Talk:Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy

France: do we need this milhist here for context?

it could probably help another article if not: Vichy was also reluctant to either disarm or surrender its naval fleet in North Africa to the British, who worried that it might fall into German hands. Eventually the British Royal Navy sank or disabled most of the French Navy, killing over a thousand French sailors in a July 1940 attack on the Algerian naval port at Mers-el-Kébir.

References

French aftermath

• In addition to the collaborators who faced trial and/or rose to high office after the Liberation, the broadcaster Philippe Henriot was assassinated in June 1944, just before Paris' liberation, while the ex-Communist Jacques Doriot's plane was shot down by the Allies in February 1945 when he was en route to meet (under German pressure) his great rival the ex-Socialist Marcel Déat. Déat himself was able to escape to Italy, where he died in 1955.
• I've also read that some of the lay French public was shocked to learn about the collaborationist activities of ordinary French citizens (for example, uniformed French gendarmes as well as Germans herding Jews into eastbound cattle cars) from Marcel Ophuls' documentary The Sorrow and the Pity (Le Chagrin et la Pitié)

While I know this from my past reading, I can't now source these facts independently of their Wikipedia articles.

1. Does anyone else here have a reference, and
2. Would these items add useful detail to the Aftermath sub-section or just increase its length?

@Elinruby @Mathglot @Piotrus —— Shakescene (talk) 04:56, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

Greater Germany

This article seems to define collaboration as collaboration in places which came under German or Italian military and/or political occupation by people and institutions that were not themselves German or Italian.

However, several places outside the Reich, usually with substantial or majority German populations, in 1933 were later absorbed into or assimilated with Greater Germany. We do mention Luxembourg and the Sudetenland. But do we include under our rubric (perhaps as a separate section) those who campaigned for reunion with Greater Germany in other areas outside its jurisdiction? For example (perhaps hypothetical):

• Austria before Anschluss in 1938
• Danzig
• the Saarland before the 1934 plebiscite
• German minorities in western Poland (several of whose provinces were absorbed as Gaue into the Greater German Reich).

@Elinruby @Mathglot @Piotrus —— Shakescene (talk) 18:59, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

I believe the case of German minority in Poland is somewhat relevant, but I'd need to dig for sources. What is your question, exactly? @Dreamcatcher25 may have some thoughts on this too _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 23:10, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, @Piotrus

I had been thinking of pro-German and pro-Nazi (or pro-Italian/fascist) collaboration in countries outside—at the time—the German Reich, an example being Konrad Henlein in Czecho-Slovakia before the Munich agreement.

This is one of those gnarly Scope, Policy & Definition problems we've been wrestling with, such as how much co-operation or acquiescence (by train-drivers, mayors, police, merchants, etc.) becomes collaboration and whether Axis countries can be said to collaborate with the Axis itself.

A further question is how should Wikipedia treat collaboration in neutral countries (Franco, the Irish Republican Army, Switzerland conniving with Nazi racial policies, etc.)

So I'm asking for others' thoughts on editorial scope as much as seeking specific history.

@Mathglot @Elinruby @Dreamcatcher25

Best wished for June. —— Shakescene (talk) 00:04, 1 June 2025 (UTC)

@Shakescene You may find these articles of interest - they may need translation (but these days AI does a good job): [1], [2], [3], [4]... _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 00:11, 1 June 2025 (UTC)

Ukraine?

Looking at the structure of the whole article (instead of just fiddling with French details), I noticed a huge, gaping and significant hole in the Soviet Union section: the Ukraine.

What I write below isn't sourced, but an outline what I have understood from reading some general books and magazines and from talking to non-experts:

The Nazis at first fertile ground with Ukrainians who had just suffered for nearly a decade under Stalin's policies of forced collectivisation and what is often considered to be deliberate starvation: damning Russia, Stalin and the Jews proved an attractive slogan at first. But after a month or two of the Reichskommissariat, many Ukrainians found the German occupation even worse and joined the Communist partisans

So the Ukraine is obviously an important part of our topic. But also explosive in the current moment as President Putin denies a separate Ukrainian nationality and accuses the current democratically-elected Ukrainian government (headed by a Jew) of anti-Semitism, fascism, etc. Heaven knows we don't want to reopen on another front all the politically-motivated edit wars from which we've just emerged.

Would @Piotrus (who laboured many nights over the Baltic section) or one of his/her colleagues be interested in writing something more solid about this very important sub-topic? @Mathglot @Elinruby. Thanks for any comments. —— Shakescene (talk) 19:07, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Touchy topic. But it is implausible we did not have such a section, and indeed, we did. It was removed by @Elinruby two years ago; they were right it was poorly sourced, but I am not convinced just blanking it was the good idea. From the old section, refs 1, 3, 4, 6 (sigh :P), 7, 9 and 10 do seem fine, and content sourced to them could be restored. See Talk:Collaboration_with_Nazi_Germany_and_Fascist_Italy/Archive_11#Ukrainian_section for the section and res in question; Elinruby correctly started a discussion about it back then, but sadly, nobody cared to comment. I fully agree the section is needed. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 00:26, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

Shakescene, we already have the article Ukrainian collaboration with Nazi Germany. We do not need to duplicate it here. Dimadick (talk) 05:05, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

Well, it should be summarized here, like we do with other countries. Nobody is proposing duplicates. No straw men, please. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:20, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

We have a fairly-full section for French collaboration, too, but I know that at least the parts I wrote weren't just a straight lift from Vichy France. I created Wartime collaboration in the Baltic states from the Baltic section here, in the hopes that the former could be increased by, e.g. adding collaboration with the U.S.S.R. and also in hopes (not yet fulfilled) that the Baltic section here could be shortened to match other similar parts of this article. @Mathglot @Elinruby @Piotrus @Dimadick—— Shakescene (talk) 13:58, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

For the moment, I've added a provisional empty section with a temporay template directing readers to the full article on Ukrainian collaboration.—— Shakescene (talk) 01:24, 21 June 2025 (UTC) @Dimadick@Piotrus @Mathglot @Elinruby

Good. I think we should add referenced content from the lead of that article. Assuming the refs are up to standard... (looking... seem ok-ish). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:29, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

Please, consider this book by Timothy Snyder as a source as well.

• Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning. Penguin, 2015. ISBN 978-1-101-90347-6

78.81.123.235 (talk) 14:41, 5 July 2025 (UTC)