Let’s continue the discussion of who was the enemy of the resistance during WWII. The simple answer is the Nazis and all the Germans who obeyed the Nazi government, particularly the Wehrmacht and police agencies. But reality is never that simple. The enemy of the resistance was both Nazis (people) and Nazism (worldview).

We’ll start with the people. And we don’t need to talk about the Gestapo or any other German in uniform. But we do need to talk about the non-German Nazis, generally known as collaborators. Collaborators, or collabos to use the slang of the day, came in a wide range of conviction and action.

At the far end of the scale were non-Germans who fervently believed in Nazism and hailed Hitler as a great leader and savior. You don’t have to look hard to find these people because they liked to march around in Nazi-type uniforms, terrorize their neighbors and pose for photographs. They had political parties like Anton Mussert’s NSB (national socialist movement) in the Netherlands or even Oswald Mosley’s short-lived British Union of Fascists. These people crossed the social and economic spectrums to include well-educated individuals with hefty bank accounts and down-and-out thugs looking for a rumble.

It was also possible to collaborate in military ways. This included policing units such as the French Milice with a paramilitary mandate to keep their fellow Frenchmen in line. It also included non-Germans who fought with the Wehrmacht. They were usually organized by nationality into legions or divisions. So an Estonian volunteer would be fighting alongside other Estonians, for example.

The issue of foreign volunteers in the Wehrmacht, however, needs to be treated with caution. Joining a political party such as the BUF was clearly a much freer choice than “volunteering” for the Wehrmacht. Yes, some soldiers enlisted with their national legion in the Wehrmacht for ideological reasons. But others enlisted under severe pressure. For example, during the Hunger Winter of 1944-1945 when the German occupation forces refused to release food to the Dutch civilians living in the part of the country that they still controlled, “volunteers” were given a sign up bonus of food plus the promise of regular meals. It could have seemed like the only way an 18 year old could survive.

So there were collaborators who publicly announced their position on the side of the Nazis by wearing a certain uniform or even a certain lapel pin.  At least everyone else knew where they stood.