Pursuit of Nazi collaborators
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The pursuit of Nazi collaborators refers to the post-World War II pursuit and apprehension of individuals who were not citizens of the
Background
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 among
Means of pursuit
The pursuit took many forms, both individual and organised. Several organisations and individuals (famous
Others were subject to after-war spontaneous retaliation in occupied countries, which in some areas led to "
Nazi support and escape organisations were infiltrated; the most famous was the
Pursuit in specific countries
Argentina
In March 1998, Ustasha Dinko Šakić, the former commandant of Jasenovac 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 to Croatia. In 1999, a Zagreb court sentenced him to 20 years in prison for his crimes. Šakić died in prison in 2008.[2]
Australia
Latvia applied to Australia to extradite
Belgium
Henri de Man was one of the leading Belgian socialist theoreticians of his period, who collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II. After the liberation of Belgium, he crossed the border to Switzerland.[7] He was convicted in absentia of treason after the war. He died on 20 June 1953, together with his wife, in a collision with a train in Murten, Switzerland.[7]
Albert Luykx fled to the Republic of Ireland in 1948 and became an Irish citizen in 1954.
Czechoslovakia
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 by Soviet 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-styled partisans, violence which resembled what is today known as ethnic 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 issuing decrees, which were later ratified by parliament.
By decree 5/1945, 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 decree 12/1945 Sb., farm property of German and Hungarian nationals or citizens was confiscated, unless they could prove active resistance against Nazism. Property of traitors, and enemies of the republic was confiscated, regardless of nationality or citizenship. By decree 16/1945 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. By 33/1945 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 law 115/1946, 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 were
Estonia
In the
France
After the liberation, France was briefly swept by a wave of executions of suspected collaborators. At least some of the women suspected of having
Three periods have been identified:[citation needed] The first phase (épuration sauvage) consisted of popular convictions,
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
Philippe Pétain, the former head of Vichy 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 the Paris massacre of 1961 as the head of the Parisian police.
The French members of the Waffen-SS
Many war criminals were judged only in the 1980s, including
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 the milices. 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
Greece was under the control of the Third Reich from 1941 to 1944. After the liberation, the country followed a controversial period of denazification. Many collaborators and especially former leaders of the Nazi-held puppet regime in Athens were sentenced to death. General Georgios 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 the Security Battalions and the gendarmerie, were soon released and reinstated in their posts; in the developing Greek 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 in Ioannina condemned, in absentia,[12] 1,930 Cham collaborators 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
Israel enacted the
On 23 February 1965, Latvian aviator and Nazi collaborator Herberts Cukurs was assassinated by the Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service, after being lured to Uruguay under the pretense of starting an aviation business.
Norway
Poland
In
After the war, Volksdeutsche of Polish origins were treated by Poles with special contempt, and also considered
German owners, as explicitly stated by the law, were not eligible for any
Soviet Union
Russian and other Soviet members of the Russian Liberation Army and the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia, such as Andrey Vlasov, were pursued, tried, and were either sent to Gulag prison camps or executed.
Many Soviet prisoners of war were seen to have collaborated with the Nazis, even if they had done no more than been captured by the Wehrmacht, 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 in Gulag forced labour camps.
The
United Kingdom
At the end of the war a number of individuals were tried by the
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 a prisoner-of-war camp, the British being ignorant to his true identity. He remained at large until 1979 when the West 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 the War Crimes Act, but he died before being prosecuted.
In 1961
Yugoslavia
The reprisals for collaboration with the Nazis were particularly harsh in Yugoslavia, because collaborators were also on the losing side of a de facto civil war fought on the Yugoslav territory during the war. The Communists executed many
After the war, the
See also
- Collaboration with the Axis Powers during World War II
- Denazification
- Deschênes Commission
- Expulsion of Germans after World War II
- Jacob Luitjens
- List of SS personnel
References and notes
- ^ "Anti-fascism", Wikipedia, 27 May 2023, retrieved 9 June 2023
- ^ a b Paige Taylor (1 October 2007). "Testimony 'clears' Zentai's name". Archived from the original on 13 October 2008. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
- ^ Carroll, Rory; Goñi, Uki (8 January 2008). "The hunt for Doctor Death". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
- ^ "Introducción". argentina-rree.com. Archived from the original on 2 October 2020. Retrieved 27 December 2007.
- Pagina/12. 15 December 2002.
- ^ Mark Falcoff, Perón's Nazi Ties, Time, 9 November 1998, vol 152, n°19 (in English)
- ^ University of Quebec (in French). (Google translation)
- ^ Judt, Tony, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, Pimlico (London: 2007), p. 46.
- ISBN 978-0199254576.: 577
- OCLC 1034908484.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link - doi:10.1086/598922.
- ^ "Examining policy responses to immigration in the light of interstate relations and foreign policy objectives: Greece and Albania". In King, Russell, & Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers (eds). The new Albanian migration. Sussex Academic. p. 16.
- ^ King 2005: 67
- ^ Ktistakis, Yiorgos. "Τσάμηδες – Τσαμουριά. Η ιστορία και τα εγκλήματα τους" [Chams – Chameria. Their History and Crimes]
- )
- ^ "Nazi war criminal dies in Britain". BBC News. 7 November 2005. Retrieved 5 November 2010.
Bibliography
- Martin Mauthner. Otto Abetz and His Paris Acolytes: French Writers Who Flirted with Fascism, 1930–1945. (Sussex Academic Press, 2016). ISBN 978-1-84519-784-1