User:Shakescene/Baltic collaboration

Baltic states
The three Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, first invaded by the Soviet Union, were later occupied by Germany and incorporated, together with the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic of the U.S.S.R. (Belarus, see below), into Reichskommissariat Ostland.

Estonia
In German plans, Estonia was to become an area of future German colonization, but Estonians themselves were considered to be standing high on the Nazi racial scale and as such had the potential for Germanization. Unlike the other Baltic states, the seizure of Estonian territory by German troops was relatively long, from July 7 to December 2, 1941. This period was used by the Soviets to carry out a wave of repression against Estonians. It is estimated that the NKVD's subordinate Destruction battalions killed some 2,000 Estonian civilians, and 50-60,000 people were deported deep to the USSR. 10,000 of them died in the GULAG system within a year. Many Estonians fought against Soviet troops on the German side, hoping to liberate their country. Some 12,000 Estonian partisans took part in the fighting. Of great importance were the 57 Finnish-trained members of the Erna group, who operated behind enemy lines.

Resistance groups were organised by Germans in August 1941 into the Omakaitse (lit. 'Self-defence'), which had between 34,000 and 40,000 members, mainly based on the Kaitseliit, dissolved by the Soviets. Omakaitse was in charge of clearing the German army's rear of Red Army soldiers, NKVD members, and Communist activists. Within a year its members killed 5,500 Estonian residents. Later, they performed guard duty and fought Soviet partisans flown into Estonia. From among Omakaitse members were recruited w Estonian policemen, members of the Estonian Auxiliary Police and officers of the Estonian 20th Waffen-SS Division.

The Germans formed a puppet government, the Estonian Self-Administration, headed by Hjalmar Mäe. This government had considerable autonomy in internal affairs, such as filling police posts. The Security Police in Estonia (SiPo) had a mixed Estonian-German structure (139 Germans and 873 Estonians) and was formally under the Estonian Self-Administration. Estonian police cooperated with Germans in rounding up Jews, Roma, communists and all people that were deemed enemies of existing order or asocial elements, they also helped to conscript Estonians for forced labor and military service under German command.. Most of the small population of Estonian Jews fled before the Germans arrived, with only about 1,000 remaining. All of them were arrested by Estonian police and executed by Omakaitse. Members of the Estonian Auxiliary Police and 20th Waffen-SS Division also executed Jewish prisoners sent to concentration and labor camps established by the Germans on Estonian territory.

Immediately after entering Estonia, the Germans began forming volunteer Estonian units the size of a battalion. By January 1942, six Security Groups (battalions No. 181-186, about 4,000 men) had been formed and were subordinate to the Wermacht 18th Army. After the one-year contract expired, some volunteers transferred to the Waffen-SS or returned to civilian life, and three Eastern Battalions (No. 658-660) were formed from those who remained. They fought until early 1944, after which their members transferred to the 20th Waffen-SS Division.

Beginning in September 1941, the SS and police command created four Infantry Defence Battalions (No. 37-40) and a reserve and sapper battalion (No. 41-42), which were operationally subordinate to the Wermacht. From 1943 they were called Police Battalions, with 3,000 serving in them. In 1944 they were transformed into two infantry battalions and evacuated to Germany in the fall of 1944, where they were incorporated into the 20th Waffen-SS Division.

The Germans also formed in the fall of 1941, eight police battalions (No. 29-36) of which only Battalion No. 36 had a typically military purpose. However, due to shortages, most of them were sent to the front near Leningrad. These battalions were mostly disbanded in 1943. That same year, the SS and police command created five new Security and Defense Battalions (they inherited No. 29-33 and had more than 2,600 men). In the spring of 1943, five Defence Battalions (No. 286-290) were established as compulsory military service units. The 290th Battalion consisted of Estonian Russians. Battalions No. 286, 288 and 289 were used to fight partisans in Belarus.

On Aug. 28, 1942, the Germans formed the volunteer Estonian Waffen-SS Legion. Of the approximately 1,000 volunteers, 800 were incorporated into Battalion Narva and sent to Ukraine in the spring of 1943. Due to the shrinking number of volunteers, in February 1943 the Germans introduced compulsory conscription in Estonia. Born between 1919 and 1924 faced the choice of going to work in Germany, joining the Waffen-SS or Estonian auxiliary battalions. 5,000 joined the Estonian Waffen-SS Legion, which was reorganized into the 3rd Estonian Waffen-SS Brigade.

As the Red Army advanced, a general mobilization was announced, officially supported by Estonia's last Prime Minister Jüri Uluots. By April 1944, 38,000 Estonians had been drafted. A portion was drafted into the 3rd Waffen-SS Brigade, which was enlarged to division size (20th Waffen-SS Division: 10 battalions, more than 15,000 men in the summer of 1944) and incorporated also most of the already existing Estionian units (mostly Eastern Battalions). The younger ones were conscripted into other Waffen-SS units. From the rest, six Border Defense Regiments and four Police Fusilier Battalions (Nos. 286, 288, 291, and 292).

The Estonian Security Police and SD, the 286th, 287th and 288th Estonian Auxiliary Police battalions, and 2.5–3% of the Estonian Omakaitse (Home Guard) militia units (between 1,000 and 1,200 men) took part in rounding up, guarding or killing of 400–1,000 Roma and 6,000 Jews in concentration camps in the Pskov region of Russia and the Jägala, Vaivara, Klooga and Lagedi concentration camps in Estonia.

Guarded by these units, 15,000 Soviet POWs died in Estonia: some through neglect and mistreatment and some by execution.

Latvia
Deportations and murders of Latvians by the Soviet NKVD reached their peak in the days before the capture of Soviet-occupied Riga by German forces. Those that the NKVD could not deport before the Germans arrivec were shot at the Central Prison. RSHA's instructions to their agents to unleash pogroms fell on fertile ground. After the Einsatzkommando 1a and part of Einsatzkommando 2 entered the Latvian capital, Einsatzgruppe A's commander Franz Walter Stahlecker made contact with Viktors Arājs on 1 July and instructed him to set up a commando unit. It was later named Latvian Auxiliary Police or Arajs Kommandos. The members, far-right students and former officers were all volunteers, and free to leave at any time. The next day, 2 July, Stahlecker instructed Arājs to have the Arājs Kommandos unleash pogroms that looked spontaneous, before the German occupation authorities were properly established.

Einsatzkommando-influenced mobs of former members of Pērkonkrusts and other extreme right-wing groups began pillaging and making mass arrests, and killed 300 to 400 Riga Jews. Killings continued under the supervision of SS Brigadeführer Walter Stahlecker, until more than 2,700 Jews had died. The activities of the Einsatzkommando were constrained after the full establishment of the German occupation authority, after which the SS made use of select units of native recruits. German General Wilhelm Ullersperger and Voldemārs Veiss, a well known Latvian nationalist, appealed to the population in a radio address to attack "internal enemies". During the next few months, the Latvian Auxiliary Security Police primarily focused on killing Jews, Communists and Red Army stragglers in Latvia and in neighbouring Byelorussia. In February–March 1943, eight Latvian battalions took part in the punitive anti-partisan Operation Winterzauber near the Belarus–Latvia border which resulted in 439 burned villages, 10,000 to 12,000 deaths, and over 7,000 taken for forced labor or imprisoned at the Salaspils concentration camp. This group alone killed almost half of Latvia's Jewish population, about 26,000 Jews, mainly in November and December 1941.

The creation of the Arājs Kommando was "one of the most significant inventions of the early Holocaust", and marked a transition from German-organised pogroms to systematic killing of Jews by local volunteers (former army officers, policemen, students, and Aizsargi). This helped resolve a chronic German personnel shortage and provided the Germans with relief from the psychological stress of routinely murdering civilians. By the autumn of 1941, the SS deployed Latvian Auxiliary Police battalions to Leningrad, where they were consolidated into the 2nd Latvian SS Infantry Brigade. In 1943, this brigade, which later became the 19th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (2nd Latvian), was consolidated with the 15th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Latvian) to become the Latvian Legion. Although formally the Latvian Legion was a volunteer Waffen-SS unit, it was voluntary only in name; approximately 80–85% of its men were conscripts.

Lithuania


Prior to the German invasion, some leaders in Lithuania and in exile believed Germany would grant the country autonomy, as they had the Slovak Republic. German intelligence Abwehr believed that it controlled the Lithuanian Activist Front, a pro-German organization based at the Lithuanian embassy in Berlin. Lithuanians formed the Provisional Government of Lithuania on their own initiative, but Germany did not recognize it diplomatically, or allow Lithuanian ambassador Kazys Škirpa to become prime minister. They actively thwarted his activities. The provisional government disbanded, since it had no power and it had become clear that the Germans came as occupiers not liberators from Soviet occupation, as initially thought.

Units under Algirdas Klimaitis and supervised by SS Brigadeführer Walter Stahlecker started pogroms in and around Kaunas on 25 June 1941. Lithuanian collaborators killed hundreds of thousands of Jews, Poles and Gypsies. Lithuanian-American scholar Saulius Sužiedėlis says that an increasingly antisemitic atmosphere clouded Lithuanian society, and antisemitic LAF émigrés "needed little prodding from 'foreign influences. He concluded that Lithuanian collaboration was "a significant help in facilitating all phases of the genocidal program. . . [and that] the local administration contributed, at times with zeal, to the destruction of Lithuanian Jewry". Elsewhere, Sužiedėlis similarly emphasised that Lithuania's "moral and political leadership failed in 1941, and that thousands of Lithuanians participated in the Holocaust", though he warned that "[u]ntil buttressed by reliable accounts providing time, place and at least an approximate number of victims, claims of large-scale pogroms before the advent of the German forces must be treated with caution".

In 1941, the Lithuanian Security Police was created, subordinate to Nazi Germany's Security Police and Criminal Police. Of the 26 Lithuanian Auxiliary Police Battalions, 10 were involved in the Holocaust. On August 16, the head of the Lithuanian police, Vytautas Reivytis, ordered the arrest of Jewish men and women with Bolshevik activities: "In reality, it was a sign to kill everyone." The Special SD and German Security Police Squad in Vilnius killed 70,000 Jews in Paneriai and other places. In Minsk, the 2nd Battalion shot about 9,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and in Slutsk it massacred 5,000 Jews.

In March 1942 in Poland, the 2nd Lithuanian Battalion guarded the Majdanek concentration camp. In July 1942, the 2nd Battalion participated in the deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka extermination camp. In August–October 1942, some of the Lithuanian police battalions were in Belarus and Ukraine: the 3rd in Molodechno, the 4th in Donetsk, the 7th in Vinnytsa, the 11th in Korosten, the 16th in Dnepropetrovsk, the 254th in Poltava and the 255th in Mogilev (Belarus). One battalion was also used to put down the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943.

The participation of the local populace was a key factor in the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Lithuania which resulted in the near total decimation of Lithuanian Jews living in the Nazi-occupied Lithuanian territories that would, from 25 July 1941, become the Generalbezirk Litauen of Reichskommissariat Ostland. Out of approximately 210,000 Jews, (208,000 according to the Lithuanian pre-war statistical data) an estimated 195,000–196,000 perished before the end of World War II (wider estimates are sometimes published); most from June to December 1941. The events happening in the USSR's western regions occupied by Nazi Germany in the first weeks after the German invasion (including Lithuania – see map) marked the sharp intensification of the Holocaust.

Jewish collaboration
Jews in the racist optics of Nazi Germany occupied the lowest place. They were destined for removal, first through ghettoization and exile, and finally through extermination. Because of that the subject of debate is whether one can speak of Jewish collaboration at all. If one defines collaboration as voluntary cooperation based on an ideological premises then by definition Jewish collaboration could not exist. According to Yehuda Bauer, the only Jewish collaborationist group in occupied Europe was the "Group 13" that existed in the Warsaw Ghetto, whose collaboration was based on the belief in the inevitability of German victory. According to Bauer, in the case of other Jewish groups, one should speak rather of "forced cooperation," although, as he points out, some groups came close to collaboration. According to Evgeny Finkel, defining "cooperation" in this way is problematic with regard to the activities of some Judenrat leaders and Jewish police, who were corrupt, despotic and their actions were guided primarily by the desire for profit and their own survival. Finkel proposes defining cooperation as activity aimed at the survival of the community and its individual members, while collaboration would be activity to the detriment of the community or the survival of individual Jews. Finkel stresses that cooperation was always open and visible, while collaboration could be public or private, often secret.

In most cases, Jews who chose to collaborate did so in order to guarantee their survival, which distinguished them from the members of most other ethnic groups who undertook collaboration with Nazi Germany. The phenomenon of Jewish collaboration was often exploited by nationalist apologists from groups deeply implicated in the Holocaust, who used it to minimize their groups' role in the extermination of the Jews.

In order to streamline the process of the exclusion of Jews, and to ease the burden of management, the Germans established Jewish institutions in the ghettos. These included, first and foremost, Jewish administrative boards, usually called Judenrats, and the so-called Jewish police, responsible for maintaining order in the ghettos. Formally, the Jewish police were subordinate to the Judenrats, but in most ghettos they quickly became independent of them and even gained a higher position, reporting directly to the Germans. According to Aharon Weiss's research, the activities of the first wave of Judenrat leaders were primarily aimed at improving the well-being of the communities they headed. Only their successors, chosen by the Germans among the most corrupt, were blind executors of German orders and acted mainly for their own self-interest. In some of the larger ghettos, the Judenrats were forced to prepare lists and hand over people to the Germans for deportation. More often, only the Jewish police took part in deportations. In most places this never happened. The Jewish police were widely hated among other Jews, and their members were far more likely to be corrupt and self-interested than the Judenrat leaders. In 14 ghettos, Jewish police cooperated with the resistance movement.

A separate form of collaboration was the activity of Jewish agents and informers of the German secret services and police. In most cases, they acted voluntarily, in order to gain monetary reward, power and status. They also believed collaboration increased their chance for survival. In Berlin, the Gestapo mobilized Jewish informants under threat of death. They took part in organizing provocations and arresting Jews hiding outside the ghetto or trying to escape from it, they also helped find people involved in smuggling, producing illegal documents or having contacts with the underground. They were widely regarded as influential people who could get things done with the Germans. They often took advantage of their position by taking bribes or helping selected individuals. Witold Mędykowski assesses this phenomenon as marginal; in a population of 15-20 thousand people in the Kraków ghetto, the number of informers is estimated at between a dozen and several dozen people. Informers were fought by the Jewish resistance, and by the Polish resistance but only if their activities harmed the Polish underground. The "Group 13" from the Warsaw ghetto, led by Abraham Gancwajch, was the only organized group of Jewish confidants who collaborated with the Germans on the basis of ideology.

Operating in Palestine since 1940, the Zionist Lehi group of about 100 members, led by Abraham Stern, regarded the British Empire as its main enemy. In January 1941, they offered an anti-British partnership to Germany in exchange for allowing European Jews to emigrate to Palestine.

In post-war Israel, many Jewish policemen have been brought to trial. In Poland after the war, 1,800 people were convicted by the courts for anti-Semitic persecution during the war. Among them, 44 were Jews, in their proceeding Central Committee of Polish Jews participated actively. In Western Europe, Jews accused of collaboration faced honour courts. In the Soviet Union, Jewish collaborators, such as police officers, were initially tried like any other collaborator for "treason to the motherland."