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Thepursuit of Nazi collaborators refers to the post-World War II pursuit and apprehension of individuals who were not citizens of theThird Reich at the outbreak ofWorld War II butcollaborated with theNazi regime during the war. Hence, this article does not cover former members of theNSDAP and their fates after the war.
There were a number of motives for the apprehension of suspected collaborators. The main motives were: revenge for those murdered, especially those murdered on ethnic grounds in the Holocaust (principally amongJews,Poles, andRussians); a desire after the war to see those responsible face justice, and be categorised as criminals by a court of law (SeeNuremberg Trials); a means of ensuring that criminal acts done were brought to light and placed on the official record, with evidence, so that they could never be disproven (some of the acts being so unthinkable thatdenial was plausible); widespread sense that genocide of whole communities and cultures on such a scale was intolerable and must not be left unprosecuted even despite the inadequacy of existing laws; and fear that a "Nazi underground" of some kind existed, such as the mythicalODESSA, which could allow the enemy to somehow regroup for their proclaimedFourth Reich.[1]
The pursuit took many forms, both individual and organised. Several organisations and individuals (famousNazi hunters) pursued ex-Nazis or Nazicollaborators who allegedly engaged inwar crimes orcrimes against humanity. Individuals reported seeing someone they recognised, now living under a false identity. Specific individuals were named and sought by groups or governments for their crimes during the war.
Others were subject to after-war spontaneous retaliation in occupied countries, which in some areas led to "witch hunts" for those suspected of having been collaborators, in which vigilantism and summary justice were common. After a first period of spontaneous pursuit, provisional governments took the matter into their own hands and brought suspected criminals to court. The Nuremberg Trial in Germany judged only the highest German Nazi authorities, and each country prosecuted and sentenced their own collaborationists.Pierre Laval in France was judged and sentenced to death, whilePhilippe Pétain was also sentenced to death, butCharles de Gaulle later commuted that to a life sentence. Governments investigated and interrogated people suspected of collaboration, for example theU.S. DOJ Office of Special Investigations.
Nazi support and escape organisations were infiltrated; the most famous was theODESSA network, its various "ratlines" and those believed to have aided and abetted them. However, many suspected war criminals were also given amnesty, and some reached high positions in post-war administrations (e.g.Maurice Papon, who becamePolice Prefect of Paris in charge during theAlgerian War (1954–62); he was blamed for the1961 Paris massacre). Others were never even tried, such asRobert de Foy who resumed his position as head of theBelgian State Security Service 1945–1958.
In March 1998,UstashaDinko Šakić, the former commandant ofJasenovac concentration camp (nicknamed the "Auschwitz of the Balkans"), was interviewed on national television in Argentina, where he had lived for over 50 years. During the interview, he admitted to his leadership position, but denied killing anyone. The interview caused a public uproar. In May 1998, Šakić was arrested by Argentine police. The following month, he was extradited toCroatia. In 1999, a Zagreb court sentenced him to 20 years in prison for his crimes. Šakić died in prison in 2008.[2]
Latvia applied to Australia to extraditeKonrāds Kalējs, allegedly a senior officer in the pro-NaziArajs Commando, but he died on 8 November 2001 before he could be extradited. Kalējs migrated to Australia in 1950 and took citizenship.Hungary applied for the extradition ofCharles Zentai from Australia. He was accused of the murder of Peter Balazs, an 18-year-oldJewish man, inBudapest in November 1944, while serving in theHungarian Army.[3]
Belgium imprisoned Belgian nationals who had collaborated with the Nazis and executed some. One Belgian to be sentenced to execution wasPierre Daye; however, he was one of the first Nazi collaborators to escape Europe, and unusually by plane. He fled to Argentina with the help ofCharles Lescat, also collaborator ofJe suis partout.[4] Once in Argentina he attended a meeting organised byJuan Perón in theCasa Rosada during which a network (colloquially calledratlines) was created, to organise the escape of collaborators and former Nazis.[5] On 17 June 1947, Belgium requested hisextradition from Argentina; however, the Argentine Government ignored this request. Now secure in his freedom, Pierre Daye resumed his writing activities, becoming the editor of an officialPerónist review.[2][6]
Henri de Man was one of the leading Belgiansocialist theoreticians of his period, who collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II. After the liberation of Belgium, he crossed the border toSwitzerland.[7] He was convictedin absentia oftreason after the war. He died on 20 June 1953, together with his wife, in a collision with a train inMurten, Switzerland.[7]
Albert Luykx fled to theRepublic of Ireland in 1948 and became an Irish citizen in 1954.
Actions against Nazi collaborators in Czechoslovakia, real or alleged, had two significant forms, by judiciary or by mob action. Immediately after the liberation of Czechoslovakia bySoviet and American armies, in an atmosphere of chaos, wild chases began. Individual acts of revenge, mob violence, and simply criminal acts motivated by the possibility to rob or loot targets, occurred. In some places were conducted, by organised groups of self-styledpartisans, violence which resembled what is today known asethnic cleansing. In most places this stopped when the provisional Czech government and local authorities took power. Other forms included legal action, undertaken by the state administration, after the war, until the regular Czech parliament was established.President Beneš ruled by issuingdecrees, which were later ratified by parliament.
By decree5/1945, property of untrustworthy persons was put under national administration. Untrustworthy were considered German and Hungarian nationals, and people who were active in destruction of the Czechoslovak state and its democratic government, supported Nazi occupation by any means, or were members of organisations considered fascist or collaborator. By the same decree, property of people of German and Hungarian nationality, who could prove they were anti-Nazi, could be returned to them.
By decree12/1945 Sb., farm property of German and Hungarian nationals or citizens was confiscated, unless they could prove active resistance against Nazism. Property oftraitors, and enemies of the republic was confiscated, regardless of nationality or citizenship. By decree16/1945 Sb., special tribunals were started. These people's courts had right to sentence to long term imprisonment, life sentence or death. Prosecutions varied from verbal support to those who had committed crimes against humanity, no prosecution was based on ethnicity. By33/1945 Sb. people of German and Hungarian nationality or ethnicity lost their Czechoslovakian citizenship. However, they had right to apply for renewal.
Most problematic was the law115/1946, concerning resistance to the Nazi regime, which shifted limit of immunity to the year 1946, effectively amnestying all crimes, acts of individual revenge and atrocities against Germans and Hungarians long after the war.
People who lost Czechoslovakian citizenship and failed to apply or did not get it weretransferred to Germany, many through thetransfer camp established atTerezín, near theTheresienstadt concentration camp.
In theEstonian war crimes trials of 1961 and 1962, several collaborators were sentenced for participation in theEstonian holocaust. Many of the accused escaped punishment by escaping into exile or by suicide. The infamousKarl Linnas, who had been sentenced to death in absentia, was finally deported by the United States in 1987, and died in a prison hospital shortly after.
After the liberation, France was briefly swept by a wave of executions of suspected collaborators. At least some of the women suspected of havingromantic liaisons with Germans were publicly humiliated by having their heads shaved. Those who had engaged in theblack market were also stigmatised as "war profiteers" (profiteurs de guerre). However, theProvisional Government of the French Republic (GPRF, 1944–46) quickly reestablished order and brought collaborators before the courts. Many of the convicted were later grantedamnesty under theFourth Republic (1946–1954), while some prominent civil servants, such asMaurice Papon, escaped prosecution altogether and succeeded in holding important positions even underCharles de Gaulle and theFifth Republic (1958 and afterward).
Between 1944 and 1951, official courts in France sentenced 6,763 people to death (3,910 in absentia) for treason and other offences, and 791 executions were actually carried out. More common was"national degradation," a loss of face and civil rights, which was meted out to 49,723 people.[8]
Philippe Pétain, the former head ofVichy France, was charged with treason in July 1945. He was convicted and sentenced to death by firing squad, but Charles de Gaulle commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.Pierre Laval was however, executed after his trial. Most convicted people were given amnesty a few years later. In the police, collaborators often resumed official responsibilities. For example, Maurice Papon, who would be convicted in the 1990s for his role in the Vichy collaborationist government, was in the position of giving orders for theParis massacre of 1961 as the head of the Parisian police.
The French members of the Waffen-SSCharlemagne Division who survived the war were regarded as traitors. Some of the more prominent officers were executed, while the rank-and-file were given prison terms; some of them were given the option of serving time inIndochina (1946–54) with theForeign Legion instead of prison.
Many war criminals were judged only in the 1980s, includingPaul Touvier,Klaus Barbie, Maurice Papon and his deputyJean Leguay. The last two were both convicted for their roles in the July 1942Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv, orVel' d'Hiv Roundup. FamousNazi huntersSerge and Beate Klarsfeld spent decades trying to bring them to justice. A fair number of collaborationists joined theOAS terrorist movement during theAlgerian War (1954–62).Jacques de Bernonville escaped to Quebec, then Brazil.Jacques Ploncard d'Assac became a counselor ofSalazar in Portugal.
Reliable statistics of the death toll do not exist. At the low end, one estimate is that approximately 10,500 were executed, before and after liberation. "The courts of Justice pronounced about 6,760 death sentences, 3,910 in absentia and 2,853 in the presence of the accused. Of these 2,853, 73 percent were commuted by de Gaulle, and 767 carried out. In addition, about 770 executions were ordered by the military tribunals. Thus the total number of people executed before and after the Liberation was approximately 10,500, including those killed in the épuration sauvage",[9] notably including members and leaders of themilices. US forces put the number of "summary executions" following liberation at 80,000. The French Minister of the Interior at the time, March 1945, reported that the number executed was 105,000.[10] Modern scholarship estimates a total number of summary executions between 10,000 and 15,000.[11]
Greece was under the control of the Third Reich from 1941 to 1944. After the liberation, the country followed a controversial period ofdenazification. Many collaborators and especially former leaders of the Nazi-held puppet regime in Athens were sentenced to death. GeneralGeorgios Tsolakoglou, the first collaborationist prime minister, was tried by the Greek Special Collaborators Court in 1945 and sentenced to death, but his penalty, like most death sentences, was commuted to life imprisonment. The second collaborationist leader,Konstantinos Logothetopoulos, who had fled to Germany after the Wehrmacht's withdrawal, was caught by the US military and was condemned to life imprisonment. In 1951, he was given parole and thus died outside prison.Ioannis Rallis, the third collaborationist prime minister, was tried on a treason charge; the court sentenced him to life imprisonment. However, several lower and middle figures that had collaborated with the Germans, especially members of theSecurity Battalions and the gendarmerie, were soon released and reinstated in their posts; in the developingGreek Civil War, their anti-Communist credentials were more important than their collaboration. Indeed, in many cases the same people who had collaborated with the Germans and staffed the post-war security establishment persecuted leftist former Resistance members.
Furthermore, during 1945, a Special Court on Collaborators inIoannina condemned,in absentia,[12] 1,930Chamcollaborators of the Axis to death (decision no. 344/1945).[13] The next year the same court condemned an additional 179.[14] However, the war crimes remained unpunished since the criminals had already fled abroad.
Israel enacted theNazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law on 1 August 1950. Between 1950 and 1961, this law was used to prosecute around 40 JewishKapos proven to have been Nazi collaborators.[15] In 1988,John Demjanjuk was sentenced to death as well, but the guilty verdict was later overturned by the Supreme Court on 29 July 1993.
On 23 February 1965,Latvian aviator and Nazi collaboratorHerberts Cukurs was assassinated by theMossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service, after being lured toUruguay under the pretense of starting an aviation business.
Vidkun Quisling, the war time Norwegian "Minister President", and, among others,Nasjonal Samling leadersAlbert Viljam Hagelin andRagnar Skancke, were convicted andexecuted by firing squad. A total of 45 people were sentenced to death and 37 were executed (25 Norwegians and 12 Germans). Both at the time and later these sentences were the subject of some debate, since the decision to reintroduce capital punishment to the Norwegian legal system for the post war trials was based on clauses in military law. Capital punishment in the Criminal Code had been abolished in 1904. The decision was made by the exiled Norwegian government in London in 1944, later to be debated three times in the Parliament during the trials, and to be confirmed by the Supreme Court.
Inoccupied Poland the status ofVolksdeutsche had many privileges but one big disadvantage:Volksdeutsche were conscripted into theGerman Army. The Volksliste had 4 categories. No. 1 and No. 2 were considered ethnic Germans, while No. 3 and No. 4 were ethnic Poles that signed theVolksliste. No. 1 and No. 2 in the Polish areas re-annexed by Germany numbered ~1,000,000 and No. 3 and No. 4 ~1,700,000. In theGeneral Government there were ~120,000 Volksdeutsche.
After the war, Volksdeutsche of Polish origins were treated by Poles with special contempt, and also consideredtraitors according toPolish law.German citizens that remained on territory of Poland became as a grouppersonae non gratae. They had a choice of applying forPolish citizenship or being expelled to Germany. The property that belonged to Germans, German companies andGerman states, was confiscated by thePolish state along with many other properties inCommunist Poland.
German owners, as explicitly stated by the law, were not eligible for anycompensation. Those who decided to apply became subject to a verification process. At the beginning of the process, many acts of violence against Volksdeutsche took place. However, soon the verification of Volksdeutsche became controlled by the juridical process and was completed in a more controlled manner.
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Russian and other Soviet members of theRussian Liberation Army and theCommittee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia, such asAndrey Vlasov, were pursued, tried, and were either sent toGulag prison camps or executed.
Many Sovietprisoners of war were seen to have collaborated with the Nazis, even if they had done no more than been captured by theWehrmacht, and spent the war in a camp. Many such unfortunate Soviet citizens were persecuted upon their repatriation to the Soviet Union. In general, after a short trial, if they were not executed, Nazi collaborators were imprisoned inGulagforced labour camps.
TheVolga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was abolished andVolga Germans were banished from their settlements on theVolga River with many being deported toKazakhstan orSiberia.
At the end of the war a number of individuals were tried by theBritish government forhigh treason. These included members of theWaffen-SSBritish Free Corps andWilliam Joyce, better known asLord Haw-Haw. As agreed at theYalta Conference, the British handed back many Soviet citizens to the Soviet authorities for trial. Some of these were collaborators who had served in the pro-NaziRussian Liberation Army. A controversy would emerge years later, as some of those handed over wereWhite Russians andCossacks who had never been Soviet citizens, and who were subsequently murdered by the Soviet authorities. Yugoslav collaborators were handed over toJosip Broz Tito's forces in theBleiburg repatriations, with many being imprisoned while some killed as a result.
Viktors Arājs, who was the leader of the eponymous commando unit which helped the Nazis murder the Jews of Latvia and Belarus, had been captured in the British zone of occupied Germany after the war, and was released in 1949 after spending several years in aprisoner-of-war camp, the British being ignorant to his true identity. He remained at large until 1979 when theWest German government put him on trial. One of Arajs's deputies, Harijs Svikeris, settled in Britain after the war and in the 1990s was thought to be a strong candidate to be prosecuted under theWar Crimes Act, but he died before being prosecuted.
In 1961Ain-Ervin Mere wasput on trial in the Soviet Union for his role in the murder of 5,000 foreign Jews inEstonia, but the request for extradition was refused by the British government, claiming that the Soviet government had insufficient evidence. On 1 April 1999,Anthony Sawoniuk was sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of murdering 18 Jews in Britain's first Nazi war crimes trial. Sawoniuk had led "search-and-kill" police squads to hunt down Jews trying to escape after nearly 3,000 were massacred at Domachevo in Nazi-occupiedBelarus during September 1942. He died in prison on 7 November 2005 at the age of 84.[16]
The reprisals for collaboration with the Nazis were particularly harsh in Yugoslavia, because collaborators were also on the losing side of ade facto civil war fought on the Yugoslav territory during the war. The Communists executed manyUstashe, as well as their collaborators, particularly in theBleiburg death marches.
After the war, theUDBA, Yugoslavia'ssecret police, was sent overseas to find and eliminate several former Ustashe who fled the country, including the leader of the Ustashe and theirpro-Nazi government,Ante Pavelić. They conducted a successful assassination ofVjekoslav Luburić and others, and the extradition ofZdenko Blažeković,Andrija Artuković, and others.
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