What would you do if your country was defeated and occupied in war, only to be liberated four years later? Philip Morgan’s answer is that you’d probably exaggerate your role in resisting the occupiers and be exonerated by a society eager to get on with it. Hitler’s Collaborators is a sophisticated analysis of wartime politics and postwar court records in Nazi-occupied Western Europe. Each country had its peculiarities, but overall, the Nazis found few ideological comrades among the conquered nations and distrusted the local Nazis in any event. However, they had no problem finding profit-seekers in business or in establishing working relations with civil servants determined to deliver the mail, process pensions and carry on the normal functions of government. The responses of occupied people often shifted according to the fortunes of war. There were few “heroes,” at least not until German defeat was imminent. The reader is thrust into uncomfortable shoes by Hitler’s Collaborators. What would you do under a similar situation? Think about it carefully before answering.
