύνδεσμος Αντικομμουνιστικής Δράσης (ΕΑΣΑΔ): Οι πρόθυμοι συνεργάτες των Γερμανών” [National Agrarian Alliance of Anti-Communist Action (EASAD): The Keen Auxiliaries of the Germans], in Κατοχική βία: Η ευρωπαϊκή και ελληνική εμπειρία [Occupation Violence: The Greek and European Experience], ed. Stratos Dordanas et al. (Athens: Εκδόσεις Ασίνη, 2016), 91–148. 24 Cf. Spyros Tsoutsoumpis, “Violence, Resistance and Collaboration in a Greek Borderland: The Case of the Muslim Chams of Epirus,” Qualestoria 2 (December 2015): 119–138. 25 Despite these concerns, which were expressed almost unanimously by the local German occupation organs, some Slavo-Macedonian formations were set up on initiative of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler and in cooperation with the IMRO-activist Ivan Mihailov (1896–1990), the so-called “Werner Corps” (presumably after their commander, SS-Obersturmbannführer Werner Heyde) respectively “Komitadjis”, cf. Fleischer, Im Kreuzschatten der Mächte, 461 f.

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Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, who had been settled after 1922 and politically belonged to the Venizelist spectrum.26 This was the case, for example, with the “Salonica Volunteer Battalion”. Founded in May 1943 and equipped with German uniforms, it was led by Georgios Poulos (1898–1949), a former colonel in the Greek army, who also appeared as the regional chairman of the “National and Socialist Party of Greece”, which saw itself as successor of the 1927 founded “National Union [of] Greece” (EEE).27 Poulos obviously had ambitions to a political career, but met with little approval from the Germans, who gladly took advantage of his services as a spy and henchman, but did not particularly appreciate his person, nor his armed men operating in western Macedonia. To these the Germans attested an only very moderate efficiency in fighting partisans in combination with an all the more severe cruelty against the civilian population.28 Another example is the combat group of Kyriakos Papadopoulos (1884–1944), which also operated as the “National Greek Army” (EES), whose case deserves a closer look because it illustrates the complexity of the collaboration phenomenon in Greece.29 Papadopoulos, known under the Turkish nickname “Kısa Bacak” (“the short-legged”), was a Turkophone Pontus Greek from the Merzifon area. After his discharge from military service in the Ottoman army 1911/12, he had formed a partisan group in his homeland that became renowned as one of the most potent formations of this kind during the guerilla war in the western Pontus area from 1914 to 1922. As a result of the compulsory population exchange of the Lausanne treaty, he came to Greece in 1924, where he was settled, together with other Turkophone compatriots, in the village of Koukos near Katerini at the foot of Mount Olympus. After the surrender in the spring of 1941, Kısa Bacak immediately procured rifles from stocks of the Greek army and set up an armed militia in his village, for which he easily found followers due to his formerly acquired reputation as an extraordinarily capable chieftain. It was precisely this that made him also a desired ally for the resistance organizations that emerged in the following year and, for

26 See Dordanas, Greeks against Greeks, 517 f. 27 Poulos had been decommissioned after the failed Venizelist coup in 1935, but, unlike many of his fellow officers, not reactivated in the 1940 war. On him and his group see in detail Dordanas, Greeks against Greeks, 49–57 and 155–206. The “National Union [of] Greece”, also known as the “Three Epsilon”, was a fascist anti-Semitic organization with Venizelist references that consisted mainly of refugees in northern Greece and in 1931 had around 7,000 members, 3,000 of them in Salonica. One of its most spectacular actions was a pogrom in the Jewish district of Kampel (Campbell) in Salonica carried out that same year. The organization was banned and dissolved by Metaxas in 1936, but re-formed in 1941 after occupation with the aforementioned relabeling, cf. Dordanas, Greeks against Greeks, 117–154. 28 See Fleischer, Im Kreuzschatten der Mächte, 458 f. 29 Cf. Dordanas, Greeks against Greeks, 245–285.

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obvious reasons, were very interested in a guerrilla leader who really knew something about his job. Therefore, in 1942, contacts were made by ELAS, which had been recently set up in this region, but they failed, and in the end, had even the opposite effects. The reasons for this were probably not primarily ideological, all the more as there is much to suggest that the less educated Pontian warlord was indifferent in this regard. Presumably much more important was that Kısa Bacak, as a traditional representative of this profession, saw little attraction in the idea of fitting himself into the centralized command structures of a regular partisan army. His negative attitude towards EAM/ELAS was also reinforced by the fact that he connoted it with the Russian Bolsheviks who had thwarted Pontus-Greek independence in World War I and had persecuted his compatriots.30 However, the decisive turn came when ELAS, after unsuccessful negotiations, attempted to assassinate him and, since the spring of 1943 had been launching attacks against him in Koukos as part of the systematic smashing of all non-Communist resistance groups in the region.31 His militia, however, successfully defended itself and in the course of the fighting, which lasted until autumn of that year, gained even more supporters. Simultaneously, Kısa Bacak was driven into the arms of the Germans, who were the only ones he hoped could provide effective protection in the long term against the ELAS attacks. They in turn saw in his militia a valuable auxiliary force for fighting partisans, especially since its action radius was at a strategic point, where the railway connection ran between Salonica and Athens. Thus, starting in February 1944 they directly supported Kısa Bacak with weapons and money, who by this means became the most important regional violence actor in the service of the occupiers. Consequently, he was also given the command of the “National Greek Army” (EES), which had previously been formed as an anti-Communist united front on the basis of Poulos’ volunteer battalion, whereupon Kısa Bacak moved his headquarters from Koukos to Salonica in August 1944. However, his close ties to the German occupiers – in July 1944 he had even made an official visit to Vienna – became his undoing after their departure, because, unlike many other collaborators, he did not manage to switch sides in

30 In fact, tens of thousands of Pontus Greeks were expelled from the Caucasus after the October Revolution of 1917, see Nikos Petsalis-Diomidis, “Hellenism in Southern Russia and the Ukrainian Campaign: Their Effect on the Pontus Question (1919),” Balkan Studies 13 (1972): 221–263, and Vlasis Agtzidis, “Persecutions of Pontic Greeks in the Soviet Union,” Journal of Refugee Studies 4 (1991): 372–381. 31 This concerned namely the “Panhellenic Liberation Organization” (PAO), originally founded as “Defenders of Northern Greece” (YBE) in response to the Bulgarian annexation policy, which was recruited from officers and dismissed gendarmes, many of whom thereafter joined Kısa Bacak.

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time. Negotiations with EDES he had begun for this purpose, to which he wanted to submit, failed. Kısa Bacak was ultimately killed at the Battle of Kilkis in November 4, 1944, in which the remaining collaboration troops of northern Greece were beaten decisively by ELAS, who at this time acted as the armed forces of the Greek “Government of National Unity”, which had been located in Athens again since October 18, 1944.32 The Battle of Kilkis, which was one of the bloodiest intra-Greek clashes of the whole period from 1941 until 1949,33 marks the military end of the security battalions which during their existence had become involved in countless war crimes, and in the summer of 1944, when the Germans began to withdraw, reached a nationwide strength of over 20,000, possibly even 30,000 men.34 It does not, however, mark their political end. Some of the security battalions in northern Greece under the command of Poulos followed the Wehrmacht on its way home and placed themselves in the service of the so-called “Greek National Committee”. This had been set up in Austria by former members of the Athens collaboration regime (including Logothetopoulos), who also had fled together with the Germans and presented themselves as an exile government until the whole group was arrested by the US Army in April 1945. In southern Greece, the security battalions, whose combat strength turned out to be negligible without German backing, were quickly brought under military control,35 disbanded, and their members interned in the Athens district of Goudi. They were, however, released just a few weeks later, because after the

32 It continued the exile government under Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou and arrived in the Greek capital on the same day. Previously, in the Caserta Agreement (September 26, 1944), the partisan armies of ELAS and EDES had been declared government troops and placed under the military supreme command of the British General Ronald Scoby (1893–1969). Likewise, the security battalions, which had been declared collaborators, were asked to disarm themselves, otherwise they would be viewed and treated as hostile forces. 33 The strength of the ELAS troops is estimated at 7,000–10,000 men, who met a force of approximately the same size of the security battalions, see Dordanas, Greeks against Greeks, 495 f. The number of victims probably was almost 1,000 killed on the part of ELAS and 1,500 killed on the part of the security battalions, as well as over 2,000 prisoners, a significant part of whom became victims of subsequent mass shootings, see Marantzidis, The Other Captains, 173. 34 For the former number see Pοlymeris Voglis, Η Αδύνατη επανάσταση [The Impossible Revolution] (Athens: Αλεξάνδρεια, 2014), 53, for the latter see Alvanos, “Οι κατοχικές κυβερνήσεις. Οι διαχειριστές μίας ανέφικτης νομιμότητας,” 72. The deviations result, inter alia, from the difficulty to reconstruct precisely the strength of the numerous semi-official formations that are summarized under the term “security battalions”. 35 Here too, victorious ELAS units subsequently carried out mass executions among members of the security battalions, e.g. after the battle of Meligalas (Messenia) in September 1944, as a result of which around 1,000 people were killed.

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outbreak of the December fighting of 1944 (Dekemvriana), which marks the beginning of the Greek Civil War, the Papandreou government had urgent need of armed men in order to fight the ELAS forces, which were close to bringing the Greek capital completely under their control. Many of them were accepted in the newly founded National Guard (Ethnofylaki) and in the National Army (Ethnikos Stratos) set up in May 1945, where some of them later on also were able to make careers in the anti-Communist climate of the post-war period.36 This development is indicative for the long-term effects of the collaboration legacy in the period of the Greek Civil War and the following decades, which describe a historical continuity extending until the military dictatorship of 1967–1974. However, it would definitely be simplistic to view these only under the aspect of a taboo and a tacit rehabilitation that followed the logic of the stigmatization of the Left. Despite the strong ideological polarization already apparent during the occupation and even more violent in the subsequent years, starting in 1944, serious efforts were made to juridically deal with the collaboration phenomenon and to hold its perpetrators personally accountable. For this purpose, special courts were set up across the country. These operated until the 1950ies and conducted during this time a barely manageable number of collaboration trials. The most spectacular of these was certainly the great “trial of governments” from February 21 to May 31, 1945 in Athens, in which Tsolakoglou, Logothetopoulos, Rallis and other high representatives of the collaboration regime were sentenced to heavy penalties.37 Overall, however, only a tiny fraction of these collaboration trials led to convictions, which is hardly surprising in view of the circumstances at the time, especially since referencing “Communist terror” when in doubt could almost always serve as an effective means of exculpation.38 AntiCommunist post-war Greece offered a variety of opportunities for former collaborators to find a place in society, for example, by becoming part of the “shadow state” (Parakratos), which willingly opened its arms to them. However, there was

36 Cf. Dimitris Kostopoulos, Η αυτολογοκριμένη μνήμη: Τα Τάγματα Ασφαλείας και η μεταπολεμική εθνικοφροσύνη [The Self-Censored Memory: The Security Battalions and Nationalist Ethos in the Post-War Period] (Athens: Φιλίστωρ, 2003). 37 See Kousouris, L’ histoire des procès des collaborateurs, 133–147. The charges were for favoring the enemy, propaganda for the occupiers etc. and in the case of Tsolakoglou and other frontline officers also for surrendering on the battlefield. Tsolakoglou received the death penalty (not executed) and two life sentences, Logothetopoulos and Rallis each received a life sentence, others also received a life sentence or long prison sentences, seven of the twenty-seven accused were acquitted. 38 With nationwide around 25,000 people who were charged as collaborators on the basis of almost 6,500 reports, this ultimately led to a conviction in only 350 cases, which corresponds to a proportion of less than 1.3 per thousand.

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never any public historical legitimation of the collaboration, whose isolated apologists always remained strictly limited to the margins of the extremist Right.39 As a synonym for national treason, the figure of the collaborator still has a considerable potential for public emotionalizing. This can be exemplified by a recent episode of contemporary political discourse in Greece. At the height of the Greek financial crisis, in the run-up to the plebiscite held in July 5, 2015 on the bailout conditions set by the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank (ECB), which the then government denoted as European ultimatum in order to subjugate the country, proponents of a “yes” were sometimes insulted as “Germanotsoliades”, literally “German-Evzones”, i. e. security battalions, a term that embodies like no other the collaboration in Greece during World War II.

39 See, for example, the notorious anti-Semite, Holocaust-denier and admirer of Hitler, Konstantinos Plevris, who recently published an apologetic monograph on the collaboration governments under the title Ιστορική αλήθεια και προπαγάνδα [Historical Truth and Propaganda] (Athens: Ήλεκτρον, 2016).

Ester Capuzzo

Italian “Racial Laws” and the Jewish Community of Fiume The Jewish presence in Fiume (now Rijeka) dates back to the 15th and 16th centuries. Most of the Jewish residents were of Spanish origin and they came mostly from Dalmatia, specifically from the cities of Split and Ragusa, to engage there in commercial activity.1 They lived in an area of the city called “Zudecca” or “Zuèca” in Calle del Tempio, where they attended a small synagogue (situated in Calle del Pozzo), there was a ritual bath and they could eat and gather according to religious precepts. After the decision of Charles VI of Habsburg to create the free port in Fiume (1719), other Jews arrived in the city for religious freedom and the freedom of trade,2 for example, those coming from Bosnia-Herzegovina.3 In Fiume with the free port, a new mentality arose that allowed the harmonious coexistence of different faiths and cultures, and therefore the Jews lived in peace and economic prosperity.4 In 1781, the Jewish community drafted a regulation similar to that of the Trieste community from 1771.5 Starting in 1850, many Hungarian Jews moved to Fiume, and from 1880, there was a further increase in the number of members of the community, which in 1895 reached 1,600 people, almost all of Hungarian origin. Although the Spanish (Sephardic) rites had been observed, due to the presence of so many Hungarian Jews, now the Ashkenazi rites were followed. Not far from the ancient Spanish rite synagogue located in an old building of the “Cittavecchia” (Calle del Tempio),

1 Rina Brumini, La Comunità ebraica di Fiume (Trieste: La Mongolfiera, 2015); Andrea Roknić and Petar Strčić, “Židovska zajednica (od vremena nastanka do 1945. godine),” in L’educazione spezzata: Scuole ebraiche a Trieste e Fiume durante le leggi razziali 1938–1943, ed. Tullia Catalan et al. (Trieste: La Mongolfiera libri, 2006), 117–120 and Teodoro Morgani, Ebrei di Fiume e di Abbazia (1441–1945) (Rome: Carucci, 1979). 2 Paolo Santarcangeli, Il porto dell’ aquila decapitata (Udine: Editore Del Bianco, 1988²), 89–92 and Ilona Fried, Fiume, città della memoria, 1868–1945 (Udine: Editore Del Bianco, 2005), 106–109. 3 Avram Pinto, Gli ebrei di Sarajevo e della Bosnia-Erzegovina, ed. Rita Tolomeo (Rome: Lithos, 1996), 98–102. 4 Ester Capuzzo, Alla periferia dell’Impero. Terre italiane degli Asburgo tra storia e storiografia (XVII–XX secolo) (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2009), 19–22 and Sauro Gottardi, “Gli insediamenti originari nell’Ottocento a Fiume degli ortodossi, degli evangelici e degli ebrei,” Fiume. Rivista di studi fiumani 17,34 (1997): 87–94. 5 Tullia Catalan, La comunità ebraica di Trieste, 1781–1914. Politica, società e cultura (Triest: Lint, 2000), 25. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671186-012

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the Jewish community now had a new synagogue built by the architect Leopold Baumhorn (Via del Pomerio).6 In the last years of the nineteenth century, Jews from other parts of the Habsburg Empire such as Slovakia, Bessarabia and Galicia came to Fiume.7 They were eager to find a safe haven in this tolerant city of the eastern Adriatic, far from the hostility and persecution suffered in their homeland. As a result, two distinct groups were formed in the city: one more numerous which followed Neologic rites and another which observed Orthodox rites.8 In Fiume, they were distinguished from their coreligionists by their strict observance of the traditional rites, and in 1890, they founded the Orthodox Israelite Union (similar to those existing in many parts of Central Europe). At the end of the 19th century, the Jewish community of Abbazia (now Opatija) was formed. Starting in 1892, Jews began to settle in the little town near Fiume during the period of its transformation from coastal resort to a fashionable spot for Habsburgian high society.9 Despite their different origins, the Jews of Fiume had felt Italian like most of the inhabitants of the city who spoke the Italian language and in World War I, some of them fought in the Italian army.10 After World War I, Fiume was annexed to Italy following the agreements signed in Rome between the Italian government and the government of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (1924) and the Jews of Fiume became Italian citizens. According to the Italian law of 1930 on the legal system of Jewish communities which recognized only 25 communities throughout the country, that of Fiume was re-established following the dissolution of the Israelite Orthodox Union and the inclusion of its members in the community of Jewish Neologists (1933).11 During the 1930s, a Zionist current developed within the community due

6 Brumini, La Comunità ebraica di Fiume, 98–99. 7 Joshua Shanes, Diaspora, Nationalism and Jewish Identity in Habsburg Galicia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) and Suzan F. Wynne, The Galitzianers: The Jews of Galicia, 1772–1918 (Tuscon, AZ: Wheatmark, 2006). 8 Fried, Fiume, città della memoria, 251. 9 Sanja Dukić, “Origini e sviluppo della Comunità ebraica di Abbazia,” in L’educazione spezzata: Scuole ebraiche a Trieste e Fiume durante le leggi razziali 1938–1943, ed. Tullia Catalan et al. (Trieste: La Mongolfiera libri, 2006), 97–116 and Morgani, Gli ebrei di Fiume e di Abbazia (1441–1945), 135–140. 10 Gabriele Rigano, “Identità nazionale e identità religiosa: Comunità di confine nella grande guerra: il caso di Trieste e Fiume,” in Gli ebrei italiani nella grande guerra (1915–1918), eds. Caterina Quareni and Vincenza Maugeri (Florence: Giuntina, 2017), 85–102. 11 Michele Sarfatti, Gli ebrei negli anni del fascismo: vicende, identità, persecuzioni (Turin: Einaudi, 2018), 273.

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to the presence of many Jews from Central and Eastern Europe who were influenced by “Revisionist Zionist Groups” and in the local section of “Betar” inspired by Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s thought.12 In this context, the Jews of Fiume defended their Italianness and deep feeling for Eretz Israel. The suppression of Jewish identity according to the Italian Fascist paradigm was slight compared to the other Italian Jewish communities. When in the autumn of 1938 Mussolini’s government promulgated “Measures for the Defense of the Italian Race” these were also extended to Fiume and thus Jewish community suffered the same fate as all the other Italian Jews.13 A Jew of Fiume wrote: Venne poi lo stillicidio della privazione a grado a grado di ogni diritto, un sopruso dopo l’altro, ogni inganno fiutava la coda di quello che lo precedeva. (Then came the dripping of deprivation, step by step, of every right, one abuse after another, every deception smelled the tail of what preceded it).14

In Fiume as in the rest of Italy, the “racial laws” were preceded by an anti-Jewish campaign in newspapers and by the census of the Jews on August 22, 1938. In the province of Carnaro (called the Kvarner area by the Fascist regime) whose capital was Fiume,15 1,729 people of the Jewish race were counted: 1,473 in Fiume, 313 in Abbazia and 30 in Laurana16 to which were added the Jews fleeing Nazi Germany and from Hungary subject to the Horthy regime. Among the Italian cities of that time, Fiume had one of the highest percentages of Jews, around 2.5 % of the population. On the basis of the data collected, special records on Jewish people were drafted, which were constantly updated in the following years.

12 Silva Bon, Le Comunità ebraiche della Provincia italiana del Carnaro. Fiume e Abbazia (1924–1945) (Rome: Società di Studi Fiumani, 2004), 81–82. 13 Annalista Capristo and Ernest Ialongo, “On the 80th Anniversary of the Racial Laws. Articles Reflecting the Current Scholarship on the Italian Fascist anti-Semitism in Honour of Michele Sarfatti,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 24 (2019): 1–3. See also Aldo Mazzacane, “Il diritto fascista e la persecuzione degli ebrei,” and Paolo Caretti, “Il corpus delle leggi razziali,” in Le leggi antiebraiche nell’ordinamento italiano: razza, diritto, esperienze, ed. Giuseppe Speciale (Bologna: Pàtron editore, 2013), 23–54 and 73. 14 Paolo Santarcangeli, In cattività babilonese. Avventure e disavventure in tempo di guerra di un giovane giuliano ebreo e fiumano per giunta (Udine: Editore Del Bianco, 1987), 24. Testimonies on racial persecutions in Fiume collected from the volume of Silva Bon, Testimoni della Shoah. La memoria dei salvati. Una storia del Nord Est (Gradisca d’Isonzo: Centro Isontino di Ricerca e di Documentazione Storica e Sociale “Leopoldo Gasparini”, 2005). 15 See Pietro Neglie, “Fiume, città contesa. Un laboratorio imperfetto e contraddittorio?,” Giornale di Storia Contemporanea 23,2 (2019): 37–64. 16 Bon, Le Comunità ebraiche della provincia italiana del Carnaro, 35. See also the documents preserved in Archive of Italian Israelite Communities (Rome), box 19, fasc. 95.

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The “racial laws” imposed by the Italian government generated not only stark restrictions that led to the depletion of the Jewish community as a whole,17 but they also were used to expel and exclude people from schools and universities,18 public sector jobs, professions, trade, industries19 and, as we will see, from the armed forces.20 In Fiume as well, soldiers and officers in particular were demoted, even if decorated, as in the case of high treason and placed on indefinite leave such as Giovanni Dalma, Ernesto Tauz, Tiburzio Heimler, Alessandro Cohen, Paolo Sprizzi, Lodovico Farkas and Ernesto Gielles belonging to the Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale.21 Moreover, the “racial laws” were used for the deprivation of goods, arrests and detention in the internment camps and forced labor (in 1942, 76 men and 95 women were conscripted to forced labor in Fiume, Abbazia and Laurana). As other Italian Jews, the Jews of Fiume were excluded from the Partito Nazionale Fascista, which was popular amongst some for their political beliefs, or being able to work in public sector jobs. Living according to the religious law of Judaism was no longer a right, and it was difficult to satisfy the needs of individuals and those of the community. The ban on the ritual slaughter of animals and the failure to respect the Sabbath and religious holidays during the forced labor imposed on the Jews was further evidence of the living conditions they had to endure. Among the anti-Jewish laws, the racial provision of September 5, 1938 established the expulsion of 5,400 Jewish students from schools and universities. The subsequent “racial laws” (R. Decree-Law of September 23, 1938, no. 1630 and R. Decree-Law of November 15, 1938, no. 1779) mandated that the communities create Jewish primary schools and junior high schools at the expense of the state where there were at least ten Jewish students. The provision also mandated that

17 Simone Duranti, Leggi razziali fasciste e persecuzione antiebraica in Italia (Milan: Edizioni Unicopli, 2019); Claudio Vercelli, 1938: Francamente razzisti: Le leggi razziali in Italia (Turin: Edizioni del Capricorno, 2018) and Marie-Anne Matard-Bonucci, L’Italia fascista e la persecuzione degli ebrei (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2015). 18 Valeria Graffone, Espulsioni immediate: L’università di Torino e le leggi razziali: 1938 (Turin: Silvio Zamorani Editore, 2018) and Pompeo Volpe and Giulia Simone, “Posti liberi”: Leggi razziali e sostituzione dei docenti ebrei all’Università di Padova (Padova: Padova University Press, 2018). 19 Fabio Isman, 1938. L’Italia razzista. I documenti della persecuzione contro gli ebrei (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2019), 84–96 and Ilaria Pavan, Tra indifferenza e oblio. Le conseguenze economiche delle leggi razziali in Italia, 1938–1970 (Florence: Le Monnier, 2004). 20 Giovanni Cecini, Le leggi razziali e il Valore Militare. Antologia di testi e documenti (Rome: Edizioni Nuova Cultura, 2019) and Alberto Rovighi, I militari di origine ebraica nel primo secolo di vita dello Stato italiano (Rome: Ufficio Storico dello Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito, 1999). 21 Ester Capuzzo, “La fine della comunità ebraica di Fiume,” Clio 36,3 (2000): 589–591.

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the teachers be “Jewish”.22 In some communities, such as that of Rome, there was even the creation of a “clandestine university”.23 Obviously, it was not easy to replace the loss of regular public education because it was necessary to find new classrooms or new buildings or it was not possible to find the minimum number of children to open a school. In Fiume 188 students were removed from schooling, divided as follows: 53 schoolchildren, 116 middle school students, 19 university students. Shortly thereafter, the community organized an elementary school and a middle school so that young students expelled from state schools could continue studying.24 Also in Fiume the census carried out on August 22, 1938 formed the centerpiece of the Fascist racist persecution which in the Province of Carnaro (Fiume, Abbazia, Laurana e Volosca) seems to have taken on some very specific aspects. The list drawn up on August 22, 1938 included 405 sheets on which the Jews of Fiume were listed with their personal data, but also with precise information indicating their economic status and further annotations specifying for each person the possession (or non-possession) of real estate, commercial and / or industrial activities and general information about their financial health (or poverty). The list distinguished between “stateless Jews”, “foreign Jews”, “Jewish race”, married (and relationship status) with “Jews”.25 The data referring to the community of Fiume and Abbazia combined with that of refugees from Central and Eastern Europe produces a greater number than the Fascist census: 1,800 Jews in Fiume, 400 Jews in Abbazia, including those residing in the smaller villages of Apriano, Clana, Laurana, Ogliane-Icici and Volosca.26 The data collected in the 1938 census were continuously processed and updated in the following years, especially after Italy’s entry into the war, when there was renewed interest in the “Jewish question”. Thus, the “General List of Members of the Jewish Race Residing in the Province of Carnaro” on November 27, 1941 contains 1,362 people.27 There is no doubt about the use that the Germans would have made of these very specific lists for the purpose of the “final solution to the Jewish question”.

22 Silvia Haia Antonucci and Giuliana Piperno Beer, Sapere ed essere nella Roma razzista. Gli ebrei nelle scuole e nell’università (1938–1943) (Rome: Gangemi, 2015). 23 Antonucci and Piperno Beer, Sapere ed essere nella Roma razzista, 82–85. 24 Sanja Dukić, “La legislazione antisemita nella scuola fascista della Provincia del Carnaro (1938–1943). L’istituzione delle scuole per gli scolari di razza ebraica a Fiume,” 137–158. 25 Capuzzo, “La fine della comunità ebraica di Fiume,” 591. See also Mario Avagliano and Marco Palmieri, Di pura razza ariana. L’Italia “ariana” di fronte le leggi razziali (Milan: Baldini&Castoldi, 2013). 26 Bon, Le comunità ebraiche della provincia italiana del Carnaro, 82–84. 27 Ibid., 87.

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On September 7, 1938 a Fascist law revoked the Italian citizenship (obtained after World War I) of foreign Jews.28 This was the case for the young sisters Margherita and Elena Ettelesz who left Fiume in 1942 and fled to Tuscany, but were captured and arrested in Serravalle (near Pistoia) where they lived.29 Fortunately, the Ettelesz sisters managed to save themselves as well as the sisters of Fiume Andra and Tatiana Bucci who were, however, deported to Auschwitz.30 They were kept alive to be used as test case for experiments conducted by Josef Mengele. This measure was part of the set of provisions with which the Fascist regime intended to get rid of foreign Jews (in many cases stateless) who were present in Italy at the time of the enactment of “racial laws”. It was in line with the discriminatory policies implemented by the states in which totalitarianism had developed according to the “model” described by Hannah Arendt. In Fiume the acquisition of citizenship was resolved much later (than other areas of Italy) with two decrees issued in May 1927 and December 1928 respectively. Between 1927 and 1928, almost a thousand foreign Jews residing in Fiume and in the province of Carnaro had obtained Italian citizenship with retroactive effect from January 1, 1919.31 In Italy, the revocation of Italian citizenship organized based on the extensive interpretation of “racial laws” did not occur in such a decisive way as in Fiume. The reason lies that Fiume had become a refuge for many Jews who fled Nazi Germany and Eastern European countries. Some had remained in the city, while others were staying there while waiting to embark from the port of Fiume to head to Palestine. At the end of the thirties, Fiume, like Trieste, had become the “Zion Gate”.32 In fact, during the 1930s many Jews had come to Fiume from various parts of Eastern Europe, especially from Hungary, including many who had lived in the city before World War I and several hundred who had a residence document issued

28 In 1939, according to statistics produced by Demorazza, there were 1,126 foreign Jews residing in Italy who had obtained citizenship in the years following 1919, see: http://www.annapiz zuti.it/cittadinanza/italiani.php, accessed February 3, 2020. 29 Roberto Daghini, In fuga per la vita: Storia delle sorelle ebree Margherita ed Elena Ettelesz: Fiume, Marliana, Serravalle P.se (Pistoia: Assonazionale Nazionale Partigiani d’Italia, Comitato Provinciale di Pistoia, Sezione Serravalle Pistoiese, 2018). 30 Andra and Tatiana Bucci, Noi, bambine ad Auschwitz: La nostra storia di sopravvissute alla Shoah (Milan: Mondadori, 2020). See also Liliana Picciotto Fargion, Gli ebrei d’Italia sfuggiti alla Shoah, 1943–1945 (Turin: Einaudi, 2017). 31 Capuzzo, “La fine della comunità ebraica di Fiume,” 589. 32 On Jewish emigration from Fiume to Palestine see Silva Bon, Trieste. La Porta di Sion. Storia dell’emigrazione ebraica verso la Terra di Israele 1921–1940 (Florence: Alinari, 1998), 22.

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by the municipal administration after 1919. The revocation of Italian citizenship was a particularly serious measure because it made 693 Jews from Fiume who had become Italian (naturalized) in the late 1920s and early 1930s stateless, without legal protection. They lost their right to permanent residence, the right to work and many other things.33 In fact, great attention was paid to “foreign Jews” such as the Hungarians who represented a conspicuous part of the Fiume community (150 names were identified) and of the Abbazia community.34 The law was immediately enacted due to the particularity of the territory of Carnaro, where different people and cultures intersected. Local Fascist authorities were afraid that Jews, like the Slavic element, could represent a potential danger to public security in these border areas. For this reason the Provvedimenti nei confronti degli ebrei stranieri (Measures against Foreign Jews) were strictly applied with particular rigor.35 This law, which provided for the internment for foreign Jews, made the presence of Jews from Austria precarious in the cities of Carnaro such as Fiume.36 In 1940, the rabbi of the Orthodox temple David Wachsberger and the rabbi of the German temple Julius Fleischmann were interned. Their release was requested by the Union of Italian Jewish Communities. In Sušak, a suburb of Fiume, Chief Rabbi Otto Deutsch was interned and accused of being anti-Italian and helping Jews escape from Croatia. Moreover, after Italy entered the war (June 10, 1940), a nighttime raid was carried out between June 15–16, 1940, ordered by the prefect of Fiume, Temistocle Testa, and the police commissioner, Vincenzo Genovesi, who were particularly obsessive and rigorous in collecting information and implementing the “racial laws”. There were 242 foreign Jews arrested because they were considered enemies coming from Eastern Europe and imprisoned in an elementary school.37 In many cases, those

33 Silva Bon, Gli ebrei a Trieste. Identità, persecuzione, risposte (Gorizia: Libreria Editrice Goriziana, 2000), 127–128. 34 “La relazione del Presidente della Comunità Israelitica di Fiume, Arminio Klein, alla Commissione Circondariale per la contestazione dei delitti dell’occupatore e dei suoi complici in data 10 dicembre 1945,” in Il tributo fiumano all’Olocausto, ed. Amleto Ballarini (Rome: Spoletini, 1999), document 1, 69. 35 Raoul Pupo, Fiume: Città di passione (Rome/Bari: Laterza, 2018), 188–189. So wrote Arminio Klein, president of the Jewish Community in Fiume, see “La relazione del Presidente della Comunità Israelitica di Fiume, Arminio Klein, alla Commissione Circondariale per la contestazione dei delitti dell’occupatore e dei suoi complici in data 10 dicembre 1945”, in Il tributo fiumano all’Olocausto, document 1, 69. 36 Ester Capuzzo, “Note in margine alla fine della comunità ebraica di Fiume,” Fiume. Rivista di studi adriatici 21,3 (2001): 1–6. 37 Michele Sarfatti, La Shoah in Italia: la persecuzione degli ebrei sotto il fascismo (Turin: Einaudi, 2008).

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arrested were sent into confinement in various places in central and southern Italy, particularly in the internment camps of Notaresco (Teramo), Campagna (Salerno), Ferramonti (Cosenza)38 and others.39 In 1942, 134 of the 761 members of the Jewish community of Fiume were removed from their families and interned in various camps. After the announcement of the “racial laws”, even though it was known that in Italy Fascism was persecuting the Jews, Jewish refugees (from Europe invaded by Nazi troops) continued to flow into Fiume, considered the “gateway” to Trieste.40 This influx greatly increased after the Nazi-Fascist invasion of Yugoslavia, which put at risk foreign Jews who had previously sought refuge there. The situation worsened with the birth of the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska) in 1941, which was governed by Ante Pavelić. The Croatian regime adopted Hitler’s racial policy by hunting the Jews while a part of its territory was occupied for strategic reasons by the Second Army of the Italian military.41 Jews were looking for salvation in the so called “channel” of Fiume, which was an escape route through the city, thanks to the help offered by the Italian soldiers. At the first World Jewish Conference held after the war in London in August 1945, delegate Raffaele Cantoni testified that Italian soldiers had rescued 5,000 Jews in this way.42 However, there are differing opinions among some scholars about this rescue of Jews.43 After the fall of Fascism on July 25, 1943, the Jews of Fiume who were in confinement in the towns of central and southern Italy hoped to be able to return to their homes. However, this illusion was short-lived because after the armistice on September 8, the Nazis occupied Venezia Giulia that was incorporated in the

38 Carlo Spartaco Capogreco, I campi del Duce: L’internamento civile nell’Italia fascista (1940–1945) (Turin: Einaudi, 2019) and Mario Rende, Ferramonti di Tarsia: voci da un campo di concentramento fascista: 1940–1945 (Milan: Mursia, 2009). 39 Carlo Spartaco Capogreco, “L’internement des Juifs en Italie et la géographie des camps (1940–1945),” Revue d’Historie de la Shoah: le monde Juif, 204,3 (2016): 201–222. 40 Walter Chendi, La Porta di Sion (Milan: Edizioni BD, 2010). 41 On the Italian occupation policy of Yugoslavia see Milo Zeev, “Bravi italiani”: La resistenza italiana contro l’Olocausto in Croazia: Storie ed esperienze personali,” Fiume. Rivista di studi adriatici, 27 (2013) and 28 (2013), 65–94 and 13–54. Cf. also Eric Gobetti, L’occupazione allegra. Gli italiani in Jugoslavia (1941–1943) (Rome: Carocci, 2007) and Karlo Ruzicic-Kessler, Italiener auf dem Balkan. Besatzungspolitik in Jugoslawien 1941–1943 (Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2017). 42 Sergio I. Minerbi, Un ebreo fra D’Annunzio e il sionismo: Raffaele Cantoni (Rome: Bonacci Editore, 1992). 43 See Michele Sarfatti, “Un articolo del 1955 su 5.000 ebrei croati salvatisi per mezzo del ‘canale’ di Fiume diretto da Giovanni Palatucci: una verifica storiografica e documentaria,” Italia contemporanea 283 (2017): 147–181.

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so-called Operationszone Adriatisches Küstenland, which included the Italian counties of Udine, Gorizia, Trieste, Pula, Fiume and Lubiana.44 It was a territorial organization removed from the control of the Italian Social Republic, annexed to the Reich and directly subjected to the German military administration, led by Gauleiter Friedrich Rainer, who settled in Trieste. Odilo Globocnik, the infamous SS Gruppenführer, former Gauleiter of Vienna after the Anschluss and protected by Hitler, also arrived here with the task of hunting down Jews and deporting them.45 In October 1943, Globocnik organized the Unit (Einheit) “R” to capture Jews. This Unit was already operating at his orders in the extermination camp of Treblinka and in others.46 The command of the “R” Unit was located in the S. Sabba rice field, where one of the young victims of Mengele, Sergio De Simone, was deported at the age of eight from Fiume and hanged in Hamburg shortly before the arrival of the English troops in April 1945. After the creation of the Operationszone Adriatisches Küstenland in Fiume, the situation became increasingly dangerous for all Jews – Italian and foreign – still present in the town; moreover, Republican police had been reorganized by the Fascists for serving the enemy. In these circumstances, an official of the Police Department working in the Foreigner’s Office, Giovanni Palatucci, worked to protect the Jews in Fiume.47 Until September 8, 1943, due to the lower level of wealth of the Jews of Fiume compared to other cities such as Trieste, those rules that prohibited the possession or management of companies with more than 99 employees and ownership of houses and land beyond a certain value established by law had not been applied. Two months later, Jewish accounts were blocked and withdrawn by the SS during the Nazi occupation period. In addition, banking institutions were prohibited from carrying out transactions involving a Jew and insurance companies were prohibited from paying out money to Jews. In October 1943, after the Nazis (together with Italian police authorities) arrested several dozen foreign Jews in Fiume (who were sent to the death camps),

44 Giorgio Liuzzi, “Operationszone Adriatisches Küstenland,” in Zone di guerra, geografie di sangue: l’Atlante delle stragi naziste e fasciste in Italia (1943–1945), eds. Gianluca Fulvino and Paolo Pezzino (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2017), 467–480. 45 Silva Bon, “La deportazione dalla Operationszone Adriatisches Küstenland,” in Il libro dei deportati. Deportati, deportatori, tempi, luoghi, vol. 2, eds. Brunello Mantelli and Nicola Tranfaglia (Milan: Mursia, 2010), 367–395. 46 Stefano Di Giusto and Tommaso Chiussi, Globocnik’s Men in Italy, 1943–45: Abteilung R and the SS–Wachmannschaften of the Operationszone Adriatisches Küstenland (Atglen: Schiffer Publishing, 2017). 47 Marco Coslovich, Giovanni Palatucci: Una giusta memoria (Atripalda: Mephite, 2008).

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Palatucci tried to put a stop to these actions by destroying the Jewish registers in the police headquarter of the town. Soon, he was under suspicion, and in September 1944, he was arrested by the Nazi-Fascists. He was deported to Dachau, where he died in February 1945. Palatucci was recognized as being “Righteous among Nations”. In January 1944, the Italian Jews of Fiume and Carnaro’s other communities also began to be arrested with the help of the Italian Social Republic’s finance policy based on the registry of the municipality. The names of 881 Jews were identified, including those who had converted to another religion or were married to “Aryans”. In Fiume, as in other places, the anti-Jewish persecution also had the character of an economic-financial operation directed to raid Jewish assets. Today we know how 67 % of Jews deported from Fiume to the extermination camps were not wealthy and more than 100 of the 1,500 members of the community lived in modest or poor conditions. In Fiume, as in other areas of the Adriatisches Küstenland, the robbery of Jewish goods belonging also to people of modest means even led to the requisition of rented apartments. On the one hand, this contributed to breaking down one of the most widespread and entrenched anti-Semitic stereotypes, that of the rich Jew as an accumulator of riches. On the other, this helped to debunk the myth of the non-dangerous nature of Fascist racism and the subordinate role of Italian Social Republic regime in the face of Nazism. Instead, we see that there were many Italians involved at least as accomplices.48 In contrast to what happened in other parts of Italy, there was zero intervention from the Ente gestione e liquidazione immobiliare (Agency for Property Management and Liquidation) in the province of Fiume (as in those of Trento, Bolzano, Belluno, Udine, Gorizia, Trieste and Pola). This was because the elective measures to Jewish assets were under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Germanic High Commissariats of the Prealps (Venezia Tridentina and Cadore) and of the Litorale (Venezia Giulia).49 Fascist authorities had a very specific role in encouraging the hunting down of Jews which, after the capitulation of Italy on September 8, 1943 and the subsequent German occupation, turned into Nazi persecution within the project of the “final solution”. Data from the 1938 census was used for the identification, arrest

48 Silva Bon, La spoliazione dei beni ebraici: Processi economici di epurazione razziale nel Friuli Venezia Giulia, 1938–1945 (Gradisca d’Isonzo: Centro isontino di ricerca e documentazione storica e sociale “Leopoldo Gasparini,” 2001). 49 Fabio Levi, Le case e le cose. La persecuzione degli ebrei torinesi nelle carte dell’Egeli, 1938–1945 (Turin: Compagnia di San Paolo, 1998).

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and deportation to the extermination camps by Nazi authorities, in collaboration with the Italian Social Republic.50 On January 30, 1944, the Great Synagogue in Via del Pomerio, built in 1903 and located not far from the building occupied by Gabriele D’Annunzio in 1919, was set on fire by Nazis who prevented the fire brigade from extinguishing the fire. The fire devoured the synagogue, sacred furnishings, the scrolls of Torah kept in the Aron, the archive and the library of the community.51 The modern Temple located in Via Galvani and built in 1928 by Orthodox Jews from Hungary, Galicia and Bessarabia was not damaged.52 The Orthodox Synagogue in Fiume like that in Genoa was one of the two unique examples of modern-style Synagogues built in Italy in the Fascist period. Of the 1,473 members of the Jewish community in Fiume, 317 Jews were deported, mainly to Auschwitz. Only 42 returned.53 Another 53 were deported from Abbazia and other places. Only four came back. A total of 370 Jews were deported from the entire county of Carnaro. This number places the Jewish community of Fiume at the top for deportations in Italy, after Rome and Trieste.54 At the end of World War II, the Jews from Fiume who survived (contrary to what happened in the other Italian Jewish communities) could not return to their homes because the entire province of Carnaro had meanwhile been occupied by the troops of Marshal Josip Broz Tito and annexed ipso facto to Yugoslavia. In most cases, they followed the destiny of the Fiuman, Istrian and Dalmatian refugees, settling in various places in Italy or emigrating to other European countries, America, Palestine / Israel, Australia or elsewhere. In conclusion, we can say that the most recent studies highlight the role that the Fascist authorities had in paving the way for the hunting down of the Jews after the capitulation of Italy on September 8, 1943 and the subsequent German occupation. The census data collected by the fascist authorities was also used in Fiume and in the province of Carnaro for the identification, arrest and deportation to the extermination camps by the Nazi authorities, in collaboration with the Italian Social Republic. 50 Bon, Le comunità ebraiche della provincia italiana del Carnaro, 89–95. 51 See Bon, Le comunità ebraiche della provincia italiana del Carnaro, 93 and Brunello Mantelli and Nicola Tranfaglia, Il libro dei deportati, vol. 2 (Milan: Mursia, 2010), 392. 52 Federico Falk, ed., Le comunità israelitiche di Fiume e Abbazia tra le due guerre mondiali: gli ebrei residenti nella provincia del Carnaro negli anni 1915–1945 (Rome: Lithos, 2012), 309. 53 Falk, Le comunità israelitiche di Fiume e Abbazia, 312–313. 54 Cinzia Villani, “The Persecution of Jews in Two Regions of German-Occupied Northern Italy, 1943–1945: Operationszone Alpenvorland and Operationszone Adriatisches Küstenland,” in Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule 1922–1945, ed. Joshua D. Zimmerman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 248.

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These are elements that dismantle the statements in support of fascism, which according to some, did not play a decisive role in the organization of the persecution.55 It should be noted that the Jewish component of Fiume and Abbazia was subjected by further vicious treatment. In particular, Prefect Temistocle Testa proved to be very rigorous in gathering information and implementing “racial laws”. The reason is to be found in the particular situation of the Quarnero area, where different peoples and cultures intersected. The vicissitudes of the Jewish persecution in Fiume and in the province of Carnaro constituted a tremendous tragedy to which another great tragedy is superimposed: that of the Julian-Dalmatian exodus, which also affected the survivors of the extermination camps. In February 2020, these events were commemorated in Fiume by an exhibition that was dedicated to the Jews of Fiume and Abbazia between 1867 and 1945.

55 Matteo Stefanori, Ordinaria amministrazione. Gli ebrei e la Repubblica sociale italiana (Rome/ Bari: Laterza, 2017).

Fernando Clara

“Collaborating Neutrality”? Portuguese Collaboration Networks at the Secretariat of National Propaganda In 1945, the Portuguese National Secretariat of Information, a government department that succeeded the Secretariat of National Propaganda, which had been created by the Prime Minister António de Oliveira Salazar in 1933, published a pamphlet in English with an intriguing title: “Portugal and the War: Collaborating Neutrality”.1 Its author was Luiz Teixeira, a journalist who had won an Essay Prize of the Secretariat of National Propaganda in 1938 with a “Profile of Salazar”,2 and since then had been collaborating with that government agency. Essentially, Teixeira’s pamphlet draws on a speech held by Salazar at the National Assembly on May 18, 1945,3 where the Portuguese Premier undertook a reassessment of Portuguese neutrality during the war, emphasizing the fact that throughout that period the country never “adopted . . . the concept of selfish or sterile neutrality”. Quite the contrary, he maintained: The active guard of the key positions of the Atlantic, the concession of bases in the Azores, with many other related and further reciprocal services, the greater and best part of our economy in the service of the Allies, financial assistance, transatlantic shipping, made this neutrality a collaborationist neutrality.4

1 Luiz Teixeira, Portugal and the War: Collaborating Neutrality (Lisbon: SNI Books, 1945); the book was also published in Portuguese in that same year: Portugal e a Guerra: Neutralidade Colaborante (Lisbon: SNI, 1945); the English translation was reprinted in 1946. Throughout these pages I will be quoting non-English sources from contemporary English translations whenever they are available. Unless otherwise noted, all other translations are my own. 2 Luiz Teixeira, Perfil de Salazar: Elementos para a história da sua vida e da sua época (Lisbon: L. Teixeira, 1938). The book was translated into Spanish and French in 1940: Perfil de Salazar: Elementos para la historia de su vida y su tiempo. Prologue by W. Fernández Florez, trans. José Andrés Vazquez (Madrid: Biblioteca Hispano-Portuguesa, 1940); Profil de Salazar: Eléments pour l’histoire de sa vie et de son époque (Lisbon: SPN, 1940); later it was also published in English: Profile of Salazar: Material for the History of His Life and Times (Lisbon: SPN Books, 1943). 3 António de Oliveira Salazar, Portugal and the Peace (Lisbon: Books SNI, 1945). The pamphlet, which gathers three speeches delivered by Salazar in May 1945, after Hitler’s death was announced, was also available in Portuguese and Spanish: Portugal e a Paz: Discursos (Lisbon: SNI, 1945) and Portugal y la Paz (Lisbon: SNI, 1945). 4 Salazar, Portugal and the Peace, 15. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671186-013

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The pamphlet follows Salazar’s argument but gives it a more popular, accessible form. In a clear and assertive style punctuated by emotional (sometimes even dramatic) tones, the author successfully rewrites the Portuguese history of the period emulating the point of view of the Allies. He begins by stressing the fact that neutrality had been “prepared in advance” and that the Portuguese were “ready to fulfill [their] duties – ready to die”. He further points out “some Portuguese contributions towards victory and the benefit of Humanity”, recalls that “Hitler might well have materialized his dream”, and ends with a direct quote adapted from Salazar’s speech: “‘It was a pity that we could not do more . . .’”.5 For someone working on the German-Portuguese relations of the period, and thus well aware of the affinities and close ties between the two authoritarian regimes, it is not only the title of Teixeira’s pamphlet that is rather ambiguous or its rhetorical emotional tone that sounds somehow displaced, to say the least. Salazar’s words are also baffling and to a certain extent surprising, and that on several counts. One only needs to recall the fact that Salazar delivered his speech at the National Assembly in Lisbon, a building that like all other public buildings in Portugal had had its flag at half-mast because of Hitler’s death just two weeks before (from May 2 to May 4, 1945). The Portuguese official mourning for Hitler was obviously announced by the local press6 and the correspondents of the main British and American news agencies in Lisbon (Reuters, Associated Press and United Press) saw to it that this strange news also reached the international press. Titles like “Tears for Hitler”, “They wept for Hitler” or “Half-Mast for Hitler” could not possibly go unnoticed by the Allied public opinion and were understandably received with a mixture of incredulity and indignation. It is true that under these headings the news also mentioned neutral Ireland and the fact that on May 2, 1945 the Irish Prime Minister, Eamon de Valera, paid a visit of condolence to the German Minister in Dublin (Eduard Hempel).7 Nevertheless,

5 Teixeira, Portugal and the War. The quotations reproduce the titles of the main chapters of the pamphlet. 6 E. g. Diário de Notícias, May 3, 1945, 6. The pro-Axis newspaper O Século (May 3, 1945, 4) provided much more detailed information: “The German Academy in Lisbon was closed, at the University of Coimbra the death-bell also tolled for Hitler and the flags were flown at half-mast”. 7 Most of the content under these headings is very similar, it basically reproduces the texts wired by the news agencies, which circulated widely in national and local newspapers, and can easily be accessed through historical press archives available online (e. g. https://www. britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/, accessed August 20, 2020). These and the quotations that follow were retrieved from that archive. On Valera’s condolence visit including rumors of the Irish Legation in Lisbon flying the flag at half-mast see: Dermot Keogh, “Eamon de Valera and

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the stream of disturbing news coming from Portugal during the first two weeks of May 1945 was appalling and, what is more, there appeared to be no end in sight. There were reports about a memorial service for Hitler held on May 6 at “a crowded German Catholic Church in Lisbon”, about a “requiem mass for Mussolini” that took place “at the fashionable Church of the Martyrs” the day before and was attended by “less than 100 persons” and about the “extraordinary scenes outside the German Legation in Lisbon after the Portuguese Government’s decision [on May 7, 1945] to seize all German diplomatic and official property on the ground that the National Government of Germany no longer exists”. Many of these news items were wired by Reuters special correspondent in Lisbon, Douglas Brown, whose critical tone towards the Portuguese regime is subtle and yet well attested by his report on Salazar’s speech of May 18, 1945. Under the heading “Portuguese Premier and Neutrality”, Brown writes: Dr. Salazar, in a speech to his single-party Parliament to-day, said that Portuguese neutrality during the war had been collaborationist neutrality with Britain, but this was the last European war in which Portugal could or should remain neutral (emphasis mine).8

It goes without saying that the end of the war was truly a delicate time for the Portuguese authoritarian regime. There is no doubt that from an international point of view, the agreement between Great Britain and Portugal concerning the use of military facilities in the Azores constituted the main and probably strongest argument behind the idea of “collaborating neutrality”. On the other hand, however, one cannot simply ignore the fact that the Azores agreement was only signed on October 8, 1943, that is to say, one month after the Allied invasion of Italy had begun (September 3, 1943), when the tide of war in Europe was clearly turning in favor of the Allies. Under these circumstances, it is hard not to agree with Serrano Suñer, Franco’s Minister of Foreign Affairs between

Hitler: An Analysis of International Reaction to the Visit to the German Minister, May 1945,” Irish Studies in International Affairs 3, 1 (1989): 69–92. 8 All quotations in this paragraph were retrieved from several British newspapers available at the above mentioned British Newspaper Archive (https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co. uk/). In view of the critical tone of Douglas Brown towards Salazar’s regime, it should not come as a surprise that the Reuters correspondent in Lisbon would be expelled from Portugal in February 1946. Nevertheless, the news coming from Lisbon did not change much in the following years, suggesting a disturbing continuity in the country’s ideological affinities and political attitudes: according to the Associated Press, a requiem mass commemorating the first anniversary of the death of Mussolini was held on April 29, 1946 at the same Church of Martyrs in Lisbon.

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1940 and 1942, when he dispassionately recalls in his memoirs Salazar’s strategy during the period: An intelligent and realistic politician, Oliveira Salazar . . . maintained very cordial relations with the powerful and victorious Germany in Europe. How could he do anything else? Only when military setbacks began to occur and in view of important events did his policy also began to evolve. By the time he ceded bases to America in the Azores, Salazar was sure that Germany could no longer do more than a platonic protest, as indeed happened.9

Against this background, it should be more than obvious that both Teixeira’s pamphlet and the inspirational Salazar speech of May 18, 1945 can only be read as a clear case of history being rewritten by the victors (Walter Benjamin). Nevertheless, useful and powerful as it was, the argument quickly spread into Portuguese public opinion. Furthermore, and this is something that cannot go unnoticed here, some contemporary Portuguese research in this area still adheres uncritically to the idea of a “collaborating neutrality” with Britain. Two essays and a PhD dissertation can illustrate this puzzling trend. A 1998 article on Portuguese neutrality assumes right from the first line that “The role of Portugal during World War II was marked by the prevalence of the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance”,10 while a much more recent essay dealing with the wartime Macau Delegation of the Portuguese Red Cross sees this specific “Red Cross branch” as “a concrete example of Portuguese collaborative neutrality with the Allies, most particularly the British”.11 As to the PhD dissertation, submitted to the University of the Azores in 1992,12 suffice it to say that its author, following the thought process of his supervisor, a former minister under

9 Ramón Serrano Suñer, Entre Hendaya y Gilbraltar: Noticia y reflexión, frente a una leyenda, sobre nuestra política en dos guerras (Madrid: Ediciones y Publicaciones Españolas, 1947), 221. Regarding the German reaction to the Azores agreement see Felicitas von Peter, “Apanhados de Surpresa?: A Embaixada Alemã e o Acordo dos Açores,” Penélope: Revista de História e Ciências Sociais 22 (2000): 35–51. 10 Joaquim da Costa Leite, “Neutrality by Agreement: Portugal and the British Alliance in World War II,” American University International Law Review 14,1 (1998): 185–199, here 185. The Azores agreement was signed under the framework of the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance, a Treaty of Friendship between the two Kingdoms that dates back to 1373. On this Alliance and its role during the war, see: Glyn A. Stone, The Oldest Ally: Britain and the Portuguese Connection, 1936–1941 (Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer, 1994) and “The Official British Attitude to the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance, 1910–45,” Journal of Contemporary History 10, 4 (1975): 729–746. 11 Helena F. S. Lopes, “Inter-Imperial Humanitarianism: The Macau Delegation of the Portuguese Red Cross during the World War II,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 46,6 (2018): 1125–1147, here 1125. 12 Luis Manuel Vieira de Andrade, “Neutralidade Colaborante: O caso de Portugal na Segunda Guerra Mundial” (PhD diss., Universidade dos Açores, 1992).

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Salazar who also published on the subject,13 perceives “collaborating neutrality” as an answer to the “disorders of the West” and as a fundamental guideline that structured Portuguese foreign policy “between the Spanish Civil War and contemporary anti-colonialism”.14 In view of the strength and longevity of the argument, it is admittedly not easy to get a clear unbiased picture of Portuguese neutrality and of the role played by collaboration networks during the period. Yet the fact remains that the news from Lisbon published by the international press in the first weeks of May 1945 contrast blatantly with Portuguese discourse on these matters and up until the present day. The rhetorical incommensurability of both these views definitely needs a thorough examination that calls for a different approach. For in fact, it should be pointed out that as far as Portuguese “collaborating neutrality” is concerned, there are still many open questions, which neither Salazar’s political strategy, nor the regime’s post-war efforts to justify its foreign policy during the war,15 nor some of the essays mentioned above, have been able to

13 E. g. Adriano Moreira, Neutralidade Colaborante. Offprint of Comunidades Portuguesas, 6–8, 1967. 14 Andrade, “Neutralidade Colaborante”, 162. It must be noted that these viewpoints are far from being exclusive to Portuguese historians or to Portuguese political scientists. American researchers like Douglas L. Wheeler, “The Price of Neutrality: Portugal, the Wolfram Question, and World War II,” Luso-Brazilian Review 23, 1 (1986): 107–127, and “The Price of Neutrality: Portugal, the Wolfram Question, and World War II,” Luso-Brazilian Review 23, 2 (1986): 97–111 or Kenneth W. Weiss, The Azores in Diplomacy and Strategy, 1940–1945 (Alexandria, VA: Institute of Naval Studies, Center for Naval Analyses, 1980) also shared similar thoughts. As Leos Müller rightly pointed out recently in his Neutrality in World History (New York/London: Routledge, 2019), 143, “The present-day view of neutrality during the World War II is affected by the character of the Nazi rule, its brutal occupation regimes, the reality of total warfare in eastern Europe, Nazi atrocities and crimes, and of course the Holocaust. But, looking at neutrality policy from a post-war perspective does not work very well if we wish to understand the choices and options that the neutrals faced in 1939, 1940 or 1941”. Nevertheless, much more elaborate and balanced overviews of Portuguese neutrality have been provided by Fernando Rosas, “Portuguese Neutrality in the World War II,” in European Neutrals and Non-Belligerents during the World War II, ed. Neville Wylie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 268–282; António José Telo, “A neutralidade portuguesa na Segunda Guerra Mundial,” in Portugal e a Guerra: História das intervenções militares portuguesas nos grandes conflitos mundiais (sécs. XIX–XX), ed. Nuno Severiano Teixeira (Lisbon: Colibri, 1998), 109–125 and, above all (because of its change of perspective and its focus on Nazi Germany that indeed makes a difference in this case), Christian Leitz’s “Nazi Germany and the Luso-Hispanic World,” Contemporary European History 12, 2 (2003): 183–196. 15 See e. g. the 15 volumes on Portuguese foreign policy during the period published by the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs between 1961 and 1992: Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros, Dez Anos de Política Externa (1936–1947): A Nação Portuguesa e a Segunda Guerra Mundial, 15 vols. (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional, 1961–1992).

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answer satisfactorily. How did this neutrality translate into practice? Which institutions and individuals were involved? How and with whom did neutral Portugal “collaborate” before, during and after the war? How strong and persistent were the ties to the Allies or to the Axis countries? Instead of dealing with these questions from an international political perspective, which is clearly contaminated by the turn that the country’s foreign policy apparently took in the final stages of the war, it could be more productive to address the same questions with a different focus, namely one more specifically interested in local institutions and individuals who developed their activities in international (though not directly political) settings. Take, for instance, the case of the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon, a state institution engaged in international cultural and scientific exchanges. From 1932 on, the Academy underwent major changes in an effort to gain international visibility and recognition. Part of that effort involved inviting foreign scientists and intellectuals to join the institution as corresponding members. The numbers and nationalities of the academy’s foreign correspondents in 1932 and in 1945 (Table 1) provide an interesting map of its international collaboration networks during the period. Table 1: Foreign Corresponding Members of the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon.16 



France





Spain





England





Italy





Germany





Most countries have much fewer corresponding members in 1945 than they had in 1932. There are only two exceptions: significantly, they are Italy and Germany. Furthermore, as membership was for life, these numbers also show that from 1932

16 The table summarizes the most represented nationalities among the foreign correspondents of the Lisbon Academy. A more detailed overview of the institution during the period is available in Fernando Clara, “The Academy of Sciences of Lisbon between Science, International Politics, and Neutrality, 1932–1945,” in Intellectual Collaboration with the Third Reich: Treason or Reason?, ed. Maria Björkman et al. (London/New York: Routledge, 2019), 101–118.

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to 1945 there was apparently no intention or interest in replacing the deceased French, Spanish and English members. The increase of Italian and German members, together with the decrease in the numbers of other nationals, leaves few doubts about the political affinities of this institution and thus also of the Portuguese authoritarian regime. Nevertheless, a closer look at the German correspondents presents a somewhat different picture. In fact, of the eight “German nationals” who were corresponding members of the Lisbon Academy in 1945, three were Jews who had managed to escape Nazi Germany (Albert Einstein was one of them), two were Catholic Priests (living in Rome), one was a German scientist that had moved to Portugal in the late nineteenth-century and finally only two were in fact Nazis. What makes this more detailed German group portrait important and at the same time challenging in this context is that it conveys a much more complex, disparate and yet realistic scenario of Portuguese neutrality during the whole period. While traces of a “collaborating neutrality” with Britain (or with the Allies) are hard to find,17 the ideological affinities with Nazi Germany cannot be concealed. At the same time, however, there are other influential networks operating at the institution, and these are using their German connections to help German-Jewish scientists escape Nazi Germany. Unveiling the international networks active at the Academy of Lisbon significantly complicates the bipolar portrait of the country that emerged from the contrast between Teixeira’s pamphlet and the shocking news printed in British and American newspapers during the first weeks of May 1945. What the Lisbon Academy of Sciences reveals about Portuguese neutrality points in a different direction. It shows that neutrality was ambiguous, complex, multifarious, dynamic and evolving. In any case, in order to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the collaboration networks operating in Portugal, research should be extended to other Portuguese institutions, namely to those that developed their activities in an international context. The publisher of the pamphlet mentioned at the beginning, the Portuguese National Secretariat of Information, is definitely a case in point. This government department was created by Salazar in 1933 under the name of Secretariat of National Propaganda (Secretariado de Propaganda Nacional, SPN). Both its name and its goals were evidently inspired by similar German and Italian institutions (the same also goes to several other new organizations set up by the Portuguese authoritarian

17 Except perhaps from 1943 on, coincidentally after the Azores agreement was signed (see Clara, “Academy of Sciences,” 112 and note 15).

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regime in this period).18 The Secretariat, which was headed by António Ferro19 and under the direct supervision of Salazar, was supposed to coordinate and centralize all propaganda services of the Portuguese New State (Estado Novo). At a national level, besides regulating the relations between the government and the press, the department promoted the activities of the state and of the Portuguese nation by encouraging works of art or popular and educational events that fostered a nationalist feeling. At an international level, it worked as a public relations agency for Salazar’s regime, overseeing official communication with foreign media, stimulating the publication of books and pamphlets that could influence foreign public opinion about the country and its government, or promoting events and inviting foreign journalists, scholars and intellectuals to visit the country in order to gain their sympathy and support. Most of the existing research on this agency has typically been focused on its national activities, but the archives of SPN also offer a comprehensive and enlightening overview of the department’s international undertakings and these in turn render a remarkably accurate reflection of the international preferences and affinities of the Portuguese regime during the period. Above all, the extensive and detailed lists of expenses of the SPN, which were personally audited by Salazar himself, and the names, activities and events these lists unveil provide a particularly interesting insight into the (collaboration) networks operating at the institution.20 Right from the beginning, the international mission of the SPN was clearly focused on promoting Salazar’s image in the international political scene, while

18 E. g. the National Foundation for Joy at Work (Fundação Nacional para a Alegria no Trabalho) established in 1935, that replicated the Italian Dopolavoro and the German Kraft durch Freude, or the Portuguese Youth Mocidade Portuguesa founded in 1936 and inspired by the Italian Balilla and the Hitler Youth. A comparative analysis of the German, Portuguese, and Italian propaganda organizations is provided by Goffredo Adinolfi, “The Institutionalization of Propaganda in the Fascist Era: The Cases of Germany, Portugal, and Italy,” The European Legacy 17, 5 (2012): 607–621. 19 Ferro was an intellectual and a writer who headed the Secretariat from its creation in 1933 to 1949 thus becoming a leading figure of Salazar’s regime. On Ferro see e. g. Margarida Acciaiuoli, António Ferro, a vertigem da palavra: Retórica, política e propaganda no Estado Novo (Lisbon: Bizâncio, 2013) and José Pedro Zúquete, “In Search of a New Society: An Intellectual between Modernism and Salazar,” Portuguese Journal of Social Science 4, 1 (2005): 39–59. 20 Most of the analysis that follows is based on these lists of expenses of the SPN which are available as a series (Propaganda Nacional 1931/1951) at Salazar’s Archive (Arquivo Oliveira Salazar, AOS) held by the Portuguese National Archives (Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, TT). These documents will be hereafter referred to by their reference code in that national catalog (e.g. PT/TT/AOS/D-M/31/9). Many of these lists are digitized and can be viewed at https:// digitarq.arquivos.pt/details?id=3895491, accessed August 30, 2020.

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at the same time it sought to build bridges to foreign institutions whose interests were somehow related to the country. In April 1933, the well-known French intellectual and poet Paul Valéry received a not insignificant sum of money to write the preface to the French edition of Ferro’s book on Salazar.21 In October 1934, a Portuguese flag was offered to the “German-Portuguese Institute of Cologne”22 and in the following year, a monetary prize was given to a student of Portuguese at the University of Hamburg for his translation of one of Salazar’s speeches. From 1935 on the efforts to publish an English version of Ferro’s book on Salazar are well documented through the records of payments to the British publishing house Faber and Faber, and through the contacts to its director, the Catholic conservative T.S. Eliot.23 Being a government agency, it is obvious that the names that come up in these lists are not limited to foreign intellectuals, scholars or cultural agents. The diplomatic corps accredited in Portugal played a significant role in the public relations policy of the SPN. The Secretariat paid for hotels, lunches and dinners and arranged for tours to the outskirts of Lisbon. Flower bouquets for the wives of the British, Italian and German ambassadors were evenly distributed. All in all, there appears to be an institutional sense of balance during the whole period, though it cannot pass unnoticed that American diplomats or officials are almost absent from these lists.24

21 PT/TT/AOS/D-M/31/9 (list of expenses for April 1933). António Ferro, Salazar. Le Portugal et son chef, trans. Fernanda de Castro, pref. Paul Valéry (Paris: B. Grasset, 1934). 22 PT/TT/AOS/D-M/31/9 (list of expenses for October 1934). The institute was actually the Luso-Brazilian Institute of the University of Cologne and it played an important role in the German-Portuguese academic and cultural exchanges during the period. Its director, Fritz Lejeune, was one of the Nazi foreign correspondents of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences. 23 PT/TT/AOS/D-M/31/9 (see e. g. the lists of expenses for May, October and November 1935, October 1936, or February, September, and December 1937) and PT/TT/AOS/D-M/31/10 (lists for May and December 1939). The English version of Ferro’s book only appeared in 1939: António Ferro, Salazar. Portugal and her Leader, trans. J. Gibbons and H. de Barros Gomes (London: Faber and Faber, 1939). In that same year the British publishing house also printed a book by Salazar: António de Oliveira Salazar, Doctrine and Action: Internal and Foreign Policy of the New Portugal, 1928–1939, trans. R. E. Broughton (London: Faber and Faber, 1939). As for Eliot, he would be a guest of the SPN in April 1938, when he was invited to Lisbon as a member of the jury of the Camões Prize (an annual prize awarded to the best foreign book on Portugal). 24 In fact, after two brief accounting entries related to the American Legation in December 1935 and in July 1936 (cf. PT/TT/AOS/D-M/31/9), it is only in November and December 1944 that the American Commercial and Press Attachés in Lisbon are explicitly listed as guests of the SPN (PT/ TT/AOS/D-M/31/13). On the problems faced by British and American diplomats in Lisbon, see: Alexandre Moreli, “The War of Seduction: The Anglo-American Struggle to Engage with the Portuguese Ruling Elite (1943–1948),” The International History Review 40,3 (2017): 654–682.

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The truth, however, is that this balance is more illusory than real. An indepth examination of the SPN records must inevitably acknowledge the fact that the number of German initiatives to strengthen the bilateral relations and bonds between the two countries clearly exceeds those of the Allied nations. Oswald von Hoyningen-Huene, head of the German Legation in Lisbon from 1934 to 1944 and a key figure in the cordial German-Portuguese relations of the period, regularly appeared on these lists together with his wife and several other officials of the German Legation in Portugal (Wilhelm Berner, Rudolf Rahn, Johannes Roth and Manfred Zapp among others).25 Furthermore, prominent Nazi leaders like Robert Ley and Albert Speer are also listed as guests of the SPN. Robert Ley, head of the German Labor Front, visited the country twice. In March 1935, he was in Lisbon to mark the beginning of the new Strength through Joy (Kraft durch Freude) Atlantic cruises, which also included voyages to Madeira and the Azores. During this first stay in Lisbon, Ley paid an official visit to the headquarters of the SPN and was received by the President of the Republic. Three years later, in July 1938, he was again in Portugal but this time as one of the passengers of the Kraft durch Freude ship Wilhelm Gustloff. These cruises also included one or two day excursions to Lisbon and its surroundings. The SPN usually hosted receptions to the “German excursionists” during their stay ashore and the Portuguese press gave full coverage of these events.26 As for Albert Speer, as he writes in his memoirs, he took his “last art tour for a quarter of a century” in Lisbon, where he opened the New German Architecture

Apparently, SPN propaganda also had some difficulties in the United States due to the critical views towards the Portugese regime held by a Luso-American journalist working in the United States (Gil Stone). See the note appended to the list of expenses of November 1939 (PT/TT/AOS/ D-M/31/l0), and Alberto Pena Rodríguez, “Portugal en América. La prensa portuguesa en los Estados Unidos: inmigración, periodismo y propaganda (1877–2013)” (PhD diss. UNED. Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, 2015). 25 See e.g. the records from July 1935 (PT/TT/AOS/D-M/31/9) to October 1944 (PT/TT/AOS/ D-M/31/13). 26 See the lists for July 1935, April 1936 and for April, May, June, July and August 1938 (PT/TT/ AOS/D-M/31/9). On these Strength through Joy voyages to Portugal see Mário Matos, “Tourism as Networking for a Pan-Fascist Mobilisation before World War II,” in Nazi Germany and Southern Europe, 1933–45: Science, Culture and Politics, eds. Fernando Clara and Cláudia Ninhos (Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 38–51. It should be worth pointing out that between 1933 and the beginning of the war, there were several other groups of “excursionists” visiting the country: British in September 1933, American in March 1934, Italian in July 1935 and French in April 1936. However, except for the French, the SPN lists show no record of expenses related to the other groups.

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exhibition on November 8, 1941.27 The impact that the exhibition had among the highest authorities of the country is well attested by a letter from HoyningenHuene where he succinctly describes the opening of the exhibition in terms that unequivocally suggest Salazar’s personal interest in the event: The opening of the architecture exhibition was a great success. The President himself made the opening in the presence of Professor Speer and Duarte Pacheco, Minister of Public Works. At 11 o’clock in the evening, after the building was closed to the general public, I was still at the exhibition with Speer and Salazar, who stayed there for an hour.28

Of course, the SPN also hosted several other lesser known (yet no less important) figures of the German cultural landscape and of the Nazi nomenclature. Two names illustrate these institutional, aesthetic and political entanglements: Carl Opitz and Franz Alfred Six. Opitz was the public relations manager of the Ufa (Universum Film AG) and apparently stayed in Lisbon from September to November 1943, where he entered into partnerships with Portuguese film producers (e. g. Nacional Filmes) and movie theater owners (e. g. Cine Ginásio) in order to facilitate the spread of German propaganda in the country.29 Six was in Lisbon in January 1944 for the opening of the new German Institute.30 He was by then director of the Cultural Politics Section of the German Foreign Office, director of the German Institute for Foreign Studies (Deutsches Auslandswissenschaftliches

27 Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs, trans. Richard and Clara Winston, intro. Eugene Davidson (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1970), 184. Expenses related to Speer and the exhibition are listed in November and December 1941 (PT/TT/AOS/D-M/31/11). 28 Hoyningen-Huene to Gertrud Richert, November 12, 1941, available at the Archives of the Ibero-American Institute held by the Prussian Privy State Archives (Ibero-AmerikanischesInstitut, Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, I. HA Rep. 218, 231:92). On Hoyningen-Huene’s close relation to Salazar see Christiane Abele, “‘Die Ruhe, die man hier genossen hat, ist Ihnen zu verdanken. . .’ Die deutsch-portugiesische Diplomatie und die Flüchtlingsfrage 1933–1945” (MA diss., Universität Freiburg, 2009). 29 PT/TT/AOS/D-M/31/13 (list of expenses from September to November 1943). Opitz and the Cine Ginásio are briefly mentioned in Klaus Kreimeier, The Ufa Story: A History of Germany’s Greatest Film Company, 1918–1945, trans. Robert and Rita Kimber (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1999), 299 and 360. A global overview of the Ufa’s international activities during the period is provided by Roel Vande Winkel and David Welch, eds. Cinema and the Swastika: The International Expansion of Third Reich Cinema (Basingstoke/ New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011), but unfortunately the volume does not address the Portuguese case. 30 PT/TT/AOS/D-M/31/13 (list of expenses of February 1944). On Six and the German Institute for Foreign Studies see Frank-Rutger Hausmann, “‘Auch im Krieg schweigen die Musen nicht.’ Das ‘Deutsche Wissenschaftliche Institut’ (DWI) im Zweiten Weltkrieg (1940–1945),” in Jahrbuch des Historischen Kollegs 2000, eds. Lothar Gall and Elisabeth Müller-Luckner (Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2001), 123–163.

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Institut) and Dean of the Faculty for Foreign Countries (Auslandswissenschaftliche Fakultät) at the University of Berlin, where Albin Eduard Beau, a German lecturer at the University of Coimbra, submitted his habilitation on “The Portuguese National Conscience” in April 1944.31 While this analysis is not exhaustive (and does not presume to be), there are still a couple of important initiatives either sponsored or co-organized by the SPN that should be mentioned in this context. One of them is embodied by the German journalist and writer Friedrich Sieburg, from whom the SPN commissioned a book about Portugal. From late March to July 1937, he traveled through the country accompanied by a SPN official in a car rented by the Secretariat.32 In December 1937, when the book was published,33 he was again invited to Portugal, this time with his wife. They both stayed in Lisbon and traveled to Coimbra and the Algarve.34 In addition, from September to December 1940 he was once more in Lisbon as a guest of the SPN (probably covering the Portuguese World Exhibition that was held from late June to December 1940).35 Moreover, Sieburg’s book is not the only German volume sponsored by the SPN. In 1938, the Essener Verlagsanstalt (a publishing house owned by the NSDAP) came out with a German translation of Salazar’s speeches with a foreword by Joseph Goebbels.36 When the book was published, the SPN invited the editor, Wolfgang Müller-Clemm, to Lisbon.37 Finally, in the following year, the SPN published a book on Germany and Portugal authored by Gustavo Cordeiro Ramos, a former Minister of Education in Salazar’s government, who was by then a full Professor for German Studies at the University of Lisbon and head of the High Culture Institute.38

31 Franz Alfred Six, “Das Deutsche Auslandswissenschaftliche Institut im Jahre 1944,” Zeitschrift für Politik 34, 10/12 (1944): 395. 32 PT/TT/AOS/D-M/31/9 (list of expenses from March to July 1937). 33 Friedrich Sieburg, Neues Portugal. Bildnis eines alten Landes (Frankfurt/Main: SocietätsVerlag, 1937). A French translation appeared also in the following year: Le nouveau Portugal, portrait d’un vieux pays, trans. Pierre Klossowski (Paris: Les Éditions de France, 1938). On Sieburg’s book, which appeared in several revised German editions until 1968, see Fernando Clara, “Literatura (d)e viagens no período dos fascismos: O Estado, a viagem e a literatura no contexto luso-alemão (1933–45),” Iberoamericana. América Latina – España – Portugal XVI, 63 (2016): 169–192. 34 PT/TT/AOS/D-M/31/9 (list of expenses for December 1937). 35 PT/TT/AOS/D-M/31/10 (list of expenses from September to December 1940). 36 António de Oliveira Salazar, Portugal: das Werden eines neuen Staates. Reden und Dokumente, introd. G. Cordeiro Ramos, trans. Joseph Maria Piel and Albin Eduard Beau (Essen: Essener Verlagsanstalt, 1938). 37 PT/TT/AOS/D-M/31/9 (list of expenses for November and December 1938). 38 Gustavo Cordeiro Ramos, Portugal und Deutschland: Portugals Erneuerung. Reden und Aufsätze (Lisbon: SPN, 1939). PT/TT/AOS/D-M/31/10 (list of expenses for March 1939). On the important

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The publication of Ramos’s book must be seen in the context of another important event that took place in April 1939 at the State Library in Berlin, an exhibition of Portuguese books entitled “Portugal: Past and Present”.39 The event was co-organized by German and Portuguese institutions (the State Library and the Ibero-American Institute of Berlin, the National Library in Lisbon and the SPN),40 and it was officially opened by Gustavo Cordeiro Ramos (representing the Portuguese government), Oswald von Hoyningen-Huene (the German Minister in Lisbon) and Alberto da Veiga Simões (the Portuguese Ambassador to Berlin). According to the German News Agency (DNB), on April 4 the three men were received by Hitler to whom Ramos offered a silver-bound German edition of “The Lusiads”.41 It is important to stress that the beginning of the war did not put an end to this friendly atmosphere (as the above-mentioned presence in Lisbon of Speer in 1941, Opitz in 1943 or Six in 1944 already suggested). In fact, in December 1940 the SPN significantly began to publish the German version of its monthly newsletter, which regularly appeared until April 1945.42 Many other German guests still benefited from SPN support throughout the war until late 1944: the art and book dealer Karl Buchholz was a guest of the SPN in May and September 1943, Gertrud Richert (head of the section for Portugal at the Ibero-American Institute of Berlin) in February 1944, Ivo Dane (who had been secretary general of the Luso-Brazilian Institute of the University of Cologne and was by then Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at the University of Berlin) in March 1944, Hoyningen-Huene on several occasions until May 1944 and the German Press and Military Attachés in September 1944.43

role played by the High Culture Institute (Instituto para a Alta Cultura) in the development of German-Portuguese academic and scientific exchange programs see Cláudia Ninhos, “Portugal at the ‘Third Front,’” in Nazi Germany and Southern Europe, 1933–45: Science, Culture and Politics, eds. Fernando Clara and Cláudia Ninhos (Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 120–40. 39 Portugal in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart. Ausstellung der portugiesischen Bibliotheken unter dem Protektorat der portugiesischen Regierung, April 1939, in der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Berlin/Coimbra: Staatsbibliothek; Atlântida, 1939). 40 The expenses covered by the SPN are listed in March and April 1939 (PT/TT/AOS/DM/31/10). 41 Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro, 6/522 (1939), April 4, 1939. 42 Portugal: Nachrichtenblatt für politische, wirtschaftliche und kulturelle Angelegenheiten (Lisbon: SPN, 1940–1945). The newsletter first began to be published in French in 1935. The English and Spanish editions appeared on a regular basis starting in 1937. 43 PT/TT/AOS/D-M/31/13. This list is far from exhaustive. Moreover, it should also be pointed out that many of the costs covered by the SPN are not individualized. For example, the rubric “German Legation”, which comes up often in these lists, is generally not detailed, making it impossible to know who the German guests of the SPN were.

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In light of what has been described so far, it seems fairly obvious that the argument of a Portuguese “collaborating neutrality” with Britain can hardly be sustained. It may well apply to the political situation after the Azores agreement was signed, but from a global diplomatic and cultural perspective, the strength and constancy of the German-Portuguese collaboration networks operating at the SPN throughout the period show that a Portuguese “benevolent” or “friendly neutrality” towards the Reich appears to be much more realistic and convincing. Yet these are not the only German (or Germany related) names that come up in these records. When viewing the SPN documents in detail, other German names are found listed that need to be scrutinized as well. Take, for instance, the case of Heinrich Gärtner, to whom the SPN paid a considerable sum of money in January 1937 for a documentary on Madeira. In June of the same year, he received a fee for three days filming,44 and in April 1939, he was again remunerated for allowing his documentary on the Azores to be exhibited in New York.45 Gärtner was an Austrian of Jewish descent who fled to Spain in 1933. During the Spanish Civil War, he found shelter in Portugal, and after Franco’s victory, he returned to Spain where he stayed until his death in 1962. Heinrich Gärtner (who also used the names Enrique Gaertner or Enrique Guerner) was a renowned cameraman, cinematographer and later also film director who directed or worked on several Spanish and Portuguese films.46 Before his documentaries on Madeira and the Azores, he had worked as director of photography in a Portuguese romantic comedy: “Gado Bravo” (Wild Cattle, released in 1934). The film was directed by António Lopes Ribeiro and the Austrian Max Nosseck, art director was the German Herbert Lippschitz and the music was composed by Luís de Freitas Branco and the Austrian Hans May. Like Gärtner, Nosseck, Lippschitz and May were Jewish refugees.47 Paul Stefan is another case in point. His name begins to appear in these lists in October and November 1940. The small amounts paid covered the costs of issuing a passport visa. Then in December, his name comes up again: the SPN commissioned a work in German from him, a “Panorama of the Portuguese

44 PT/TT/AOS/D-M/31/9 (list of expenses for January and June 1937). 45 PT/TT/AOS/D-M/31/10 (list of expenses for April 1939). 46 Cf. Michael Seidman, The Victorious Counterrevolution: The Nationalist Effort in the Spanish Civil War (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011), 192. 47 On Gärtner’s collaboration in this movie see his interview to the Portuguese magazine Animatógrafo, 11, June 12, 1933, 4. Regarding the Portuguese cinematographic landscape of the period and its international networks, see: Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek, ed. Exil in Portugal (Filmexil 16. Munich: Edition Text + Kritik, 2002) and Patricia Vieira, Portuguese Film, 1930–1960: The Staging of the New State Regime, trans. Ashley Caja (London: Bloomsbury, 2013).

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Music”, and paid him a first installment.48 The Jewish-Austrian Paul Stefan (also Paul Stefan Grünfeld or Gruenfeld) was without any doubt more than capable of the task. He was a prolific writer, music historian and critic who had published widely on Mahler, Schönberg, Schubert, Toscanini and Dvořák.49 After the annexation of Austria in 1938, he fled to Switzerland; in 1939 he moved to France, only to flee again to Portugal in 1940. According to the SPN records, the work on Portuguese music must have been finished and delivered to the Secretariat before May 1941,50 for on May 2, 1941 the German-Jewish journal Aufbau in New York published an article by the “just arrived” Austrian author, where he provides a very brief but interesting biographical account of his escape route and of his activities and projects in Lisbon.51 Stefan died in the United States in 1943. There is finally another name worth mentioning in this context, that of Gretchen Wohlwill. She was a German-Jewish painter who in 1940 managed to escape to Lisbon, where her brother had already been living since 1934 (Friedrich Wohlwill is one of the German-Jewish corresponding members of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences mentioned before; their two other siblings died in Theresienstadt).52 Her name appears only twice in the SPN lists, in October and November 1944,53 when the Secretariat sponsored an exhibition of Wohlwill’s paintings and covered the printing costs of the catalog. At a later exhibition (in 1947) also sponsored by the SPN she was awarded the prize “Francisco da Holanda” and in 1952, she participated in another exhibition of “foreign painters” organized by the Secretariat.54 The SPN support of Wohlwill’s activities in Portugal is not limited to these events and prizes. From 1942 on, she collaborated regularly with Vera Leroi and Anne Marie Jauss (both of German-Jewish descent), who had been entrusted with the interior design of “Portugal’s Inns” (Pousadas

48 PT/TT/AOS/D-M/31/10 (list of expenses for October and November 1940). 49 Cf. “Gruenfeld Paul Stefan,” in Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon 1815–1950, 2:90 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1957). 50 The payment of the second installment was recorded on the list of expenses for May 1941 (PT/TT/AOS/D-M/31/11). As far as I am aware the book was, however, never published. 51 Paul Stefan, “Paul Stefan erzählt,” Aufbau, 2 (1941): 10. 52 On Gretchen Wohlwill’s exile in Portugal see her memoirs, Lebenserinnerungen einer Hamburger Malerin, ed. Hans-Dieter Loose (Hamburg: Gesellschaft der Bücherfreunde zu Hamburg, 1984), and Fernando Clara, “Breve nota em torno do exílio português de Friedrich e Gretchen Wohlwill,” in De passagem: Artistas de língua alemã no exílio português, ed. T. M. Oliveira and M. A. G. Teixeira (Porto: Afrontamento, 2018), 241–254. 53 PT/TT/AOS/D-M/31/13 (list of expenses for October and November 1944). 54 Cf. Margarida Acciaiuoli, “Os anos 40 em Portugal. O país, o regime e as artes: restauração e celebração” (PhD diss., Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 1991), vol. II, 20, 38, 40.

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de Portugal), a SPN project that aimed to provide the country with a nationwide network of picturesque and comfortable inns.55 What the stories of Heinrich Gärtner, Paul Stefan and Gretchen Wohlwill show and tell – and there are many more similar stories to be explored in the archives of the SPN – is quite obvious: while António Ferro was officially receiving Nazi authorities with pomp and circumstance and fostering German-Portuguese relations, he was also more or less discreetly helping Jewish artists and intellectuals escape Nazi Germany, hiring them, paying for their visas, or rewarding them for their work. Furthermore, in the archives of the institution under the section “correspondence received (1936–1950)” by the Secretary General there is a thick folder exclusively dedicated to the “Refugees” and another one labeled “Visas for foreigners”.56 Among the hundreds of documents kept, there is a telegram from Stefan Zweig to Ferro that offers a good viewpoint to observe Ferro’s modus operandi in these cases and to understand how these personal networks functioned. On July 23, 1940, Zweig appeals directly to “Antonio Ferro Directeur de Propagande”: “I would be infinitely grateful if you could obtain a visa to Portugal for my first wife Friderike Maria Zweig and her two daughters”.57 The following day Ferro wrote to the Director of the Portuguese International Police58 requesting a visa. Since there was apparently no answer, he insisted again on the subject in a letter of August 8, 1940,59 saying that Friderike Zweig was staying at a hotel in Montauban, France with her two daughters and their husbands and wished to join her husband in the United States. In addition, he stresses the fact that she was “the wife of the great writer Stefan Zweig to whom we owe a remarkable work” on Magellan.60 Meanwhile, on July 27, Friderike Zweig had already written a five page letter to “Monsieur le Ministre”

55 See Wohlwill, Lebenserinnerungen, 12 and, globally on this project, Marta Lalanda Prista, “Discursos sobre o passado: Investimentos patrimoniais nas Pousadas de Portugal” (PhD diss. Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2011). 56 Correspondência recebida 1936/1950. Secretariado Nacional de Informação 1929/1974, PT/ TT/SNI-GS/20/11. Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo. Lisbon. The documents, which will be hereafter referred to by their reference code in that national catalog, are digitized and can be viewed at https://digitarq.arquivos.pt/details?id=4332386, accessed August 30, 2020. 57 Telegram from Stefan Zweig to António Ferro, July 23, 1940, PT/TT/SNI-GS/20/11, image 709. 58 Meant is the International Department of the State Defense and Surveillance Police (Polícia de Vigilância e Defesa do Estado). 59 António Ferro to the Director of the International Police, Lisbon, August 8, 1940, PT/TT/ SNI-GS/20/11, images 715–717. 60 Stefan Zweig, Magellan: Der Mann und seine Tat (Vienna: Herbert Reichner Verlag, 1938).

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explaining her situation in much more detail,61 and at the beginning of August, Ferro had also cabled Stefan Zweig announcing that he hoped to be successful soon.62 Finally, on August 12, 1940 Ferro telegraphs “Madame Zweig” telling her that she should urgently contact the Portuguese Consulat at Marseille, where she could receive the visas for herself and her two daughters.63 This highly centralized and personal network was indeed successful in this case. Ferro managed to obtain a visa for Zweig’s first wife, but the many visa requests that he kept sending to the Portuguese International Police began to be noticed. After all, he was supposed to apply only for a very limited number of visas for foreign artists, journalists and intellectuals, and that was clearly not the case for many of the requests received by the Portuguese authorities. Salazar himself had to step in to put an end to an activity that was becoming suspicious in the eyes of a regime that had friendly relations with Nazi Germany and that looked upon many of the refugees with social and political mistrust.64 One month after the outburst of the war, a copy of a dispatch signed by Salazar and dated September 29, 1939 was sent to Ferro by the Premier’s cabinet. Salazar’s words are clear enough: The attention of the Secretariat of National Propaganda is drawn to the need to restrict the application for special passports, which the Ministry of the Interior should only grant when the circumstances fully justify it and are truly missions in the interest of the Government.65

Salazar was obviously concerned that these initiatives of the Director of the SPN might be publicly misinterpreted, thus putting at risk the country’s recently declared neutrality in the conflict. There can be no doubt that Ferro was a man of the regime, however, the cases of Paul Stefan, Friderike Zweig, Gretchen Wohlwill

61 Friderike Maria Zweig to António Ferro, July 27, 1940, PT/TT/SNI-GS/20/11, images 718–722. 62 Copy of telegram from António Ferro to Stefan Zweig, August 4, 1940, PT/TT/SNI-GS/20/11, image 708. 63 Copy of telegram from António Ferro to Friderike Maria Zweig, August 12, 1940, PT/TT/SNIGS/20/11, image 706. On Friedrike Zweig’s escape to the United States see Maria de Fátima Gil, “O (ex-)casal Zweig: momentos portugueses de exílios distintos,” in De passagem: Artistas de língua alemã no exílio português, ed. T. M. Oliveira and M. A. G. Teixeira (Porto: Afrontamento, 2018), 77–109. 64 Irene Flunser Pimentel and Cláudia Ninhos, “Portugal, Jewish Refugees, and the Holocaust,” Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust 29, 2 (2015): 101–113. 65 PT/TT/SNI-GS/20/11, image 633. Salazar’s dispatch to the SPN was not an isolated case, though. After the beginning of the war, a series of Directives concerning the issuing of visas were sent to Portuguese diplomats abroad. An overview of these Directives is provided by Manuela Franco, “Reasons of Humanity: Aristides Sousa Mendes,” Arquivo Maaravi: Revista Digital de Estudos Judaicos da UFMG 1, 1 (2007): 114–122.

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and many others show that his views on these matters might not always have coincided with Salazar’s policies regarding the refugees. Seen as a whole and at a distance, Portuguese neutrality was ambivalent, complex and versatile. For many it was definitely an “enigmatic neutrality”.66 Its ambivalence is well documented by a state agency like the SPN, deeply involved in the country’s foreign policy. From 1933 to 1945, German-Portuguese collaboration networks produced and at the same time were products of this ambivalence. They operated on different levels and used different communication channels: communication flowed simultaneously at an institutional level and at a personal level. At an official, institutional level the Portuguese attitude, and above all the attitude of the country’s elites, was certainly one of friendliness towards Nazi Germany. On the other hand, however, personal connections and professional communication channels also played a decisive role in helping Jewish refugees escape Nazi Germany, either by allowing them to settle and work in Portugal or by providing them transit visas to America. It would appear reasonable to assume that the end of the war would also bring an end to the ambivalence inherent to Portuguese neutrality. However, that was not the case. In fact, both the institutional and personal communication channels did not cease to exist with the end of the conflict. Their roles were merely adapted to the new international situation and to the local circumstances of both countries. After the war, institutional channels conveyed a clear message of commitment to the Allies (Teixeira’s pamphlet is one among many other examples), while networks of individuals who had had a close relationship with Nazi Germany were now helping former Nazis in Portugal to go about their lives as if nothing had changed. Several German individuals were allowed to remain and work in Portugal, in spite of repeated repatriation requests by the Allies67 and the wife of the German Minister in Portugal was still living in the scenic outskirts of Lisbon, where

66 Jerry K. Sweeney, “Genesis of an Airbase: The United States, Portugal, and Santa Maria,” Aerospace Historian 24, 4 (1977): 222. 67 See e. g. the folder kept at Salazar’s Archive on the “Activity of the Allied Countrol Council. Repatriation of German subjects in Portugal” (“Activitidade do Allied Control Council. Repatriamento de súbditos alemães em Portugal,” PT/TT/AOS/D/J/8/4/33). The folder includes an aide-mémoire (in Portuguese) where the names of the following German lecturers at Portuguese Universities are explicitly mentioned: Albin Eduard Beau, Joseph Maria Piel, Harri Meier, Wolfgang Kayser, and Heinz Kröll. According to the argument developed in the aide-mémoire, they should not be delivered to the Allies because they worked at state Universities and were therefore public servants of the Portuguese state.

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she was joined by her husband after 1947.68 Coincidentally or not, the German Minister in Dublin was also granted asylum in Ireland, where he lived with his family until 1950, when he moved to Germany after accepting an offer to join the Foreign Office in Bonn.69 Needless to say that such a post-war scenario not only recalls the disturbing news about Lisbon and Dublin published by the Anglo-American press during the first weeks of May 1945, it also gives clearer contours to the enigmatic and resilient ambivalence of Portuguese collaboration networks before, during and after the war.

68 Cf. Abele, “Die Ruhe”, 65 and José Manuel Duarte de Jesus, Dança sobre o vulcão. Portugal e o III Reich: O Ministro von Hoyningen-Huene entre Hitler e Salazar (Lisbon: Edições 70, 2017). 69 Carolle J. Carter, The Shamrock and the Swastika: German Espionage in Ireland in World War II (Palo Alto, CA: Pacific Books, 1977), 82. Noteworthy in this context is also the fact that at the beginning of the fifties, Salazar inquired in Bonn, London, Washington and Paris about the possibility of having Hoyningen-Huene as German Minister in Lisbon again (cf. Abele, “Die Ruhe,” 69).

Reflections on Jewish “Cooperation” with the Nazis in Western and Eastern Europe

Julius H. Schoeps

Between Collaboration, Betrayal and Coercion A Nightmarish Chapter of European-Jewish Relations under the Nazis In her highly controversial book “Eichmann in Jerusalem”,1 which appeared in German in 1963, the journalist and author Hannah Arendt explained that European Jews had been partly responsible in aiding their own demise. If the leaders of the Jewish Communities and the international party and charity organizations had outright refused to cooperate with the Nazi authorities, then according to Hannah Arendt, there would have been chaos and suffering among the Jewish population in Europe, but the total number of victims would have hardly been between four and a half and six million. Arendt’s claim hit like a bombshell in an ammunition depot and has been hotly debated ever since. In her book, Hannah Arendt more or less directly accused the Jewish Councils (Judenräte)2 and their leaders of having contributed to the planning and execution of the “Final Solution”. There was massive protest against this – at that time – sensational theory, friendships were ended because of it3 and numerous critical responses were insistent in pointing out the perceived baselessness of Arendt’s claims. Some Shoah survivors accused Arendt and other historians who put forth similar arguments that they were killing the Jews for a second time with their assertions and desecrating the memory of those murdered. Gershom Scholem, the historian of religion and ideas from Jerusalem, was Hannah Arendt’s harshest and most severe critic. He vehemently contradicted Arendt’s theory and accused her not only of not comprehending history, but

1 Hannah Arendt’s report of the Eichmann trial first appeared as a five-part series in the “New Yorker”, followed by a book published by Viking Press in 1963. The German translation appeared as Eichmann in Jerusalem. Ein Bericht von der Banalität des Bösen (Munich: Piper, 1964). 2 The Jewish Councils refer to the involuntary organizations the SS and the Gestapo forced Communities to make in the occupied territories of Europe. 3 For example, the friendship between the philosopher Hans Jonas and Hannah Arendt see Hans Jonas, Erinnerungen. Nach Gesprächen mit Rachel Salamander, ed. Christian Wiese (Frankfurt/Main/Leipzig: Insel, 2003), (called Memoirs – based upon Conversations with Rachel Salamander in English), 292 f. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671186-014

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also decried her lack of solidarity with the Jewish people (Ahavath Israel).4 Scholem asked, “Who among us can say today, which decisions those Jewish ‘elders’, or whatever you would like to call them, should have taken in those circumstances”?5 Hannah Arendt defended herself against Scholem’s accusations, particularly against his insinuation that she lacked solidarity with the Jewish people. She accused Scholem of not having understood her correctly, of not wanting to understand her correctly. Her criticism was in no way a criticism of the Jewish people as a whole. She explained that the point she was making in her book was solely about the behavior of individual members of the Jewish Councils under Nazi occupation. She wrote Scholem, “The question that I raised is about the cooperation of Jewish functionaries, and you cannot say that they were simply traitors.”6 Arendt’s book, a cross between philosophy and journalism, sparked a debate7 that has been taking place on two levels. On one level, it is about how the Jewish Council’s behavior should be classified historically and how it should be assessed morally. On another, it is also about Jews see themselves in the period after the experience of the Shoah. According to some survivors, if the Jewish Councils would be considered to be partially responsible for what happened, then the line between victim and offender becomes blurred.8 Now we are getting to the actual issue at stake, namely the involvement of individual Jewish functionaries in the Nazi extermination process. The Jewish Councils scrutinized, according to Hannah Arendt’s accusation, had worked together with the Nazis in the occupied territories in Eastern Europe, mostly not on purpose, however, de facto. This assertion remains hard to take for many survivors. The explosive nature of this accusation was magnified by the tone

4 The correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem about Arendt’s Eichmann book comprises five letters. Three are from Scholem to Arendt, two from Arendt to Scholem. See Stéphane Mosès, “Das Recht zu urteilen: Hannah Arendt, Gershom Scholem und der Eichmannprozess,” in Hannah Arendt Revisited. “Eichmann in Jerusalem und die Folgen,” ed. Gary Smith (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 2000), 78 ff. 5 Gershom Scholem to Hannah Arendt, 23. June 1963, in: Gershom Scholem, Briefe II: 1948–1970, ed. Thomas Sparr (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1995), 95–100, here 98. 6 Hannah Arendt to Gershom Scholem, July 20, 1963, in: Gershom Scholem, Briefe II: 1948–1970, ed. Thomas Sparr (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1995), 162 f. 7 See also the contributions by Friedrich S. Brodnitz, Eva G. Reichmann, Jacob Robinson and Adolf Leschnitzer, in Die Kontroverse Hannah Arendt. Eichmann und die Juden, ed. Friedrich A. Krummacher (Munich: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, 1964). 8 Cf. the contributions by Amos Elon and Anson G. Rabinbach, in: Smith, Hannah Arendt Revisited, 17 ff. and 33 ff.

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taken by Hannah Arendt at the time, which Gershom Scholem found “heartless, even spiteful”. Jewish Councils were not only found in Nazi occupied Poland. There were similar councils in other countries. In Hitler’s Third Reich the Jewish Council was called the “Reich Association of Jews in Germany” (Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland). In the Netherlands, it was called the “Joodse Raad”. The purpose of using these Jewish Councils was twofold for the highest levels of Nazi leadership. On the one hand, they thought that the existence of the Jewish Councils could help placate the international public. At the same time, they also wanted to create something which would help them enforce anti-Jewish measures easier in the future. In Eastern Europe, on the instructions of Reinhard Heydrich, the SS Senior Group Leader (Obergruppenführer) and head of the Reich Main Security Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA), the Jewish Councils were at first only responsible for the transport of Jews to the designated “concentration cities”, Jewish living quarters which were soon also known as ghettos. Over time, the Jewish Council’s scope of duties were widened considerably. In the ghettos where they had authority, they were made responsible for practically everything that was relevant within those walls. The heads of the Jewish Councils in the General Government were not only in charge of the ghetto’s police, fire department and legal system; they were also responsible for being the employment office, acquiring food, distributing living space as well as public health, education and culture. They employed a workforce that was generally larger than was strictly necessary. The reason for this was the hope that in doing so, they would be able to protect individual people and save them from being transported to labor camps or extermination camps. It was a hope tightly clung to, but ultimately futile; it proved effective in only a few exceptions. When the book “Judenrat” by the New York YIVO archivist Isaiah Trunk came out in 1972, many thought that the debate about the Jewish Councils sparked by Hannah Arendt would cool down. Trunk’s book, winner of the National Book Award, gave an in-depth look into the history and politics of the Jewish Councils.9 As previously mentioned, their creation to serve as Jewish self-administration authority was ordered by the Nazis. Trunk’s study was able, at least for a time, to introduce an objective tone to the debate, yet could not 9 Cf. Julius H. Schoeps, “Doch nicht mitschuldig? Die Judenräte im historischen Urteil der Nachwelt,” Die Zeit, November 24, 1978, accessed June 28, 2020, https://www.zeit.de/1978/48/ doch-nicht-mitschuldig; Isaiah Trunk, Judenrat. The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation (New York: Stein and Day, 1977).

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refute Arendt’s accusation that individual members of the Jewish Councils did collaborate with the Nazis and played a part in the deportations. The general administrative duties that the Jewish Councils took on are not subject to debate. Trunk correctly asserted that the Judenräte had to take on these duties; otherwise, there would soon have been lawless chaos. The only disputable point is the role the Jewish Councils played in the deportations. The question continues to be raised if they were not in fact a bit responsible for the execution of the deportations due to their participation and assistance. Shouldn’t they have flat-out refused and rejected the order to create transport lists? Hannah Arendt commented about this in her Eichmann book: In both Amsterdam and in Warsaw, in Berlin as in Budapest, the Nazis could depend on Jewish functionaries to make up lists of people and their property, to come up with the money to cover the costs of deportation and execution from the deportees, to keep an eye on newly vacated apartments, to provide the necessary police to apprehend Jews and bring them to the trains, and – up until the bitter end – to help with the transfer of Jewish Community property for an orderly confiscation.10

The historian Trunk is much less rigid in his judgement about the question of collaboration or cooperation from the Jewish Councils with the Nazis than the strongly moralizing journalist Hannah Arendt. He came to the conclusion that it ultimately did not matter if the Jewish Councils were directly or indirectly involved with the deportations. According to Trunk, a refusal to cooperate with the Nazis would have had no effect on the result, the intentional and cruel murder of millions of Jewish men and women. So far so good. Nevertheless, the question should be raised if it is even possible to speak of “collaboration” or, perhaps better to say cooperation, from the Jewish Councils with the occupying Gestapo authorities? When he wrote his book about the Jewish Councils in occupied Poland, Trunk at least was convinced that this was not possible or only to a limited extent. He thought that after all, the Jewish Councils did not work with the Nazi authorities voluntarily, but were forced to. Even today, there is not much else that can be added to this observation by Isaiah Trunk. However, what is grandiosely and speculatively referred to as collaboration with the occupying forces or cooperation with the Nazi regime should be investigated and assessed, not collectively, but on a case by case basis. Each case has its peculiarities and characteristic features and these should be taken into account in their consideration and assessment. Assimilation and resistance do not have to necessarily be opposing positions. As Trunk remarked, it was possible to offer resistance while following the 10 Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 154.

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instructions from the occupying forces at the same time. This is not a contradiction in terms. The submissive behavior of some Jewish Councils toward the occupiers did not dispel the suspicion of collaboration, but rather even strengthened it in some cases. To pursue this question further, the behavior and actions of certain Jewish Council members must be put under scrutiny, just as Hannah Arendt claimed. In general, they can be put into different categories that themselves provide further information. There is, for example, as can be read in an article in the “Encyclopedia of the Holocaust”,11 those Jewish Councils who steadfastly refused to work with the Germans. Then there were those who agreed to carry out measures of a material nature, such as the confiscation of property. Finally, and these are the cases that we are particularly interested in, there were those Jewish Council members who followed the German orders and submitted to their instructions unconditionally. In one or two of these cases, personal interests played a role. The statistics provided by Isaiah Trunk in his book prove that almost 80 % of the Jewish Council members were murdered or died during their deportation. The tables listed in the “Encyclopedia of the Holocaust” under the caption Jewish Council are revealing. They substantiate that 45 of the 146 Jewish Council leaders in the General Government helped their Communities and warned them about actions being planned. The Germans fired 26 leaders for not following orders, 18 were murdered when they refused to surrender members of their Communities, five committed suicide and 11 complied with the German commands. The debate about whether the Jewish Councils were coerced into working with the Nazis or did so on their own accord continues to be intensely controversial and emotional. After the war and after the liberation in the Netherlands, two of the leaders of the former “Joodse Raad” named by the occupying German forces, David Cohen, an historian specializing in antiquity, and Abraham Asscher, a diamond trader, were put on trial before a Jewish Court of Honor, which found them guilty of collaboration with the Germans. The debate centers around the question of whether the “Joodse Raad” became German accomplices, particularly by having submitted a list of names and addresses of Jews to the occupying authorities in the summer of 1942. Until today, the role played by the writer Friedrich Weinreb remains hotly debated. He is accused of having been an informal collaborator for the Gestapo and having denounced many Dutch Jews and handing them over to the Germans. In

11 Cf. Eberhard Jäckel, Peter Longerich and Julius H. Schoeps, eds., Enzyklopädie des Holocaust. Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden, vol. II (Berlin: Argon Verlag, 1993), 694 f.

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1947, he was brought before a court in the Netherlands and accused of collaboration with the occupying forces. It was determined that he committed treason and he was given a jail sentence. The historian Jacques Presser then claimed in his 1965 book about the murder of Dutch Jewry that the Weinreb decision was a blatant miscarriage of justice.12 On the contrary, Friedrich Weinreb was a victim of a great injustice. Until today, the “Weinreb affair” continues to get tempers flaring in the Netherlands. Another instance of collaboration continuing to spark controversy in the Netherlands is the spectacular case of a young woman named Anna (Ans) van Dijk (1905–1948). From a Jewish family herself, Anna van Dijk had no scruples working for the “Joodsche Zaken” (Office 11 of the political police) under the name of Ans de Jong. The fact that she was forced into collaborating by the Nazis was able to be used as a mitigating circumstance in her favor, although it does not exonerate her from her accommodating behavior at the time. It has been proven that she assisted in tracking down Jewish men and women who had gone into hiding.13 It is said that she handed over at least 145 people to the occupying forces and of these more than 60 lost their lives in concentration camps. Anna (Ans) van Dijk is even said to have betrayed her own brother’s family to the Nazis. After the war, she was charged with treason and brought to trial. On January 14, 1948, she was executed by firing squad. On the eve of her execution she converted to Roman Catholicism and was baptized, which continues to give rise to speculation. She likely hoped to receive comfort and forgiveness through her conversion. Even today it is still difficult to understand why Ans van Dijk was executed, while SS officers like Ferdinand aus der Fünten and Willy Lages, who had organized the deportation of the Jews in the Netherlands and sentenced to death after 1945, had their sentences reduced to imprisonment. It remains a mystery as to why it was different for Ans van Dijk and her death sentence was carried out. One explanation is the anti-Jewish atmosphere, which dominated the Netherlands after liberation. Another possibility would be that she should serve as an example. She was not only a woman, but also a lesbian and did not appear to have had a particularly attractive personality.

12 Cf. Jacques Presser, Ondergang. De vervolging en verdelging van het Nederlandse Jodendom 1940–1945, 2 vols. (Den Haag: Staatsuitgeverij, 1965). 13 Cf. Sytze van der Zee, Vogelvrij. De Jacht op den joodse onderduiker (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 2010).

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Like Friedrich Weinreb in the Netherlands, Rabbi Leo Baeck,14 the former chair of the Reich Association of Jews in Germany (Reichsvereinigung in Deutschland) was suspected of having cooperated with the Nazis to the disadvantage of his fellow Jews.15 After 1945, Hannah Arendt and Raul Hilberg after her have made this accusation, which includes the insinuation that Baeck cooperated with the Nazis and therefore has a substantial share of complicity in the deportation and annihilation of Jews. Eva G. Reichmann, an intimate friend of Leo Baeck, who worked for the CV (Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens/ Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith) until 1938, vehemently denied this claim. Those responsible for the well-being of those entrusted to their protection had had only “the choice between horror and horror”.16 The debate about the role played by Leo Baeck, the “Jew Führer” as Hannah Arendt derogatorily called him, flared up once again when a 1600 page work called “Die Entwicklung der Rechtsstellung der Juden in Europa, vornehmlich in Deutschland” (The development of the legal status of the Jews in Europe, primarily in Germany) surfaced not long ago.17 Written by Baeck in 1941 and 1942, this 1600 page tome was supposedly written by Baeck on orders and under the control of Gestapo. Only a few copies have survived.18 To what extent the accusation is true that he let himself be willingly instrumentalized by the Gestapo in taking on this project remains a hotly contested debate.19 As we can see from these cases, the lines between willing cooperation and efforts to resist are often blurred. In her book about Eichmann, Hannah Arendt points to the different ways some Jewish elders behaved. She mentions, for example, how Chaim Rumkowski in Łódź (called “Chaim the First”) printed money with

14 Cf. Julius H. Schoeps, “Preuße in dunkler Zeit. Rabbiner Leo Baeck und die Nationalsozialisten,” in Über Juden und Deutsche. Historisch-politische Betrachtungen (= Deutsch-jüdische Geschichte durch drei Jahrhunderte, vol. 4) (Hildesheim: Olms, 2010), 261 ff. 15 Cf. Beate Meyer, Tödliche Gratwanderung. Die Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland zwischen Hoffnung, Zwang, Selbstbehauptung und Verstrickung (1939–1945) (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2011). 16 Eva G. Reichmann, “Reply to Hannah Arendt,” in Die Kontroverse, 215. 17 Cf. Hermann Simon, “Bislang unbekannte Quellen zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Werkes ‘Die Entwicklung der Rechtsstellung der Juden Europas, vornehmlich in Deutschland,’” in Leo Baeck 1873–1956. Aus dem Stamme von Rabbinern, eds. Rachel Heuberger and Fritz Backhaus (Frankfurt/Main: Jüdischer Verlag, 2001), 103–110 and Fritz Backhaus and Martin Liepach, “Leo Baecks Manuskript über die ‘Rechtsstellung der Juden in Europa’. Neue Funde und ungeklärte Fragen,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 1 (2002): 55–70. 18 A copy is stored in the Leo Baeck Institute in New York. 19 Cf. Volker Resing, “Der Streit um die K-Akten. Neue Quellen lösen Debatte über ein ungewöhnliches Werk von Leo Baeck aus,” Aufbau 15 (2001).

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his signature and stamps with his portrait and was driven through the streets of the ghetto in a kind of coach. The name of Adam Czerniaków, the head of the Jewish Council in the Warsaw Ghetto, also comes up in the discussion of collaboration by the Judenräte. When tasked with choosing which Jews should be deported, he found himself unable to do so and killed himself with cyanide on July 23, 1942. In his farewell letter to his wife and his co-workers, he explained that, “They are demanding that I kill the children of my people with my own bare hands. There is nothing else left for me to do but die”.20

Chaim Rumkowski, head of the Judenrat in Łódź, 1941. bpk/Klaus Schönstein. No. 30009518

The examples of the Jewish elders in the General Government, the German Reich and the Netherlands should clearly be evaluated differently. Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, originally a textile manufacturer and insurance agent, behaved like a dictator in word and gesture, spreading fear amongst those who dared to contradict him.21 Known as “Chaim the Terrible”, Rumkowski was submissive towards the occupying forces in the Łódź Ghetto and did what was expected of him. Yehuda Leib Gerst, a survivor of the ghetto, describes him: “He was as gentle as a lamb towards the perpetrators. There were no limits to his obedience to all of their orders, even when their goal was to wipe us all out.”22 Rumkowski, who was considered to be ambitious and eager to make himself indispensable to the ghetto administration, should certainly be judged differently than Adam Czerniaków, the Chair of the Warsaw Jewish Council. The latter was

20 Adam Czerniaków, Das Tagebuch des Adam Czerniaków. Im Warschauer Ghetto 1939–1942 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2013), 285. 21 Cf. Michal Unger, Reassessment of the Image of Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2004), 4 ff. 22 Ibid, 8.

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an impressive figure, a former member of the Warsaw City Council and the Polish Senate. Czerniaków was an intellectual who strove to help wherever he could. His diary, a “document of powerlessness” reflects the limited possibilities he was faced with as well as the feeling of helplessness that tormented him. This feeling is also poignantly described in his memoirs by a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, the later literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki.23 A meaningful indicator to differentiate between cases of collaboration would be where and on whose side the person responsible could be placed and if the person personally profited from collaborating with the occupying powers – or not. This was normally not the case for members of the Jewish Councils, with the exception of a few spectacular cases such as Chaim Rumkowski and a few other members, who were purported to have used their position for their own benefit (although this should be looked into more closely). As for Rumkowski, the Chair of the Jewish Council in the Łódź Ghetto, his ingratiating behavior did not help him in the end. His behavior has been assessed differently by different historians,24 but even he did not survive German occupation. In August 1944 he, his wife and their adopted son were deported and murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Only a very small group of people, however, were actually guilty of collaboration and betrayal. This group has become the subject of some interest in recent years and includes those dubious personages who agreed to become agents for the Gestapo in exchange for some personal gain and the “Fahnder” (seekers) or “Greifer” (grabbers). These were Jews who denounced other Jews such as Stella Goldschlag-Kübler in Berlin, known as “the blonde ghost of Kurfürstendamm” or Celeste Di Porto in Rome, the “black panther”,25 who was born in the ghetto in Rome and maintained close contact with Italian fascists. Both women were young, came from Jewish families, were exceptionally attractive and had many male admirers. During the deportation phase, they served the Gestapo as informants and denunciators. Stella Kübler, née Goldschlag, continues to excite people’s imaginations, even having a novel based on her.26 She worked as a “Fahnderin” in Berlin starting in the spring of 1943. Originally, she simply wanted to protect her own family, but as she was put under increased pressure, she worked for what was referred to

23 Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Mein Leben (Stuttgart: DVA, 1999), 243 ff. 24 Cf. Saul Friedländer, Die Jahre der Vernichtung. Das Dritte Reich und die Juden 1939–1945, vol. 2 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2006), 89. 25 Cf. Corina Kolbe, “Die schwarze Pantherin. Jüdische Nazi-Kollaborateure in Rom,” Spiegelonline, August 3, 2017, accessed June 8, 2020, https://www.spiegel.de/geschichte/celeste-diporto-juedische-nazi-kollaborateurin-entschied-ueber-leben-und-tod-a-1134709.html. 26 I. e. Takis Würger, Stella. Ein Roman (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2019).

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as the “Jüdischer Fahndungsdienst” or “Jewish tracing service” as the journalist Peter Wyden has proven.27 Together with a male companion, she would go to the different cafés in town, attend movie theaters and theaters where she thought she might meet other Jews who had gone into hiding. The exact number of her victims, people she denounced and handed over to the Gestapo is anywhere between 600 and 3,000. After the “raid on Jews” on October 16, 1943, Di Porto betrayed dozens of people, including some close personal contacts.28 She tracked down Jews in the ghetto and in the alleys around Campo di Fiori square, who she would then surrender to the Nazis and their Italian facilitators. It is said that she received a bounty of 5,000 lira for a man, 3,000 lira for a woman and 1,000 lira for a child. The people recruited by the Gestapo as “Fahnder” had similar motivations. Stella Goldschlag-Kübler never developed any kind of sense of having done anything wrong. She did not see herself as a perpetrator, but as a victim and did not understand why she was not recognized as a “victim of Fascism” after 1945. Peter Wyden tracked her down to a small town in Southern Germany in the early 1990s where she was living under a different name. He attempted to find out something about what her motivations were when she was a “Fahnder”. What he discovered was sobering. In their conversation, Stella Goldschlag-Kübler either remained silent or did not feel to be in a position to explain why she allowed herself to be recruited by the Gestapo and work as a “Fahnder”. She completely lacked any sense of having done anything wrong. In Wyden’s portrait of her, originally published as a spectacular series of articles in the magazine “Der Spiegel” in 199229 and later appearing in book form, Stella Goldschlag-Kübler is presented as a pathetic, pitiful creature. According to the author, she had been a victim of the circumstances and could not have acted any differently. From this point of view, Celeste Di Porto was also clearly a victim of her circumstances.30 “It wasn’t just the money that kept her going,” claimed the Italian historian Anna Foà on the Italian historical television channel Rai Storia, rather she wanted to “take revenge against the world, which had treated her unfairly.” In this sense, it was a tragic chain of events that shaped her behavior.

27 Peter Wyden, Stella (Göttingen: Steidl, 1995). 28 Cf. Kolbe, “Die schwarze Pantherin”. 29 Peter Wyden, “Sonst kommst du nach Auschwitz,” Der Spiegel 43–45 (1992). 30 On Celeste Di Porto see the novel of Guiseppe Pederiali, Stella di piazza Giudia (Rome: Giunti, 1995) and Anna Foà, Portico d’Ottavia 13. Una casa del ghetto nel lungo inverno del 1943 (Rome/ Bari: Laterza, 2013).

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Today, however, the question also arises as to what extent a loss of Jewish identity was connected to the betrayal committed. These are obviously two extreme cases, two women whose Jewishness no longer meant anything to them. There are indications that both lost their sense of Jewish identity over the course of the events in Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. In Stella GoldschlagKübler’s case, this meant that she had no scruples in handing over Jews who had been in hiding to the Gestapo. Stella Goldschlag-Kübler was asked repeatedly about her actions as a former “Fahnder” in post-war Germany, but she was not aware of having done anything wrong. She even turned into an avowed antiSemite. Why this was and how it came to be has remained open to speculation. Like Stella Goldschlag-Kübler, Celeste Di Porto did not appear to care much about her Jewishness. Otherwise, she would have probably behaved differently and not let herself be used to help the occupying powers. Her later statements in court do not shed light on whether she actually realized exactly who she was serving. What is known is that neither woman cared a bit about their Jewish heritage. Later, after the war and the end of German occupation in Italy, Celeste di Porto, who had decided whether those she denounced and betrayed would live or die with a nod of her head, was said to have converted to Catholicism. Although she, like Stella Goldschlag-Kübler, was brought to court and sentenced to prison, she was later pardoned and escaped relatively unscathed. In any case, confronted with her actions in the past, with the betrayal she committed, did not lead to Celeste di Porto admitting to any having done anything wrong. She did not feel any remorse. Let us now briefly return to the Jewish Councils, their members and leaders in the General Government, the leaders in the “Reich Association of Jews” in Hilter’s Germany and the “Joodse Raad” in the Netherlands. Looking back, the question that constantly arises is if they could have acted differently than they did. Shouldn’t they have refused to cooperate and call for open resistance? The justified objection to this course of action is that under the given circumstances, such a call would have been a suicide mission and would have had no real chance of success. When you consider the fact that in addition to the Wehrmacht, there were whole regiments of “order police” (in 1943 there were 30,000 order police in the General Government in Poland alone), the Gestapo and SD (between 35,000 and 40,000) stationed in the occupied Eastern territories, it is clear that it would be pointless to speculate about the chances for success for such a call. Moreover, Jews who were willing to actively be in the resistance could hardly ever count on any support from the surrounding population. The non-Jewish population in the

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occupied territories were themselves scared, paralyzed by inaction and/or had anti-Semitic tendencies. It was almost impossible for the leaders and members of the Jewish Councils in the ghettos to counteract, much less escape, the claws of the Nazi’s death machine. The transports to the extermination camps couldn’t be stopped; at most they could be temporarily delayed and slowed down by blockades. People came to terms with the situation as best they could. The dilemma and the anguish felt by the Jewish leaders while they were taking their decisions become clear in a passage from a speech made by Jacob Gens. Gens, who was later shot by the Gestapo, was the head of the ghetto administration in Vilnius and in October 1942 said before writers and artists in this oft-quoted and famous speech: Many of you consider me to be a traitor and many of you are astounded to see me at a literary evening in the ghetto. I, Gens, lead you to your deaths and I, Gens, try to save Jews from death . . . I make my calculations in Jewish blood, not Jewish honor. When they demand that I hand over a thousand Jews, I do it, because when we, us Jews, don’t, then the Germans would come and violently drag off not a thousand, but thousands and thousands . . . I, Jacob Gens, if I survive, will leave the Ghetto dirty, with blood on my hands, but I will go before a Jewish court and say I did everything I could to save as many Jews from the Ghetto as I could and give them liberty. In able to save the rest . . . I had to get myself dirty and act without a conscience.31

Did Jacob Gens really get his hands dirty? The last word has not yet been said. Ans van der Dijk, Stella Goldschlag-Kübler and Celeste Di Porto were clearly traitors who acted egotistically. They moreover had criminal natures and made sure they would personally profit from their work for the Nazi authorities. It is different with Jacob Gens, who wanted to help, and although he gained no personal advantage through his position and function, was still suspected of being a collaborator and traitor. As the poet Abraham Suzkever remarked looking back, Jacob Gens did not comprehend, “that he was just a tool in the hands of the Gestapo’s war”.32 Gens is admittedly a tragic figure, in a sense similar to Czerniaków, who also was faced with writing the transport lists, thereby deciding who would live and who would

31 Different versions of the speech have survived. See Yitzhak Arad, Ghetto in Flames. The Struggle and Destruction of the Jews in Vilna in the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem Martyr’s and Heroe’s Remembrance Authority, 1980), 342–346. The Yiddish original can be found in the Moreshet Archives, D. 1.357 [The Mordechai Anielevich Memorial Holocaust Studies and Research Center, Givat Haviva]. The speech consists of 8 typed pages. The author wishes to thank his colleague Dina Porat in Tel Aviv for her research into this matter for him and bringing this to his attention. 32 Abraham Suzkever, Wilner Getto 1941–1944 (Zurich: Ammann, 2009), 55.

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die. Who should go on the transport, who shouldn’t? This was an anguishing decision. Gens knew full well, as he openly admitted to himself and before others, that if he were to survive, that he would leave the ghetto a tainted man with “blood on his hands”. Czerniaków, who like Gens was faced with similarly difficult decisions, was so dejected by what was demanded and expected of him that he, as previously mentioned, saw no other option for himself than to die by his own hand. A last note written by Czerniaków found in the community administration states that the “resettlement staff” demanded that he organize the deportation of children. Czerniaków wrote, This fills my bitter cup to the brim, for I cannot surrender helpless children to death. I have decided to resign. Don’t see this as an act of cowardice or an escape. I am powerless, my heart is breaking from grief and pity. I can’t bear it anymore. My deed will show everyone the truth and perhaps lead them to the right path of action. I am aware that I am leaving you a difficult legacy.33

How are these different examples of collaboration, or shall we say cooperation, with the Nazi authorities to be assessed? The cases of Czerniaków and Jacob Gens are different from the actions of both Stella Goldschlag-Kübler and Celeste Di Ponto especially due to the fact that although Czerniaków and Gens also worked with the occupying forces, the SS and the Gestapo, they did so – and this is the distinction – not in order to gain any personal advantage or wealth. This is a marked distinction to Chaim Rumkowski, the Jewish elder in Łódź, and a few other dubious members of the Jewish Councils who had no scruples to do so. Nevertheless, these cases are exemplary for showing that people can act in different ways under extreme circumstances. Not everyone is able to display their humanity. This can lead to the situation that a person does exactly the opposite of what was expected. A long-time friend can suddenly become an enemy and an enemy a (supposed) friend. Betrayal becomes purely an end in itself, as we can clearly see in the aforementioned cases of Stella Goldschlag-Kübler, Ans van Dijk and Celeste di Ponto. The journalist Margret Boveri called betrayal, breach of trust and deception omnipresent phenomena in her 1956 book “Der Verrat im 20. Jahrhundert” (Betrayal in the 20th century). “The content of the betrayal”, she wrote, “changes with the turning of the wheel of history. Today heroes who were hanged

33 Czerniaków, Das Tagebuch, 285.

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yesterday as traitors are celebrated as martyrs, and the other way around. Betrayal remains, like a lasting transforming shadow . . . belonging to our era”.34 Jacob Gens, the head of the Vilnius Ghetto, was clearly a case such as Margret Boveri had in mind in her observations. We have to ask ourselves if Gens was nothing but a traitor who let his brothers and sisters in faith down out of malice and for personal gain. Or was he, to borrow a phrase of Gershom Scholem, simply a “bad guy” who would do anything to please and serve the German occupiers? Opinions on this continue to vary up to today. The Israeli playwright Joshua Sobol attempted to work out this situation creatively in his successful play “Ghetto”. He was, however, unable to find an answer to this question either, which plagues him as well. In an interview he conducted with himself, he admitted that it was extremely difficult for him to face the truth. Looking back, the figure of Jacob Gens, who had been forced to trade a life for a life, filled him with terror. Sobol could still see the people, men, women and children, who had been herded together in the Vilnius Ghetto and were just scraping by in the extremely difficult circumstances and bracing themselves for much worse to come. Sobol asked himself if those who were whiling away their lives in the ghetto could trust a man like Jacob Gens. Was he really saving Jews as many people believe today or was he perhaps just a scoundrel like Chaim Rumkowski, who was mainly looking out for himself and his own well-being? In the end, Sobol’s play has the audience answer these questions for themselves. It was also difficult for him, almost impossible, said Sobol, “to open myself up to the complex questions of the physical and moral survival of a person”.35 Jacob Gens wasn’t just anyone, he wasn’t simply a random functionary of the Jewish Community, but a universally respected authority people in the ghetto looked up to and developed a kind of instinctive trust in. As the Chair of the Vilnius Jewish Council, he was the person who not only was given the power to determine and control daily life in the ghetto. He was also, and this should be expressly noted at this point, the person who was given the responsibility to help decide who of the ghetto inhabitants would live or die during the deportation phase.

34 Margret Boveri, Der Verrat im 20. Jahrhundert (= Rowohlts deutsche Enzyklopädie, vol. 23), Vol. 1: Für und gegen die Nation: Das sichtbare Geschehen (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1956), 7. 35 Joshua Sobol, “Ein Interview mit mir selbst,” in Ghetto. Schauspiel in drei Akten. Mit Dokumenten und Beiträgen zur zeitgeschichtlichen Auseinandersetzung, ed. Harro Schweizer (Berlin: Quadriga, 1984), 193.

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The philologist, translator and community archivist Zelig Kalmanowicz was perfectly aware of the problems, the pressure and the circumstances that were facing Gens and the ghetto leaders. In November 1942, he noted in his diary: In truth we are not innocent in every case. We have bought our lives and our future with the death of tens of thousands. When we decided that we had to continue with this life despite everything, then we have to continue till the end. May the merciful God forgive us.36

Whatever can today be held against him and his conduct at the time, Jacob Gens was certainly no Judas, not a betrayer in the sense of abandoning those entrusted to him at the hour of their greatest need. Any way you look at it, he was someone who, despite the pressure exerted by the occupiers, was trying to act responsibly within the strict confines he was allowed. When he was confronted with having to decide who would live and who would be sent to their death on a transport, he made such decisions out of necessity. He did so even though it admittedly pained him deeply. As the leader in the Vilnius Ghetto, Jacob Gens undoubtedly sent some Jews to their death with his decisions,37 yet he was also the one who helped and was repeatedly able to save individuals through daring rescues from being transported to extermination camps. What was he then? Was he simply a Judas, a collaborator, as some would say? Or was he, like Marcel Reich-Ranicki said of the case of Adam Czerniaków, a traitor who was also a hero at the same time? In the case of Jacob Gens, both seem to be true. He was undoubtedly, like Czerniaków, someone who worked together with the Nazi authorities, but at the same time, he was also a martyr and a hero. The question of how Gens’ and Czerniaków’s conduct should be assessed in hindsight has not yet been definitively and unequivocally answered. The only thing that is certain is that it would be premature to absolutely condemn Jacob Gens, Adam Czerniaków and other members of the Jewish Councils. By no means that should happen.

36 Yitskhok Rudashevski, The Diary of the Vilna Ghetto. June 1941–April 1943 (Tel Aviv: Ghetto Fighter’s House, 1973), 31. 37 Cf. Friedländer, Die Jahre der Vernichtung, 464 ff.

Part II

Krisztián Ungváry

The Thesis that only Germans are to Blame – Well-Intended, but Unsustainable The terms “victim” and “perpetrator” are part of the most important discussions in the politics of memory worldwide. They also carry out a legitimizing function: if someone can claim to be a victim, this in turn opens the door to farreaching political and economic demands. All nations probably have their master narratives about their own victimhood, yet their intensity varies widely. In Europe, the examples of Poland and Hungary are particularly striking, where the official politics of memory still cultivate an image of innocently sacrificed nations. Of all countries, Germany is an exception because here, in addition to the usual discourse of victimhood, a perpetrator discourse could also develop, which has become more and more dominant since the 1980s. This discourse has also been academically fruitful. Research into the perpetrators’ motives is eminently important for not only historical, but also legal and psychological reasons. However, this discourse has also produced some bizarre side-effects; for example, people saying that Germany had lost its right as a nation to ever be allowed to win the World Cup in soccer, or self-loathing slogans like “Death to Germany”, which are even considered in vogue in certain radical left-alternative circles. One would think that in the 21st century, people could slowly start to take a more detached view of the events of nearly 80 years ago, yet there are certain indications which tell a different story. As an example of this, I would like to analyze a speech that was at the time accepted without comment by all media in Germany. On May 8, 2020, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and the director of the renowned Institute of Contemporary History (Institut für Zeitgeschichte) in Munich, Prof. Dr. Andreas Wirsching, published an article together in the news magazine “Der Spiegel” about Germany’s responsibility and guilt for World War II and the Holocaust. Their thesis was that Germany alone bore responsibility for World War II and the Holocaust. Those who sow doubt about this and thrust other countries into the role of perpetrator do injustice to the victims. This thesis sounds good to some people and is apparently one of the founding myths of the Federal Republic of Germany. However, it does not stand up to a rational examination. I do not doubt for a moment that both authors made this statement in good faith. The German State, the scientific community in Germany and their respective representatives would do well not to forget their historical https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671186-015

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responsibility. However, this statement – regarding the “sole” responsibility, not responsibility per se – is unsustainable according to the historical research. It is legally unnecessary. Moreover, its consequences are counterproductive and destroy exactly that kind of open discussion about historical topics that the authors would certainly regard as indispensable for a pluralistic society. If the statement had been purely political, then I would not be writing. At the end of the day, incumbent politicians are allowed to take many liberties; in Hungary, they are not even forced to adhere to scientific or academic standards. However, this is a central statement from a Western democracy, which has been lent academic credibility and weight precisely by its being co-authored by the director of the IfZ. First of all, it should be said that well-intended but exaggerated claims have the unpleasant side-effect of legitimizing statements to the contrary. The thesis that Germany bear all responsibility is, for those who do not want to hear anything about “German guilt” at all, proof that they are right and by refuting this idea, many also feel empowered to throw the baby out with the bathwater. From a legal point of view, the statement is absurd; the legal responsibility for a crime is not dependent on the number of people involved. If two people commit a murder, they are not each convicted for “half” of the murder. On the contrary: each receives the full punishment if there are no mitigating circumstances present. Collective participation in the murder is in and of itself not a mitigating circumstance, particularly not when both parties act with premeditation. Stalin’s culpability for the outbreak of World War II in no way exonerates Hitler – and vice versa. Maas and Wirsching’s argument is also legally unsustainable from another point of view. It is entirely possible to do the victims an injustice when their victimhood is called into question. However, the line of thought presented here is not only based on this fact, but also the idea that the victims would also be wronged when the “right” perpetrators are not invoked when speaking of their fate, and according to Maas and Wirsching’s interpretation, these can only be Germans. Yet this is not true. It is not the rights of the victims that are violated, but those of the “wrong” perpetrators. It is not as paramount to concentration camp survivors who threw them into the camp than what was done to them in that camp (or gulag). The crosscheck here is to what extent does the victim have an advantage or a disadvantage, depending on one’s point of view, if s/he was not murdered by the Nazis, but by a communist security service like the NKVD? Would this make them a second-class victim? Maas and Wirsching would also certainly refute this. The absurdity of this central thesis becomes clear when considering that, according to Maas and Wirsching’s argument, those murdered by Soviet security forces in Eastern Poland between 1939 and 1941 can be called

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“victims of the Nazis” – and “those who sow doubt about this and thrust other countries into the role of perpetrator do injustice to the victims”. Parenthetically, this last sentence can hardly be understood in any other way than as if the correct version of events would be that the German people as a collective are exclusively entitled to the role of perpetrator. However, this cannot be meant to be taken seriously by any stretch of the imagination. It is true that there were not many in Germany who actively resisted. Many of those who did, however, did so exactly because they wanted to save Germany’s honor and the honor of the German people. For the sake of these men and women alone, we should avoid making such statements. From a moral standpoint, it is exactly the same situation I described from the criminal law point of view. The Nazi’s culpability for World War II is in no way impacted by the fact that Stalin was also interested in a war “among capitalist powers” and undertook everything he could to begin one. Maas and Wirsching’s statement, however, is an inadvertent whitewashing of Stalin. Imre Kertész would certainly have to speak of a recurring “fatelessness” decreed again 75 years later because his experience would be declared non-existent and irrelevant according to this kind of patronizing interpretation. It is exactly this kind of apology for Stalin and other non-German perpetrators in the context of World War II and the Holocaust that we encounter in everyday German public discourse again and again. According to this argument (or as it is often, a tacitly presumed consensus), without Hitler’s actions, no one else could even have become perpetrators. Hitler and the Nazi regime are also responsible for the culpability of the other perpetrators, and therefore bear full responsibility, or at the very least a kind of “ur-guilt”. However, this line of argument, as seductively and smoothly it tries to steer us to the full and exclusive culpability of the German people, is unsustainable, because here real guilt is erased from history with a hypothetical-contrafactual sleight of hand. This becomes all the easier to do the more wishful thinking involved. Historiographically, a statement which seeks to explain historical events monocausally is, to put it mildly, unusual. History is taught in school precisely to inoculate young people against all forms of monocausal explanations of the world and painting things in black and white. History lessons are meant to teach young people to be able to impartially analyze social and political processes. There is no historical event that can be explained monocausally. World War II and the Holocaust are no exception. In this concrete example, it is even more unambiguous. I do not know of any serious historical work about World War II and the Holocaust which prove the exclusive “sole responsibility” of Nazi Germany. On the contrary, all of these authors seek to show the complexity of events. Even those who more or less defend Stalin’s politics, for example, admit that some of the Soviet dictator’s actions

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were unnecessary and even counterproductive as they contributed to aggravating conflicts, encouraged Germany to military action and caused harm to the Allies. Wirsching is therefore unable to provide any solid assumptions backed by the literature for his academic analysis. In the end, neither Maas nor Wirsching provide any information about what they have based their thesis on. We have no idea.

The Distillate Normally, when making statements concerning the politics of memory, politicians should be able to refer their statements back to academic texts. This is all the more true when a representative from academia is called upon as a co-author, or shall we say “key witness”, as is the case here. Randolph L. Braham, Raul Hilberg, Dieter Pohl, Götz Aly, Hans Mommsen, Christopher Browning, Timothy Snyder and many other colleagues certainly depict Nazi Germany’s main share of the blame for the Holocaust, yet they in no way try to whitewash Romanian, Hungarian, Latvian or Ukrainian perpetrators. On the contrary, they try to portray the interplay of anti-Semitic politics in Eastern Europe, for example. To give just one example: the number of Jews mass murdered in Romania had already reached five digits before something similar was organized in Nazi Germany. Is German policy solely to blame for this as well? Maas and Wirsching’s distillate will taste good to some readers and bad to others. This is not the problem. The thing is that this distillate was not extracted using academically accepted methods, but from well-intentioned wishful thinking. I must once again emphasize the point that there are no academic works substantiating that a single country bear the sole blame or the sole responsibility for an historical event, not for World War II, not for the Holocaust, not for any event in history. Academically speaking, Dr. Wirsching owes the experts and the general public a monograph proving Germany’s “sole blame”. However, such a monograph still remains a desideratum and no one would be able to provide it. On the other hand, recently there have been highly notable new works precisely about the outbreak of World War I and II, the Holocaust, as well as the Paris Peace Conference in 1919/1929, which were strangely completely ignored here, as they apparently did not fit into the desired narrative. Thus, an historical event is being completely decontextualized. Furthermore, the complexity of historical events is being deterministically reduced. The distillates by Maas and Wirsching have interesting and in Germany certainly uncalculated side-effects, “collateral damage” if you will. For example,

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there are the e-mails I now receive in Hungary admonishing me to immediately stop dealing with the Hungarian government’s guilt in World War II and the Holocaust. After all, this has been forbidden by German authorities, quasi “ex cathedra”, or should we say “official” historiography. The postulation that Germany is solely to blame is incidentally an essential part of Viktor Orbán’s politics of memory. It has even been “artistically” immortalized in a memorial of the German occupation of 1944 on Freedom Square in Budapest. The “German” eagle (i. e. not just the Nazi eagle) is pouncing on the innocent “Hungarian” archangel Gabriel. No mention is made of the fact that Hungary was a German ally, that the Hungarian government, for example, mandated a brutal search of all women to be deported, including their genitals, looking for valuables, so that only truly plundered citizens be handed over to the German extermination machinery. The same is also true for the fact that the Third Reich first demanded “only” 50,000 men capable of work from Hungary, yet the Hungarian government held exactly this cohort back, sending in their place a much larger number of women, children and senior citizens to Auschwitz. According to Wirsching, though, the Hungarian government is blameless.

Additional Side-Effects Maas and Wirsching fear German revisionism and complain that in recent months there have been repeated “attempts” to rewrite history in a “disgraceful way”. I spend a lot of time in Germany, was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin and am in constant contact with German colleagues. I am also familiar with the current debates in German media and politics. This is precisely why I find this statement, despite all my sympathy for self-criticism, to overshoot the mark. Yes, there are also some crude views in Germany, and yes, these can increasingly be heard in certain political parties. However, why are these being examined in such an extremely German-centric way? The crude “man on the street” is an international phenomenon not limited to Germany! The same applies to the problem in the attitude of migrants with a Muslim background toward the Holocaust, which is also an international phenomenon. It is precisely thanks to its well-established democratic structures that Germany does very well in comparison to other countries. There is a strange aftertaste when German historians and politicians demand something from their own country which no other country has ever achieved. Should we once again believe that “the German spirit shall heal the world”? The thesis that Germans bear all of the blame also has a financial side effect. If it is true that Germany alone is culpable for the Holocaust and World War II,

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then all restitution payments that did not come from Germany made to victims of the war need to be made by the German treasury. There would therefore be no political reason for payments made by the Hungarian state to victims of the Holocaust. What is more, if Germany’s absolute guilt is established as per Maas and Wirsching, there could be additional costs the German government would be liable for. If this statement were to appear in a legally binding form, then nothing would stand in the way of class action suits and claims. This would mean the German taxpayer would not only have to recompense for the damages caused by the Soviet Union during World War II on foreign soil (for example, in Romania, Hungary and Poland), but would also be liable for all damage caused, for example, during the Polish-Ukrainian civil war in Volhynia, which took place outside of any German involvement. One of the central messages of the statement is that it is necessary to “make a clear distinction between victims and perpetrators”. Anyone who has done some research on totalitarian systems knows that these roles are usually difficult or even impossible to separate completely. Historiography takes place in shades of gray and not in black and white. To give just one example: The men involved on July 20, 1944 were certainly all victims of the Nazi system. However, many of them had previously been accomplices and supporters. Is it then better when we completely block out one side? Wouldn’t we be depriving these men and women of their very humanity with all of its highs and lows? Maas and Wirsching make the case for a common culture of memory, but in a way that only their version can be called European. At the same time, they write that we have to be willing to include other people’s perspectives in our own memories. This would require accepting the experiences of other countries as equal to one’s own and leaving the guilt and responsibility that does not belong to the German culture of remembrance to those who need come to terms with it.

The Dilemma However, this is where German politics enters difficult and dangerous waters. Giving up on the postulate of Germany’s sole guilt is politically explosive for Germany – needless to say why and how. For good reason this topic is given top priority in the Foreign Office as well. However, this places German politics before a dilemma. It is one thing to demand honesty and candor when dealing with history. This is faced with concerns in domestic, foreign and memory policy. The supposed stability of Germany and of Europe must be preserved.

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If history could be “rewritten”, then it would have to be possible to write it “correctly” in a certain way. This one true way of writing history does not exist, even if Maas and Wirsching would like to claim it for themselves here, only to contradict themselves a little while later: “But how can we make remembrance of 8 May a part of European memory in a way that unites us?” All historiography is interpretation. The continually recurring historical debates, beginning with the Fischer controversy, continuing with the Historikerstreit, the debate about the Wehrmacht exhibition, the topics of aerial warfare bombing and expulsion and so on – they are recurring signs that the thesis of Germany’s sole responsibility is politically desired on the one hand, but not quite sanctioned by history, so that history cannot be successfully interpreted in this way. These debates also show that the German academic culture of remembrance was hardly in the position to utilize the new insights generated in a way that would raise the quality of more recent debates. Finding one interpretation, one narrative, which unites Germans and Europeans and does not have obvious logical, legal and moral contradictions rendering it unsustainable at the same time (“How much politics is good for history?”) appears to be a necessary duty for politics. However, in a liberal Western democracy where the state cannot impose a way of thinking on society, this is simply impossible for now. In Europe today, history is interpreted within national frameworks. A common European history is only seen in questions dealing with conflicts with other continents. It is still possible that the slow rapprochement of the national cultures in the European Union create a more common European historiography. This requires the dismantling of monocausal, national historiographies. A long and difficult process.

Serge Klarsfeld

The Most Extreme of all of the French State’s Collaboration: The Surrender of the Jews Before examining the ideological links that led the government of the French State to collaborate closely with the Third Reich in their joint persecution of the Jews, I would like to give an overview of the political and military collaboration for which the Vichy regime was condemned. It must be remembered that this French State was led by a national hero, Marshall Pétain, by Pierre Laval, who had been Prime Minister several times during the Third Republic, and by François Darlan, Admiral of the French Navy; three eminently respectable figures until they led France into this collaboration; a collaboration that needs examination to establish what it was mainly responsible for. I am not an expert on political and military collaboration, but many of those who have written about this subject have done so, in my view, with preconceived or partisan ideas. I shall be speaking simply as a common sense observer who was also a Jewish child hunted by the Gestapo and the Vichy police, one of the very few among you, if not the only one. The French military defeat led to such chaos and human suffering due to the massive exodus of French people from northern France towards the south of the country that the armistice signed by Marshall Pétain was supported by the great majority of the French population, who saw him as their country’s savior, while only a tiny proportion of them answered the appeal General de Gaulle made at the same time from London. An authoritarian regime was established; the Head of State held all executive and legislative powers; he reigned supreme in his zone and any laws he enacted would cover the whole country, including the zone occupied by the Germans, subject to the agreement of the German authorities. Right from the start, this regime demonstrated its ideological closeness to Hitler’s Germany, with the aim of achieving a prominent position in the new European order and the best possible peace terms. This policy direction was soon encouraged by the destruction of part of the French fleet by the Royal Navy at Mers El Kébir and by the attempt by the Free French forces under General de Gaulle to capture Dakar with the support of the British; in the end, the French fleet took no further part in the war and scuttled its ships in Toulon when the Germans attempted to capture them in late 1942. Of course, the Prime Minister, Laval, made a statement in April 1942 that indicated collaboration: “I wish a German victory” though he did also say “because https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671186-016

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without it bolshevism would settle everywhere”; though it must be remembered that in 1941, during the Russian defeats and shortly before Pearl Harbor, General de Gaulle told his Chief of Staff, General Pierre Billotte, that if the Germans win this war it is Pétain, Laval and Deat who will have been right and he will have damaged France. The course of action undertaken by Vichy would be, besides its occasional statements, to maintain effective neutrality: the defence of the French empire against all invaders; this would be the case in Madagascar and Syria, where the Vichy army fought both the British and the Free French forces, as well as when the Americans landed in North Africa; a battle that lasted only 48 hours when Admiral Darlan took command of the French forces in Africa in the name of Marshall Pétain and with the agreement of General Eisenhower and President Roosevelt, even though they saw this Admiral as just a “temporary expedient”, who had argued for military collaboration with the Germans just a year earlier, but without Pétains’s support. The fact remains that only a very few Legion of French Volunteers and volunteers with the French Waffen-SS, both engaged in fighting the Red Army, fought with the Wehrmacht against the Allies. During the war, not a single unit of the French army under Vichy command ever fought alongside the German army. In contrast, the French police, under orders from their government, were active alongside the Gestapo and the SS. That they took this course of action against armed political opponents, Gaullists and Communists, could be considered understandable, even though the methods employed, in particular torture and summary executions, were totally indefensible. However, what constituted a crime against humanity and a collaboration that caused Vichy France the loss of its soul was its active participation in the “final solution of the Jewish question”, designed by Nazi Germany to be an extermination, as publicly proclaimed by Hitler on several occasions and again on the first day of 1942, a terrible year for the Jews, saying that the Jews would not exterminate the nations of Europe, rather the Jews would be victims of their own scheming. In terms of economics, it seems understandable to me that a Germany at war would exploit the resources of France after defeating it, to strengthen itself when it was preparing further aggressions. Every victorious power makes good use of its victory at the expense of the vanquished, otherwise the victory would be pointless. France’s economic collaboration was the inevitable consequence of its defeat and not a decision made of its own free will. In contrast, the Vichy French State had spontaneously declared itself to be an anti-Semitic state in its constitution. The Jewish Statute of October 1940 had not been required by the Germans or suggested by them to the government of the French State. It was drafted and adopted by the revanchists of the Dreyfus affair and by Philippe Pétain. The draft of this statute was made even more severe by the Marshall

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himself, as revealed by the document annotated in his handwriting that I made public in 2010. This Jewish Statute enabled the new regime to make Jews the scapegoats for the defeat and to give the Third Reich a guarantee that Vichy could align itself ideologically with Nazism. Proof would be achieved through actions taken and in this Vichy wasted no time: while the Jewish Statute of October 3 mainly applied to French Jews and excluded them from employment in public service, the law of October 4, 1940 enabled Prefects to detain without trial any foreigners “of Jewish origin” and they did not hold back. In the free zone under Vichy rule, more than 30,000 Jews were quickly interned, even though in the occupied zone the Germans had not yet organized camps for the Jews or asked Vichy to create them. Following this statute, which Vichy extended and made more severe with a second statute on June 2, 1941, a number of laws were proclaimed by the French State ordering a census of the Jews, their exclusion and dispossession and making them outcasts. In 1941, Jews were arrested and interned in the occupied zone, but this only applied to men. In the first half of 1942, the deportations began and five convoys left for the East carrying 4,900 men and 100 women, all in the prime of life. This might have been for forced labor, but the worst was to come that July. Following negotiations between the SS and Pierre Laval, the Prime Minister, Vichy would undertake to ensure its police forces arrested the number of Jews required by the Germans, namely 40,000, on condition that for the time being this would involve only foreign Jews deemed stateless: ex-Germans, Austrians, Poles, Russians and Czechs; other nationalities would soon follow: anyone from the Baltic states, Yugoslavs, Belgians, Dutch, Romanians, Greeks and Turks not acknowledged as such by the Turkish government. Since not enough adults had been arrested (9,000) in Paris during the big round-up at the Vélodrome d’Hiver (short Vel’d’Hiv’), carried out exclusively by the Paris police, the French authorities suggested to the SS that the 4,000 children being held, even though almost all of them were French nationals, should also be deported. The SS response to this proposal was that three trains a week had been scheduled and since the Gestapo in Berlin had not yet given the green light for the deportation of children, the trains would leave as intended; it was inevitable that parents and children would be separated since Vichy had no objection to it. Three thousand young children were separated from their parents by the French police and remained in camps in Loiret for two to three weeks in appalling conditions causing mental and physical suffering, before being sent to the camp at Drancy to be deported from there in convoys of 500 adults and 500 children, because the Germans did not want trains filled exclusively with children. Transport to Auschwitz took place in atrocious conditions, as did the

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executions. Of the 4,000 children arrested in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ round-up, only 6 six teenagers aged 16 and 17 survived. Vichy made itself an active accomplice in this crime against humanity and it continued this collaboration with the Nazi crime in the free zone, where it had promised to arrest and hand over 10,000 Jews. On August 26, 1942, it organized a gigantic round-up targeting Jews of nationalities liable for deportation in all the 40 departments of the free zone, in towns and villages. Once again, several hundred children were victims of this round-up and 10,000 Jews were handed over to the Germans in the occupied zone from an area, the free zone, where there were no Germans. It was then, in late August 1942, when German victories were at their height, when Erwin Rommel was threatening Cairo and the Wehrmacht was advancing on Stalingrad, it was then that the French people actively reacted against the antiJewish measures taken by the government led by Pétain and Laval and against the involvement of Vichy France in actions against the Jews on behalf of the Germans. In Lyon, Cardinal Pierre-Marie Gerlier, the leading figure in the Catholic Church, used his authority to rescue one hundred children about to be sent to Drancy and other Archbishops joined him in speaking out against Vichy. In addition, reports sent to Laval from Prefects were informing him of the criticism and condemnation expressed by many French people outraged by this persecution. Under pressure from public opinion, Laval informed the SS leaders of this situation on September 2, 1942, even though they had just asked him to fill a deportation train with one thousand Jews every day from September 15 to October 31. Laval, according to the SS, objected that he was encountering unheard-of opposition against the government from the Church, led by Cardinal Gerlier. He asked that no additional demands be made concerning the “Jewish question”, especially that no more quotas be set for the amount of Jews to be deported. The SS chiefs agreed with Laval’s view, not wishing to cause a crisis between them and a Pétain–Laval government which suited the Third Reich and had suited them all the way through. Vichy’s concerns increased with the Allied landings in North Africa and the defeat at Stalingrad. However, over a few months in 1942, more than 40,000 Jews were deported, 33,000 in eleven weeks; 3,000 per week. Vichy was still in a good enough position that it could have refused to assist the Germans with their criminal program in which French policemen handed over babies and old people to them for deportation in conditions that indicated that a horrible fate awaited, and even though the Jewish consistory had written to Pétain and Laval on August 25, 1942 warning that it had absolutely no doubt about the ultimate fate awaiting deportees after they had already borne unspeakable suffering. Furthermore, the German government did not want them as a labor force, but had clearly stated their intent to exterminate them methodically and mercilessly.

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Vichy could have refused the German requests: it was in a good enough position; France was working at full capacity for the German wartime economy; the safety of German troops in France was ensured by the Vichy police; Vichy was protecting its empire and had promised the Germans that its fleet would remain neutral. And yet Vichy willingly collaborated with the Germans, allowing its police to cooperate in an operation that led to the deaths of more than 70,000 Jews, including 11,000 children, almost all arrested by French policemen. This is the clearest and most reprehensible instance of Vichy’s collaboration. This was not done in order to prevent something worse from happening, but a deliberate intention to persecute the Jews, matching that of the Nazis and, at the crucial moment when Hitler decided to deport western European Jews to eastern Europe, Vichy’s anti-Semitic exclusion policy paved the way for a genuine criminal collusion in the form of the arrest and handover to the Nazis of tens of thousands of Jews. The government of the French State could have said “no” to the SS when they asked it to put at their disposal the prefectoral administration and the French police so they could seize Jews in the free zone as well as the occupied zone and hand them over for deportation. It was at that moment the fate was sealed for this regime, which slid into a cruel and criminal collaboration that marked Vichy forever.

Tvrtko Jakovina

Being in Love with Traitors Views on Collaboration during World War II in Several Balkan Countries after the End of the Cold War What had once been official truth was now discredited root and branch – becoming, as it were, officially false. But this sort of taboo-breaking carries its own risks. Before 1989 every anti-Communist had been tarred with the “Fascist” brush. But if “anti-Fascism” had been just another Communist lie, it was very tempting now to look with retrospective sympathy and even favor upon all hitherto discredited anti- Communists, Fascists included. Tony Judt, Postwar. A History of Europe since 1945 (London: Pimlico, 2017), 824.

In 1945, Josip Broz Tito’s Yugoslavia came into being. It was the first republic of Southern Slavs, and it was communist. The Germans and some of the Italians who used to live there were expelled. The National Liberation War in Yugoslavia was also a revolution. Together with the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia was the only country in Europe that had expanded past its pre-war borders. Slovenia and Croatia, two People’s Republics in the north-western part of Yugoslavia, received territories that had been Italian between the two World Wars. Both of these nations had their “collaborators” during the Italian and Nazi German occupation during World War II. The Croats, who had been given a fascist Ustaša state by the Germans and the Italians, the so-called Independent State of Croatia, were also actively supporting German war efforts on the Eastern Front and in Stalingrad. The Ustaša regime was also the last government still in power before the fall of the Third Reich; Zagreb, the capital of the Independent Sate of Croatia, was liberated on May 8, 1945! The victory of Tito’s Partisans and the National Liberation Army, as it was called, was unique in many different ways. The extensive Yugoslav guerilla movement was massive and homegrown. It did not receive assistance from the Soviets, although its leadership aspired to become as similar to the Soviet Union as possible, at least until the late 1940s. Tito’s victory in the war and revolution became the ideological and political, even spiritual, cornerstone of the new Yugoslavia. War and revolution became central to the pantheon of Yugoslav ideas. It was celebrated in movies, books, on records and in the political arena. All of the other victories and achievements, all of the other things Tito’s regime was based on or had achieved, like the specific Yugoslav Marxist variation of socialist self-management or the non-aligned foreign policy, both of which followed after the split with https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671186-017

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Stalin’s Soviet Union in 1948, remained present, but were not as important as these founding events which were continually refreshed, ritualized parts of everyday life. This practice of celebration intensified in the 1970s, as the regime was looking for ways to reinforce its legitimization. By the late 1980s, many of the rituals had become totally emptied of meaning; unattractive to the young; or seeming hollow to the old. Starting shortly after the death of Marshal Josip Broz Tito in 1980, a critical re-evaluation, often bordering on nationalism, started to shake the very foundations of the Yugoslav regime. The most prominent attacks took place in Serbia, which was opening up discussions on topics from World War II, questioning the Serbian victims in the Ustaša Croatian state and attacking the very foundations of the Yugoslav myth. Slobodan Milošević, head of the Serbian League of Communists from 1985, was the engine behind the breakup of Yugoslavia. Milošević was a very skillful tactician. He had a great ability to use different, often opposing, groups and he used them for his political goals. The last Communist era boss and, after the end of the Cold War, the leading nationalist in Serbia, Milošević had created an atmosphere in which his plans became acceptable for those who were radical nationalist followers of the monarchy and the Četnik ideology of Greater Serbia, as well as many who were still deeply embedded in the falling Communist regime and ideology. Almost without precedent, Serbia had continued reinterpreting its recent history and started to develop the idea that the Serbs were the only people in Europe with two anti-fascist movements. During the 1990s, Serbia adopted the narrative of having two anti-fascist movements, although the Partisans were still the more important. The idea that the outcome of the war in Yugoslavia would anyhow be decided by the Allies being perpetuated Serbian historians living outside of the country was becoming dominant. Partisan warfare was described as futile, expensive and unnecessary, while the Četnik policy of inactivity was suddenly being described as smart. To achieve this, many facts about the Četnikss had to be ignored: the thousands who were killed and disappeared during the war, the unspeakable crimes, the killing of the non-Serbs, the collaboration between the Četniks and other fascists, including not only the Germans, but also the Ustaša in Croatia. The Yugoslav Army in the Homeland, or the Četniks, were little different from a classic collaborationist force. They remained loyal to the Royal Government in exile, but fought against the army eventually recognized by the Allies, the Partisans. If the Četniks were only a more passive anti-fascist, liberal and anti-communist movement – and not collaborators – why were they abandoned by the Allies in 1944? The Partisans symbolically ruled Serbia from 1944–1945. After the fall of Milošević on October 5, 2000, a “new” nationalism picked up strength in Serbia, establishing “anti-anti-fascism”, or a “revision of revisionism”, as values in Serbian

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society. Already strong in Croatia, anti-Yugoslavism and the negation of everything Tito had produced was now establishing itself in Serbia. Revisionism (or pseudo-revisionism) in Serbia was first introduced in the history textbooks before spreading further. Četnik collaboration was either ignored or fully omitted. Četnik war crimes against civilians were ignored. The Partisans were turning into the villains – communists and no more than usurpers, headed by a Croat, Marshal Josip Broz Tito. What followed was the institutional and political rehabilitation of Četniks, followed by their judicial rehabilitation. On December 21, 2004, the “Law on the Equalization of Četniks and Partisans” was adopted. The “Law on Rehabilitation” followed and Serbia officially had recognized the Četnik movement as “one of the two anti-fascist movements in Serbia”. True, there were some war crimes, but in war, all sides were doing bad things. That had become the only way to fine-tune the ideology of nationalism, the only ideological paradigm with the “right” interpretation of the past. The Četnik leader Dragoljub Mihailović was rehabilitated from being a war criminal and his movement ceased to be criminal and collaborationist. The Serbian Orthodox Church contributed to the rehabilitation of the Četniks, but also increased rehabilitation attempts of some of its clergy, notably Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović, who was regarded as a spiritual father of the purely fascist organization of Dimitrije Ljotić “Zbor” during World War II in Serbia. Nikolaj Velimirović was an anti-Semite, anti-Western (he even declined to use soap), but nevertheless praised as one of 100 most notable Serbs by the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences and named a Saint in 2003. Living descendants of Milan Nedić, the president of the Serbian government during the Nazi occupation of Belgrade and the general who had reported to Adolf Hitler in 1942 that Belgrade was “judenfrei”, were trying to secure his judicial rehabilitation. These attempts did not hold up in court, although the long procedure and testimonies of some established historians relativized the view on history in Serbia even more. In April 2019, the court in Belgrade finally concluded the whole saga of Nedić – who had never been legally convicted, since he had committed suicide. In spite of that, the whole picture of the past was shattered even further. Nedić was not put on the same level as Mihailović, but how “unclear” his position in Serbian society had become can be illustrated by the way he was discussed on TV during the Covid-19 pandemic. In a lecture televised by the Serbian Radio Television, Nedić was described as a brave general, someone who was trying to preserve the soul of the Serbs and someone who had been saving the Serbs expelled by the Ustaša from the West. Although history textbooks paint a bit different picture of Nedić where he is not praised, just as Ante Pavelić is not being flattered in Croatian textbooks – the overall atmosphere in society has paved

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the road to such relativism of notorious collaborators. Those who were real anti-Fascist fighters became invisible or were simply turned into villains. The politics of history in Croatia over the past three decades was even more exclusive and troublesome. Croatia and arguably Macedonia (but for different reasons and with different historical events) made the most dramatic departure from what it used to be or how it would be interpreted in the large historiographies. In Croatia, this is primarily connected with World War II. In North Macedonia, World War II was not part of the dispute, but rather ancient Macedonians of Alexander the Great and the Macedonian feud with the Hellenic Republic. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the situation is different among the different nations of that country. Serbs and Croats follow the (conservative) historians in Serbia or Croatia. Bosniaks are trying to connect with Ottoman heritage, but some of the buildings, like a school in Sarajevo, were named after Mustafa Busulandžić, a Muslim writer who had welcomed the disappearance of Jews from Sarajevo during World War II. The school was renamed in 2018. In Montenegro, the changes and re-interpretations were the smallest. The Partisan warfare was not questioned; the national holiday of Montenegro remained the same (in memory of the July 1941 uprising against the Italians). In Slovenia, the changes were partial. This country did not give up on Partisan warfare; Slovenian statehood was based on the victory that set the current borders. It would have been rather bizarre and political unsavvy to do something like that, but, to a large extent, that is exactly what happened in Croatia. With the exception of the regions gained after the war (Istria, Rijeka and some of the Islands in the Adriatic Sea), where monuments were not being destroyed, in other parts of Croatia, especially in the South and East, the Yugoslav, anti-fascist past, was literally demolished. The Southern Slav approach to the past has remained the same for many decades. It is seen in black and white, just like political life and so many other phenomena in society. It had been black and white in Yugoslavia, it is the same today, but the actors are not the same. Defamation of the Partisans, the erasing of anything connected with the anti-fascist fight and the renaming of the streets opened the way to normalizing the quisling collaboration during World War II. With the Četniks, the transformation was a bit easier. With the Ustaša in Croatia, it was much harder to “rebrand” them, although many attempts were made (after all, would it be possible to re-brand Hitler?). When these failed, a group effort was made by many in the media, politicians and historians attempting to minimize or fully negate some of the most hideous deeds and war crimes. Even the Ustaša concentration camps, where Roma, Jews, Serbs and anti-fascists were killed in the tens of thousands, were being negated. For example, in the spring and summer of 2020, the “Glas koncila” (The Voice of the Council), the central newspaper published by the Archbishop of Zagreb, ran 14 articles based on a publication which

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denied the very existence of the Jasenovac concentration camp. Some of the most prominent members of the Catholic Church in Croatia have been deniers of the Ustaša atrocities during World War II for many decades. Already in 1993, the Croatian Parliament adopted a law by which members of the “Croatian home army mobilized between April 17, 1941 and May 15, 1945” i. e. Ustaša and regular Domobran (Home guard) forces of the Independent State of Croatia, were eligible to be financially compensated for their service. Therefore, since then the veterans of the collaborator forces were being paid by the state treasury in the Republic of Croatia for their service. At the same time, hundreds of monuments dedicated to Partisan warfare were demolished and street names were erased. For the past 30 years, the Croatian Parliament has been sponsoring commemoration events in Bleiburg, Austria, where on May 15, 1945, following the agreement in Yalta, British forces had deported different Yugoslav collaborators back to Tito in Yugoslavia. Many were killed upon their return, but rather than stating this fact, according to the World Jewish Congress, the whole commemoration had turned into the “epicenter of celebration of the fascist pro-Nazi movement heroes”. In 2020, deputies of the Austrian parliament from both the right as well as the left wing passed a resolution forbidding the commemoration of Croatian collaborationists on Austrian soil. The current Prime Minister of Croatia, Andrej Plenković, head of the Croatian Democratic Union, seems not to be a radical, not to be corrupt and not to be a revisionist. Nevertheless, he succeeded Tomislav Karamarko, former Minister of the Interior and Vice-President of the Croatian Government (2016) who, as the head of the then-largest opposition party, had moved the whole political scene so far to the right that many previously unthinkable things had become normal in Croatia after 2015. The Croatian political scene had shifted tracks, and many Croatian politicians around Plenković were openly flirting with radical ideas. Therefore, it was his government that was financially supporting groups that were negating the very existence of the Ustaša concentration camp in Jasenovac. It was his government that had allowed the use of Ustaša greeting “Za dom spremni” (Ready for the homeland) on some occasions. It was during his time in office that Serbian, Jewish and Roma representatives refused to go with government officials to the Jasenovac memorial and honor the memory of the victims with them due to the rise in right-wing populism. In 2019, a high placed functionary in Plenković’s Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs called several ambassadors accredited in Zagreb and asked them not to attend the commemoration ceremony organized by the victims, but only the ceremony the Prime Minister and the Speaker of the Parliament (both members of the same party, the HDZ) would be attending. The ministry functionary was given the cold shoulder by the major ambassadors, but all this shows a sense of uneasiness and the troublesome relationship the current government has with the recent past. Although June 22 is

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national holiday, the Anti-Fascist Day, top ranking politicians from the leading right-wing party/movement never come to the Brezovica woods near Sisak where the uprising started. In spite of everything, there is still opposition in Croatia, there is even space for open debate, and there are some encouraging signs that things are changing for the better – at least in relation to the Homeland War in Croatia. In Serbia, things are different. The last elections in the spring of 2020 were boycotted by the opposition, who are no longer represented in the parliament at all. In Croatia, the HDZ scored a major victory with less than 48 % of the votes, but the extreme right wing parities got 16 seats in the 151 member parliament and will not participate in the government. As the leader of the Jewish Community in Croatia, Dr. Ognjen Kraus, wrote, the Prime Minister now has no excuse to not fulfill all the necessary laws and changes. Segments of society suffering from horrible traumas have demonstrated their goodwill; it is now up to the government to live up to its promises. In every former Yugoslav republic, nationalism has become the ruling ideology, although to different extents. For nationalists, history is a part of national cohesion. Therefore, the past has to be changed and re-adapted to fit current political interests. Historical revisionism was thus understood not as a logical, scholarly attempt to learn more or to be more precise, but quite the opposite. The Communist postwar crimes of subjecting innocent victims to arbitrary judicial procedures or repression cannot rehabilitate those who were collaborators and are responsible for war crimes in the name of Nazi-fascist ideology. History as it used to be taught was not revised, but very often changed to pseudohistory. Sometimes these changes just required a strong belief in obvious lies (like in the case of Alexander the Great and Macedonian historiography or the insistence that Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina should identify with the Ottoman past, disregarding the centuries of history that had preceded the Ottoman conquest). For the most part, especially in the case of the Croats and the Serbs, it was pure historical revision of the recent past, especially of World War II. For many years, historians in different Yugoslav republics have claimed that the systematic deletion from collective memory and distortion of historical sources, the discrediting of “remains of the communist historiography” and ignorance of everything achieved during the Cold War leads to the “apologia of quislings and frequent victimization of prominent collaborators”. Thus, in most post-Yugoslav states, those who had been collaborators – with the Germans and Italians – became if not the “good guys” then at least many attempts were made to put them on equal footing with the Partisans. Partisans and Tito became little more than criminals in different ways in the different post-Yugoslav states. Their deeds in Croatia and Serbia were identified only with the last few days of the war and ideology of Communism. Right-wing

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discourse existing in the West and the frequent inability or unwillingness to distinguish Stalinism in its purest form from other variations, have helped revisionist, or collaborationist, tendencies in South-Eastern Europe. In the end, we have galimatias, a reflection of the overall situation in societies where clear values no longer exist, where the rule of law was never strong, where collaboration with pure evil could become a desirable past. Some think that it is enough to blame the Germans for the Holocaust and forget everything else, especially the others killed during the war and our own responsibility. Nationalism seems to be a panacea for everything.

Franz Sz. Horváth

Traumas that do not End? Not Dealing with History in Hungary “I hate the entire 20th century!” was the title of a 1991 album by the Hungarian rock band Beatrice. The title song began with the lyrics: “I am a Hungarian / I was born a Hungarian/ traitors and criminals ruled over me / where will the wind blow 16 million people”. Later in the song, history is called a nightmare and the question is asked where it all will lead, then listing a number of important historical events and names in Hungarian history of the 20th century: the White Terror of 1919, the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary Miklós Horthy, Hitler and his “wunderwaffe”, Stalin and his tanks, the death camp in Recsk, the Uprising in 1956, the Iron Curtain and the Red Terror. However, two events that shaped the discussions about history and the politics of memory in Hungary after 1991 were still missing from the song, namely the Treaty of Trianon and the Holocaust and the fate of Jewish Hungarians. The song itself was two-fold. On the one hand, it was filled with a kind of national pride, on the other it was marked by a self-image of an innocent nation as a victim of a repulsive history in which either foreign powers (Hitler, Stalin) or “traitors and criminals”, deviants from the Hungarian norm, were responsible for the atrocities. The song offered the implicit, history-revising conclusion in the final refrain: “History has us in its pocket”, releasing the listener from any responsibility or self-reflection. 1. On June 4, 1920 Hungary signed the Treaty of Trianon. In accordance with the treaty, Hungary committed itself to reducing its army, unification with Austria was prohibited and payment of reparations for war damages was mandated. The greatest shock, however, were the newly drawn borders. Hungary’s territory was reduced from 282,000 km2 to 93,000 km2. Its population went from 20 to eight million inhabitants. In percentages, this was 67 % of its territory and over 58 % of its population. Since 2010, June 4 is celebrated in Hungary as the Day of National Unity, a national memorial day. The legislative reforms since 2010, the erection of a “Memorial for the Victims of the German Occupation” in 2014, which presents Hungary as a victim, and the “Trianon Memorial” planned for mid-2020 all came about under the influence of the after-effects of the Treaty of Trianon and cultivate an emotional narrative of victimhood that goes hand in hand with a very one-sided view of history. Since 2010, members of Hungarian minorities in other countries have the possibility to obtain Hungarian citizenship as a moral compensation for their separation from the “mother country” in 1920. In the constitution of 2010, the https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671186-018

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Hungarian state emphasizes its special responsibility for their fate and promises to support their efforts to maintain their identity. At the end of May 2020, a few days before the 100th anniversary of the signing of the treaty, the “Memorial of National Unity”, as the Trianon memorial is officially called, should have been unveiled. Due to the situation with Corona, the ceremony was postponed until August 20. A 100-meter long wall will be erected in the street in the center of Budapest. In its middle, an eternal flame will burn in a smashed block of granite and the 12,000 place names will be listed on the walls in their Hungarian spelling from 1913 – even if those places were already purely Slovak, Romanian or Serbian communities. This is nothing more than a covert demand for a mental repatriation of these communities, which should once again become a part of the Hungarian collective memory. This allows for a new revisionism of the interwar period. In addition, there were countless conferences, meetings and commemorative events held in 2020 to mark the 100th anniversary of the signing of the treaty. Of the many books published commemorating this anniversary, a threevolume work published by the Osiris publishing house stood out as a negative example. The publishing house was established in 1994 and actually has acquired a very good reputation as the publishers of critical Hungarian historians (Ignác Romsics, Krisztián Ungváry) and classics of Hungarian and world literature as well as philosophy, sociology and history. However, the publishing house’s owner, János Gyurgyák, who also has made a name for himself as an historian, has been reducing its publishing activities since about 2010 due to an indeterminate cultural ennui. Hardly any new publications have appeared since then, apart from maintaining the house’s program. This makes the submission all the more conspicuous of the three-volume publication in a black decorative slipcase entitled “Hungary is Bleeding” because it takes up the government’s official victimhood narrative. The first volume, also encased in a black cover, is a new edition of an anthology from the interwar period, which includes works by contemporary authors and poets (Attila József, Dezső Kosztolányi and Endre Ady) who thematized the unfair peace treaty. As the title suggests, the writings were about overcoming pain. In the other two volumes, which now appear in white covers, under the title of “Hungary Remembers”, in their essays the authors focus on describing the effects of the treaty, on the official politics of memory, on historical-political and psychological-mentality-historical explanations of the causes, consequences and importance of this event, one of the most significant in the century for Hungary. At least some of these texts no longer present a discussion of grievances, yet these in no way salvage the intention of the publication. However, the fact that the publishers insist on characterizing the work as a “peace

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dictate” not only demonstrates its treatment of the treaty, but also the attitude of a large segment of Hungarian society. As much as the title of the new edition “Hungary is Bleeding” signifies an attitude of martyrdom and victimization, so little do many Hungarians seem willing to historicize the treaty. 3. After the Wehrmacht occupied Hungary on March 19, 1944, Jewish Hungarians were quickly forced into ghettos and deported. Between May 14 and July 9, about 437,000 Jews were deported from Hungary to Auschwitz on 147 transports. About 325,000 to 349,000 were killed there and in other camps. A decades-long anti-Semitic tradition preceding these events, which reached back to the end of the 19th century and led to the first numerus clausus law in Europe, limiting university admissions. This also led to the introduction of a wide range of additional “Jewish laws” after 1938, which subjected Jewish Hungarians to more severe measures dictating their living conditions than those for Jewish Germans. The other particular features of the Holocaust in Hungary were the breathtakingly fast ghettoization and the deportation of the people at a pace that even surprised Adolf Eichmann and Rudolf Höß, the commandant of Auschwitz. This took place at such a speed and with such noticeable willingness from the Hungarian authorities that it would be an understatement to regard the Hungarian gendarmes and the civil population craving Jewish property as mere accomplices. Another unusual feature is the fact that the nearly half a million Jewish Hungarians were deported from recently regained border territories such as Carpatho-Ukraine and Northern Transylvania so that these would be ethnically homogenized and therefore not be lost again. These Jews tended to live observantly and be Orthodox, so that they did not even have real advocates in the Jewish community in Budapest. How much less then in Hungarian politics! It remains to be said that when Ian Kershaw said the road to Auschwitz was paved with anti-Jewish hatred, then the Hungarian “Jewish laws”, the anti-Semitic discourse in the interwar period, which included large segments of Hungarian society, intellectuals and politicians, undoubtedly formed an essential part of the road leading to the death chambers. 4. Exactly 70 years after the deportation of Jewish Hungarians, in 2014 the government in Budapest built the “Memorial for the Victims of the German Occupation”. A German imperial eagle stands in the center, attacking an allegorical symbol for an innocent Hungary from the sky. Hungary is represented by the Archangel Gabriel whose legs are tied up in a cloth and whose arms are outstretched Christ-like. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán claimed that the memorial is intended to commemorate the loss of Hungarian sovereignty through the occupation of the country and the pain that Hungarians suffered through the loss of their freedom. It is true that the name of the memorial

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can be understood to commemorate all victims and therefore theoretically include those Jewish Hungarians who were deported during the occupation. Nevertheless, the claim that Hungary lost its sovereignty and freedom remains a historical misrepresentation. Indeed, Miklós Horthy, Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary, had so much political leeway and political power that he was able to stop the deportation of Jews from Budapest in July 1944. Accordingly, he would have been able to do so earlier as well, but instead he appointed Döme Sztójay, well-known to be pro-German, as Prime Minister and took no action against the anti-Semitic members or anti-Semitic actions of the new government. The memorial therefore plays an essential role in the current, official victimhood narrative, which portrays a completely onesided and thus inaccurate view of history. In 2019 the first monograph about the Transylvanian Party appeared, written by János Kristóf Murádin. The party had a short-lived existence. It was founded at the end of 1940 after Northern Transylvania was returned to Hungary, yet already ceased to exist in the fall of 1944. The majority of its leaders were Hungarians who had already led the Hungarian minority in Romania in the interwar period. Most of the preliminary work for this current monograph was completed after 2000, when historians had meticulously determined that these Hungarian politicians had completely forgotten their experience as members of a minority (1920–1940) after they became members of the Hungarian Parliament starting in 1940. Rather, they then dreamt of an ethnically homogenous Greater Hungary, supported anti-minority positions themselves and contributed to the anti-Semitic legislation in the country. At the same time, the Jewish Hungarians in Northern Transylvania had remained true to their Hungarian culture while their territory belonged to Romania (1920–1940). Murádin’s monograph simply ignores these events and focuses on presenting the party’s founding, its development, its politicians and its members in a positive light. There is no deep analysis of the party’s program or a critical examination of how it saw itself or its ideology. The author refrains from an intensive hermeneutic or discourse-analytical attempt to place the statements by leading members in the contemporary politicalideological context. No mention is made of the involvement of the Hungarian population in Northern Transylvania in the ghettoization and deportation of almost 150,000 Jewish Hungarians from Northern Transylvania. Thus, 75 years after the party ceased to exist, an apologetic study has appeared which falls far short of the state of current research. The monograph is emblematic for the refusal of the Hungarian minority in Northern Transylvania to recognize that they were not only victims, but also perpetrators of history.

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6. The Treaty of Trianon and the Holocaust were the two most significant and drastic events in the eventful history of Hungary in the 20th century. The fact that they have become traumatizing events has to do with their aftereffects and how Hungarian governments and Hungarian society dealt with them and with the narratives used to describe them. What they have in common is that the majority of Hungarians view them from a distorted and one-sided perspective. They are seen as events forced upon Hungarians by external, foreign powers. In this way, many Hungarians are able to ignore their own ancestors’ contribution to the creation of both the treaty and the Holocaust. Too often there is an ethno-centric feeling of contentment, which, with regard to Trianon, ignores the feelings of Slovaks and Serbs, for example. In the absence of profound knowledge of the culture, art or political goals of the different nationalities, it is not surprising that the demographic conditions from 1920 and afterwards, or even from today, are not known. When such awareness is lacking (and there are numerous other examples of general ignorance about the international political situation before and after World War I), historical events are understood only in light of Hungarian national narratives. Book titles such as “The Loss of Northern Transylvania”, even if the book is technically irrefutable in its presentation and arguments, create a national-historical focus that should have been overcome 100 years after the treaty. This focus also frequently recurs in Hungarian society’s handling of the Holocaust. The cultural and historical-political debates about individual people that have been flaring up again and again for years show that Hungarian contributions to the history of anti-Semitism are neither taken seriously nor their actual implications taken into account and that neither the collaboration in the spring of 1944 nor the atrocities committed by the Arrow Cross Party and its unbridled supporters in the fall and winter of 1944/45 have been sufficiently addressed and their significance understood for the identity of a nation. The futile struggles of Jewish survivors to reclaim their property stolen in 1944 is just another sad chapter in this complex. Ignoring the fate of the Jews they were responsible for has led to Hungarians complaining about the loss of the Hungarian character in many places in Northern Transylvania and blaming Romanian assimilation policies for this. They deliberately omit the fact that by participating in the mass murder of Jews in 1944 they played a major role in this loss. 7. Is it feasible to imagine a way out of this narrative of self-pity and selfvictimization? How could the national narratives be successfully overcome? In the case of the Treaty of Trianon, it seems that only by historicizing events would there be the possibility of coming to terms with this trauma. This in turn would only be possible if the Hungarian minorities no longer play a role

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in Hungary’s relations with its neighboring countries. An unbiased examination of Hungary’s own collaborative role in the Holocaust can also only take place after a shift in emphasis in the historical-political discourse, which must be introduced into large segments of society. The critical findings of experts, which certainly do already exist, also need to be more widely available. It goes without saying that this will be a long and difficult road ahead.

Imre Szakál

The Question of Collaboration and the Politics of Memory in Ukraine Counter to most East-Central European nations, the Ukrainians had no chance to develop a lasting statehood after World War I, despite the efforts of the Ukrainian movements in Lviv and Kyiv. The Ukrainian state-building experiment had no support from the great powers; the members of one of the most numerous nations in East-Central Europe found themselves under the supremacy of different countries. After 1921, the vast majority of the Ukrainians lived in the Soviet Union and Poland. In addition, there were significant Ukrainian communities in Romania and Czechoslovakia. It was clear for the Ukrainian nationalist movement that a change in this situation without a new war would be almost unimaginable. However, the idea of an independent Ukrainian nation-state did not disappear, despite the Soviet social transformation, or Polish nation-building. The Ukrainian question became a tool in the hands of the countries that used East-Central Europe as an area of their foreign endeavors. The war, from which many expected the creation of independent Ukraine, brought unimaginable suffering. Most of the territories of the Ukrainians became a theater of war. The double occupation brought double the violence and forced people to seek out survival strategies. Moreover, the war with all its horrors had created possibilities in individual and community dimensions. The collaboration was fueled by all of these three factors in the case of Ukrainians. Some were searching for ways to survive, some were motivated by the opportunity of personal benefits and others were influenced by the idea of the long-awaited Ukrainian independence. Collaboration, just as the suffering of war, was an everyday experience in the occupied territories. There were examples of collaboration with both, the Red Army and the German military and administrative organs on the part of the Ukrainian, Russian, Polish and Crimean Tatar inhabitants. The debate over the facts of the Ukrainian collaboration with Nazi Germany, the participation of the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) and UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) in the Holocaust and in the ethnic cleansing against the Polish inhabitants often has more of a memory politics nature than a scientific one. In the Soviet Union, the memory of the Ukrainian nationalist independence movement after World War II and the case of the collaboration were framed by the myth of the Great Patriotic War. Thus, the members of the OUN and the UPA, who collaborated with Nazi Germany in the hope of Ukrainian independence, became “fascists”, “traitors” of the “Soviet brotherhood”. In addition, the victory https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671186-019

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in World War II and the myth of the Great Patriotic War became some of the essential reference points of Soviet identity in the Ukrainian territories. Research confirms that the post-1991 elites of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine were interested in the reframing of the myth of the Great Patriotic War into a new discourse of pan-Slavism and Orthodox unity. These three former Soviet states adapted the Soviet narratives and built legal structures to preserve the united narrative of the war and the shared memory. This practice delimitated the possibilities of the interpretation of the collaboration. Although the trope of “Soviet brotherhood” was changed to “East Slavic brotherhood”, the discourse of the Ukrainian nationalist movement in the war had not changed. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the development of the Ukrainian nation state-building could be started, the process of which was burdened by the Soviet past in several ways. Until today, one of the most excruciating paradoxes of the existence of independent Ukraine is that the territory of the country was forged by Soviet rule. The very rule against which the Ukrainian memory politics tries to reformulate the country’s historical master narrative. During the three decades of Ukrainian independence, we could observe the change in the memory of World War II. As fewer and fewer members of the war generation remained, the memory of the war began transitioning from the communicative memory to the cultural memory. Despite the decades since the war, this memory has not been able to become “cold”, but remains a “hot memory” without a social or academic consensus. The claim for respecting the efforts for independence of the Ukrainian nationalist movement in World War II appeared after 1991 in both top-down and bottom-up constellations. The first two presidents of independent Ukraine had a cautious, multi-vector memory policy, trying to endow the Soviet narrative with national meaning.

Stepan Bandera Memorial in Lviv, 2012. Ullstein Bild- Caro/Andreas Bastian. No. 01711289

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The Ukrainian “counter-history”, which claimed a new master-narrative, had its first serious chance to make a change after the so-called Orange Revolution in 2004 during the presidency of Viktor Yushchenko. It became clear that the reinterpretation of the war and the role of Ukrainians in it meant both a search for national identity and a choice between Russia and the West. In this process, besides the memory of Holodomor, the memory of the OUN and the UPA had a prominent place. The president espoused the memory of two historical individuals with the naming of Stepan Bandera, leader of the OUN-B, and Roman Sukhevich, leader of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army as National Heroes of Ukraine. Because of their disputed role in the violence during World War II, the question had divided both Ukrainian public opinion and historical scholarship. The memory politics of the Yushchenko presidency tried to emphasize the suffering of the Ukrainian nation during the World War and present the Ukrainians as victims of the totalitarian regimes. Interestingly enough, the awarding of the title of Hero of Ukraine actually has a connection to the former award of the Hero of the Soviet Union. With the title, one of two different orders to the recipients is granted; for civilians the Order of State, for members of the military the Order of Gold Star and a miniature version of the medallion. The Order of Gold Star and the miniature medallion were unmistakably designed based on the Gold Star medal of the Hero of the Soviet Union. It is not rare that the Soviet stylistic repertoire is invoked when glorifying anti-Soviet nationalist heroes and the collaborators. The real significance of the Ukrainian role in World War II emerged after the events in 2014. Post-Euromaidan Ukraine tried to sever its ties with its Soviet past and with the memory policy of Russia. The annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and the war in Eastern Ukraine caused the “war of identities” and the “war of memory policies”. The culmination of these processes became the socalled de-communization law package, which evoked heated debates in Ukraine, as well as abroad. The four decommunization laws were passed in 2015. The first was the law “On Access to the Archives of Repressive Agencies of the Totalitarian Communist Regime of 1917–1991”. The second element of the package was a law “On the Condemnation of the Communist and National Socialist (Nazi) Regimes and Prohibition of Propaganda of Their Symbols”. The third law was “On the Legal Status and Honoring the Memory of Fighters for Ukraine’s Independence in the Twentieth Century.” The fourth was the law “Perpetuation of the Victory over Nazism in World War II of 1939–1945”. The regulations of the laws were directed at creating an opportunity to reformulate the official Soviet historical narrative regarding Ukraine, emphasizing the victimhood of the Ukrainians under totalitarian regimes. As a result of the law on archives, the files of the Soviet archives must be declassified and moved to the Ukrainian Institute

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of National Memory. The second law prohibits any propaganda and use of symbols of Communist or Nazi totalitarian regimes on threat of punishment and the restraining of liberty. The third law on the legal status and honoring the memory of the fighters for Ukraine’s independence proclaims that “the name of fighters for independence of Ukraine in the twentieth century shall be assigned to the persons who participated in all forms of political, armed and other collective and individual struggle for the independence of Ukraine in the twentieth century as a part of governments, organizations, institutions and groups.” The law covers the “rebel and guerrilla groups” as well as the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Article 6. of the law states, that “public denial of the legitimacy of the struggle for the independence of Ukraine in the twentieth century is recognized as an insult to the memory of fighters for the independence of Ukraine in the XX century, disparagement of Ukrainian people and is unlawful.” With this, the law makes the discussion about the role of these organizations in collaboration with the occupation regimes in World War II very difficult. The fourth law states that World War II began as a result of the agreement between the Nazi and Soviet regimes and emphasizes the suffering and war losses of the Ukrainian people. With the law, the Memorial and Reconciliation Day, celebrated on May 8, was established in order to commemorate all victims of World War II in Ukraine. Besides that, the popular holiday inherited from the Soviet Union, Victory Day on May 9, was preserved. Therefore, the Ukrainian memory policy created a new tradition that is linked to the European Victory Day and preserved an element of the Soviet tradition. So, by this law, the Ukrainian memory policy states that it wishes to celebrate the victory over Nazi Germany by making the Soviet Union one of those responsible for the war. It is evident that the legislators tried to take advantage of the depth of the myth of the Great Patriotic War in the Ukrainian cultural memory and tried to highlight the victory in World War II as a Ukrainian achievement. From the text of the laws, it is clear that the Ukrainian memory policy denies any responsibility for the events during World War II. There is no word about the collaboration or any participation in the mass murders on Ukrainian territory. Every individual who was a member of different Ukrainian national organizations during the double occupation was named a fighter for the independence of the country. The adaptation of the package of laws mentioned above evoked a significant international reaction. Seventy scholars wrote an open letter to the President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, in which they voiced that they “regard these laws with the deepest foreboding.” The experts formulated their objections in the following manner: The potential consequences of both these laws are disturbing. Not only would it be a crime to question the legitimacy of an organization (UPA) that slaughtered tens of thousands

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of Poles in one of the most heinous acts of ethnic cleansing in the history of Ukraine, but it would also exempt from criticism the OUN, one of the most extreme political groups in Western Ukraine between the wars, and one which collaborated with Nazi Germany at the outset of the Soviet invasion in 1941. It also took part in anti-Jewish pogroms in Ukraine and, in the case of the Melnyk faction, remained allied with the occupation regime throughout the war.

The Venice Commission and the OSCE made a joint opinion on the Law of Ukraine on the Condemnation of the Communist and Nationalist (Nazi) Regimes and Prohibition of Propaganda of their Symbols. In the opinion, the experts state that although the legislation has its legitimate aims, but The Law also has too broad a scope and introduces sanctions that are disproportionate to the legitimate aim pursued. The current wording might even jeopardize the aims of the Law itself: by discouraging historical research and stifling public debate, the Law could prevent coming to terms with historical and social injustices rather than facilitate such a process. It could also hinder the establishment of a pluralistic society based on tolerance towards different views and opinions, including views relating to the modern history of Ukraine.

Primarily because of the rehabilitation of the members of the OUN and the UPA, the package of laws received a very negative reaction from Poland, because both of these organizations were involved in the 1943 massacre of the Polish inhabitants of Volhynia. Despite the different protests, all of the elements of the package were signed into law by President Petro Poroshenko. These memory political endeavors do not help the “healing” discourse about the diversity of the role of Ukrainians in World War II and the collaboration. The official narrative states that the increase of the significance of the Ukrainian collaboration with Nazi Germany in World War II is one of the inherited elements of the former Soviet propaganda. In his book published in 2016, Volodymyr Viatrovich, the former head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, writes that anti-Nazi activity of certain parts of the Ukrainian nationalist movement discredits the accusation of collaboration. The popularity of the Ukrainian nationalist organizations with controversial roles in World War II is expressed not only in the laws mentioned above. The Ukrainian far-right organizations use the symbols of the OUN, especially the red-black flag of the OUN-B; it turns up at street protests, football matches or on bumper stickers. The OUN-B greeting “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the Heroes” was widely used during and after the Euromaidan, by both politicians and civilians. What is more, in 2018, it became the official greeting of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In post-1991 Ukraine, as in other nationalizing states of the post-Soviet region, an instrumentalization of history has emerged. After a century, Ukraine has

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a new opportunity to build its own nation state. This process intensified especially after 2014 and accompanies the separation from Soviet history policy and its entire heritage. However, as in the Soviet Union, the Great Patriotic War was one of the most important symbolic elements of identity politics. Currently in Ukraine, World War II has an emphasized role in the historical policy of the country. It manifests itself on the level of political and social memory, as well. The legislation outlined the suffering of the inhabitants of Ukraine during the war as also part of the victory over Nazi Germany. Furthermore, the question of collaboration is avoided and reduced, now a topic that casts a backlight on the official narrative. There is no social or academic consensus in the country about the question of the collaboration, or the participation of the Ukrainians in the Holocaust or in the massacre against the Poles. Moreover, the current legal and political environment is unfortunately unfavorable for such discourse.

About the Authors Meinolf Arens studied Eastern European, Medieval and modern history and European ethnology in Münster and Vienna, receiving a PhD in 2001 on the Habsburg and Transylvania 1600–1605. He published on minority issues in Eastern Europe, on recent and early medieval history in the Danube-Carpathian-Black Sea region and on the history of religion. He has organized numerous academic events in several countries, including lectures and study trips. He contributed to the Studium Translyvanicum 1988–2009, the Forum Romania 2003–2010, the Moldovans Csángós 2003–2008, the Forum Hungaricum 2010–2014 and the Forum Ost 2016–2020. In 2000–2013 he was research assistant at various institutions in Munich and Vienna and since 2012 has been head of INTEREG in Munich. One of his recent publications is Massengewalt in Südosteuropa im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert: Motive, Abläufe und Auswirkungen, ed. together with Martina Bitunjac (Berlin: Duncker&Humblot, 2021). Martina Bitunjac holds a Ph. D. in Modern History and in the History of Europe from the Humboldt University of Berlin and the Sapienza University of Rome (Cotutelle de thèse). She is a researcher at the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies and the managing editor of the Journal of Religious and Cultural Studies / Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte. In addition, she is a lecturer at the Department of History at the University of Potsdam. Her academic interests include Holocaust studies, currently with an emphasis on Jewish children during World War II, Fascist movements in the Balkans and Jewish history in Southeastern Europe. Most recent publications: Lea Deutsch. Ein Kind des Schauspiels, der Musik und des Tanzes (Berlin/Leipzig: Hentrich&Hentrich, 2019); Verwicklung. Beteiligung. Unrecht. Frauen und die Ustaša-Bewegung (Berlin: Duncker&Humblot, 2018). Ester Capuzzo is a full Professor of Contemporary History at the Department of Modern Literature and Culture of Sapienza University of Rome. She is the former General Secretary of the Istituto per la Storia del Risorgimento Italiano and is now Secretary of the National Commission for Giuseppe Garibaldi’s Writings, Vice-President of the Società Dalmata di Storia Patria, a member of the scientific committee of the Casa del Ricordo of Roma and the scientific committee of the Filippo Turati Fondation of Historical Studies. Her recent works include: Società e istituzioni in Francia e in Italia durante la prima guerra mondiale, ed. Ester Capuzzo (Rome: Edizioni Nuova Cultura, 2017). Fernando Clara is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, New University of Lisbon (FCSH-NOVA), where he also received his PhD in German Culture (2002) and his Habilitation in Cultural Studies (2010). Among his publications that deal with the Fascist period are the co-edited volumes The Anxiety of Influence: Politics, Culture and Science in Germany’s Relations with Southern Europe, 1933–1945 (in Portuguese, Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang 2014), Nazi Germany and Southern Europe, 1933–45: Science, Culture and Politics (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2016) and Closing the Door on Globalization: Internationalism, Nationalism, Culture and Science in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (New York: Routledge 2018).

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Lars Dencik was born in 1941 from Jewish parents from Czechoslovakia who escaped the Holocaust by finding refuge in Sweden. He lives in Stockholm, Sweden and is Senior Professor of Social Psychology at Roskilde University, Denmark where he has been directing the research programme “Social Psychology in a Radicalized Modernity”. His research deals with the implications of societal modernization on the relations between individuals and groups in society. In recent years, he has particularly focused on the relationship between societal modernization and Jewish life. He has served on the academic board of Paideia – The European Institute for Jewish Studies, and of Judisk Kultur (Jewish Culture) in Sweden and is part of the international research team investigating experiences and perceptions of anti-Semitism among Jews in different European states. Some of his recent publications are: Different Antisemitisms. Perceptions and Experiences of Antisemitism among Jews in Sweden and across Europe, together with Karl Marosi (London: Institute of Jewish Policy Research, 2017) and “Alike but different: Richard Wagner and Martin Heidegger on Jews,” in Cosmopolitism, Heidegger, Wagner. Jewish Reflections, ed. Daniel Pedersen (Stockholm: J! Jewish Culture in Sweden, 2017), 223–232. Olaf Glöckner is a Senior Researcher at the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies in Potsdam. He is also a lecturer at the Historical Institute and at the Department of Jewish Studies at Potsdam University. Currently, his main focus of research is on transnational Jewish migration, German-Israeli relations, modern anti-Semitism and strategies of prevention, genocide studies and European-Jewish developments after 1989/90. He has published on several topics, including Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union and genocides in the 20th Century. Recent publications: Integrationsbedarfe und Einstellungsmuster von Geflüchteten im Land Brandenburg (Eine Studie des Moses Mendelssohn Zentrums), with Wahied Wahdat-Hagh (Potsdam: Universitätsverlag Potsdam, 2019); Das neue Unbehagen. Antisemitismus in Deutschlande heute, ed. with Günther Jikeli (Hildesheim: Olms Verlag, 2019). Franz Sz. Horváth received his PhD in 2006 at the University of Heidelberg and is currently a teacher at the Immanuel-Kant-Schule in Rüsselsheim am Main. From 2006 to 2007, he was a research fellow at the University of Southampton. His research interests include ethnic minorities in Eastern Europe, Jewish-Gentile relations and anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and the modern history of Hungary and Romania. Main publications: Zwischen Ablehnung und Anpassung. Die politischen Strategien der ungarischen Minderheitselite in Rumänien 1931–1940 (Munich: Ungarisches Institut, 2007); “Minorities into Majorities: Sudeten German and Transylvanian Hungarian Political Elites as Actors of Revisionism before and during World War II,” in Territorial Revisionism and the Allies of Germany in World War II: Goals, Expectations, Practices, eds. Marina Cattaruzza, Stefan Dyroff and Dieter Langewiesche (New York: Berghan Books, 2013). Tvrtko Jakovina received his MA from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and his PhD from the University of Zagreb in 2003. He is a Professor at the Department of History, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, guest lecturer at the Istituto per l’Europa centro-orientale e balcanica and Fullbright visiting scholar at Georgetown University. His publications include: Socijalizam na američkoj pšenici [Socialism on the American Grain] (Zagreb: Matica Hrvatska, 2002); Američki komunistički saveznik: Hrvati, Titova Jugoslavija i Sjedinjene Američke Države 1945–1955 [The American Communist Ally. Croats, Tito’s Yugoslavia and the United States 1945–1955] (Zagreb: Profil, 2003); and The Tito-Stalin Split 70 Years After, with Martin Previšić, (Ljubljana: FFZG / FF, 2020).

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Katerina Kakasheva studied Languages and Cultural Studies at the Universities in Skopje, Heidelberg and Kassel. She has a Master’s Degree in Diplomacy and International Relations from the Faculty of Law Iustinianus Primus in Skopje. Her fields of interest are minority issues in North Macedonia and the Balkans and the European integration of the Balkan region. She is an executive committee member of the Association for Macedonian-German Friendship and Cooperation. Serge Klarsfeld, born in Bucharest in 1935, is a Holocaust survivor, author and attorney. He has published many books on the fate of French Jewry during the Holocaust and has been active in bringing Nazi and Vichy officials to trial for the crimes they committed during World War II. Most recent publications: Les transferts de juifs du camp de Rivesaltes et de la région de Montpellier vers le camp de Drancy en vue de leur déportation 10 août 1942 – 6 août 1944 (Paris: Fils et filles des déportés des juifs de France, 1993); La Shoah en France, le calendrier des déportations (septembre 1942 – aout 1944) (Paris: Fayard, 2001). Stephan Lehnstaedt received his PhD from the LMU in Munich in 2008 and his Habilitation in 2016 at the TU in Chemnitz. He has lectured at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Humboldt University Berlin and the London School of Economics and was a research associate at the German Historical Institute Warsaw from 2010 to 2016. Since 2016, he has been a Professor of Holocaust Studies and Jewish Studies at Touro College Berlin, where he lectures in Germany’s only Holocaust-related MA program. His latest books are: Der vergessene Sieg: Der Polnisch-Sowjetische Krieg 1919–1921 und die Entstehung des modernen Osteuropa (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2019); and Der Kern des Holocaust: Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka und die Aktion Reinhardt (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2017; Polish 2018, French and Dutch 2020). Björn Opfer-Klinger received his PhD in 2004 at the University of Leipzig. He was a lecturer at the Universities of Göttingen and Dresden, a freelance science journalist and has been working as a History Editor for Educational Media for the Ernst Klett Verlag since 2004.His most recent publications are specialist essays on the peace treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine with Bulgaria in 1919 and the history of the Armenian minority in Bulgaria and ethnopolitical violence and the Bulgarian occupation in Macedonia 1915–1918. Most recent publications: Albanien. Ein Produkt internationaler und lokaler Machtrivalitäten? Die Entstehung des albanischen Staates im Umfeld des Ersten Weltkrieges (Saarbrücken: AV Akademikerverlag, 2015); Die ungeliebte EUSüdosterweiterung. Bulgariens und Rumäniens steiniger Weg nach Europa (Osnabrück: fibre, 2007); Im Schatten des Krieges. Besatzung oder Anschluss.Befreiung oder Unterdrückung. Eine komparative Untersuchung über die bulgarische Herrschaft in Vardar-Makedonien 1915–1918 und 1941–1944 (Münster/Berlin: LIT-Verlag, 2005). Julius H. Schoeps is a historian and political scientist, Professor Emeritus, Founding Director of the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies at the University of Postdam and Chairman of the Moses Mendelssohn Stiftung in Berlin. Publications include: Deutschjüdische Geschichte durch drei Jahrhunderte. Ausgewählte Schriften (Hildesheim et al.: Olms Verlag 2010/2013); Der König von Midian. Paul Friedmann und sein Traum von einem Judenstaat auf der arabischen Halbinsel (Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 2014); Begegnungen. Menschen, die meinen Lebensweg kreuzten (Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 2016); Düstere Vorahnungen. Deutschlands Juden am Vorabend der Katastrophe (Berlin/Leipzig: Hentrich&Hentrich, 2018.)

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Valentina Sommella is Assistant Professor of History of International Relations. She teaches East Asian History and Culture. Before joining the Department of Political Science at the University of Perugia, she taught the history of international relations at La Sapienza University of Rome and was Visiting Research Fellow at University College Dublin. Her main research interests lie in the foreign policy of liberal Italy; Italian foreign policy in the interwar years; relations between the Allies during and after WWII; and, more recently, the rise of China as a global power in the international system. She has participated in several research projects and has published three monographs and numerous articles in international journals, for example Dalla non belligeranza alla resa incondizionata. Le relazioni politico-diplomatiche italo-francesi tra Asse e Alleati (Rome: Aracne, 2008) and Un’alleanza difficile. Churchill, de Gaulle e Roosevelt negli anni della guerra (Rome: Aracne, 2005). Imre Szakál studied History and Geography at the Ferenc Rákóczi II Transcarpathian Hungarian College. In 2009 he was a member of a post-graduate programme in history at the University of Debrecen. In 2015 he completed his dissertation on the topic “The land question and colonization policy in Subcarpathian Rus during the Era of the First Czechoslovakian Republic (1919–1938)”. Since 2013, he has been Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Social Sciences of the Ferenc Rákóczi II Transcarpathian Hungarian College. In 2018, he became deputy-head of this department. His research interests include the microhistory of the change of state after World War I and the memory policy of the different states regarding Transcarpathia during the 20th century. Publication: “Rend, fegyelem, összetartás, s nem lesz panasz többé a Kárpátok bércei között”: Iratok Ruszka Krajna történetéhez, 1918–1919 [Order, discipline, unity, and there will be no more complaints between the Carpathian hills – Documents on the history of Ruska Kraina, 1918–1919], (Beregszász – Ungvár, Ukrajna: II. Rákóczi Ferenc Kárpátaljai Magyar Főiskola, 2018). Krisztián Ungváry studied History and German at the Loránd Eötvös University of Sciences (ELTE), Budapest. His doctoral dissertation on the 1944–45 Siege of Budapest entered the bestseller lists. His main fields are 20th century political and military history and the history of the secret service in Hungary. He aroused great interest with studies in which he pointed out factual errors in a travelling German exhibition on the Blitzkrieg (Wehrmachtsausstellung). Main publications: A Horthy-rendszer mérlege: Diszkrimináció, szociálpolitika és antiszemitizmus [The Balance Sheet of the Horthy Regime: Discrimination, Social Policy and anti-Semitism in Hungary] (Pécs: Jelenko Kiadó, 2012); Horthy Miklós – A kormányzó és felelőssége 1920–1944 (Budapest: Jaffa kiadó, 2020) and in German: Nikolaus Horthy: Der Reichsverweser und seine Verantwortung 1920–1944 (Budapest: Jaffa kiadó, 2020). Giuseppe Motta is Associate Professor in the History of International Relations and Eastern European History at Sapienza University of Rome, where he gained a PhD in European History. He is the former editor in chief of the “Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies”, a member of the scientific committee of the review “Scienze e Ricerche” and of the editorial board of the “Istorijski časopis/The historical review”. He is also a member of the scientific committees of the PhD courses in European history and of the Specialization School in Archival and Library Studies at Sapienza University of Rome, of the Institute of ItalianRomanian Studies of the Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj and of the Observare research center of the Autonomus University of Lisbon. He has dedicated many books and articles to the conditions of national minorities and to ethnic conflicts in Eastern-Central Europe, for example

About the Authors

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The Great War against Eastern European Jewry. 1914–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017). Joachim Tauber is Professor of Modern History and Director of the Northeast-Institute at the University of Hamburg. He received his PhD in 1990 at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in ancient and East European history and in 2013 his Habilitation at the University of Hamburg in contemporary history. In October 2020 he was elected as German Co-Chairman of the German-Russisan Historical Commission. His fields of study include German history in the 20th century, Lithuanian history in the 20th century, Nazism and the Holocaust. His publications include Arbeit als Hoffnung. Jüdische Ghettos in Litauen 1941–1944 (Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2015) and as editor ‘Kollaboration’ in Nordosteuropa: Erscheinungsformen und Deutungen im 20. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006). Alessandro Vagnini received his PhD in European history in 2007 and is Associate Professor on the History of International Relations at the Department of Political Sciences – Sapienza University of Rome, where he teaches the history of globalization and the history of international and European relations. He deals with issues relating to the history of Central and Eastern Europe, the Far East, international relations and military history, with particular attention to post-WWI and Italian foreign policy in the interwar period. He works with the Historical Office of the Italian Army General Staff, the Italian Geographical Society and the UMFST University of Tîrgu Mureş. He is also a member of the editorial board of the Bollettino dell’Ufficio Storico dello Stato Maggiore Esercito and Bollettino dell’Ufficio Storico della Marina Militare. Recent publications include L’ Italia e i Balcani nella grande guerra. Ambizioni e realtà dell’ imperialismo italiano (Rome: Carocci editore, 2017); and Ungheria: la costruzione dell’Europa di Versailles (Rome: Carocci editore, 2015). Ioannis Zelepos is a historian and cultural scientist. He studied General History, Byzantine Studies and Modern Greek Philology in Hamburg and Thessaloniki, completed his doctorate in Eastern European History at the Free University Berlin and completed his habilitation with Venia legendi for South-Eastern European History and Modern Greek Studies at the University of Vienna. His main research interests focus on Greece and Cyprus in the 19th and 20th centuries, the history of Greek migration, early modern religious cultures, the Enlightenment, identity discourses and nationalism in Southeast Europe. His latest publications are: Kleine Geschichte Griechenlands. Von der Staatsgründung bis heute (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2017) (2nd ed.); “Verpasste Chancen? Die Pontusgriechen zwischen 1918 und 1922” Europäisches Journal für Minderheitenfragen, 12/3–4 (2019): 359–373; and Antike und Byzanz als historisches Erbe in Südosteuropa (19.–21. Jahrhundert), ed. together with Hans-Christian Maner (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 2020).

Bibliography Categorized by Country General Works Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Penguin Books, 2006. Bachmann, Klaus. Vergeltung, Strafe, Amnestie: Eine vergleichende Studie zu Kollaboration und ihrer Aufarbeitung in Belgien, Polen und den Niederlanden. Frankfurt/Main: Lang, 2011. Barnett, Victoria, ed. Bystanders: Conscience and Complicity during the Holocaust. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999. Bauerkämper, Arndt, and Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, eds. Fascism without Borders: Transnational Connections and Cooperation between Movements and Regimes in Europe from 1918 to 1945. New York: Berghahn, 2017. Bennett, Rab. Under the Shadow of the Swastika: The Moral Dilemmas of Resistance and Collaboration in Hitler’s Europe. New York: New York University Press, 1999. Benz, Wolfgang, ed. Anpassung, Kollaboration, Widerstand: Kollektive Reaktionen auf die Okkupation. Berlin: Metropol, 1996. Björkman, Maria, Patrik Lundell, and Sven Widmalm, eds. Intellectual Collaboration with the Third Reich: Treason or Reason? London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2019. Black, Peter, Béla Rásky, and Marianne Windsperger, eds. Collaboration in Eastern Europe during World War II and the Holocaust. Vienna/Hamburg: New Academic Press. Böhler, Jochen, and Robert Gerwarth, eds. The Waffen-SS: A European History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Cesarani, David, and Paul A. Levine. “Bystanders” to the Holocaust: A Re-Evaluation. London: Frank Cass, 2002. Chiappano, Alessandra, Fabio Minazzi, and Hannah Arendt. Pagine di storia della Shoah: nazifascismo e collaborazionismo in Europa. Milan: Kaos, 2005. Davies, Peter. Dangerous Liasons: Collaboration and World War Two. Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2004. Deák, István. Europe on Trial: The Story of Collaboration, Resistance, and Retribution during World War II. Philadelphia: Westview Press, 2015. Deák, István. Kollaboration, Widerstand und Vergeltung im Europa des Zweiten Weltkrieges. Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2017. Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933–1945, eds. Bundesarchiv, Institut für Zeitgeschichte and Lehrstuhl für Neuere und Neueste Geschichte der Universität Freiburg, Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2012–2017. Dieckmann, Christoph, Babette Quinkert, and Tatjana Tönsmeyer, eds. Kooperation und Verbrechen. Formen der “Kollaboration” im östlichen Europa 1939–1945. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003. Drapac, Vesna, and Gareth Pritchard. Resistance and Collaboration in Hitler’s Empire. London: Macmillan International, 2017. Forndran, Erhard, Frank Golczewski, and Dieter Riesenberger, eds. Innen- und Außenpolitik unter nationalsozialistischer Bedrohung: Determinanten internationaler Beziehungen in historischen Fallstudien. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1977.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671186-021

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Albania Fischer, Bernd J. “Kollaborationsregimes in Albanien 1939–1944.” In Europa unterm Hakenkreuz. Okkupation und Kollaboration (1938–1945), ed. Werner Röhr, 367–376. Berlin/Heidelberg: Hüthig, 1994. Fischer, Bernd J. Albania at War, 1939–45. London: Hurst & Company, 1999. Kasmi, Marenglen. Die deutsche Besatzung in Albanien 1943 bis 1944. Potsdam: Zentrum für Militärgeschichte und Sozialwissenschaften der Bundeswehr, 2013.

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Baltic Countries: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania Anušauskas, Arvydas, ed. Lietuvos laikinoji vyriausybė: posėdžiu̜ protokolai, 1941 m. birželio 24 d. – rugpjūčio 4 d. Vilnius: Lietuvos Gyventoju̜ Genocido ir Rezistencijos Tyrimo Centras, 2001. Bartusevičius, Vincas, Joachim Tauber, Wolfram Wette, eds. Holocaust in Litauen: Krieg, Judenmorde und Kollaboration im Jahre 1941. Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2003. Birn, Ruth Bettina. Die Sicherheitspolizei in Estland 1941–1944: Eine Studie zur Kollaboration im Osten. Paderborn et al.: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2006. Brandišauskas, Valentinas. Siekiai atkurti Lietuvos valstybinguma̜: (1940 06–1941 09). Vilnius: Valstybinis Leidybos Centras, 1996. Brandišauskas, Valentinas, ed. 1941 m. birželio sukilimas: dokumentu̜ tinkinys. Vilnius: Lietuvos Gyventoju̜ Genocido ir Rezistencijos Tyrimo Centras, 2000. Brandišauskas, Valentinas. “Neue Dokumente aus der Zeit der provisorischen Regierung Litauens.” In Holocaust in Litauen: Krieg, Judenmorde und Kollaboration im Jahre 1941, edited by Vincas Bartusevičius, Joachim Tauber and Wolfram Wette, 51–62. Cologne/ Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2003. Dean, Martin. Collaboration in the Holocaust: Crimes of the Local Police in Belorussia and Ukraine, 1941–44. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001. Dieckmann, Christoph. Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Litauen 1941–1944. Vol. 1–2, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2016. Djukov, Aleksandr Rešideovič. “Uničtožit’ kak možno bol’še . . .”: Latvijskie kollaboracionistskie formirovanija na territorii Belorussii, 1942–1944. Moscow: Fond Istoričeskaja Pamjat’, 2009. Gaunt, David, ed. Collaboration and Resistance during the Holocaust: Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. Bern: Lang, 2004. Isberg, Alvin. Zu den Bedingungen des Befreiers: Kollaboration und Freiheitsstreben in dem von Deutschland besetzten Estland 1941 bis 1944. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1992. Kott, Matthew, Arunas Bubnys, and Ülle Kraft. “The Baltic States: Auxiliaries and Waffen-SS Soldiers from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.” In The Waffen-SS: A European History, edited by Jochen Böhler and Robert Gerwarth, 120–164. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pettai, Eva-Clarita. Revisionismus schon vor der Geschichte: Aktuelle Kontroversen in Lettland um die Judenvernichtung und die lettische Kollaboration während der nationalsozialistischen Besatzung. Cologne: Wissenschaft und Politik, 1998. Reichelt, Kathrin. “Kollaboration: Zwei Beispiele aus der Judenverfolgung in Lettland 1941–1944.” In “Kollaboration” in Nordosteuropa: Erscheinungsformen und Deutungen im 20. Jahrhundert, edited by Joachim Tauber, 77–87. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006.

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Reichelt, Kathrin. Lettland unter deutscher Besatzung 1941–1944: Der lettische Anteil am Holocaust. Berlin: Metropol, 2011. Stang, Knut. Kollaboration und Massenmord: Die litauische Hilfspolizei, das Rollkommando Hamann und die Ermordung der litauischen Juden. Frankfurt/Main: Lang, 1996. Starkauskas, Juozas. Stribai: ginkluotieji kolaborantai Lietuvoje partizaninio karo laikotarpiu; (1944–1953). Vilnius: Lietuvos Gyventoju̜ Genocido ir Rezistencijos Tyrimo Centras, 2001. Tauber, Joachim. Arbeit als Hoffnung: Jüdische Ghettos in Litauen 1941–1944. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015. Tauber, Joachim, ed. “Kollaboration” in Nordosteuropa: Erscheinungsformen und Deutungen im 20. Jahrhundert. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006. Tragedija Litvy: 1941–1944 gody; sbornik archivnych dokumentov o prestuplenijach litovskich kollaboracionistov v gody vtoroj mirovoj vojny. Moscow: Izdat. Evropa, 2006. Truska, Liudas, and Vygantas Vareikis. The Preconditions for the Holocaust. Vilnius: Margi Raštai, 2004. Vanagaitė, Ruta. Mūsiškiai. Vilnius: Alma littera, 2016. Weiss-Wendt, Anton. Murder without Hatred: Estonians and the Holocaust. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2009.

Belarus Chiari, Bernhard. Alltag hinter der Front: Besatzung, Kollaboration und Widerstand in Weißrußland 1941–1944. Düsseldorf: Droste, 1998. Dean, Martin. Collaboration in the Holocaust: Crimes of the Local Police in Belorussia and Ukraine, 1941–44. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001. Kudzin, Aleksandr. “Die weißrussischen Kollaborateure: Verräter oder Patrioten?”. Hamburg: Universität Hamburg, 2009. Munoz, Antonio J., and Oleg V. Roman’ko. Hitler’s White Russians: Collaboration, Extermination and Anti-Partisan Warfare in Byelorussia, 1941–1944. Bayside: Europa books, 2003. Rein, Leonid. The Kings and the Pawns: Collaboration in Byelorussia during World War II. New York: Berghahn Books, 2011. Roman’ko, Oleg Valentinovič. Legion pod znakom Pogoni: Belorusskie kollaboracionistskie formirovanija v silovych strukturach nacistskoj Germanii (1941–1945); monografija. Simferopol: Antikva, 2008. Roman’ko, Oleg Valentinovič. Belorusskie kollaboracionisty: sotrudničestvo s okkupantami na territorii Belorussii 1941–1945. Moscow: Centrpoligraf, 2013.

Belgium Bruyne, Eddy de. Encyclopédie de l’occupation, de la collaboration et de l’ordre nouveau en Belgique francophone (1940–1945). La Roche-en-Ardenne: Édition du Cercle Segnia, 2016. Conway, Martin. Collaboration in Belgium: Léon Degrelle and the Rexist Movement, 1940–1944. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.

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Bulgaria Chary, Frederick B. The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution, 1940–1944. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972. Genčev, Nikolaj. Vănšnata politika na Bălgarija: (1938–1941). Sofia: Izdatelsvo Vektor, 1998. Groueff, Stephane. Crown of Thorns. The Reign of King Boris III. of Bulgaria 1918–1943. London: Madison Books, 1987. Hoppe, Hans-Joachim. Bulgarien – Hitlers eigenwilliger Verbündeter. Eine Fallstudie zur nationalsozialistischen Südosteuropapolitik. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1979. Kalogrēas, Baios. Okkupation, Widerstand und Kollaboration in Makedonien: 1941–1944. Mainz: Rutzen, 2008. Miller, Marshall Lee. Bulgaria during World War II. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975. Opfer-Klinger, Björn. “Die bulgarische Wiederaufrüstung 1923–1944,” Zeitschrift für Heereskunde 47 (2003): 10–16. Sirkov, Dimitár. Vánšnata politika na Balgarija 1938–1941. Sofia: Izdatelstvo Nauka i Izkustvo, 1979. Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fragility of Goodness: Why Bulgaria’s Jews Survived the Holocaust. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Wien, Markus. Markt und Modernisierung. Deutsch-bulgarische Wirtschaftsbeziehungen 1918–1944 in ihren konzeptionellen Grundlagen. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2007.

Ex-Czechoslovakia Borovička, Michael. Kolaboranti: 1939–1945. Prague: Paseka, 2007. Bryant, Chad Carl. Prague in Black: Nazi Rule and Czech Nationalism. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007. Frommer, Benjamin. National Cleansing: Retribution against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Lipscher, Ladislav. Die Juden im Slowakischen Staat 1939–1945. Munich/Vienna: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1980. Mastny, Vojtech. The Czechs under Nazi Rule: The Failure of National Resistance, 1939–1942. New York: Columbia University Press, 1971. Nižňanský, Eduard. Nacizmus, holokaust, slovenský štát. Bratislava: Kalligram, 2010.

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Hungary Braham, Randolph L. The Hungarian Jewish Catastrophe: A Selected and Annotated Bibliography. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984. Braham, Randolph L. The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000. Cole, Tim. “Ebenen der ‘Kollaboration’. Ungarn 1944.” In Kooperation und Verbrechen: Formen der “Kollaboration” im östlichen Europa 1939–1945, edited by Christoph Dieckmann, Babette Quinckert and Tatjana Tönsmeyer, 55–77, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003. Deák, István. “Collaborationism in Europe, 1940–1945: The Case of Hungary,” Austrian History Yearbook 15 (1979): 157–164. Durucz, Peter. Ungarn in der auswärtigen Politik des Dritten Reiches 1942–1945. Göttingen: V & R 2006. Fenyo, Mario D. Hitler, Horthy, and Hungary: German-Hungarian Relations, 1941–1944. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Yale University Press, 1989. Horthy, Miklós. Memoirs. London: Hutchison, 1956. Juhász, Gyula. A háború és Magyarország: 1938–1945. Budapest: Akad. K, 1986. Kállay, Miklós. Hungarian Premier: A Personal Account of Nation’s Struggle in World War II. New York: Columbia University Press, 1954. Mihok, Brigitte, ed. Ungarn und der Holocaust: Kollaboration, Rettung und Trauma. Berlin: Metropol, 2005. Ormos, Mária. Hungary in the Age of the Two World Wars 1914–1945. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Réti, György. Hungarian-Italian Relations in the Shadow of Hitler’s Germany, 1933–1940. Boulder: Social Science Monographs, 2003. Sipos, Peter. “Hungary: The Occupied Satellite.” In Anpassung, Kollaboration, Widerstand: Kollektive Reaktionen auf die Okkupation, edited by Wolfgang Benz, 243–56. Berlin: Metropol, 1996. Szita, Szabolcs. Halálerőd: A munkaszolgálat és a hadimunka történetéhez, 1944–1945. Budapest: Kossuth Könyvkiadó, 1989. Ungváry, Krisztián. A magyar honvédség a második világháborúban. Budapest: Osiris kiadó, 2005. Ungváry, Krisztián. Horthy Miklós – A kormányzó és felelőssége 1920–1944. Budapest: Jaffa kiadó, 2020. Ungváry, Krisztián. “Die Rückgliederung der Batschka und des Baranya-Dreiecks unter ungarischer Herrschaft 1941–1944.” In Massengewalt in Südosteuropa im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert: Motive, Abläufe und Auswirkungen, edited by Meinolf Arens and Martina Bitunjac, 187–205. Berlin: Duncker&Humblot, 2021.

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Italy Collotti, Enzo. “Kollaboration in Italien während der deutschen Besatzung 1943–1945.” In Europa unterm Hakenkreuz. Okkupation und Kollaboration (1938–1945), ed. Werner Röhr, 415–430. Berlin/Heidelberg: Hüthig, 1994. De Felice, Renzo. Mussolini il duce. Vol. II. Lo stato totalitario 1936–1940. Milan: Einaudi, 2008. Duranti, Simone. Leggi razziali fasciste e persecuzione antiebraica in Italia. Milan: Edizioni Unicopli, 2019. Franzinelli. Mimmo. RSI. La Repubblica del duce. 1943–1945. Milan: Mondatori, 2007. Goeschel, Christian. Mussolini and Hitler. The Forging of the Fascist Alliance. New Haven/ London: Yale University Press, 2018. Jäger, Gudrun and Liana Novelli-Glaab, eds. Judentum und Antisemitismus im modernen Italien: . . . denn in Italien haben sich die Dinge anders abgespielt. Berlin: Trafo Verlag, 2007. Mancini, Roberto. Storia della Repubblica sociale. Rome: Pagine, 2017. Osti Guerrazzi, Amedeo. Caino a Roma: I complici romani della Shoah. Rome: Cooper, 2006. Raspin, Angela. The Italian War Economy, 1940–1943: With Particular Reference to Italian Relations with Germany. New York: Garland Publishing, 1986. Reichardt, Sven and Armin Nolzen, ed. Faschismus in Italien und Deutschland. Studien zu Transfer und Vergleich. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2005. Sarfatti, Michele. Gli ebrei nell’Italia fascista. Vicende, identità, persecuzione. Turin: Einaudi, 2000. Schlemmer, Thomas. Invasori, non vittime. La campagna italiana di Russia 1941–1943. Bari: Editore Laterza, 2009.

Luxembourg Artuso, Vincent. La collaboration au Luxembourg durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale (1940–1945): accommodation, adaptation, assimilation. Frankfurt/Main: Lang, 2013. Dostert, Paul. Luxemburg zwischen Selbstbehauptung und nationaler Selbstaufgabe: Die deutsche Besatzungspolitik und die volksdeutsche Bewegung 1940–1945. Luxemburg: Imprimerie Saint-Paul, 1985. Modert, Octavie, ed. Collaboration: Nazification?: Le cas du Luxembourg à la lumière des situations francaise, belge et néerlandaise. Luxembourg: Archives Nationales de Luxembourg, 2008. Volkmann, Hans-Erich. Luxemburg im Zeichen des Hakenkreuzes: eine politische Wirtschaftsgeschichte 1933–1944. Paderborn et al.: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2010. Quadflieg, Peter M. “Zwangssoldaten” und “Ons Jongen”. Eupen-Malmedy und Luxemburg als Rekrutierungsgebiet der deutschen Wehrmacht im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Aachen: Shaker Verlag, 2008.

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Netherlands Bachmann, Klaus. Vergeltung, Strafe, Amnestie: Eine vergleichende Studie zu Kollaboration und ihrer Aufarbeitung in Belgien, Polen und den Niederlanden. Frankfurt/Main: Lang, 2011. Boon, Louis Paul. Hij was een zwarte: Over oorlog en collaboratie. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 2003. Colin, Nicole, ed. Täter und Tabu: Grenzen der Toleranz in deutschen und niederländischen Geschichtsdebatten. Essen: Klartext-Verlag, 2011. Dunk, Hermann von der. “Kollaboration und Widerstand in den Niederlanden und Belgien.” In Widerstand und Kollaboration in Europa, edited by Mechtild Gilzmer, 61–84. Münster: LIT-Verlag, 2004. Foray, Jennifer L. Visions of Empire in the Nazi-Occupied Netherlands. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Fransecky, Tanja. “Die Wachmannschaften der Deportationszüge: Frankreich, Belgien und die Niederlande.” Francia: Forschungen zur Westeuropäischen Geschichte 42 (2015): 207–230. Happe, Katja. Viele falsche Hoffnungen. Judenverfolgung in den Niederlanden 1940–1945. Paderborn et al.: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2017. Hirschfeld, Gerhard. Fremdherrschaft und Kollaboration: Die Niederlande unter deutscher Besatzung, 1940–1945. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1984. Hirschfeld, Gerhard. Nazi Rule and Dutch Collaboration: The Netherlands under German Occupation 1940–1945. Oxford: Berg, 1988. Jong, Louis. The Netherlands and Nazi Germany. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990. Keizer, Jasper. Dienen onder het hakenkruis: Friezen in duitse krijgsdienst. Leeuwarden: Friese Pers Boekerij, 2000. Sax, Aline. Voor Vlaanderen, volk en Führer: De motivatie en het wereldbeeld van Vlaamse collaborateurs tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog 1940–1945. Antwerpen: Manteau, 2012. Van der Zee, Nanda. ed. “Um Schlimmeres zu verhindern . . .”: Die Ermordung der niederländischen Juden; Kollaboration und Widerstand. Munich: Hanser, 1999. Van Liempt, Ad. Kopfgeld: Bezahlte Denunziation von Juden in den besetzten Niederlanden. Munich: Siedler, 2005. Verstraete, Pieter Jan. Trouw en Dietsch: Vlaamse leiders en hun collaboratie; Staf de Clercq en Hendrik Jozef Elias. Soesterberg: Aspekt, 2006. Warmbrunn, Werner. The Dutch under German Occupation: 1940–1945. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972. Wouters, Nico. Mayoral Collaboration under Nazi Occupation in Belgium, the Netherlands and France, 1938–46. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

Norway Abrahamsen, Samuel. Norway’s Response to the Holocaust. New York: Holocaust Library, 1991. Bohn, Robert. Reichskommissariat Norwegen: “Nationalsozialistische Neuordnung” und Kriegswirtschaft. Munich: Oldenbourg, 2009.

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Frøland, Hans Otto, ed. Industrial Collaboration in Nazi-Occupied Europe: Norway in Context. 2016. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Harper, Christopher S. Rettsoppgjørets behandling av deportasjonen av jødene fra Norge under okkupasjonen 1940–1945. Oslo: HL-senteret, 2012. Hoidal, Oddvar K. Quisling: A Study in Treason. Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1989. Karlsen, Ola. Profitørene: De ukjente landssvikerne. Oslo: Gyldendal, 2017. Kroglund, Nina Drolsum. Hitlers norske hjelpere: nordmenns samarbeid med Tyskland 1940–45. Oslo: Historie & kultur, 2010. Larsen, Stein U. “Charima from below?: The Quisling Case in Norway.” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 7 (2006): 235–244. Levin, Irene. Vi snakket ikke om Holocaust. Mor, jeg og tausheden. Oslo: Gyldendal, 2020. Lorenz, Einhart. “Antisemitische Judenbilder und die norwegische Haltung zur Deportation.” Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 16 (2007): 217–238. Michelet, Marte. Den største forbrytelsen. Ofre og gjerningsmenn i det norske Holocaust. Oslo: Gyldendal, 2014. Michelet, Marte. Hvad visste hjemmefronten? Holocaust i Norge: Varslene, unnvikelsene, hemmeligholdet. Oslo: Gyldendal, 2018. Oldenburg, Lennart. Under stöveln: Norge 1940–1945. Stockholm: Atlantis 2008. Petrow, Richard. The Bitter Years: The Invasion and Occupation of Denmark and Norway, April 1940–May 1945. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975. Rougthvedt, Bernt. Norges verste nazister: nordmenn og tyskere i Hitlers tjeneste 1940–45. Oslo: Spartacus, 2015. Storeide, Anette. Norske krigsprofitører: Nazi-Tysklands velvillige medløpere. Oslo: Gyldendal, 2014. Thorsdahl, Geir. Quislings biskoper: en norsk kirke i nazismens tjeneste. Oslo: Kagge Forlag, 2017.

Poland Bachmann, Klaus. “Kollaboration während des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Polen: Ein nichtnormativer Ansatz.” In Nation, Nationalitäten und Nationalismus im östlichen Europa: Festschrift für Arnold Suppan zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by Marija Wakounig, Wolfgang Müller and Michael Portmann, 419–440. Vienna: LIT-Verlag, 2010. Bachmann, Klaus. Vergeltung, Strafe, Amnestie: Eine vergleichende Studie zu Kollaboration und ihrer Aufarbeitung in Belgien, Polen und den Niederlanden. Frankfurt/Main: Lang, 2011. Broszat, Martin. “Faschismus und Kollaboration in Ostmitteleuropa zwischen den Weltkriegen.” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 14, 3 (1966): 225–251. Chrobaczynski, Jacek. “Rassenkrieg gegen Polen.” In Anpassung, Kollaboration, Widerstand: Kollektive Reaktionen auf die Okkupation, edited by Wolfgang Benz, 213–219. Berlin: Metropol, 1996. Engelking, Barbara. ‘Szanowny panie gistapo’: Donosy do władz niemieckich w Warszawie i okolicach w latach 1940–1941. Warsaw: IFiS PAN, 2003. Engelking, Barbara and Helga Hirsch, eds. Unbequeme Wahrheiten: Polen und sein Verhältnis zu den Juden. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 2008.

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Engelking, Barbara. Such a Beautiful Sunny Day . . . Jews Seeking Refuge in the Polish Countryside, 1942 –1945. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2016. Finkel, Evgeny. Ordinary Jews. Princeton; Oxford, 2017. Friedrich, Klaus-Peter. “Kollaboration und Antisemitismus in Polen unter deutscher Besatzung (1939–1944/45): Zu den verdrängten Aspekten eines schwierigen deutsch-polnischjüdischen Verhältnisses.” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 45, 9 (1997): 818–834. Friedrich, Klaus-Peter. Der nationalsozialistische Judenmord und das polnisch-jüdische Verhältnis im Diskurs der polnischen Untergrundpresse (1942–1944). Marburg: Verlag Herder-Institut, 2006. Friedrich, Klaus-Peter. “Polen und seine Feinde (sowie deren Kollaborateure): Vorwürfe wegen ‘polnischer Kollaboration’ und ‘jüdischer Kollaboration’ in der polnischen Presse (1942–1944/45).” In “Kollaboration” in Nordosteuropa: Erscheinungsformen und Deutungen im 20. Jahrhundert, edited by Joachim Tauber, 206–249. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006. Grabowski, Jan. ‘Ja tego Żyda znam’: Szantażowanie Żydów w Warszawie 1939–1943 Warsaw: IFiS PAN, 2004. Grabowski, Jan. Judenjagd: Polowanie na Żydów 1942–1945; studium dziejów pewnego powiatu. Warsaw: Stowarzyszenie centrum badań nad zagłada̜ Żydów, 2011. Grabowski, Jan. “‘I Have Only Fulfilled my Duties as a Soldier of the Home Army’: Miechὀ︠w AK and the Killing of Jews in Rȩdziny-Borek; a Case Study.” In The Holocaust in Occupied Poland: New Findings and New Interpretations, edited by Jan T. Gross, 115–129. Frankfurt/ Main: Lang, 2012. Grabowski, Jan. “Rural Society and the Jews in Hiding: Elders, Night Watches, Firefighters, Hostages and Manhunts.” Yad Vashem: Yad Vashem Studies 40, 1 (2012): 49–74. Grabowski, Jan. Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013. Grabowski, Jan. The Polish Police: Collaboration in the Holocaust. Washington, DC: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, 2017. Grabowski, Jan. “Die polnische Gesellschaft unter deutscher Besatzung: Unterdrückung, Widerstand und selektive Solidarität.” In Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Polen 1939–1945: Eine Leerstelle deutscher Erinnerung?, edited by Dieter Bingen and Simon Lengemann, 35–49. Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2019. Grabowski, Jan. Na posterunku: udział polskiej policji granatowej i kryminalnej w zagładzie Żydów. Wołowiec: Wydawnictwo Czarne, 2020. Gross, Jan Tomasz. Polish Society under German Occupation – Generalgouvernement, 1939–1944. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. Gross, Jan Tomasz. Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Kędzierski, Robert. Polnische Kollaboration und Kooperation mit den Nationalsozialisten: Eine Analyse der polnischen Kollaboration und Kooperation mit dem nationalsozialistischen Regime im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Saarbrücken: AV Akademikerverlag, 2015. Kochanowski, Jerzy. “‘Selbst mit dem Teufel, Hauptsache in ein freies Polen’: War während des Zweiten Weltkriegs ein gemeinsames Vorgehen von Polen und Deutschen gegen die UdSSR denkbar?” In “Kollaboration” in Nordosteuropa: Erscheinungsformen und Deutungen im 20. Jahrhundert, edited by Joachim Tauber, 289–304. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006.

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Portugal Clara, Fernando. “The Academy of Sciences of Lisbon between Science, International Politics, and Neutrality, 1932–1945.” In Intellectual Collaboration with the Third Reich: Treason or Reason?, edited by Maria Björkman, Patrik Lundell and Sven Widmalm, 101–118. London/ New York: Routledge, 2019. Leitz, Christian M. Nazi Germany and Neutral Europe during World War II. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. Luca, Antonio. “Portugal’s Double Game: Between the Nazis and the Allies.” In The Plunder of Jewish Property during the Holocaust: Confronting European History, edited by Avi Beker, 269–281. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2001. Ninhos, Cláudia. Portugal e os nazis: histórias e segredos de uma aliança. Lisboa: A Esfera dos Livros, 2017. Pimentel, Irene Flunser. “Neutral Portugal and the Holocaust: Salazar and the German Ultimatum of 1943.” In Bystanders, Rescuers or Perpetrators?: The Neutral Countries and

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Romania Benjamin, Lya. Evreii din România între anii 1940–1944. Bucharest: Ed. Hasefer, 1993. Brustein, William, and Amy Ronnkvist. “The Roots of Anti-Semitism: Romania before the Holocaust.” Journal of Genocide Research 4, 2 (2002): 211–235. Case, Holly. Between States: The Transylvanian Question and the European Idea during World War II. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009. Chiper, Ioan. România şi Germania nazistă: relaţiile româno-germane între comandamente politice şi interese economice; (ianuarie 1933–martie 1938). Bucharest: Ed. Elion, 2000. Deletant, Dennis. Hitler’s Forgotten Ally: Ion Antonescu and his Regime, Romania 1940–44. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Geissbühler, Simon. Blutiger Juli: Rumäniens Vernichtungskrieg und der vergessene Massenmord an den Juden 1941. Paderborn et al.: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2013. Hausleitner, Mariana. “Romania in World War II: Revisionist out of Necessity.” In Territorial Revisionism and the Allies of Germany in World War II, Goals, Expectations, Practices, edited by Marina Cattaruzza, Stefan Dyroff and Dieter Langewiesche, 173–192 (New York: Berghan Books, 2013). Haynes, Rebecca. Romanian Policy towards Germany, 1936–40. London: Macmillan Press, 2000. Lungu, Dov B. Romania and the Great Powers: 1933–1940. Durham: Duke University Press, 1989. Neagoe, Stelian, Rumînia Carol, and Ion Antonescu. Hitler, Regele Carol si Maresalul Antonescu: relatiile germano-române (1938–1944). Istorie. Bucharest: Humanitas, 1994. Ritschl, Albrecht. “Nazi Economic Imperialism and the Exploitation of the Small: Evidence from Germany’s Secret Foreign Exchange Balances, 1938–1940.” The Economic History Review: A Journal of Economic and Social History 54,2 (2001): 324–345. Solonari, Vladimir. Purifying the Nation. Population Exchange and Ethnic Cleansing in NaziAllied Romania. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press et al., 2010. Stoenescu, Alex Mihai. Armata, Mareşalul şi evreii: cazurile Dorohoi, Bucureşti, Iaşi. Bucharest: Editura Rao, 2010. Traşcă, Ottmar. “Rumänisierung – Vernichtung – Rettung. Das Antonescu-Regime und die Judenfrage in Rumänien 1940–1944.” In Massengewalt in Südosteuropa im 19. und

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Spain Beaulac, Wiliard L. Franco. Silent Ally in World War II. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986. Bowen, Wayne H. Spain during World War II. Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2006. Burdick, Charles. Germany’s Military Strategy and Spain in World War II. Syracuse: Syracuse University, 1968. Burdick, Charles. “Moro: The Resupply of German Submarines in Spain, 1939–1942” Central European History, 3,3 (1970): 256–284. Kleinfeld, Gerald R. and Lewis A. Tambs. Hitler’s Spanish Legion: The Blue Division in Russia. London: Stackpole Books, 2014. Leitz, Christian. Economic Relations between Nazi Germany and Franco’s Spain 1936–1945 London: Clarendon Press, 1996. Rodríguez Jiménez, José Luis. Los Esclavos Españoles de Hitler. Barcelona: Editorial Planeta S.A., 2002. Rother, Bernd. Spanien und der Holocaust. Tübingen: Niemeyer Verlag, 2001. Suárez Fernández, Luis. España y la Segunda Guerra Mundial: desde 1939 hasta 1945. Madrid: Actas, 1997. Suárez Fernández, Luis. Franco. Los años decisivos. 1931–1945. Barcelona: Editorial Ariel 2011.

Sweden Aalders, Gerard, and Cees Wiebes. Die Kunst der Tarnung: Die geheime Kollaboration neutraler Staaten mit der deutschen Kriegsindustrie. Der Fall Schweden. Frankfurt/Main: Zweitausendeins, 1994. Åmark, Klas. Att bo granne med ondskan. Sveriges förhållande till nazismen, Nazityskland och Förintelsen. Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag, 2016. Henriksson, Sten. Sviktande neutralitet: den svensk-tyska ubåtsspärren i Öresund 1940–1945. Stockholm: Carlssons, 2017. Kvist Geverts, Karin. Ett främmande element i nationen. svensk flyktingpolitik och de judiska flyktingarna 1938 –1944. Uppsala: Acta Univeristatis Uppsaliensis, 2008. Levine, Paul. Swedish Neutrality during World War II: A Controversy Still Unresolved. Stockholm: Fakta info direkt, 1999. Lindberg, Hans. Svensk flyktingpolitik under internationellt tryck 1936–1941. Stockholm: Allmänna Förlaget, 1973.

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Switzerland Bower, Tom. Blood Money: The Swiss, the Nazis and the Looted Billions. London: Pan books, 1997. Chevallaz, Georges André. The Challenge of Neutrality: Diplomacy and Defense of Switzerland. Lanham: Lexington books, 2001. Codevilla, Angelo M. Between the Alps and a Hard Place: Switzerland in World War II and the Rewriting of History. Washington DC: Regnery History, 2013. Fahlbusch, Michael. Zwischen Kollaboration und Widerstand: zur Tätigkeit schweizerischer Kulturwissenschaftler in der Region Basel während des Dritten Reiches. Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2002. Fink, Jürg. Die Schweiz aus Sicht des Dritten Reiches. Zürich: Schulthess Juristische Medien, 1985. Halbrook, Stephen P. Target Switzerland: Swiss Armed Neutrality in World War II. New York: The History Press, 1998. Halbrook, Stephen P. The Swiss and the Nazis: How the Alpine Republic Survived in the Shadow of the Third Reich. New York: Casemate publishers, 2006. Jost, Hans Ulrich. Politik und Wirtschaft im Krieg: Die Schweiz 1938–1948. Zurich: Chronos Verlag, 1998. Klarsfeld, Serge. “La Suisse face au génocide: nouvelles recherches et perspectives.” Revue d’histoire de la Shoah: le monde Juif; la revue du Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine 210 (2019): 51–54. Kreis, Georg. Die Schweiz im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Innsbruck: Haymon Verlag, 2011. Schelbert, Leo, ed. Switzerland under Siege 1939–1945. A Neutral Nation’s Struggle for Survival. Rockport: Picton Press 2000. Ziegler, Jean. La Suisse, l’or et les morts. Paris: Seuil, 1997.

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Index of Persons Abetz, Otto 43–44 Abromeit, Franz 147, 153 Aglion, Raoul 45 Alecsandri, Vasile 107 Aly, Götz 284 Ancel, Jean 118 Antonescu, Ion 103, 106, 112–118 Antonescu, Victor 102 Arendt, Hannah 107, 234, 263–267, 269 Arens, Meinolf XIII, XVIII Asscher, Abraham 267 Aus der Fünten, Ferdinand 268 Baeck, Leo 269 Bagryanov, Ivan 162, 176, 192 Baky, László 77–78 Bandera, Stepan 83–84, 86–89, 90, 92, 95, 97, 310–311 Bárdossy, László 71–72 Baumhorn, Leopold 230 Beau, Albin Eduard 252, 257 Beckerle, Adolf-Heinz 188 Belev, Aleksandăr 162, 169, 187–188 Benjamin, Walter 244 Berger, Gottlob 142–143 Bernanos, Georges 36 Bernbaum, Michael 202 Berner, Wilhelm 250 Bethlen, István 100 Biagini, Antonello F. XIV Billotte, Pierre 290 Bitunjac, Martina XII, XV, XVIII Björnsson, Björn Sveinn 19 Black, Peter 96 Boisson, Pierre 49 Boris III of Bulgaria 161–167, 169, 172–173, 176, 181–182, 185, 188, 190–191 Bourantas, Nikolaos 223 Boveri, Margret 273, 276 Braham, Randolph L. 284 Bretholz, Wolfgang 182 Boia, Lucian 107 Božilov, Dobri 191 Briand, Aristide 100

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Brown, Douglas 243 Browning, Christopher 284 Brunner, Alois 147, 150, 158 Bucci, Andra 234 Bucci, Tatiana 234 Buchholz, Karl 253 Buragas, Petras 125–126 Bürger, Karin XIV Bursche, Julius 63 Canaris, Wilhelm 87 Cankov, Aleksandăr 164, 175, 182 Cantoni, Raffaele 236 Capuzzo, Ester XIII, XVIII Carol II of Romania 102–103, 110–112, 115 Casertano, Raffaele 153 Catroux, Georges 41–42, 46 Charles VI of Habsburg 229 Chatzimichalis, Platon 216 Christian X of Denmark 15 Christov, Dočo 191 Churchill, Winston 33–34, 36, 38–39, 42–49 Cioran, Emil 107 Clara, Fernando XIII, XVIII Clark, Mark W. 46 Cohen, Alessandro 232 Cohen, David 267 Conta, Vasile 107 Corbin, Charles 36 Codreanu, Corneliu Zelea 110–111 Crainic, Nichifor 110 Cuza, Alexandru C. 107, 110 Cyril, Prince of Bulgaria 191 Czerniaków, Adam 270–271, 274–275, 277 D’Annunzio, Gabriele 239 Dalma, Giovanni 232 Dane, Ivo 253 Dangkoulas, Antonios 214 Dannecker, Theodor 188, 201 Darlan, François 38–39, 44–48, 289–290 Deák, István 75 Deák, László 74 Dencik, Lars XII, XVII

342

Index of Persons

Deutsch, Otto 235 de Gaulle, Charles XII, 33–50, 289–290 de Freitas Branco Luís 254 de Laborde, Jean 46 de Larminat, Edgard 40 de Simone, Sergio 237 de Valera, Eamon 242 del Banner, Andreas Toscano XIV Deletant, Dennis 113, 116 Di Porto, Celeste 271–274 Dieckmann, Christoph 124 Dočev, Ivan 163, 182 Drohberg, Karl 64 Dvořák, Antonín 255 Ehrenthál, Eduard 155 Eichmann, Adolf 77–78, 107, 147, 149, 153, 158, 263–264, 266, 269 Einstein, Albert 247 Eisenhower, Dwight D. 46, 48–49 Eliade, Mircea 107 Eliot, Thomas Stearns 249 Eminescu, Mihai 107 Endre, László 77 Ettelesz, Elena 234 Ettelesz, Margherita 234 Făcăoaru, Iordache 109 Farkas, Lodovico 232 Feketehalmy-Czeydner, Ferenc 74 Ferdinand I of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (Ferdinand I of Bulgaria) 161–162, 164 Ferenczy, László 77 Ferro, António 248–249, 256–257 Filov, Bogdan 169, 176–177, 191 Flandin, Pierre-Étienne 34, 49 Fleischmann, Julius 235 Foà, Anna 272 Frank, Hans 56, 88 Gabrovski, Petăr 163, 169, 176, 187, 191 Gärtner, Heinrich, also Enrique Gaertner/ Enrique Guerner 254, 256 Gebert, Erich 148 Gens, Jacob 274–277 Gerlier, Pierre-Marie 292 Gerst, Yehuda Leib 270

Genovesi, Vincenzo 235 George II of Greece 215 Gielles, Ernesto 232 Giovanna of Savoy 164, 166 Globocnik, Odilo 53, 237 Glöckner, Olaf XII, XVII Godfroy, René 38 Goebbels, Joseph 252 Goga, Octavian 110–111, 272, 274 Goldschlag-Kübler, Stella 271, 273, 275 Göring, Hermann 17 Gosztony, Péter 185 Gustloff, Wilhelm 250 Gyurgyák, János 304 Gyvorskas, Faivelis 131 Haakon VII of Norway 20–21 Haşdeu, Bogdan Petriceicu 107 Haynes, Rebecca 114 Heimler, Tiburzio 232 Helm, Hans 152 Heyde, Werner 223 Heydrich, Reinhard 10, 147, 265 Hilberg, Raul 269, 284 Himka, John-Paul 92 Himmler, Heinrich 18, 26, 56, 63, 223 Hitler, Adolf 18, 19, 21, 34, 39, 43–44, 46, 48, 55–56, 66, 75–76, 85, 87, 103, 113–115, 117, 122, 137–142, 159–161, 167, 173–176, 182, 191, 202, 204, 222, 228, 236–237, 241–243, 248, 253, 265, 273, 282–283, 289–290, 293, 297–298, 303 Hoffmann, Heinrich 39, 114 Hoffman, Stanley 6 Hoppe, Hans-Joachim 161 Horváth, Franz Sz. XIV, XIX Höß, Rudolf 305 Hull, Cordell 43 Iliescu, Ion 114, 117 Imrédy, Béla 75, 77 Iordachi, Costantin 100, 116 Iorga, Nicolae 107 Ionescu, Nae 107 Jabotinsky, Vladimir Ze’ev 231 Jakovina, Tvrtko XIV, XIX

Index of Persons

Janko, Josef 206 Jaross, Andor 77 Jauss, Anne Marie 255 Juin, Alphonse 45 Kadelbach, Philipp VII Kakasheva, Katerina XIII, XVIII Kállay, Miklós 76 Kalmanowicz, Zelig 277 Kalogrias, Vaïos 179 Kanellopoulos, Panagiotis 217 Kantardžiev, Asen 163, 166 Kaplan, Robert 113 Kasche, Siegfried 139–140, 143–144, 153–155 Katzmann, Friedrich 63 Kayser, Wolfgang 258 Kershaw, Ian 305 Keynes, John M. 103–104 Khromeychuk, Olesya 93 Kjosseivanov, Georgi 167–170 Klarsfeld, Serge XIV, XIX, 34, 40 Koch, Erich 88, 93 Koenig, Pierre 41 Kogălniceanu, Mihail 107 Kontschalowski, Andrej VII Košak, Vladimir 153 Kotowski, Elke-Vera XIV Kozma, Miklós 74 Kraus, Ognjen 300 Kröll, Heinz 258 Kubiliūnas, Petras 125, 132 Kubiyovych, Volodymyr 94 Kun, Béla 69 Kvaternik, Eugen Dido 152 Kvaternik, Slavko 152–153 Lages, Willy 268 Lakatos, Géza 78 Landau, Ludwik 57 Laval, Pierre 34, 39, 43, 46, 48, 289–292 Leahy, William 44 Lecca, Radu 116 Leclerc, Philippe 41 Legentilhomme, Paul 41 Lehnstaedt, Stephan XII, XVII

Lejeune, Fritz 249 Leroi, Vera 255 Ley, Robert 250 Livizeanu, Irina 108 Ljotić, Dimitrije 297 Logothetopoulos, Konstantinos 216, 219–220, 226–227 Lohse, Hinrich 122 Lorković, Mladen 154 Luburić, Vjekoslav 153 Lueger, Karl 152 Lukov, Christo N. 163, 165, 182 Lulčev, Lulčo 166 Luther, Martin 149, 153–154 Lyssenko, Mykola 83 Maas, Heiko 281–287 Maček, Vladko 138 Mach, Alexander 137–138, 148, 157 Macmillan, Harold 41, 49 Magistrati, Massimo 102 Mahler, Gustav 255 Maniu, Iuliu 117 Mannerheim, Carl Gustaf 18 Manuila, Sabin 110 Margalit, Avishai 40 May, Hans 254 Meier, Harri 258 Melnyk, Andriy 86–88, 93, 313 Meltz, Renaud 43 Mendès France, Pierre 36 Mendelsohn, Ezra 107 Mengele, Josef 234, 237 Michov, Nikolai 191 Mihajlov, Ivan, also Mihailov 197, 223 Mitsotakis, Aristomenis 220 Molotov, Vjačeslav Michajlovič 12, 17, 102, 173 Mommsen, Hans 284 Monnet, Jean 36 Mostowicz, Arnold 10 Motta, Giovanna XIV Motta, Giuseppe XII, XIV, XVIII Müller-Clemm, Wolfgang 252 Murádin, János Kristóf 306 Muralis, Povylas 130 Murashko, Oleksandr 83

343

344

Index of Persons

Muraviev, Constantine 192 Murer, Franz 125 Murphy, Robert 41, 45 Muselier, Emile 41 Mussolini, Benito 76, 103, 153–154, 163, 167, 172, 191, 231, 243, 273 Nabersberg, Carl 125 Nageler, Viktor 143, 148, 150 Nedić, Milan 297 Neubacher, Hermann 105, 115, 219 Neuwirth, Lucien 37 Noguès, Charles 38, 45, 49 Nosseck, Max 254 Ólafsson, Davíð 19 Oldson, William O. 108 Opfer-Klinger, Björn XII, XVIII Opitz, Carl 251, 253 Orbán, Viktor 285, 305 Oršanić, Ivan 152 Pacheco, Duarte 251 Palamas, Kostis 220 Palatucci, Giovanni 237–238 Pálffy, Fidél 75 Papadopoulos, Kyriakos, also Kısa Bacak 224–226 Papagos, Alexandros 215, 217 Papandreou, Georgios 217, 226–227 Paulescu, Nicolae C. 109–110 Pavelić, Ante 138–140, 142–145, 152, 157, 160, 236, 297 Pétain, Philippe XII, 33–40, 43–48, 49, 289–290, 292 Petljura, Symon 83–84, 97 Peyrouton, Marcel 49 Piel, Joseph Maria 258 Plechavičius, Povilas 132–133 Plenković, Andrej 299 Plevris, Konstantinos 228 Pohl, Dieter 284 Poulos, Georgios 224 Pop, Valer 106 Porat, Dina 274 Poroshenko, Petro 312–313 Presser, Jacques 268

Quisling, Vidkun 14, 21, 29, 46 Rădulescu, Ion Heliade 107 Rahn, Rudolf 250 Rainer, Friedrich 237 Rallis, Ioannis 220–223, 227 Ramos, Gustavo Cordeiro 252–253 Ravasz, László 72 Reichmann, Eva G. 269 Reich-Ranicki, Marcel 271, 277 Rendel, George 175 Ribeiro, António Lopes 254 Richert, Gertrud 251, 253 Richter, Gustav 116 Ritschl, Albrecht 104 Rommel, Erwin 219, 292 Romsics, Ignác 304 Ronikier, Adam Graf 58 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 39, 42–45, 47–49, 290 Roth, Johannes 250 Rümelin, Eugen 164, 168 Rumkowski, Mordechai Chaim 9–10, 269–271, 275–276 Saggioro, Alessandro XIV Saint-Léger Léger, Alexis 36 Salazar, António de Oliveira 241–249, 251–252, 257–259 Schellenberg, Margaret-Ann XIV Schimana, Walter 222 Schindler, Max 60 Schmitt, Oliver 185 Schoeps, Julius H. XIII, XV, XVIII Scholem, Gershom 263–265, 276 Schönberg, Albert 255 Schubert, Franz 255 Schwarzbart, Salomon 83 Sciarrone, Roberto XIV Scoby, Ronald 226 Serédi, Jusztinián 71 Sevov, Jordan 166 Shevchenko, Taras 83 Siccardi, Cristina 188 Sieburg, Friedrich 252 Simeon of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha 191 Simões, Veiga 253 Simović, Dušan 175

Index of Persons

Six, Franz Alfred 251, 253 Snyder, Timothy 84–85, 93, 284 Sobol, Joshua 276 Sommella, Valentina XII, XVII Speer, Albert 250–253 Spinosa, Antonio 164 Sprizzi, Paolo 232 Stadtmüller, Georg 223 Stefan, Paul, also Paul Stefan Grünfeld or Grunfeld 254–257 Stepinac, Alojzije 157 Stetsko, Yaroslav 92 Stimson, Henry L. 48 Stresemann, Gustav 100 Studnicki, Władysław 57 Sukhevich, Roman 311 Suñer, Serrano 243 Suzkever, Abraham 274 Szakál, Imre XIV, XIX Szálasi, Ferenc 75, 78 Székely-Molnár, Zsigmond 77 Sztójay, Döme 76–78, 306 Takács, Albert 77 Tauber, Joachim XII, XVIII Tauz, Ernesto 232 Teixeira, Luiz 241 Teleki, Pál 69–71 Temistocle, Testa 235, 240 Thors, Ólafur 20 Tiparescu, Petru 109–110 Tisch, Charia 127 Tiso, Jozef 124, 137, 157, 160 Titulescu, Nicolae 102 Tixier, Adrien 45 Toscanini, Arturo 255 Trunk, Isaiah 265–267 Tsaldaris, Konstantinos 217 Tsolakoglou, Georgios 215–219, 221, 227 Tuka, Vojtec 137 Turda, Marius 110 Ungváry, Krisztián XIII, XIX, 304 Urbantke, Wilhelm 150, 156–157 Vagnini, Alessandro XVII, XVII Vajna, Gábor 78

Valéry, Paul 249 Van Dijk, Anna (Ans) 268, 275 Viatrovich, Volodymyr 313 Victor Emmanuel III of Italy 163–164 Vilhjálmsson, Vilhjálmur Örn 19–20 Vlahov, Dimitar 197 von Beseler, Hans 67 von Hoyningen-Huene, Oswald 250, 253 von Papen, Franz 177 von Renteln, Adrian 122 von Rezzori, Gregor 107 von Ribbentrop, Joachim 12, 17, 102, 113, 143, 173 von Richthofen, Herbert 173–175, 177 von Wächter, Otto 94 von Weizsäcker, Ernst 170 Volovici, Leon 108 Vrettakos, Leonidas 223 Vytautas, Grand Duke of Lithuania 129 Wachsberger, David 235 Wallmeier, Ursula XIV Watts, Larry L. 115 Weichert, Michał 59 Weinreb, Friedrich 267–269 Wendler, Richard 64 Weygand, Maxime 33, 36, 41–42, 48 Wien, Markus 183 Wiesel, Elie 117 Wirsching, Andreas 281–287 Wisliceny, Dieter 147 Woger, Iva, née Wollner 155 Wohlwill, Friedrich 255 Wohlwill, Gretchen 255–257 Wyden, Peter 272 Yushchenko, Viktor 97, 311 Zamov, Vladimir 185 Žanić, Milovan 152 Zapp, Manfred 250 Žekov, Nikola 162 Zelepos, Ioannis XIII, XVIII Zervas, Napoleon 221 Zweig, Friderike Maria 256–257 Zweig, Stefan 256–257

345

Index of Places Abbazia, also Opatija 230–235, 239–240 Adriatic Sea 196, 298 Adriatisches Küstenland 237–238 Aegean Islands 215 Aegean Sea 175, 196 Africa 37–40, 42–49, 139, 190, 219, 290, 292 Algarve 252 Apriano 233 Asia 56, 132, 173, 223 Athens 169, 172, 215–222, 225–227 Auschwitz, also Auschwitz-Birkenau 10, 22, 26, 30, 34, 77, 95, 149–150, 153, 202, 234, 239, 271, 285, 291, 305 Austria XV, 18, 24, 95, 99, 144, 167, 195, 199, 208, 226, 235, 254, 255, 299, 303 Austria-Hungary 65, 162 Azores 241, 243–244, 250, 254 Bačka 194, 204–207 Balkan XII, XIII, XVIII, XIX, 101–102, 135, 138–139, 159, 162, 167, 172, 176–177, 179, 182, 192, 199, 202, 295 Baltic 13, 17, 91, 95, 121, 143, 159, 173, 291, 323 Banat XIII, XVIII, 117, 170, 193–197, 199, 201, 204–210 Baranya 204–205 Belarus XV, 133, 310, 324 Belgrade 101, 175–176, 194–197, 199, 205–206, 209, 297 Belomorije 179 Belzec 95 Berchtesgaden 173, 191 Berlin 45, 69–70, 73, 75–76, 87–88, 99–102, 104–107, 115–116, 128–129, 140, 144, 153, 161, 175–179, 182, 184, 188, 197, 204, 206, 209, 215, 217, 252–253, 266, 271, 285, 291 Bessarabia 101, 103, 113, 116–117, 170–171, 230, 239 Bitola 189, 197, 199, 201 Bosnia-Herzegovina 206, 209, 229, 298, 300, 338–339 Bratislava 143, 149, 156 Brezovica 300

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671186-023

British Isles 171 Brody 95 Bucharest 99–102, 105–106, 115–116, 192, 206 Bucovina 171 Budapest 72–73, 76, 77–79, 100, 101, 204–206, 266, 285, 305–306 Bulgaria XVIII, 99, 101, 103, 147, 161–192, 194, 196–197, 199–206, 208–210, 215–216, 222, 224–225 Burgas 173, 191 Čadca 142, 155 Cadore 238 Cairo 217, 292 Carpatho-Ukraine 305 Chalkidiki 180 Chania 220 Chile 76 Clana 233 Coimbra 242, 252 Cologne 253, 249 Cracow 53, 58–61 Craiova 103, 171 Crete 172, 215–217, 220, 222 Crimea 311 Croatia XI–XIV, XVIII, 137–147, 151–160, 178, 199, 205–207, 235–236, 295–300 Cyrenaica 43 Czechoslovakia 87, 137, 160, 167–168, 193, 309, 325 Czestochowa 63–65 Dachau 76, 238 Dakar 44, 289 Danube-Carpathian Region 204 Danzig-Westpreußen (Reichsgau) 62, 64 Debar 200 Délvidék 74 Demotika 177 Denmark X, 5, 11, 13, 14–16, 19, 22–31, 326 Dobrudža, also Dobruja 103, 170–171 Dodecanese 215 Drancy 40, 291–292

348

Index of Places

Edessa 177 Edirne 196–197 El Alamein 47, 196 England 171, 246 Epirus 215 Essen 252 Estonia 13, 17–18, 26, 121–122, 323 Ethiopia 102 Europe V–VI, IX, X, XI–XVII, XIX, 11, 18, 20, 26, 34, 51, 56, 66, 70, 75, 78, 81, 85, 95, 100, 102–104, 107, 111, 113, 117–119, 127, 132, 137, 142–144, 146–147, 155, 159, 161–163, 165, 170, 172–173, 179, 193, 195, 197, 201–202, 206, 217, 230–231, 233–236, 243–245, 261, 263–265, 269, 281, 284, 286–287, 290, 293, 295–296, 301, 305, 309 Evros 177 Fiume, also Rijeka XIII, XVIII, 229–240, 298 Finland 5, 11–13, 17–18, 23–26, 29–31, 102, 161, 173, 326 Florina 177 France V, VII, XIII, XIV, XVII, 6, 17, 33–50, 56, 104, 114, 117, 147, 161–163, 167–168, 171, 256, 289–290, 292–293, 327 Galicia 53, 74, 88, 92, 94, 95, 230, 239 Germany V, VII–VIII, IX, XI–XIII, XV, XVII–XVIII, 5–6, 8, 11–17, 19, 22–24, 27, 29–32, 37–38, 43–44, 46, 49–50, 53, 64–65, 67, 69, 70–79, 83, 85, 87–88, 90, 97–106, 111, 112–119, 125, 137–140, 143, 147, 153–154, 161–164, 168, 171, 174, 183–184, 186–187, 190–192, 199, 207–208, 210, 215–217, 219, 231, 234, 243–247, 252, 254, 256–259, 265, 272–273, 281–287, 289, 290, 309, 312–314 Gostivar 177, 200 Great Britain 11–12, 14, 17, 21, 37–39, 72, 114, 163, 167, 172, 175, 181, 217, 221, 243–244, 247, 254 Greece XIII, XVIII, 161, 169, 172–181, 184, 192, 197, 201, 210–211, 213–228, 328

Halle 161 Holič 157 Hungary XI–XIV, XVII, XIX, 51, 69–79, 99, 101–103, 115, 119, 138–139, 161–162, 167, 170–173, 176, 204–207, 231, 234, 239, 281–282, 285–286, 300, 305–308, 329 Huta-Pieniacka 95 Iceland 5, 13–14, 19–20 Ionian Islands 215 Istanbul 196–197 Istria 298 Italy V, VII, XIII, XVIII, 44, 70, 72, 76, 79, 103, 119, 151, 153–154, 158, 160–164, 171, 175, 177, 179, 183, 191, 197, 211, 215–217, 220, 230–231, 233–239, 243, 246, 273, 330 Japan 56 Jasenovac 153, 159, 299 Jedwabne 91, 146 Jerusalem 107, 263 Kamyanets-Podilsky 73–74 Karelia 12–13 Kastoria 180 Katerini 224 Katyn 55 Kaunas XII, 91, 122, 125–128, 130–131 Kežmarok 149 Kićevo 177 Kilkis 226 Kiruna 12 Klessheim 76 Koukos 224–225 Kragujevac X Kraljevo X Kruševac 180 Kursk 191 Kyiv 92, 309 Latvia 13, 17, 56, 121–122, 284, 323 Laurana 231–233 Leipzig 161 Leningrad 17 Leskovac 180

Index of Places

Lidice X Lisbon 242–243, 245–253, 255–256, 258–259 Lithuania X, XII, XV, XVIII, 13, 17, 121–134, 168, 323 Łódź 9, 10, 269–271, 275 Lom 189 Lublin 53, 60, 96, 149 Lviv 87, 89–92, 97, 309, 310 Macedonia (North), see also Vardar Macedonia 173, 175–180, 183–184, 186, 188, 191, 195–197, 199–200, 202, 205, 208–210, 215, 223–224, 258, 300 Madagascar 290 Madeira 250, 254 Malmberget 12 Marseille 257 Mauthausen 76 Meligalas 226 Mers El Kébir 289 Messenia 226 Morava 180 Moscow 86, 90, 139, 169, 173, 182, 197 Murmansk 17 Narvik 12 Natzweiler-Struthof 30 Netherlands X, 147, 265, 267–270, 293, 331 Neuilly-sur-Seine 162 New York 265 Niš 196 Norway X, 5, 11–12, 14, 17, 20–26, 29–31, 37, 46, 331 Nováky 149, 158 Novi Sad, see also Újvidék 73–74, 205 Ogliane-Icici 233 Ohrid 177–178 Palikrowy 95 Paris 108, 259, 284, 291 Patras 221 Pearl Harbour 290 Pécs 205 Peloponnese 221–223 Pest 79

349

Pidkamin 95 Pirin Mountains 175 Pirot 197 Ploiești 172 Plovdiv 173, 197 Poland V, VII, X, XV, XVII, 10, 51, 53–57, 69–60, 62–63, 65–67, 86–87, 91–93, 95–96, 102, 118, 139, 167, 170, 201, 265–266, 273, 281–282, 286, 309, 313, 332 Pontus 223–224 Prešau 142 Prijedor 139 Prilep 197 Radom 53, 62, 64 Ragusa 229 Ravensbrück 30 Reykjavík 19 Rhineland 102 Riga 122 Rila Mountains 191 Romania XII, XVIII, 73, 87–88, 99–119, 147, 161, 163, 170–171, 173–174, 176, 182, 191–192, 204, 206, 284, 286, 306, 309, 335 Rome V, XIV, 73, 153–154, 161, 179, 230, 233, 239, 247, 271 Rumeli 222 Ruse 191 Russia/Soviet Russia, see also Soviet Union 12, 85, 97, 100, 106, 111, 119, 161, 165, 170, 172, 174, 181, 310, 311 Sachsenhausen 30, 88, 150, 153 Salonica 214–215, 218, 222, 224–225 Samothrace 177, 213 Schleswig-Holstein 122 Seredʼ 149–150, 158 Seredžius 131 Šiauliai XII, 122, 125–126 Skopje 177–178, 187, 189, 196, 199, 201–202 Slovakia X, 137–142, 144–153, 155–161, 173, 230 Sobibór XIV, 95 Soviet Union, see also Russia/Soviet Russia 11–13, 17–18, 29, 53, 55, 57, 72, 74,

350

Index of Places

84–85, 87, 101–103, 112, 115–116, 121, 124, 129, 133–134, 165, 171, 173–175, 181–182, 204, 216, 286, 295, 296, 309–312, 314 Split 229 Stalingrad 103, 117, 132, 140, 160, 221, 292, 295 Stambolijski 164 Štip 189, 199, 201 Stropkov XIV Struga 177 Strumica 197 Stutthof 95 Sušak 235 Sweden 5, 8, 11–14, 16–18, 22–28, 30, 31 Syria 290 Syrmia 139, 205 Tetovo 177, 200 Thasos 177 Theresienstadt 16, 26, 31, 150, 255 Thessaloniki 139, 162, 167, 177, 180, 189, 195–197, 202 Thessaly 215, 223 Thrace 173, 175, 177, 179, 184, 189, 196–197, 202, 215 Toulon 46, 289 Transnistria 113, 116, 117 Transylvania 100, 103, 112, 115–117, 170–171, 305–307 Treblinka 95, 189, 201–202, 237 Turkey 169–170, 173–174, 177, 181–182, 195 Újvidék, see also Novi Sad 73 Ukraine XIII, XIV, XV, 73, 75, 83–89, 92–95, 97–98, 139, 309–314 United States of America 45, 56, 59, 72, 117, 173, 181, 250, 255–257

Vardar Macedonia XIII, XVIII, 189, 194, 196–197, 199–200, 202, 209 Varna 173 Venezia Giulia 236, 238 Venezia Tridentina 238 Verdun 33–34, 36, 45 Versailles 87, 102, 105, 107, 193 Vilkija 131 Vilnius XII, 91, 122–123, 128–128, 130–131, 133 Vistula 56 Volhynia 97, 286, 313 Volosca 233 Vranje 177, 197 Vyhne 149 Wallachia 116 Wartheland (Reichsgau) 62, 64 Warsaw 10, 53, 56–58, 60–62, 67 White Ruthenia 122 Yugoslavia X–XI, XIII, XIV, 71–72, 101, 137–138, 140, 146, 149, 153–154, 156, 158, 160, 163, 168, 173, 175–179, 181, 192–200, 202, 204, 205–206, 208–209, 224, 236, 239, 295–296, 298–299 Zagreb 139, 143, 145, 147, 152, 154, 157, 295, 298–299 Zaječar 180 Zemgale 91 Žilina 142, 146 Zsablya 74