What is collaboration: betrayal or struggle for freedom?

Surely many people do not know what collaboration is, and they hear this word for the first time. In the legal interpretation, this voluntary, deliberate, willful cooperation with enemies in their interests and at the expense of their country, in other words - treason. This term was first voiced during World War II, in 1940, when Marshal Petain, the head of the Vichy regime, called on the French nation to cooperate with the German authorities during the occupation of France.

Later on, what is collaborationism, learned in other countries. The term began to apply to all European governments that operated under the German occupation (the regime of the Lokot Republic, the government of Quisling in Norway, the activities of the "Melnikovs" in the occupied territory of the USSR, etc.), as well as the citizens of the occupied countries controlled by the Nazi bloc of military organizations Division of the SS, Vlasov's army, etc.).

Collaborationism in World War II

In historical science, fiction, publicistic works, the heroism of millions of people during the war is widely covered - sometimes genuine, sometimes mythologized, sometimes imaginary. But there were other people - those who collaborated with the Nazis, trying by any means to survive in the conditions of the occupation regime. Now it is often possible to meet the statements of historians that the Soviet Union was a country of traitors, supposedly hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens rose under the banner of the Third Reich, thus trying to fight the hated Stalinist regime. Is it really? Was Russian collaboration really so massive? Let's try to understand.

Cooperation with the fascists

It would be pointless to deny that collaboration in the Great Patriotic War took place. It is known for sure that several tens of thousands of Russian citizens who joined the ROA (Russian Liberation Army) detachments in February 1945 with weapons in their hands tried on the Oder to stop the victorious offensive against Berlin of our army. And how many traitors were there? By February 45th ROA had two divisions formed, including about forty thousand people, and one undeformed, numbering ten to twelve thousand fighters. Also nominally to the ROA was the Cossack Corps of Helmut von Pannwitz, consisting of forty-five thousand people, and a Russian corps, formed of emigrants, who fought in Serbia, including about six thousand fighters. Thus, there were only one hundred and twenty thousand people in the ROA detachments. In various collaborative services in the territory of the whole of the USSR, in total, up to eight hundred thousand fighters (according to German data) were involved. That's all!

Types of Collaboration

It should be said that state treason can be different: administrative, intellectual, military, economic, spiritual, ideological, national, sexual, and child. So, some people collaborated with enemies with weapons in hand - this is military collaborationism. In the USSR, France and other countries during the Second World War there was another category of people who provided their intellect to the service of the enemy: the spiritual power of the priest, the skill of the actor, the talent of the worker. As for children's collaboration, he seems to have been rash. German officers selected thousands of Russian hungry children, fed, and then gave pieces of TNT and offered to throw them at railway stations to piles of coal. Almost all the children did not complete the assignment, and those who did it, for sure, did it because of thoughtlessness.

Love and the Germans

And how was sexual collaboration in the Second World War manifested? Europe needed people with good blood. Remember the soloist of the Swedish group "ABBA" Anni-Frid Lingstad? She is just the product of sexual collaboration. Her father is a German soldier, and her mother is a Norwegian. Russian girls, from the racial point of view, did not meet the requirements of the Third Reich . Even orders were issued prohibiting the German invaders from cohabiting with our women in order to avoid damage to the Aryan blood. However, in practice, things were different. Between people who looked at the front from the deep rear, and those who were in its very heat, there were certain contradictions. For example, in Orel, General Gaman, the German commandant, announced that if a woman proves that she had given birth to a child from a German soldier, she will receive alimony from the German command.

Massacre

About what is collaborationism, they knew in all countries of Europe, but they dealt with traitors everywhere in different ways. For example, in Norway, a person who simply responded to the same greeting with a German, had to publicly repent. What can we say about active collaborators. They were sentenced to death, imprisoned. It was the same in the Soviet Union. Even in the post-war period, people who used to be in the occupied territories had to reflect this fact in questionnaires. It was a black mark, the so-called Kainova seal, signaling that such a person should be treated with caution.

Finally

And what is collaboration in the understanding of modern people? For example, now in the Baltic countries, collaborators are called liberators. They are proclaimed heroes and fighters for freedom. Fortunately, the people who stand up for this point of view are a minority. We should not heroize the criminals who fought on the side of the fascists with weapons in their hands. We can not allow, that after decades after the victory was won, we tried to steal it!