In the last posts we talked about single issue collaborators willing to damn everything else for the sake of one idea and  collaborators who agreed with Nazism and had the integrity to declare their allegiance.

There were also opportunist collaborators who saw that the wind was blowing on the side of the Nazis during the first years of the occupation and jumped on that ship. In the early years of occupation it was absolutely more profitable to be friendly with the Nazis, do business with the Nazis and generally support the Nazis. Maybe these people didn’t whole heartedly agree with every aspect of Nazism, but they agreed enough to put their own profit and comfort ahead of any other ideals.

This group of collabos does not include everyone who worked for the occupation forces during the war. Plenty of people really had no choice because they were drafted into the job or had no other options for a paycheck. There were other people who kept their civil service jobs but obstructed the Nazi agenda by doing their job badly or even by using their job as a cover to help the resistance. Dutch-Paris benefitted from the resistance activities of several city hall clerks who used their position to make false documents for resisters and fugitives. They also had assistance from police and customs officers who looked the other way, gave them useful information or even helped them cross borders illegally.

Generally speaking, economic collaborators worked with the Nazis for economic motives. Some of them also believed in Nazism. Some actually used their job as a cover for resistance. It was difficult to sort them out after the war.