Complicated Complicity European Collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II

The German invasion of Poland in September 1939 and the occupation of other European countries in the following years generated new military, economic and social constellations. The conflict areas were on the one hand characterized by fear, violence and terror; members of the resistance and people stigmatized by the racial policies were arrested, tortured and killed by the Nazis. At the same time, different agents and individuals became interdependent; in this extreme state of emergency, people were confronted with new alternative attitudes and behaviors. Collaboration, i.e. the pragmatic, at times open, cooperation of governments, military and political organizations, as well as individuals with the German overlords, the Gestapo and the Nazi authorities became the norm in the occupied countries and satellite states. The consequence was the wide-scale surrender particularly of the Jewish population and the rapid implementation of their deportation to concentration and extermination camps.