Collaborationism
Encyclopedia
Collaborationism is cooperation
with enemy force
s against one's country
. Legally, it may be considered as a form of treason
. Collaborationism may be associated with criminal
deeds in the service of the occupying power, which may include complicit
y with the occupying power in murder
, persecution
s, pillage, and economic
exploitation
or participation in a puppet government.
against smugglers trading with England
and assisting in the escape of monarchists, and is itself derived from the Latin collaboratus, past participle of collaborare "work with", from com- "with" + labore "to work." The meaning of "traitorous cooperation with the enemy" dates from 1940, originally in reference to the Vichy Government
of France and those who cooperated with or helped the Nazis, following the French defeat in the Battle of France
.
or were simply anti-communists. Collaborateurs on the other hand, could engage in collaboration for a number of more pragmatic reasons, such as preventing infrastructure damage for use by the occupation forces or personal ambition, and were not necessarily believers in fascism per se. Arch-collaborators like Pierre Laval
or René Bousquet
are thus distinct from collaborationists.
Recent research by the British historian, Simon Kitson
, has shown that French authorities did not wait until the Liberation to begin pursuing collaborationists. The Vichy government, itself heavily engaged in collaboration, arrested around 2000 individuals on charges of passing information to the Germans. Their reasons for doing so was to centralise collaboration to ensure that the state maintained a monopoly in Franco-German relations and to defend sovereignty so that they could negotiate from a position of strength. It was among the many compromises that the government engaged along the way.
(1887-1945), a senior officer in the Norwegian army, served the Nazis as prime minister. He gave his name to the high profile government collaborator.
(1880-1946) was a Slovene general who collaborated as he took control of the semi-independent region of the Italian-occupied southern Slovenia known as the Province of Ljubljana
, which came under German control in 1943.
or English radio-personality Lord Haw-Haw
.
saw institutions and individuals collaborating with occupying Soviet forces until the Soviet-backed regimes in their countries collapsed in 1989 and 1990.
More recent examples of collaboration, according to some, have included institutions and individuals in Afghanistan
who collaborated with the Soviet occupation until 1989 and individuals in Iraq
and Afghanistan today who continue to work with American forces.
society, collaboration with Israel
is viewed as a serious offence and social stain. Suspects have even on occasion been killed: in the few years preceding 2009, hundreds of suspected collaborators have been killed by fellow Palestinians. In addition, during the period of 2007-2009, around 30 Palestinians have been sentenced to death in court on collaboration-related charges, although the sentences have not been carried out.
In June 2009, Raed Sualha, a 15-year-old Palestinian boy, was brutally tortured and hanged by his family because they suspected him of collaborating with Israel. Palestinian authorities launched an investigation into the case and arrested the perpetrators. Police said it was unlikely that such a young boy would have been recruited as an informer.
During the Arab Uprising against British rule in Mandatory Palestine in 1936, a large number of the thousands of Arabs who died were accused of collaboration with Jews. These included people with contact with Jews, such as village elders, teachers, students, farm laborers, skilled laborers, nurses and businessmen. Many of those deemed pro-Jewish often retaliated, but more either left Palestine or ended contact with Jews out of fear for their lives.
Cooperation
Cooperation or co-operation is the process of working or acting together. In its simplest form it involves things working in harmony, side by side, while in its more complicated forms, it can involve something as complex as the inner workings of a human being or even the social patterns of a...
with enemy force
Force
In physics, a force is any influence that causes an object to undergo a change in speed, a change in direction, or a change in shape. In other words, a force is that which can cause an object with mass to change its velocity , i.e., to accelerate, or which can cause a flexible object to deform...
s against one's country
Country
A country is a region legally identified as a distinct entity in political geography. A country may be an independent sovereign state or one that is occupied by another state, as a non-sovereign or formerly sovereign political division, or a geographic region associated with a previously...
. Legally, it may be considered as a form of treason
Treason
In law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one's sovereign or nation. Historically, treason also covered the murder of specific social superiors, such as the murder of a husband by his wife. Treason against the king was known as high treason and treason against a...
. Collaborationism may be associated with criminal
Crime
Crime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction...
deeds in the service of the occupying power, which may include complicit
Complicit
An individual is complicit in a crime if he/she is aware of its occurrence and has the ability to report the crime, but fails to do so. As such, the individual effectively allows criminals to carry out a crime despite possibly being able to stop them, either directly or by contacting the...
y with the occupying power in murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
, persecution
Persecution
Persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or group by another group. The most common forms are religious persecution, ethnic persecution, and political persecution, though there is naturally some overlap between these terms. The inflicting of suffering, harassment, isolation,...
s, pillage, and economic
Economy
An economy consists of the economic system of a country or other area; the labor, capital and land resources; and the manufacturing, trade, distribution, and consumption of goods and services of that area...
exploitation
Exploitation
This article discusses the term exploitation in the meaning of using something in an unjust or cruel manner.- As unjust benefit :In political economy, economics, and sociology, exploitation involves a persistent social relationship in which certain persons are being mistreated or unfairly used for...
or participation in a puppet government.
Etymology
The term collaborate dates from 1871, and is a back-formation from collaborator (1802), from the French collaborateur as used during the Napoleonic WarsNapoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
against smugglers trading with England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and assisting in the escape of monarchists, and is itself derived from the Latin collaboratus, past participle of collaborare "work with", from com- "with" + labore "to work." The meaning of "traitorous cooperation with the enemy" dates from 1940, originally in reference to the Vichy Government
Vichy France
Vichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...
of France and those who cooperated with or helped the Nazis, following the French defeat in the Battle of France
Battle of France
In the Second World War, the Battle of France was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries, beginning on 10 May 1940, which ended the Phoney War. The battle consisted of two main operations. In the first, Fall Gelb , German armoured units pushed through the Ardennes, to cut off and...
.
France
In France, a distinction emerged between the collaborateur and the collaborationniste. The latter expression is mainly used to describe individuals enrolled in pseudo-Nazi parties, often based in Paris, who had an overwhelming belief in fascist ideologyFascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
or were simply anti-communists. Collaborateurs on the other hand, could engage in collaboration for a number of more pragmatic reasons, such as preventing infrastructure damage for use by the occupation forces or personal ambition, and were not necessarily believers in fascism per se. Arch-collaborators like Pierre Laval
Pierre Laval
Pierre Laval was a French politician. He was four times President of the council of ministers of the Third Republic, twice consecutively. Following France's Armistice with Germany in 1940, he served twice in the Vichy Regime as head of government, signing orders permitting the deportation of...
or René Bousquet
René Bousquet
René Bousquet was a high-ranking French civil servant, who served as secretary general to the Vichy regime police from May 1942 to 31 December 1943.-Biography:...
are thus distinct from collaborationists.
Recent research by the British historian, Simon Kitson
Simon Kitson
Simon Kitson is a British historian.Kitson did his undergraduate studies at the University of Ulster and his post-graduate studies at the University of Sussex, under the supervision of Professor Roderick Kedward...
, has shown that French authorities did not wait until the Liberation to begin pursuing collaborationists. The Vichy government, itself heavily engaged in collaboration, arrested around 2000 individuals on charges of passing information to the Germans. Their reasons for doing so was to centralise collaboration to ensure that the state maintained a monopoly in Franco-German relations and to defend sovereignty so that they could negotiate from a position of strength. It was among the many compromises that the government engaged along the way.
Low countries
The collaborators in Belgium were chiefly Walloons organized into the Rexist movement. There was an active collaboration movement in the Netherlands.Norway
Vidkun QuislingVidkun Quisling
Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonssøn Quisling was a Norwegian politician. On 9 April 1940, with the German invasion of Norway in progress, he seized power in a Nazi-backed coup d'etat that garnered him international infamy. From 1942 to 1945 he served as Minister-President, working with the occupying...
(1887-1945), a senior officer in the Norwegian army, served the Nazis as prime minister. He gave his name to the high profile government collaborator.
Yugoslavia
Leon RupnikLeon Rupnik
Leon Rupnik, also known as Lav Rupnik or Lev Rupnik was a Slovene general during the Kingdom of Yugoslavia who collaborated with the Fascist Italian and Nazi German occupation forces during World War II...
(1880-1946) was a Slovene general who collaborated as he took control of the semi-independent region of the Italian-occupied southern Slovenia known as the Province of Ljubljana
Province of Ljubljana
The Province of Ljubljana was a province of the Kingdom of Italy and of the Nazi German Adriatic Littoral during World War II. It was created on May 3, 1941 from territory occupied and annexed to Italy after the Axis invasion and dissolution of Yugoslavia, and it was abolished on May 9, 1945, when...
, which came under German control in 1943.
Celebrities
High-profile collaborators included Dutch actor Johannes HeestersJohannes Heesters
Johan Marius Nicolaas "Johannes" Heesters is a Dutch actor, singer and entertainer with a -year career, almost exclusively in the German-speaking world. In Germany and Austria, Heesters is mainly known for his acting career...
or English radio-personality Lord Haw-Haw
Lord Haw-Haw
Lord Haw-Haw was the nickname of several announcers on the English-language propaganda radio programme Germany Calling, broadcast by Nazi German radio to audiences in Great Britain on the medium wave station Reichssender Hamburg and by shortwave to the United States...
.
Postwar Europe
Post-World War II Soviet-occupied Eastern EuropeEastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
saw institutions and individuals collaborating with occupying Soviet forces until the Soviet-backed regimes in their countries collapsed in 1989 and 1990.
More recent examples of collaboration, according to some, have included institutions and individuals in Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
who collaborated with the Soviet occupation until 1989 and individuals in Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
and Afghanistan today who continue to work with American forces.
Among Palestinians
In PalestinianPalestinian people
The Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with origins in Palestine. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one third of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza...
society, collaboration with Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
is viewed as a serious offence and social stain. Suspects have even on occasion been killed: in the few years preceding 2009, hundreds of suspected collaborators have been killed by fellow Palestinians. In addition, during the period of 2007-2009, around 30 Palestinians have been sentenced to death in court on collaboration-related charges, although the sentences have not been carried out.
In June 2009, Raed Sualha, a 15-year-old Palestinian boy, was brutally tortured and hanged by his family because they suspected him of collaborating with Israel. Palestinian authorities launched an investigation into the case and arrested the perpetrators. Police said it was unlikely that such a young boy would have been recruited as an informer.
During the Arab Uprising against British rule in Mandatory Palestine in 1936, a large number of the thousands of Arabs who died were accused of collaboration with Jews. These included people with contact with Jews, such as village elders, teachers, students, farm laborers, skilled laborers, nurses and businessmen. Many of those deemed pro-Jewish often retaliated, but more either left Palestine or ended contact with Jews out of fear for their lives.
See also
- Anti-fascismAnti-fascismAnti-fascism is the opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals, such as that of the resistance movements during World War II. The related term antifa derives from Antifaschismus, which is German for anti-fascism; it refers to individuals and groups on the left of the political...
- Anti-communismAnti-communismAnti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
- ChinilpaChinilpaChinilpa is a Korean word that denotes Koreans who collaborated with the Japanese government during its reign over Korea , or shortly before...
- JashJashJash , or fursan is a type of collaborator, usually a military unit composed of people of Kurdish descent that cooperates with enemy combatants against the Kurdish army, Kurdish rebels, or the Kurdish civilian population...
- Collaboration during World War IICollaboration during World War IIWithin nations occupied by the Axis Powers, some citizens, driven by nationalism, ethnic hatred, anti-communism, anti-Semitism or opportunism, knowingly engaged in collaboration with the Axis Powers during World War II...
- Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime ChinaCollaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime ChinaCollaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime China is a history book which investigates collaboration between the Chinese elites and Japanese, following the attack on the Chinese city of Shanghai in August 1937, just before the outbreak of the Second World War, and during the...
- Dhimmi (pejorative sense)
- HanjianHanjianIn Chinese culture, a Hanjian is a derogatory and pejorative term for a race traitor to the Han Chinese nation or state, and to a lesser extent, Han ethnicity. The word Hanjian is distinct from the general word for traitor, which could be used for any race or country...
- HilfspolizeiHilfspolizeiThe Hilfspolizei was a short-lived auxiliary police in Nazi Germany in 1933.The Hilfspolizei was created on February 22, 1933 by Hermann Göring, newly appointed Interior Minister of Prussia, to assist regular police in maintaining order and persecuting communist in the wake of the Reichstag fire...
- MedismMedismMedism can refer to:* In ancient Greece, imitating or having sympathies or siding with the Persians . It was considered a crime in many ancient Greek states. Themistocles the Athenian was ostracized for Medism...
- OpportunismOpportunism-General definition:Opportunism is the conscious policy and practice of taking selfish advantage of circumstances, with little regard for principles. Opportunist actions are expedient actions guided primarily by self-interested motives. The term can be applied to individuals, groups,...
- Palestinian territoriesPalestinian territoriesThe Palestinian territories comprise the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Since the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988, the region is today recognized by three-quarters of the world's countries as the State of Palestine or simply Palestine, although this status is not recognized by the...
- Puppet government
- Pursuit of Nazi collaboratorsPursuit of Nazi collaboratorsThe pursuit of Nazi collaborators refers to the post-World War II pursuit and apprehension of individuals who were not citizens of the Third Reich at the outbreak of World War II and collaborated with the Nazi regime during the war...
- QuislingQuislingQuisling is a term used in reference to fascist and collaborationist political parties and military and paramilitary forces in occupied Allied countries which collaborated with Axis occupiers in World War II, as well as for their members and other collaborators.- Etymology :The term was coined by...
- Resistance during World War IIResistance during World War IIResistance movements during World War II occurred in every occupied country by a variety of means, ranging from non-cooperation, disinformation and propaganda to hiding crashed pilots and even to outright warfare and the recapturing of towns...
- TreasonTreasonIn law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one's sovereign or nation. Historically, treason also covered the murder of specific social superiors, such as the murder of a husband by his wife. Treason against the king was known as high treason and treason against a...