User:Bigeez/Collaboration/Resistance Practising Page

Collaboration
During the war, large territories were under Axis occupation since the German Army required local accommodation or collaboration for some degree of control. Early guidelines are recorded in the Geneva Conventions, outlining one’s duty to obey the enemy. Collaboration consisted primarily in participation of hostilities by the Axis. Nazi ideology-driven collaboration was a factor, of which there were four main reasons: 1) support for Nazi-fascist culture, 2) antisemitism, 3) anticommunism, and 4) a national desire for an independent fascist state. At times, there was a combination of shared beliefs in antisemitism, hatred of Soviet communism, enthusiasm for National Socialist ideology, and hope for a united Europe under German Supremacy. Auxiliary forces patrolled the shores (Schutzkommandos), while others were concentration camp guards, low-level administrators and professionals. Waffen-SS volunteers formed divisions, brigades, legions, or battalions bearing the names of historical heroes, as in the Croatian/Bosnian Muslim, Scandinavian, Dutch, Belgian, and French. The vast majority of the population were accommodators. Laborers worked in factories, docks, train stations and airfields. Economically, British (Singapore) and American (Philippines) colonies accommodated or collaborated with the enemy. The first reason for ideology-driven collaboration, Nazi-inspired symapthies, evolved after World War I  with the dissolution of the Central Powers, multi-nationalism, the collapsed German, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian empires, the partition of Poland, and the rise of communism that "sowed the seeds for deep resentment." Collaboration by paramilitary groups which supported Nazi ideology, particularly in Western Europe were France's Marcel Déat and Milice française, the 33rd Waffen SS in France, Belgium's Léon Degrelle and the Légion Wallonie, Norway's Vidkun Quisling, Nordic "Panzers", and Dutch Waffen-SS units in the Netherlands.

The second reason for ideology-driven collaboration was antisemitism and the identification and killing of ethnic and religious groups or “undesirables” throughout Europe, particularly in Western Ukraine, Lithuania, and Byelorussia. The Holocaust, the Third Reich’s determination to murder all the Jews of Europe, developed over time and could not have been accomplished with the "efficiency and completeness that it was without the assistance of many non-German Europeans." Conversely, the survival of many Jews would have been inconceivable without the opposition of many non-Germans who were executed for sheltering Jews. Operation Barbarossa initiated collaboration on a scale which could not be compared to in Northern or Western Europe. Ukrainians, the Baltic states, Caucasians, Russians and members of some Asian nationalities assembled ethnic units and served the Germans as armed militiamen, or Ukrainian, Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian policemen. Mass killing of Jews after Operation Barbarossa was perpetrated by specialised troops composed of local volunteers who could not have succeeded without the collaboration of many non-German Europeans. The Trawniki, Soviet POW’s trained in Western Ukraine, tortured and shot hundreds of thousands of Jews under German supervision. Yet, even the Channel Islands collaborated with the Germans who handed the Jews over to the Gestapo. Ultimately, those who collaborated in Hitler’s Final Solution did so as “collaborators, cooperators, or as accommodators.” The Judenrat served in the Jewish police as spies of German intelligence, however, they “sought to escape their doomed fate and were not committed collaborators.”  Waffen-SS divisions implicated in the persecution and execution of the Roma (Gypsy) and Jews were seen in Eastern European collaborators, Western Ukraine, Byelorussia, Lithuania, and France, where the highest German-recorded number of Jews were sent to concentration camps, including the Latvian Waffen SS, Estonian Waffen-SS, the paramilitary, and Einsatzgruppen. The third reason for ideology-driven collaboration was communism, manipulated by German propagandists and igniting ethnic unrest as in the Baltic countries, Ukraine and Russia. Bronislav Kaminski in Russia’s autonomous Lokot Republic administered an entire district for the Germans. Former military and police fought the communist threat as in Latvia’s 2nd SS Infantry Brigade and the Ukrainian Galician Division. Fear of Stalin terror and forced collectivisation, mass executions and deportations inspired many against the Soviets, including the paramilitary Hilfsfreiwillige, while within the German Army a Russian army was created (Vlasov Army). In Greece, Ioannis Rallis’ Greek Security Battalions fought communist ELAS partisans. The fourth reason for ideology-driven collaboration was the nationalistic desire for establishing an independent fascist state. Conscripts from the Occupied Eastern countries subsumed by Waffen SS divisions where ideology-driven sympathies festered, hoped to establish an independent fascist country to partner with Nazi Germany. These include Vidkun Quisling in Norway, Ferenc Szálasi in Hungary, Anton Mossert in the Netherlands, Pierre Laval in France, and Stepan Bandera in Ukraine. Estonian conscripts began as a means to defend the Occupied Eastern countries as the Third Reich crumbled. Auxiliaries as in the Estonian Auxiliary Police, paramilitary forces (Einsatzgruppen) and Feldgendarmerie were responsible for containing resistance. In the Balkans, Georgios Tsolakoglou of Greece's collaborationist government and the allies of the Axis, such as Slovakia and Croatia, from dismembered Yugoslavia, sought independent fascist states. The Croatian Handschar Waffen-SS and Moslems from Bosnia, Yugoslavian, and Greek Security Battalions engaged communists. POWs, either semi-voluntarily or compulsory, collaborated.

Resistance
Resistance by local populations took place in occupied countries due to the repressive nature of the occupiers. A resister was anyone who resisted by a) not cooperating with their occupiers or b) endangering themselves or others; either passively or actively. Resisters came from all walks of life where the “changes at the battle front made resisters out of collaborators,” empowered by Axis defeats incurred at El Alamein, Stalingrad and the simultaneous invasion of North Africa by the United States. Resisters printed illegal newspapers or used the wireless to communicate and receive radio messages from London. Widespread partisan movements kept German divisions engaged, such as the French, Norwegian, Greek, Yugoslavian,      and Russians, including the Italians who changed sides and joined the Allies in 1943. German policies in Byelorussia resulted in the second-largest resistance group in Europe, following Tito's resistance in Yugoslavia. Noteworthy was the Polish Underground's “monumental undertaking of the Warsaw Uprising” and Europe’s only underground organisation dedicated to assisting the Jews (Żegota). At times, resistance was complicated depending on one’s nationality, religion, or ethnicity, particularly in the Balkans and Eastern Europe.

Allied-assisted partisan warfare was the aim of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), which Churchill said “would set Europe ablaze.” The American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) adapted the British model upon Churchill's insistence to Roosevelt, who appointed “Wild Bill” Donovan as its chief. The OSS would eventually rival the SOE, setting up training camps in the United States and overseas, successfully sending thousands of agents around the globe. At times, the Allied intelligence services cooperated with resisters, such as the Jedburgh and Sussex missions, sent to Occupied France prior to the D-Day invasion. Comprised of one OSS or SOE officer, one French officer or émigré, and one British or American radio operator, they played "a crucial role." In the Balkans, both Churchill and Roosevelt aimed to keep Greece and Yugoslavia free from Stalin's attempt at control. "Churchill's gamble paid off, because both never entered the Soviet bloc." On occasion, both nationalist and communist forces acted in unison under the leadership of the SOE, such as the destruction of the Gorgopotamos Bridge linking the Athens to Thessaloniki railway by EDES (nationalists) and ELAS (communists). In Southeast Asia, resistance was more complex as the dynamics were different than in Europe. The Japanese also presented themselves as liberators of colonial peoples, and this was accepted by at least parts of the local independence movements. In reality it was much different, since the Japanese sought its own colonial empire and intended to subjugate every country they invaded. However, in the last weeks of the war, the Indonesian independence movement was able to leverage its limited collaboration with the Japanese to gain their support; enough to declare the Netherlands East Indies free, which doomed the Dutch attempts to resume control after World War II ended. In French Indochina, the communist Viet Minh gave rise to an anti-Axis partisan movement. This initiated Vietnam’s anti-colonial movement, in which the American OSS became a key player.