AP Syllabus focus:
'The Holocaust was carried out with help from some Axis allies and collaborationist governments across Europe.'
Nazi persecution became far more effective when local governments, police forces, and civilians assisted German authorities. Collaboration turned occupation into a Europe-wide system of exclusion, arrest, deportation, and murder.
Why Collaboration Was Crucial
Nazi Germany did not have enough officials, police, or soldiers to identify, isolate, arrest, and deport millions across an entire continent by itself. As German control spread, the regime relied on existing state institutions and local elites to make persecution workable. Collaboration connected German racial goals to local administration, policing, and social control.
One major vehicle was the collaborationist government.
Collaborationist government: A regime that cooperated with an occupying or dominant foreign power and helped enforce its political, military, or racial policies.
These governments and institutions helped persecution expand by:
registering Jews and preserving census records
excluding Jews from schools, professions, and public office
confiscating businesses, homes, and valuables
supplying police for roundups and transit-site security
organizing transport for deportations
Local knowledge mattered enormously. Municipal clerks, police officers, neighbors, and informers often knew where Jews lived, who had gone into hiding, and what property could be seized. This made persecution faster, cheaper, and more thorough.
State Collaboration in Occupied and Allied Europe
Vichy France
After France’s defeat in 1940, the Vichy regime under Marshal Pétain did not merely obey German orders. It issued its own anti-Jewish laws, removed Jews from public life, and cooperated in identifying and isolating them. French police played a central role in arrests and roundups, including the Vel' d'Hiv roundup of 1942. The French-run transit camp at Drancy became a key site from which Jews were deported eastward.
Map and site imagery from the USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia showing Drancy’s role as a major transit camp in France and situating it within the broader network of Nazi camps in Europe. Used alongside your notes, it helps students see how deportation depended on identifiable places, bureaucratic routing, and coordinated transport systems—not only on frontline violence. Source
Administrative cooperation gave Nazi persecution a reach that German manpower alone could not have achieved in France.
Slovakia, Croatia, Romania, and Hungary
Some Axis allies went beyond passive compliance. The Slovak state adopted anti-Jewish legislation and assisted deportations. In the Independent State of Croatia, the fascist Ustaše regime pursued violent racial and nationalist goals of its own, persecuting Jews while also targeting Serbs and Roma. Here, collaboration was tied to local state-building and extreme nationalism, not simply submission.
Romania participated directly in pogroms, massacres, and deportations, especially in areas under Romanian control. Hungary had already enacted anti-Jewish measures before 1944; after German occupation, Hungarian administrators and the gendarmerie helped deport hundreds of thousands of Jews with extraordinary speed.
Archival photograph (Szombathely, Hungary, June 30, 1944) showing Hungarian gendarmes overseeing the deportation of Jews from a ghetto. The image makes the mechanics of collaboration visible: local uniformed forces controlling the process on the ground, turning policy into arrests, forced movement, and transfer into the deportation system. Source
In each case, local state power expanded the scale of persecution.
Occupied Northern and Western Europe
Even in places without a powerful allied state, German rule often depended on local cooperation. In countries such as Norway, collaborationist leaders and domestic police could assist registration, arrest, and deportation.
Press photograph from Oslo (September 26, 1943) showing Vidkun Quisling with Nasjonal Samling ministers in a propaganda-style leadership gathering under German occupation. As a visual primary source, it underscores that collaboration was often institutional and governmental—providing domestic authority structures that could support occupation policies. Source
Elsewhere, local civil services and police forces helped maintain records, enforce restrictions, and carry out raids, giving occupation authorities a practical grip on daily life.
Institutions, Denunciation, and Everyday Complicity
Collaboration was not limited to high politics. It also depended on ordinary institutions and everyday choices. Civil servants processed identity papers. Police guarded ghettos or transit centers. Railway and transport officials enabled deportation. Employers and neighbors sometimes profited from the removal of Jews through cheap labor, vacant housing, or confiscated businesses.
Forms of collaboration included:
bureaucratic collaboration through paperwork and registration
policing collaboration through raids, arrests, and guarding
economic collaboration through Aryanization and property seizure
social collaboration through denunciations, blackmail, and betrayal
In parts of eastern Europe, local auxiliaries and militias also helped carry out shootings, ghetto liquidations, or searches for those in hiding. This shows that the expansion of persecution was administrative as well as violent: it rested on records, transport, property transfer, and local enforcement.
Motives Behind Collaboration
Motives varied from place to place and often overlapped.
Ideology: antisemitism, fascism, and ultranationalism made Nazi racial policy appealing to some groups.
Political calculation: some rulers hoped cooperation would preserve autonomy or win German favor.
Material gain: businesses, homes, jobs, and valuables taken from Jews created powerful incentives.
Fear and coercion: occupation pressured officials and civilians, though coercion alone does not explain the scale of involvement.
Opportunism: collaboration could offer promotion, influence, or protection.
In some regions, local actors did not just assist German plans; they radicalized them. Their own antisemitic traditions, nationalist agendas, or political ambitions deepened persecution beyond what German occupation forces could organize quickly on their own.
Variation Across Europe
Collaboration was widespread, but it was not uniform. Some governments were eager partners, some officials slowed implementation, and some societies produced stronger rescue networks than others. These differences affected:
how quickly Jews were identified
how effective deportations became
how possible hiding or escape remained
how completely Jewish property was taken
The extent of local cooperation shaped the pace and intensity of persecution across Europe.
FAQ
Bulgaria allied itself with Nazi Germany and passed anti-Jewish measures, so it did collaborate.
However, most Jews living within Bulgaria’s pre-war borders survived. Pressure from members of parliament, the Orthodox Church, and parts of the public helped block their deportation. At the same time, Bulgarian authorities did deport Jews from occupied territories in Thrace and Macedonia.
This makes Bulgaria a striking example of how collaboration and limitation could exist together in the same state.
Denmark is notable because most Danish Jews escaped deportation in 1943.
When the danger became urgent, resistance groups, fishermen, and ordinary citizens helped ferry Jews to neutral Sweden. Danish officials and society were less willing to participate fully in anti-Jewish persecution than many collaborationist regimes elsewhere.
Denmark does not mean Nazi policy was weak; rather, it shows that where local cooperation was limited and rescue networks were active, persecution could be disrupted.
Church responses varied widely across Europe.
Some clergy remained silent, accepted antisemitic assumptions, or prioritised order over protest. Others condemned particular deportations, hid Jews, or helped forge documents. Institutional churches often acted cautiously because they feared repression or believed open confrontation would worsen conditions.
The result was uneven: churches sometimes reinforced passivity, but in certain places individual clergy and church networks became important centres of rescue or public protest.
After 1945, governments had to decide how far to punish collaboration without causing further instability.
Differences came from several factors:
whether the state had remained intact during the war
how much evidence survived
whether civil conflict continued after liberation
whether leaders wanted harsh purges or rapid national reconciliation
Some countries held prominent trials and public purges. Others punished only the most visible collaborators and folded many former officials back into public life. Politics often shaped justice as much as morality did.
Many countries preferred to remember themselves primarily as victims or resisters after 1945.
Admitting collaboration forces difficult questions about state responsibility, antisemitism, and the behaviour of ordinary people. As archives opened and historians produced new research, older national myths were challenged. This often led to public disputes over monuments, school curricula, official apologies, and the role of police or civil servants.
The controversy persists because collaboration was not only a story of dictators and occupiers; it also involved familiar institutions within European societies.
Practice Questions
Identify TWO ways in which collaborationist governments assisted Nazi persecution in Europe during the Holocaust. (2 marks)
1 mark for each valid identification, up to 2 marks:
enforced anti-Jewish laws
registered or identified Jews
used police for roundups or arrests
confiscated Jewish property
organized or guarded deportations or transit camps
Evaluate the extent to which local collaboration, rather than German coercion alone, enabled the expansion of persecution across Europe from 1940 to 1944. (6 marks)
1 mark for a clear argument about the extent of collaboration’s importance
1 mark for specific evidence from western or northern Europe, such as Vichy France or Norway
1 mark for specific evidence from eastern or southeastern Europe, such as Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, or Croatia
1 mark for explaining how collaboration operated through police, bureaucracy, transport, or property seizure
1 mark for analysis of why local knowledge or institutions made persecution more effective
1 mark for complexity, such as noting that German leadership remained central or that collaboration varied by country
