"Whoever is between the living, there is still hope, since a living dog is better than a dead lion."
Ecclesiastes 9: 4
Collaboration during the Second World War. They say that the commissioner is a state of mind. And yes, with this statement, perhaps, one can agree. But if this is so, then, probably, another statement will also be correct that a fascist is also a state of mind, only with a minus sign. That is, someone follows the idea, but there are also those who choose the "dark side of power" for completely different reasons. This is cowardice, and mercantilism, and amoralism. In any case, all these mental qualities are not the most pleasant in the list of human personality traits. However, they are. To one degree or another, they are … everyone. But someone can be above the base in his soul, and someone follows these qualities on a lead. And someone has a low threshold of pain sensitivity, so if you drive sharp matches under his nails, he will agree to everything. Although there are others like Tommaso Campanella, who was tortured for 48 hours with the torture "velya" ("wakefulness"), that is, they did not let him sleep, periodically impaling him on a stake. It is clear that sitting on a stake cannot sleep, and in general there is little pleasant in this. The torture was stopped only when the doctor said that another half hour and he would die. But the most important thing is that Campanella never confessed to anything and proved, as he himself wrote about it, "that his spirit is free." But again, this is an exception.
What is collaboration? TSB responds
So when it comes to foreign citizens who fought in the Nazi army during World War II, we must remember that there were many reasons why they did this. But for us now it is important not to delve into all these reasons, but simply to see who, apart from persons of German nationality, fought at that time on the side of the German army with arms in hand. Not so long ago, an interesting article by the author A. Samsonov, dedicated to Polish and Jewish collaborators, was published on the pages of VO. Today we continue and develop this topic.
To begin with, an extensive historiography is devoted to the topic of the participation of Soviet and foreign citizens in the Second World War as part of the German army and the SS troops in the West, there they did not make any false secrets from it, as, say, we did before 1991. According to academician A. O. Chubaryan, “this problem was completely ignored in Soviet historiography”, since “it was based on the idea that the number of traitors to the Motherland was extremely insignificant” (Chubaryan A. O. Discussion issues of the history of the war // World War II. Actual problems: K 50- Anniversary of the Victory / O. A. Rzheshevsky, editor-in-chief, M., 1995, p. 11). Therefore, the essence of such a phenomenon as various types of cooperation of a certain part of Soviet citizens with Germany has not received the proper deep scientific interpretation in Russian historical literature. It is interesting that these concepts themselves (“collaborationism” and “collaborators”) are not found in the pre-war reference literature at all. There is no decoding and no explanation of what it is, even in such authoritative publications as the "Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron" and "Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Granat Brothers." This, however, did not mean that such a word and concept did not exist in the lexicon of European languages. It was, of course, but … it was used extremely rarely.
In post-war Soviet reference books such as the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, the term "collaborators" has already appeared and was interpreted as: "persons who collaborated with the fascist invaders in the countries occupied by them during the Second World War 1939-1945." A practically analogous explanation of this term was given in the “Soviet Encyclopedic Dictionary”. Nevertheless, there was practically no research on this topic. The concept of the "brotherhood of Soviet peoples" did not allow writing about all the negative aspects of our common history, and research on this topic was viewed as propaganda of nationalism and chauvinism. It is not surprising that the study of the topic of cooperation between Soviet citizens and the enemy began only after the collapse of the USSR.
Union of Nordic Germans
But Western historians were not bound by ideological frameworks. Moreover, they were especially interested in the participation of "non-Germans" in the SS troops - the elite of the "German nation". After all, the leaders of the Reich have repeatedly stated that "the SS organization is a union of specially selected Nordic Germans …". It was with these words that, for example, the order of Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler of December 31, 1931 began, according to which a special marriage license was introduced for all SS men "in order to select and preserve racial and hereditarily pure blood."
Here, first of all, it should be noted that initially both the soldiers, and even more so the SS officers, as well as their wives, had to go through a complex procedure of "racial selection", and in the "SS special forces", which appeared already in 1934, and became the prototype of the "SS troops", the selection was even tougher. However, already in June 1944, the number of foreigners in the Wehrmacht and in the SS troops reached 486.6 thousand people, and in total during the war there were at least 1.8 million people. From foreigners of non-Aryan origin, 59 divisions, 23 brigades were formed, and besides that, several more separate regiments, several special legions and battalions.
The gap between word and deed
It turns out that it was in the SS troops that foreigners were accepted very willingly! So, 12 out of 43 SS divisions were staffed by "volunteers of German nationality" from the countries of Northern and Western Europe, that is, not purebred Aryans, but half-blood Germans (and this is still very mildly said that half-bloods, in many there was no blood), and as many as 15 divisions were recruited by "volunteers" of non-German nationality in general, who were recruited throughout Europe, and not all of them and always even went there voluntarily.
How could it have happened that in the elite troops of Hitlerite Germany there were so many people of "non-German" or even "non-Aryan" origin, previously proclaimed people of the "lower race"? Slavs, French, Hungarians, Romanians, Albanians and even people from the Caucasus mountains and the "sunny republics" of Central Asia - whoever did not serve in the SS troops! Why did it happen?
Let's start with remembering that back in 1940, Essen's Gauleiter Terboven, Reichskommissar of Norway occupied by Germany, said that it is much easier to unite the Scandinavians with the Germans than, for example, the same Prussia with Bavaria, that is, the North Germans with the South. Norwegians are the same Aryans, he argued (and even more than even some of the Germans, if we mean the same Bavarians), and, if so, the Norwegians may well become full citizens of the Third Reich. He was of the same opinion about the Danes, the inhabitants of the Netherlands, Luxembourg and the Belgians. These were people of "German blood". And if so, then they could consider themselves citizens of "Greater Germany". Although it may well be that there was no talk of complete equality.
Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler was of the same opinion. So, in September 1940, on his initiative, the "General SS detachments of Flanders" were created. Two years later, also the "Dutch SS". Well, in May 1941 - "Norwegian SS". They seemed to be under the jurisdiction of their pro-fascist leaders. But already in the fall of 1942 they became part of the organization of the "German SS detachments". And … were renamed "German SS in Flanders", "German SS in the Netherlands" and "German SS in Norway". That is, the German "beginning" came out on top. National - for the second. In April 1943, the Danish "German Corps" ("Corps Schalburg") was created. The number of all these units amounted to almost 9 thousand people. They were engaged in helping the local police to fight partisans and anti-fascists.
"Burgundy" - the state of the SS
Interestingly, SS Reichsfuehrer Himmler had plans to create a new German state "Burgundy" in northern Europe, which would include the lands of the Netherlands, Belgium and North-Eastern France. Moreover, all political and state administration was to be carried out here by the SS forces on the basis of their SS code. At the same time, the idea was based on the idea to unite all the "Nordic blood" in Europe, and to make sure that then "the Germans would never again fight against the Germans."
Well, in the Reich itself, after the start of the war, the selection for the SS immediately became much less stringent than before. In the lists of SS formations, completely non-German surnames were full of, and for some reason, most often Slavic ones. For example, in the list of executioners of the Auschwitz concentration camp, such names were about 15–20%. Ceased to worry the leaders of the Reich and the SS and the external data of future functionaries. The SS motto: "Your honor - your loyalty" - this is the only thing that the Reichsfuehrer SS demanded of them.
All flags of the world are visiting us
Further more. Although Hitler in his book "Mein Kampf" and in every possible way condemned the French for the fact that they "spoil" pure European blood with the blood of Negroes and Asians, nevertheless, in the spring of 1944, posters with the image of a German soldier in a helmet appeared in many French cities. who demandedly pointed his finger in the face of the person looking at the poster, and with the inscription: "Enroll in the SS troops!". Moreover, these recruiting posters were hung not only in France, but also in other European countries occupied by German troops. And it is clear that for those who had problems with the law, this was a good way to avoid them. I signed up for the SS and … "all bribes are smooth." Well, something similar to the situation with the same French Foreign Legion. Got there, and he will save you both from prison and from the bag. Another thing is that later “freedom” had to be practiced with arms in hand, but if someone broke the law, then such people had to choose the least of two evils, and many of them seemed to be the “least” the chosen path of collaboration.
References:
1. Drobyazko, S., Karashchuk, A. Eastern volunteers in the Wehrmacht, police and SS. M.: AST, 2000.
2. Kovalev, B. Nazi occupation and collaboration in Russia. 1941-1944. M.: AST, Transitkniga, 2004.
3. Carlos Caballero Jurado. Foreign volunteers in the Wehrmacht. 1941-1945. M.: AST, Astrel, 2005.
4. Shabelnik, N. On the question of Soviet collaboration during the Great Patriotic War / Proceedings of the Military Space Academy. A. F. Mozhaisky. Publisher: Military Space Academy named after A. F. Mozhaisky (St. Petersburg)
5. Gilyazov, IA Collaborationist movement among Turkic-Muslim prisoners of war and emigrants during the Second World War. Dis. … Dr. East. Sciences: 07.00.02 Kazan, 2000.
6. Ermolov, I. G. The emergence and development of Soviet military-political collaboration in the occupied territories of the USSR in 1941-1944. Dis. … to-that ist. Sciences: 07.00.02 Tver, 2005.
7. Shantseva, EN Genesis of the partisan movement and collaborationism in the Great Patriotic War: the example of the occupied territory of the Bryansk region: August 1941 - September 1943. Dis. … to-that ist. Sciences: 07.00.02 Bryansk, 2011.
8. Napso, N. T. Eastern legions in the Wehrmacht during the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945 Dis. … to-that ist. Sciences: 07.00.02 Maykop, 2000.
