Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy

Some countries' leaders such as Henrik Werth of Axis member Hungary, cooperated with Italy and Germany because they wanted to regain territories lost during and after World War I, or which their nationalist citizens simply coveted.

Axis military forces recruited many volunteers, sometimes at gunpoint, more often with promises that they later broke, or from among POWs trying to escape appalling and frequently lethal conditions in their detention camps.

Gérard Romsée [fr], the former secretary-general for internal affairs, was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment, and Gaston Schuind, Judicial Police of Brussels,[15][unreliable source?]

The four main political factions which emerged as leading proponents of radical collaborationism in France were Marcel Déat's National Popular Rally (Rassemblement National Populaire, RNP), Jacques Doriot's French Popular Party (Parti Populaire Français, PPF), Eugène Deloncle's Social Revolutionary Movement (Mouvement Social Révolutionnaire, MSR), and Pierre Costantini's French League (Ligue Française).

[54] Throughout that summer, L'Humanité and the entire communist underground press continued to publish articles preaching "Franco-German brotherhood," denouncing "British imperialism," and depicting de Gaulle as a reactionary and war-mongering soldier.

Historians differ how much of Vichy's anti-Semitic campaigns came from native French roots, how much from willing collaboration with the German occupiers and how much from simple (and sometimes reluctant) cooperation with Nazi instructions.

[110] The creation of the Arājs Kommando was "one of the most significant inventions of the early Holocaust",[109] and marked a transition from German-organised pogroms to systematic killing of Jews by local volunteers (former army officers, policemen, students, and Aizsargi).

[clarification needed] On August 16, the head of the Lithuanian police, Vytautas Reivytis [lt], ordered the arrest of Jewish men and women with Bolshevik activities: "In reality, it was a sign to kill everyone.

[138] Henlein also tried to expel all Czechs from the Sudetenland, but the neighbouring Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia refused to accept them and he was informed that the need of the area's factories for labour outweighed such ethnic policies.

[citation needed] During the war, Jews were called up to serve in unarmed "labour service" (munkaszolgálat) units which repaired bombed railroads, built airports or cleaned up minefields at the front barehanded.

[citation needed] Nonetheless, half of the Jews living within the pre-Barbarossa borders survived the war, although they were subject to a wide range of harsh conditions, including forced labor, financial penalties, and discriminatory laws.

The survival of Jews in some parts of the country does not alter this reality.On 25 March 1941, under considerable pressure, the Yugoslav government agreed to the signing of the Tripartite Pact with Nazi Germany, guaranteeing Yugoslavia's neutrality.

[190] The Central Serbia region and the Banat were subjected to German military occupation in the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia, Italian forces occupied the Dalmatian coast and Montenegro; Albania annexed the Kosovo region and part of Macedonia; Bulgaria received Vardar Macedonia (today's North Macedonia); Hungary occupied and annexed the Bačka and Baranya regions as well as Međimurje and Prekmurje; the rest of Drava Banovina (roughly present-day Slovenia) was divided between Germany and Italy; Croatia, Syrmia and Bosnia were combined into the Independent State of Croatia, a puppet state under the direction of Croatian fascist Ante Pavelić.

[207][208][209] The Auxiliary Police Troop and the Russian Protective Corps were paramilitary units raised in the German-occupied territory of Serbia, composed exclusively of anti-communist White émigrés or Volksdeutsche from Russia, under the command of General Mikhail Skorodumov (around 400 and 7,500 men respectively by December 1942).

The division's soldiers brutally punished civilians accused of working with partisans in both occupied Serbia and the Independent State of Croatia, going so far as to raze entire villages.

[215] Most of Kosovo and the western part of southern Serbia (Juzna Srbija, included in Zeta Banovina) was annexed to Albania by fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.

[218][page needed] The Balli Kombëtar militias, or Ballistas, were volunteer Albanian nationalistic groups that started as a resistance movement, then collaborated with the Axis Powers in hopes of seeing Greater Albania created.

One of the biggest components of the MVAC was the Civic Guards (Vaške Straže [sl]),[223] a Slovene volunteer military organization formed by the Italian Fascist authorities to fight the partisans, as well as some collaborationist Chetniks units.

Volunteer pilots joined the Luftwaffe as Pavelić did not want to get his army directly involved for both propaganda reasons (Domobrans/Home Guards were a "chieftain of Croatian values, never attacking and only defending") and due to a safeguarding need for political flexibility with the Soviet Union.Pavelić proclaimed that Croats were the descendants of Goths, to eliminate the leadership's inferiority complex and be better viewed by the Germans.

[236] Already from the very first days, individual deserters and prisoners from the Red Army were offering their help to the Germans in auxiliary duties such as, but not limited to, cooking, driving, and medical assistance.

[242] Joseph Stalin subsequently declared the Kalmyk population as a whole to be German collaborators in 1943 and ordered mass deportations to Siberia, causing great loss of life.

[citation needed] Ethnic Armenian, Georgian, Turkic and Caucasian forces deployed by the Germans consisted primarily of Soviet Red Army POWs assembled into ill-trained legions.

[247] The well-publicized Arab-Jewish clash in Mandatory Palestine from 1936 to 1939, and the rise of Nazi Germany, began to affect Jewish relations with Egyptian society, despite the fact that the number of active Zionists was small.

[251] Concerned that the French fleet might fall into German hands, the British Royal Navy sank or disabled most of it in the July 1940 attack on the Algerian naval port at Mers-el-Kébir, which poisoned Anglo-French relations and led to Vichy reprisals.

[252] When Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa, began on 8 November 1942 with landings in Morocco and Algeria, Vichy forces initially resisted, killing 479 and wounding 720.

Admiral François Darlan appointed himself High Commissioner of France (head of civil government) for North and West Africa, then ordered Vichy forces there to stop resisting and co-operate with the Allies, which they did.

[257] In 1940, Résident Général Charles Noguès implemented antisemitic decrees coming from Vichy excluding Moroccan Jews from working as doctors, lawyers or teachers.

[267] Germany permitted French aircraft en route from Algeria to Syria to fly over Axis-controlled territory and refuel at the German-controlled Eleusina air base in Greece.

Displaced Persons Commission clarified the U.S. position on the Baltic Waffen-SS Units, considering them distinct from the German SS in purpose, ideology, activities and qualifications for membership.

[286] Major American companies with investments in Germany included General Motors, Standard Oil, IT&T, Singer, International Harvester, Eastman Kodak, Gillette, Coca-Cola, Kraft, Westinghouse, and United Fruit.