Collaboration during the Great Patriotic War: who and why went over to the side of the fascist army

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

There are different forms of collaboration: military, political and economic. One way or another, very many Soviet people had to interact with the occupation regime, who did not dare to join the ranks of the partisans. A. Tsiganok, Candidate of Military Sciences, claims that about 10% of the population collaborated with the occupiers in one way or another.

Agricultural activities, road repairs, cleaning in administrative offices or carrying out a death sentence - all these actions in the territories captured by the Germans during the Second World War fall under the definition of collaboration. Until April 1943, there was no clarification in the legal field regarding the severity of the guilt against Nazi accomplices.

Who are collaborators and what did they do during the Second World War

Active military collaboration is one of the most tragic topics in the history of the USSR. An impressive number of Soviet citizens served in the military units of Nazi Germany during the Second World War, which makes it possible to consider collaboration as a mass phenomenon. Candidate of Military Sciences A. Tsiganok calls the figure - up to 1.5 million people, the Russian historian K. Aleksandrov - 1.24 million. And these are only those who defended the interests of the Third Reich with weapons in their hands, performing tasks such as police surveillance and punitive operations against partisans.

From the local residents of the occupied territories, auxiliary police units were formed, which allowed the German administration to maintain order in the settlements. The duties of the guards included checking documents, guarding prisons and concentration camps, guarding agricultural facilities.

Also, the police were supposed to catch the "encirclements" - the soldiers of the Red Army who got out of the cauldrons. Any person in the forest who did not have a special permit to hike for firewood was subject to capture and delivery to the German administration. The policemen received 30 Reichsmarks, rations, clothes, shoes and 6 cigarettes a day.

To destroy the partisan detachments and the population loyal to them, Schuma battalions were created from the collaborationist policemen, whose members were well paid (from 40 to 130 Reichsmarks, depending on age and marital status; married people with children received more than single ones).

The battalions numbered 500, and only 9 of them were Germans. Together with regular troops, such units carried out anti-partisan operations, which were particularly brutal. From the report on Operation Swamp Fever (Belarus, 1942), we see that the punishers killed 389 armed partisans in battle, while the number of “suspicious persons” executed after the battle was 1274 people (3 times more than those killed in battle).

Another way of cooperation with the Nazis should be outlined - economic and passive military interaction, which has also become quite widespread. There were about 1 million volunteer assistants to the Wehrmacht (they were called hivi from Hilfwilliger). They performed the work of orderlies, cooks, sappers.

Who dared to serve the Hitler regime

The prisoners constituted the bulk of the military collaborators. Staying true to the oath was extremely difficult. The first reason: the action of the Geneva Convention "On the Treatment of Prisoners of War" did not apply to the Red Army soldiers, their conditions of detention were unbearable. Many died as a result of exhaustion, epidemics and torture.

In 1941, the position of the Wehrmacht was unambiguous - all the servicemen of the USSR were to be destroyed, it was not planned to involve them in the units of the German troops. The Russian geographer and publicist P. Polyan claims that of the captured Red Army soldiers in the first year of the Second World War, only 20% of the people survived.

With the first setbacks on the Eastern Front, the growth of the partisan movement, the situation began to change. The German military-political leadership formed police units from collaborators, which made it possible to free a significant part of the personnel for battles on the front lines.

The second reason is that the Soviet leadership equates surrender with a crime. The order of August 16, 41, No. 270 "On the responsibility of servicemen for the surrender and abandonment of weapons to the enemy" was in force.

Another stratum of the population, in which many collaborators were noted, are citizens with an anti-Soviet position. These are mainly those who lost their property during collectivization, relatives of repressed citizens. It should be noted that the motive of the struggle against Bolshevism is greatly exaggerated in Western historiography. In reality, few assisted the Third Reich under these slogans. The children of those who were repressed as a member of the monarchist movement were often not privy to the details of the events due to fear. For security reasons, the new generation was not indoctrinated with the idea of the need to fight against Bolshevism.

The Nazis successfully recruited representatives of the national minorities of the Soviet Union, using the idea of creating independent states. The strategy was effective where the national issue was especially acute - Ukraine, the Baltic States, the Caucasus.

Historians do not give exact numbers, since the topic of collaboration was hushed up for a long time and did not study properly. But most scientists agree that the lion's share of those who collaborated with the Nazis had the main task of surviving. Those who fought against Bolshevism were few.

How military collaborators distinguished themselves

Nazi accomplices did not achieve significant successes in battles against the Red Army and the troops of the Anti-Hitler coalition. But history knows a lot of high-profile punitive operations, the tragedy and cruelty of which goes beyond understanding.

In 1941, in the Babiy Yar tract (near Kiev), with the participation of Ukrainian collaborators, a mass massacre of Soviet prisoners of war, as well as the civilian population of Jewish and Gypsy nationalities, was committed. The death toll ranges from 100 to 150 thousand people.

"Winter Magic" - an anti-partisan operation in the north of Belarus, carried out in 1943, in which the Ukrainian and 7 Latvian police battalions took part. As a result of the action, about 11 thousand people were killed, including children.

The Kryukov tragedy, which occurred in the village of the Chernihiv region, ended in the death of more than 6 thousand people, most of which were impossible to identify. These are only the largest operations of collaborators; in total, hundreds of thousands of people have suffered from them.

The more time passes after the war, the more questions arise for everyone who is interested in history, and the more valuable the photographs taken at that time are. This is how it looks The Great Patriotic War in photographs by Dmitry Baltermants.