Talk:Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy/Archive 10

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Is this collaboration?

   Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force

Main article: Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force

The Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force, composed of volunteers, was formed in 1944. Its leadership was Lithuanian, and its weapons came from the Germans. The purpose of the Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force was to defend Lithuania against the approaching Soviet Army and to defend the civilian population in the Lithuanian territory from actions by Soviet and Polish partisans. The LTDF disbanded itself after it was ordered put itself under direct German command, and refused to swear the Hitler Oath. Shortly before it was disbanded, the LTDF suffered a major defeat by Polish partisans in the battle of Murowana Oszmianka. Elinruby (talk) 10:10, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

If sources describes it as such it definitely is. IMO it is it main purpose was to fight against Germany's enemies using Germany's equipment Marcelus (talk) 10:28, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, yes it is. Slatersteven (talk) 11:04, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

@Elinruby

Viewing the Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force as collaborationist is wrong considering these facts:

• Refusal to obey German orders and only listening to the orders of Lithuanians themselves
• Lithuanians purposefully delaying and not swearing the Hitler Oath
• Its personnel was severely punished for disobedience to the Germans: ~80 soldiers were killed in Paneriai, while ~52 officers, including the commander, were deported to the Salaspils concentration camp.

Sources for this (in Lithuanian, not much exists in English): [1], [2].

In this English-language book, it says: In 1944, the Germans granted permission for General Povilas Plechavičius to form a Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force consisting of about 20,000 soldiers. The Germans aimed to utilize this force countering Soviets, but when the Germans attempted to assign SS-related tasks to the newly formed unit, General Povilas Plechavičius refused to comply. Therefore, soon after creation of the Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force the Germans realized that the unit was pro-Lithuanian and posed a threat to the Nazi regime. As a result, the Germans arrested the newly created unit's staff members and disbanded the unit. However, a substantial part of unit's soldiers joined the underground and contributed towards Lithuanian armed resistance efforts against the Soviets after World War II.

@Marcelus, the Polish Armija Krajowa in the Vilnius Region was armed and uniformed by Germans and fought against Germany's enemies - the Soviet partisans. So, if you say that the LTDF was collaborationist because it had German weapons and uniforms, then you should view the AK as a German collaborator as well, for consistency's sake. Cukrakalnis (talk) 17:54, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

As I said, we need to rely on sources and describe the whole complexity of the situation, what I mean is that the mention of the LVR should be in the article with an explanation that it was a failed attempt and the Lithuanians and Germans envisioned it differently. Mention of the short-lived German-Polish arrangement in Belarus should also be included. Marcelus (talk) 18:41, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

There are actually several instances of stuff like this in other countries. Just to take the discussion out of the Baltics. There's one unit (Ukrainian? Albanian? I can find it) where two brigades defected to the Free French the minute they got to the Western Front. (Apparently the Germans didn't trust them closer to home). Either the Danish or the Dutch unit was assured that they would be used for home defense but instead were sent to the Eastern Front, where they were decimated.

Getting back to this instance: How about, in the big re-write that's coming, we say that they were recruited and armed, then refused to serve? And then in the likely spinoff we go into further detail? Please note that is about more than Lithuania as there are several units with similar circumstances. Also note, the above discussion is based on wp-en articles about individual units that are very badly referenced, and referencing help would be appreciated Elinruby (talk) 21:59, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Bottom line, describing the whole complexity of the situation sounds good to me. My answer to my own question is more questions. What were these people told, and beyond accepting weapons, did they take any overt action on behalf of the Germans, even one that they perceived to also be in their own interests? Belarus section needs help. I have already noticed that the Charlemagne SS were there and they definitely *were* ideological collaborators, but I haven't done anything about it yet because I have a poor grasp of the overall context. Elinruby (talk) 23:52, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

I offer my help in re-writing certain sections of the article, e.g. Lithuania and the Soviet Union (including Belarus), as I have read a lot of material about them and consider myself to have a sufficiently solid grasp of their context. I agree that the complex situations should be described wherever they arise. Although there is the problem of having arguably doubtful cases in an article titled Collaboration with the Axis powers, because the reader very easily could consider all people and units named here as collaborators, which is unfair IMO.

Before any major re-writing, these are the questions I think should be answered:

• What is the WP:SCOPE here? You already asked that above (the section Is it collaboration if:) almost a month ago, but it doesn't seem like anything clear came out of that and the current WP:LEDE does not have a sharp definition. Perhaps the material now in the lede should be moved to a new section definition or something similar. My approach would be that the intention is what matters most and that these cases should be highlighted.
• What about Japan? The Empire of Japan was certainly an Axis power, but collaboration with it is barely mentioned in this article. That said, it is linked to at the very top of the article.
• This article lacks conciseness and clarity. Certain sections have a disprotionate amount of material compared to others: e.g. ~23kB for the Baltic states and ~15kB for the whole of the Soviet Union. The section on Transcaucasia is basically only about Armenia. I find it amusing that the subsection of Central Asia is included under Collaboration by country in Europe, because it was part of the USSR. Considering how bloated this article is, I would think that there should be a rule capping the maximum of paragraphs per section (maybe 3), otherwise it is too much.

Essentially, much of the material in this article should be moved to dedicated and specific articles, which would be linked to in this article, just to keep the article within manageable limits. The article's scope should be tightened and the sections cut down to no more than just a few paragraphs. Entire books and monographs can be written about each country, so we should be careful to not get lost in rabbit-holes. It really is very easy to get bogged down in literature and lose track of the basics and the most important things. (Just a general caution, not directed personally to anyone.) Cukrakalnis (talk) 14:23, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

P.S. the lack of consistent citing in this article is a total nightmare Cukrakalnis (talk) 14:25, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

The Soviet Union has already been highlighted as a problem and one that I for one am very ill-equipped to tackle. Feel free. Re spinoffs, yes I agree, the scope is much too huge. Japan was spun off a couple weeks ago but also needs a huge amount of help. The volunteer units have been proposed by me as another spinoff as there were many shades of collaboration there that deserve more detail. The obstacle to further breaking it up is a lack of outside comment on proposals. Currently it's organized by continent but IMHO it may make more sense to split by empire. IE British, French, German, Italian. Soviet.Union, although that was not de jure an empire of course. Totally agree on rabbit holes; have been down several in this effort. I think the answer to the balance problem is to spinoff and expand though; I've trimmed the longer sections quite a bit already and there isn't much fat there. And the military history context has been a problem Elinruby (talk) 23:28, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

@Elinruby Since you asked me to comment here, and since I used to edit this topic area long ago, I'll offer a few thoughts. It's a difficult question, and basically, we should stick to what the sources say. If we have sources that clearly call LTDF collaborators, then quote them. Otherwise, this is complicated and maybe we should split such content into a dedicated article? There may be some OR/SYNTH issues, if we use some definition of collaboration and then argue that LTDF meets it even if no RS actually says so. The case of Battle of Murowana Oszmianka is very interesting, in general, as I think it was LTDF's largest battle. So from that angle, the only fight this formation got into was against the Polish partisans, right? So on the surface, they did act, if briefly, as German's auxiliaries, from what I recall. But, again, we should focus on what do the reliable sources say? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:04, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

As for WP:Scope, I think we can easily limit ourselves to collaboration with Nazi Germany. We will then avoid the situation where Romania, which was part of the Axis, is listed as a "collaborator." And a collaboration with Japan or even Italy is a separate topic.

As for the length of sections, I think we can't think that big country = big section, small country = small section. It all depends on the complexity of a country's situation. For example when it comes to the Baltic countries, their peculiarity lies in the existence of many relatively small different collaborative formations (vide Estonia). Each of them must be mentioned along with their specifics ( for example, how they were recruited, to whom they were subordinate, etc.). This lengthens the article. In other countries, the collaborations may have been numerically larger, but less complicated, making them take less space to describe.

Another issue is the current division, which should be rethought. Because, for example, we have the subsection "Ukraine", as part of the "Soviet Union". In view of this, where should the collaboration of Ukrainians from eastern Poland be described? At the moment it is not mentioned at all (Roland Battalion, OUN, etc.). Similarly, Belarusians or Volksdeutsche? Perhaps instead of "Ukraine" it should be "Ukrainians"? Marcelus (talk) 11:55, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

@Marcelus @Elinruby The article's title is "Collaboration with the Axis powers". Perhaps the Collaboration with the Axis powers should be renamed to Collaboration with Nazi Germany (now a redirect to this), while a new article called Collaboration with Fascist Italy be created to take in the sections almost partly/exclusively about that (British Somaliland, Albania, Montenegro, Kosovo, Slovene Lands)?

In case the article is made to be specifically about collaboration with Germany, I would be very much in favour entirely removing the sections - Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary - which now mostly focus on those unoccupied states and their treatment of Jews, so there's actually not that much about collaboration itself in the Romania and Hungary sections.

Removing the material that is Italy-related to a specialized article and removing unoccupied countries from an article about collaboration (which implies occupation) would remove 20-25 kB from this gigantic article of <200kB.

I understand the issue with Ukraine, so I think the wisest division would be a sections about Ukrainians (Ukrainian collaboration with Nazi Germany already exists). Overall, considering how collaboration in Nazi Germany worked due to their views about race, etc., would it not be better to have sections based on nationality or even ethnicity? This would have the benefit of not singling out Jews in their own section at the very end. This would also split up the Czechoslovakia section into Czechs and Slovaks, which definitely had different experiences during this time. Just putting things out there, so to speak.

I will try and clean up the Category:Collaboration with the Axis Powers, because it is an unbelievable mess which suffers from overcategorization. Cukrakalnis (talk) 20:45, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

My rationale for Hungary was that it was *not* an Axis power when its top general cut a personal side deal with the Nazis that tipped the country into the fascism column, and the prime minister committed suicide. Romania is there from an early exploration of the collaboration in the Balkans topic area, in which I claim zero expertise so this is of course discussable. I did not find anything of the kind for Romania but it was very much a shallow dive. Good idea on the category.

(A bit later) I know I keep asking this but: Is it collaboration if you singlehandedly send an entire country into fascism? Because of some dream of empire? I am not convinced that occupation of one's country of citizenship in a sine qua non for collaboration. We have a category for US collaborators for example. Not... declaiming, just... Innocently asking questions. 22:01, 15 March 2023 (UTC) Elinruby (talk) 22:01, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

I keep hearing "whatever the sources say". It's true, but simplistic. Which sources? About collaboration? I am using the one at Collaboration in warfare. I keep meaning to being those sources over here. About who collaborated? The sourcing in this article when I got here was poor to be polite. National narratives diverge. Individual sources may or may not be controversial. None of this, AFAICT has been particularly your fault; I am just venting. But that is something of an answer, and I do not know the answer to my own question, so I am going to shut up now for the moment at least. Elinruby (talk) 02:53, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

(on re-reading myself} Sorry to confusingly rant, guys, I think I was talking about Wartime collaboration above, but I should have added the definition I was talking about while I had it open, because I didn't find it when I looked for it earlier. I think it must have been in one of the sources for that article; it had to do with agency, or whether collaboration was a freely made choice. I'll nail that down, but meanwhile Piotrus' definition of intention amounts to the same thing, I think. If you signed but to protect your neighbors from going to a gulag then maybe the people who signed up to bring an Aryan nation into being are Nazi-er Nazis. Meanwhile I added a different reference to the lede; the ones I replaced were for Burma, which is no longer in this article, because we spun off Collaboration with Japan, and the Middle East, which is poorly developed and maybe should be left for future work, as they say. The rewritten lede is mine and although I wrote it carefully I am open to changes, of course, except that what was there was mostly about a definition created to discuss Vichy France so let's not just revert it, hmmm? Elinruby (talk) 11:53, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

also against a hard and fast rule about length, at least until we address the issue of the Channel Islands having its own section. This is because strictly speaking it isn't part of Britain, but although somebody seems to think there was collaboration there, given the difference in scale it doesn't seem due for its section to be the same length as the USSR. Good point about Central Asia. We also need to address that the Ukraine section seems very fixated on "Ukrainians" and pogroms. Ukrainian... Police? UNA? There are divergent narratives here I believe but we need to do better than "Ukrainians". Also pls note that Algeria was part of France at the time. Elinruby (talk) 22:16, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

(I see I messed up the indent again. Very sleepy, sorry. Talk amongst yourselves, getting coffee.)Elinruby (talk) 22:18, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Scope, splitting etc.

Looking from sidelines at repeat inconclusive discussions about what is collaboration and how article could be split, I feel like it may be worth considering having a RfC or two, to figure out major questions about what the article should contain and how whole thing should be structured. Collaboration can be defined in varied ways, with most limited definition including only voluntary cooperation with foreign invader by occupied population, while widest definition would include any cooperation by any party. Not to mention corner cases, like minor but still independent Axis members (Romania, Bulgaria etc.), and Vichy colonies attacked by Allies. I have also seen some comments along the lines "whatever sources say", but this is also extremely vague. Is single use of word "collaboration" in any RS sufficient for including something? Or should only RS of certain quality be used? Maybe term "collaboration" should appear in significant portion of sources describing something to qualify? Or even only include stuff described as "collaboration" by major best quality sources dealing with WW II history and collaboration in general scale? Lots of options.

Similarly about splitting, should the topic be split geographically (Asia, Africa, maybe even individual country articles), or maybe by ways of collaboration (puppet civilian administrations, military volunteers, trade and business relations)? What should happen with this article? I see the Pacific area was completely removed from here, but is this the way? Will Collaboration with the Axis powers end up as a disambiguation page after several splits? Or should it aim to be a general summary of all collaboration with Axis everywhere, with splitting only meaning shortening and summarizing, while excess detail moves to subarticles? I feel that without overall vision how the topic should be structured, any improvements to the article will remain very uneven, and overall it will remain a mess illustrated by curious sights of Ustaše Croatia and Channel Islands sections being almost equal in size and whatnot.--Staberinde (talk) 16:05, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

WP:RFC's are useful for situations where there are long discussions that are deadlocked, and have failed to show progress over a long period, due to editors who are unable to resolve content disagreements. Nothing similar to that is happening here, discussions on multiple topics are making good progress, and I see no call for an Rfc, here. What you might be hinting at, is that you'd like to see additional feedback from more editors, and that's fine, but there are other methods for that. The fact that discussions so far haven't answered every questions that has been raised, is not a reason to have an Rfc about it, and in fact, would fail WP:RFCBEFORE. If you can point to an irresolvably deadlocked point of disagreement which has made no progress toward resolution after long attempts to do so, then perhaps it could be addressed in an Rfc; but I see nothing like that here, just multiple editors discussing, making progress, and updating the article accordingly. In other words, exactly the way it's supposed to work at Wikipedia.

Also, the three questions you pose at the end of the first paragraph, are not really up for discussion here, as they are already decided by policy on WP:DUEWEIGHT, WP:Reliable sources, and others. Nothing "decided" here about sourcing can overturn existing policy and guidelines about it. In theory, you could try to alter them at the talk page of the policy in question, but here, we just apply those policies as written. Mathglot (talk) 16:51, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

I got a bit more pessimistic impression but maybe I was mistaken. If "good progress" is being made when feel free to ignore my comment. Also, I would note that while policies indeed need to be followed, what is the most correct way to apply policy in specific situation may not be always universally obvious.--Staberinde (talk) 20:11, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

I have seen an RFC enshrine horrors on another page and I would dearly love to avoid one here. I would also dearly love somebody working on Croatia so if you know the topic, please feel free to dig in. I tried a little in the section and as I recall managed to do some referencing, but I don't know enough to expand it and Shakescene has specifically said (somewhere} that he doesn't either.

I agree about the Channel Islands (and have already considerably trimmed the section, believe it or not) but I am not sure how to fix it the balance issue it represents beyond asking questions and making suggestions. One of the problems with that section is that it isn't clear *who* informed, but somebody was edit-warring over that section so methinks there may be something notable there.

Zooming out, the following are relevant to your larger concern

1. Everyone agrees that the article is AWFUL, especially as to weight. (Central Asia is currently also in Europe because Russia, as someone else pointed out. This is why geography is the wrong approach)
2. The set of people currently working on the article does not overlap with the set of people who originally posted this stuff. At all, except for Piotrus and Poland. And it looks like his input was only in specific sections
3. The overall problem with the article in fact is that everyone who contributed prior to February only contributed to one or at most two sections (I should note that I have not read the history prior to January 2018)
4. Discussion since February has so far has been remarkably fact-based.
5. The average RFC participant doesn't want to read and the genre is ill-suited to broad questions of balance imo, and that is what we have here.

That said, more input would be a very nice thing and I repeat my invitation to help. Elinruby (talk) 23:27, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

@Staberinde: who is mostly to whom this is addressed. Elinruby (talk) 01:54, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Possibly a theory of everything?

it looks like an important member of my extended family is dying and while her kids are adults, my help may be useful with all of the everything. I've been quiet for a couple of days because I put in some long hours on this and was starting to make silly typos from fatigue. I answered a couple of threads here this morning then got the family news. So as I wait to hear about that, let me try to tie up some loose ends and focus several discussions

1. Collaboration with the Axis powers was always too broad a topic.
2. Wartime collaboration exists and should probably be beefed up. It's not a bad article but it could use some more references
3. One rationale for spinning off Collaboration with Imperial Japan was, as I understand it, that the time scope is somewhat different and so are the issues, although the theme of using nationalist movements is still common.
4. We really have to lose the geography-based approach in my opinion, for many reasons but the fact that national boundaries were different then is enough.
5. We really lack coverage of Italy. I am not going to argue with what I saw in the article history; I think there's a significant bit of political history that applies to the period between Italy's surrender and Germany's.
6. once we eliminate pure geography as the basis for a split, which I think we have, other suggestions that have surfaced.
7. Discussions by Nazi administrative district might be somewhat useful in pointing out commonalities. A compare and contrast of Belgium vs France or vs the Netherlands would be illuminating, I think. But this is not intuitive for English speakers and I personally would have to look up what those units were to even begin.
8. I think a good suggestion was made above and it would result in:
   • Collaboration with Nazi Germany (needs work)
   • Collaboration with Fascist Italy (to be written)
   • Collaboration with Imperial Japan (needs work)

Possibly

• Collaboration with the Soviet Union (to be written?)

Possibly

• A very high-level discussion of why fascism happened then (to be written?)

Would this approach clear up some of the problems about collaborating with whom, and why, that we are having? The other suggestion I had about dividing by colonial empire would require a lot of repetition, I think Elinruby (talk) 02:36, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

@Elinruby You're very active here and you're not under any obligation to put in numerous hours daily into this, and I think that other Wikipedians will be understanding if you can't contribute for some time for any reason. I highly appreciate your efforts here!

As for geographical division by continents - I was the one who introduced it for the reason so its more sub-divided and thus easier to navigate. Before, it was just all countries in a row and it felt totally disorganized. Any categorization that does the job better is obviously preferable. I think there's really only one other option if we drop geographical divisions, which is ethnicities. Personally, I'm not sure that dropping geography entirely is the best option, because it makes more sense to compare within a regional context (I would suggest using EuroVoc's classification for how to define Western, Southern, Central and Eastern Europe). I think it's more logical to compare the Flemish with the Dutch than with the Latvians, just as an example. The proposal to divide by colonial empires only makes sense in areas that are outside Europe.

I agree on there being three articles for each major Axis power. I'm also in favour of the article Collaboration with the Soviet Union being created, but it should only be created after we fix this article, because I don't want the same mistakes that were made in this article to be repeated there. Regarding a very high-level discussion of why fascism happened then, I would avoid taking a new bite after not having finished the previous one (metaphorically-speaking). Cukrakalnis (talk) 16:16, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

point taken and yep I am just saying don't wait on me. It's a proposal. Talk about it, refine it, whatever. We do have at least identified two absurdities in the current system. I've been as active as I am because I TNTed the thing and feel a.certain responsibility. But at least for the next couple of days, I am going to be very preoccupied. I am not familiar with that classification system but if it's something like Balkans vs Iberia vs Baltic vs Scandinavia I'm probably on board for that.

But this question is as I see it the bottleneck and therefore must be resolved. That, and what is collaboration, as I keep asking, but that is probably for the high-level article, and +1 on there being plenty else to do first. But we have to get the goal straight to avoid working at cross-purposes.

Peace out. I do feel fairly confident that there are people who know stuff working on stuff that I can't do, so yay us. Fuzzy kittens all around. Elinruby (talk) 19:56, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Syria and the Lebanon

The first paragraph of Collaboration with the Axis powers#Syria and the Lebanon (League of Nations mandates) has an exhaustive list of the Vichy French forces without indicating if and how they collaborated with Germany and Italy.

The Vichy government's Armée du Levant (Army of the Levant) under General Henri Dentz had regular metropolitan colonial troops and troupes spéciales (special troops, indigenous Syrian and Lebanese soldiers). He had seven infantry battalions of regular French troops at his disposal, and eleven infantry battalions of "special troops", including at least 5,000 cavalry in horsed and motorized units, two artillery groups and supporting units. The French had 90 tanks (according to British estimates), the Armée de l'air had 90 aircraft (increasing to 289 aircraft after reinforcement) and the Marine nationale (French Navy) had two destroyers,a sloop and three submarines}.

Some context for the subsequent attack on Palmyra is probably necessary, but (as Elinruby often says) this is not an article about military history. (If it were, then enumerating the ground, air and naval forces available for combat or defence would likely become rather more relevant.)

Can this paragraph be shortened, summarised or even deleted without making the following paragraphs less understandable? Or could it be recast with an eye to showing the collaborationist (or for that matter anti-collaboration) implications? —— Shakescene (talk) 07:01, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Well, let's see. It's Vichy. Vichy is collaborationist. But a lot of my recent mumbling is to the effect that we should be focusing more on the Darlans of the world than the schmucks who joined a unit, unless maybe they did it on purpose. My answer, with respect to this content, which I put there because this is the Vichy Army, is hmmm. I think there may an untold story here. On the other hand I don't think we are going to tell it anytime soon. So I think we should treat it like Brittany, which would be higher priority anyway, because the militia we aren't talking about there was at least a volunteer ideological Nazi unit.

TL;DR: imo copy all that milhist to the talk page and let it archive. I would like to make sure it's covered *somewhere* and various JStor rabbit holes make me think there's a history there, but since we're discussing a split, I think North Africa and/or the French Protectorates might be a separate topic that is currently beyond my ken and yours, like the Mufti. Elinruby (talk) 22:42, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

@Shakescene @Elinruby I think we should remove the milhist to an article where it's more relevant. IMO the milhist of certain states, even if collaborationist, is not what this article about collaboration was aiming for, because I don't see any milhist of the Italian Social Republic, Government of National Unity (Hungary), etc. Actually, neither of these two puppet states is mentioned on this article, although the Independent State of Croatia is...

I fully agree that we should be focusing more on the Darlans of the world than the schmucks who joined a unit, unless maybe they did it on purpose, with the purpose obviously being unambiguously Nazi, fascist, etc. Cukrakalnis (talk) 15:51, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Right. Go for it Elinruby (talk) 21:00, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

¶ Although I haven't absorbed them fully, these Wikipedia articles might provide more context about whether the Syrian and Lebanese mandates were under collaborationist (rather than, say, neutral) control: First Syrian Republic#World War II and independence and Greater Lebanon#World War II and Later history —— Shakescene (talk) 01:47, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Jewish Virtual Library

Its non-rs and need to updated to with better reference. scope_creep^Talk 12:02, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Yeah Piotrus noticed that, I saw in the history. Do you remember where else you saw it? Alternately, feel free to delete and add a cn if that seems applicable. Actually I can just look at the references come to thing of it Elinruby (talk) 04:24, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

@Scope creep: I found the one that was in North Africa and removed it. Let me know if I missed one, k? And thanks Elinruby (talk) 05:36, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

The conceptual problem of defining collaboration and resistance

Here's a quote from The New York Times about France in WW II which I believe is appropriate to keep in mind when writing about either collaboration or resistance. These are murky topics. "If one were to tabulate the memoirs of those years, one might conclude that nearly everyone in Paris resisted the Germans during the occupation. But it is also possible to make the case that 'everybody collaborated.'"

Is this not being discussed above? Slatersteven (talk) 12:35, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

“Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.” Denis Diderot. Smallchief (talk)

I don't think it hurts to restate the question. There aren't *that* many people working on this. @Smallchief: are you the OP here? Looks like someone split your post. Feel free to refactor if so. Elinruby (talk) 05:40, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, there is too many discussions on this t/p on virtually the same topic Marcelus (talk) 10:22, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

and by and large nobody is answering them so I question whether it is helpful to shut down input from anyone, even if it is perceived by someone else to not belong in its own section. There is an extremely wide range of cultural backgrounds here. I don't know Smallchief from Adam, apart from some earlier comments on this talk page, so I emphatically don't speak for him, but consider the possibility that this was intended as a philosophical suggestion vs taking issue or agreeing with a specific suggestion above. We need help, so let's not go all MoS police on the people who are talking an interest. Not on the talk page anyway. Elinruby (talk) 21:00, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

References needed addressed

Hi @Elinruby: Last Jewsish virtual library reference needing removed. Ref 180. Once that is gone and a suitable replacement found I fix the rest of the refs. scope_creep^Talk 13:10, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

reference 180 is France24. Something has changed since you looked. i need to do a quick errand but i can track that reference down starting in about half an hour probably. It must be close. And when you say fix, you mean standardize the format? That would be awesome. Do you have the capacity to run the bot someone is talking about above? Alternately if you prefer feel free to just replace it with a cn and proceed. In adding future references I'll follow whichever format you elect, because there still are quite a few cn tags. Elinruby (talk) 19:51, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

I fixed it and forgot to update. scope_creep^Talk 22:41, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Ah ok. Thanks. I was coming in here to say I still couldn't find it but 183 looked questionable. I think it might be something like CENSOR but am not actually sure. Anyway, if anyone challenges any references it would probably be that one. Maybe we should run it past RSN. Feel free to improve reference formatting as you see fit, at least as far as I am concerned. Did you comment on the move proposal? Elinruby (talk) 06:57, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Looks good. scope_creep^Talk 09:43, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Hidden categories

Who do we need to ping to get those looked at? This article for example no longer belongs in "Category:Australia, New Zealand and South Pacific military history task force articles", and never more than very slightly overlapped with "British military history" articles. This is categorized as a "high-importance" article about Italy but we barely mention it. We should either remove the article from the category or write about that topic. Just saying. If this is something I can edit myself but have forgotten how, someone please educate me. Otherwise could someone please take a look? Elinruby (talk) 06:55, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

This is also no longer an Asian military history article. I will go see if these categories made it to the Collaboration with Imperial Japan article and add them there if not Elinruby (talk) 07:01, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

I think you can remove them by removing the task-forces at the very top of the talk page. Cukrakalnis (talk) 19:53, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

thanks Elinruby (talk) 20:33, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

I removed everything to do with Asia since that should presumably now be on the Collaboration with Imperial Japan page (although as I type this I am having second thoughts about India). I also removed ANZ and Britain because they have been removed from the article, and the US because I haven't seen any mention of it in the current article. This does not reflect a judgement that there was no collaboration in those countries, only that the current version of this article does Not mention them. I think that collaboration in the UK probably *should* have an article, the ANZ POWs should probably be included in the Volunteers article, and I've noted that many individuals are listed in the Collaboration in United States category. I have not gone into these in any depth at all since the scope of this article is such that we've been excluding all but the most influential of individual collaborators Elinruby (talk) 20:53, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Moving out Asian sections barely trims this article

I finally did the deed and moved collaboration with Japan to Collaboration with Imperial Japan. However, this barely scratches the surface, since it moved only about 16,000 bytes out of 222 k (~7%), leaving a bloated 206 kilobytes here, which is just over what's considered a reasonable limit on Wikipedia. And, though it might just scrape the ceiling, few people are going to read all of that at one sitting (after 15 years working, on and off, on War of 1812, I still haven't read the whole article through). I see two major needs:

1. The non-Asian portion that remains still needs drastic pruning. But almost all of the recent edits I've seen (justified though individual ones might be) have added to this article's length, not trimmed it. Not every nominal volunteer Waffen-SS unit (e.g. the British Free Corps) need be mentioned here, rather than at its own country's collaboration (or resistance or WW2) page. Ditto for isolated idiosyncratic individual collaborationists or microscopic paper pro-Axis parties. But there are also major excisions and abridgements that still would need to be made to maintain balance and return this page as a useful, coherent, readable summary and comparative narrative for a topic that would interest the general reader.
2. The new article I created, Collaboration with Imperial Japan, now something of a skeleton, needs major work to make it more useful, informative and coherent. I've done enough work as I reasonably can for the moment, and with any luck, some experts on Asian history, Asian nationalism, and the Asian theatre of World War II will join in contribute, fill out and correct what is there currently.

—— Shakescene (talk) 03:46, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

We do need experts for collaboration with Japan. I've made an effort but I am positive that we are missing a lot.

Since we're getting nothing but crickets on our various proposals, I think bolder moves are in order. I'll see what I can do with the volunteer units, but much of it is completely unsourced. And somebody seems to have conflated units that were ideologically driven with recruiting PoWs and forced labor. I totally agree about the British Free Corps, btw. Some countries may not longer have an entry after the volunteer units spin off, but maybe that's a feature not a bug. Anyway, here goes. Elinruby (talk) 07:30, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Re your edit summary for adding Japanese to the lead, one of the sources is for Burma. Maybe I need to be explicit about this.Elinruby (talk) 07:34, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

For as long as this page is named "Collaboration with the Axis powers", the collaboration with Imperial Japan should be included, possibly just as a single brief subsection with a link to Collaboration with Imperial Japan. Note that atrocities by Imperial Japan were no better than atrocities by Nazi. I am also surprised that collaboration is limited only by WWII. This should not be because such collaboration has started long before WW II and was critically important to enable Nazi Germany to conduct the war. And just for a reference, please see Category:Collaborators with Nazi Germany by nationality. My very best wishes (talk) 21:26, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

yes, everyone agrees that the article needs to move. I think where we were at was spin-offs by individual countries. And I saw a draft for France. I think what you say makes sense, because as far as I can tell we have agreement but arguably not consensus about the move proposal. I have said a couple of times that I am in favor of any rational proposal that does not assign Central Asia to Europe. If we can't agree on a move or a specific split proposal, I think it does need a little more than a hatnote. But you can't put it under Japan, though, shouldn't it be under Burma and Thailand and so on? The individual countries we have an entry for? Feel free to assess consensus for yourself if you like. I'm preoccupied with something else right now and so are several of the other interested parties. TL;DR count me as a vote for any proposal that gets Central Asia out of Russia. Or maybe we could just rename that section to the names of the republics? Feel free to work on whatever you want to. Ukraine needs help badly also. Finland... Manchuria... Greece... Levant, Mahgreb

Elinruby (talk) 23:57, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Who agrees? No, I do not. Move where? To Collaboration with Fascism in Europe? This is an entirely different and poorly defined subject, unlike the collaboration with axis countries. Please make an RfC if you wish to move. I am sorry, but it seems you have a poor understanding of this subject. My very best wishes (talk) 18:28, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

The Dialectic and Semiotics Reappear: Can we usefully treat Collaboration separately from Resistance, Invasion, Occupation, German policies, and Liberation?

(or Everything, Everywhere, All at Once)

I haven't fully absorbed all the points above, but I realised that much of our difficulty arises from treating Collaboration as a distinct topic (and article) separate from its opposite, Resistance, or from the Occupation powers' demands, (although less dramatic, Attentisme was, by the necessities of carrying on daily life, the attitude of most of the occupied most of the time, but that's hard to define, let alone quantify, and is so far an empty article on Wikipedia).

Collaboration means nothing without a counterpart (Axis occupiers) or an opposite (the Resistance, or co-operation with anti-Axis "liberators").

I know that this implies a truly massive task of merging with and reorganising many, many other articles — something I wouldn't attempt even to begin approaching alone — but (since there's a dialectic), this also applies to, say, Resistance (against what?) —— Shakescene (talk) 02:29, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't see any advantage to what you propose, as it would imply that the topic of "Collaboration with the Axis powers" was either not notable, or else had borderline notability but insufficient secondary sourcing about it to justify a stand-alone page about it. However, neither is the case, as there are dozens of books that discuss the subject and many in which it is the central topic, making it a highly notable topic. So rather than merge it, it should probably be greatly expanded, and then split into a series of articles, perhaps along the lines discussed above of which this one would remain the parent article in WP:Summary style.

The idea that you can't discuss "Collaboration as a distinct topic (and article) separate from its opposite" seems odd to me, the kind of thing that might come up in philosophy class, but isn't practical here as far as how to improve this article. Unless I've totally missed your point.

As to any inclusion of material about the French Resistance, or about resistance to other Axis powers (neither of which is the topic of the article), I think it would be fine, as long as it is in due proportion to the amount of material in secondary sources about resistance to the Axis, in articles whose topic is collaboration with the Axis. It's not for us, as editors, to decide we have to consider collaboration and resistance equally in the article, or in some proportion that we consider philosophically or logically justified, because that would be original research. If the sources about collaboration talk about resistance, then so should we; if the sources about collaboration don't talk very much about resistance, then we shouldn't, either. Pretty much simple as that. P.S. I've taken the liberty of removing the pilcrow from the section title. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 03:43, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

@Mathglot and Shakescene: scope continues to be a boggle. I think that we need some context, and this article should be about more than "he's a collaborator! And he's a collaborator! All these people are collaborators!" (Oprah reference intentional)

Attentisme should not be a blank article.

My thread above about a grand theory of everything may be relevant, if it didn't make your radar. With respect, it isn't really helpful to say that we go with what the sources say. Of course. We have all been around long enough, and spent enough time at WP:RSN, to know that this is the correct answer. Which sources though? Eichmann in Israel would seem like an excellent source, for example, except that apparently she is now considered mistaken as to the Judenräte. And there is still that lingering problem about page numbers in the online edition.

I added some discussion of antisemitism in the Third Republic as an attempt to explain why France was such fertile ground for fascism, and this got removed as not collaboration and not Vichy. Which is true, in the narrow sense. It is also true that historically I always include too much background, and have to be trimmed. At least you both do so thoughtfully. Elinruby (talk) 11:05, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

To be honest, this page should really be just a disambig page pointing to the relevant sections on collaboration in articles like Netherlands_in_World_War_II#Collaboration, German_occupation_of_Norway#Acceptance_and_collaboration and Collaboration_in_German-occupied_Poland, etc. As Mathglot points out, there are many sources available, but most of them are country specific, so it is a bit WP:SYNTHy, or at least a bit WP:CONTENTFORKish, to combine it all into one article here when we already have multiple articles that cover it in adequate detail. This article should be structured more like France_during_World_War_II in my opinion. --Nug (talk) 10:24, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

That seems valid. Slatersteven (talk) 12:33, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree, best to make "Collaboration with the Axis powers" into a disambiguation page for further disambiguation pages of "Collaboration with (insert major Axis power - Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan)" and then those in turn just point to country-specific pages. Seems like the most logical and clear cut solution. It would definitely save from duplication of material and introduce way more clarity. Cukrakalnis (talk) 21:56, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm on board for that. It's always been a question of the scope of the spin-off articles. If there's now a consensus for country-by-country discussions, I can see that it would avoid some of the current absurdities. There's still an issue with what is collaboration, but that approach makes a lot of sense, and the people with expertise in given countries can talk on the respective pages rather than trying to enunciate a rule for what is collaboration that works for Burma, Denmark and Italy. Elinruby (talk) 04:32, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

It seems to me that we should completely reconceptualize the article. Move away from describing "one case after another" and instead try to describe the phenomenon of collaboration with the Germans more problematically. Pointing out the difference between the various countries and regions, the different forms of collaboration, the thin line between cooperation and collaboration, and treason, etc. What we have now is valuable and should be transferred to individual articles, most of which are not yet exist, e.g. Estonian collaboration with Nazi Germany. Marcelus (talk) 10:28, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

I think Estonian collaboration is sufficiently fleshed out to be its own article, don't you Scope creep? As far as I am concerned it could be a spinoff with a list entry like My very best wishes is talking about. Do it. Elinruby (talk)

Elinruby (talk) 00:06, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Morning @Elinruby: Folks, I think there is probably enough for an article. It is quite a sizable block and there is enough there for a starter article if somebody can write a lede and fix the context. When you compare it with something Collaboration in German-occupied Poland it has some way to go before it's fully fleshed out. Looking at the conversation, does the historical analysis of collaboration fit the country by country model that is being discussed? You will need to check. I do know that in well established countries like Belgium, Denmark, Holland, for example it may be quite easy to classify that way as they have well established country and legal boundaries, but in certain other areas like around the Balkans where the resistance ranged far and wide, it may be slightly different. I think collaboration and resistance are two sides of the same coin but don't know for sure. I'd like to see more research. I think collaboration is a probably a distinct subject, as perhaps driven by ideology as much as say fiduary concerns. They did pay their cronies quite handsomely. It might be a case that German fastidiousness regarding their bureaucracy is tied to a country level, although you get for example Reichprotectorate of Bohemia and Monrovia which is seems to be an entirely artificial region. There is much more to do, for example: [3]. I think what you need in that a definition of what colloboration is and that is academically sourced. If its different in one country then it is multiple definitions. There is all sorts of factors that define what made folk colloborate. For some it was religion, others ideology, others money, group dynamics, being ransomed, family held hostage and being fooled and so on. Multiple reasons that needs looked at. There is probably a standard text on it, or several. Often they are quite obscure and then often revised by 2nd and 3rd generation historians after the war that are more visible with the internet. When I looked at the Vichy police collaboration article on fr wikipedia it was a list of operations. No real analysis of what it meant to colloborate, what it means, who kicked off and why. This article is that state. Hope that helps. scope_creep^Talk 10:54, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

I think you need to end up with a historical analysis of collaboration with academic sources in its own article (due to size) + this article as a list of operations (summary article) + list of individual countries, regions, special instances for example Vichy Police collaboration, specific instances set of articles. There is a Collaboration article but I don't know how you would work that in. It seems to be peace-time collaboration and is a bit of a mess. scope_creep^Talk 11:11, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

+1 to all of that really Scope creep, especially Greece, which I find completely mysterious. I'm of the personal opinion that most people had to go to work in the morning and we should, at least at the overview level, try to avoid either blaming or excusing. Even though I did get pretty indignant about that Hungarian general.

What I am wondering though is this. If he leaves the Estonia section in place for now as a summary of the article he is writing, then starts a main article based on this text, what would help it get through NPP, whether with some suggestions or not? I think he wants to spin it off to expand it, right Marcelus? And btw, I know "summary of an article not yet written" was what we said about the Jewish collaboration section, but I assume you wrote this the same way. Elinruby (talk) 17:56, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

As for reconceptualizing the article, I am not sure if we are talking about the kind of high-level overview I proposed in, I think, "Possible theory of everything", but I am in favor of such an article if we are able to write it. I know I would like to read it. I think another editor agreed with me about that, but thought we had enough to work on already at the moment. Which is also true. But, for example, I suspect that there were many economic drivers to the rise of fascism in the 30s. No, I don't have a source handy for that; it's just an impression I formed from past reading and academic work (which does not rise to the level of making me any kind of expert). Maybe resource curse applies, although I have previously only ever seen the term applied to the DRC. I believe I saw that rubber had a great deal to do with occupations in southeast Asia. (Burma maybe?) A theme I noticed while going through the existing text was collaboration by nationalists and resistance fighters supporting invaders as an alternative to another occupier. Burma, Ukraine and possibly Yugoslavia come to mind, although I am admittedly lost when it comes to Yugoslavia. Alsace also comes to mind -- it was French, it was German, it was French, a dizzying number of times. People had crops to tend and jobs to go to. I am sure there are several other regions like that. Elinruby (talk) 19:08, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Move proposal

i realize that we keep discussing moves and merges and scope, but afaict, correct me if I am wrong, we don't have a really strong consensus on how to do it exactly, except that everyone seems to agree that something should be done.

Question: pending resolution of that discussion, should this article be moved to "Collaboration with Fascism in Europe"?

Or should we just proceed to country by country spinoffs? This would result in some very short articles (Greece and Norway for example) but I am not necessarily against it either.

The current title however is simply wrong IMHO Elinruby (talk) 04:05, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Do you want the article to be about any period in time, or limited to WW2 ? Because the choice of title may affect the scope; there are people who collaborate with Fascists in Europe now, so does that mean an article with the new title should potentially include them, if they meet WP:V and WP:DUE issues? The title "the Axis powers" restricts the scope to the time period of World War II without actually containing any title words that name the war period, but if you change it to the proposed title, it will potentially remove that constraint. Mathglot (talk) 05:19, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

¶ I was thinking the same thing as Elinruby: that some title needs to distinguish this page from the spun-off Collaboration with Imperial Japan. But while I was thinking that, I considered the geographical scope, and at a minimum it would include the Near and Middle East.

India presents a particular quandary: while Azad Hind and the Indian National Army were Japanese allies, Subhas Chandra Bose broadcast from Berlin, and the Indian Legion (as I understand it) was part of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS, serving largely in European theatres. And Transcaucasia really fits easily nowhere: not really European (although Georgians and Armenians might insist otherwise), nor Middle Eastern nor South Asian.

Perhaps some clunky title such as Collaboration with the European Fascist powers or Collaboration with European Fascism might fit better. —— Shakescene (talk) 05:21, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

@Mathglot and Shakescene: so did I hear

1. Need date range and

2. Agree to a split and asking about categories?

Maybe some mumbling about Transcaucasia? I agree with all of the above, if we're voting here. This proposal is for until we have some consensus on a split. Some people suggested splitting by country. I am ok with that or with almost any of the proposed splits by region. Elinruby (talk) 06:18, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Note to self and others: the current version of Axis collaboration article has an example from Burma that should be moved to the collaboration with Imperial Japan. The lede could then probably use an in-scope different example of nationalists collaborating for the weapons and training. I am sure there was some stuff like that in Yugoslavia or Greece or probably several Elinruby (talk) 06:33, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't see a Burmese example here (nor does FIND find anything for Burma or Burm—). I did move Burma over to Collab with Imp. Japan. However there is one book in Further Reading here about India's war for independence that likely should be moved or copied to Imperial Japan, a title I deliberately picked to avoid imposing a starting date (1895? 1910? 1931?) Roughly the same could be said about this article for events before 1 September 1939. The takeover of Czechoslovakia (permitted by Munich) and the Sudeten Germans aren't usually classed as part of World War II; nor is the Anschluss with Austria — N.B. would it make any useful sense to discuss Austrian collaborators (including one A. Hitler) with the Reich, since pan-Germanism has always been part of Austrian politics? Let alone Danzig. —— Shakescene (talk) 06:58, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Well Danzig seems to be notable in at least a peripheral role in French history in World War 2. Probably a lot more. As for Austria and Czechoslovakia, I see your point with the move request. Basically I am OK with pretty much any categorization that gets Central Asia out of Europe. (Because Russia, see?) And do we need to decide which borders we're using? 1939? Elinruby (talk) 07:18, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Ok, maybe I already took care of it. Thank you for checking. Elinruby (talk) 07:20, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

there's a recent suggestion that we split by countries,did you see that?Elinruby (talk) 07:41, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

On the move, how about European collaboration with the Axis powers? Elinruby (talk) 07:45, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

or Collaboration with the Axis powers in Europe? I think that's clunkier though. Elinruby (talk) 07:46, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

I would prefer Collaboration with Nazi Germany. Spin off collaboration with Italy, other Fascist countries in Europe into separate articles as has rightly been done with Japan. Smallchief (talk) 09:52, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

I have been thinking generally about this approach. We'd definitely need Collaboration with Nazi Germany (beginning in 1938 or early 1939, or heaven knows when with Konrad Henlein, the Sudeten Germans, the SdP and the DNSAP in Czecho-Slovakia. Also a (much shorter one) about Collaboration with Fascist Italy which would have to start in 1938 with Albanian collaborators. However, there would be some German-Italian crossover in the Balkans.

I don't know if a separate article or articles would be necessary for collaboration with the other Axis members and co-belligerents: Finland (too confusing considering the Soviet invasions), Hungary (quite probably), Romania and Bulgaria. In theory, also, collaboration with Slovakia and the Independent State of Croatia.

I have to leave now; more later —— Shakescene (talk) 18:04, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Re Burma I might have deleted it. I am spending a lot of time in the history right now and will find it again. It was not extensive material but I had trouble finding it, essentially saying and referencing that Japan trained a small number of nationalists who later became leaders of the country. One of the examples of Axis countries weaponizing internal dissension Elinruby (talk) 09:20, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

@Peacemaker67: to see if they have an opinion on the Balkans. Please consider me a vote in favor of any proposal that would take Central Asia out of Europe. I need to do some other stuff meanwhile.

It looks to me like Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, as well as Belgium and France, are well-developed and could well spin off into separate or regional articles. I would say Ukraine needs serious help and so does the Soviet Union, but if a topic matter expert is available that would be best. I have gone through the existing sections for those sections and left some tags I think but do not currently have enough topic knowledge to be sure I would catch omissions or errors of fact. Still working on Volunteers; it's slow going. If someone wants to work on that let me know. Elinruby (talk) 06:42, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

No, it should be about what it is. Slatersteven (talk) 09:53, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

please explanation your objection Elinruby (talk) 01:42, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

The simplest solution in my view is to just make this article into a huge disambiguation list with country-specific articles, e.g. Collaboration in German-occupied Poland, etc. Doing anything more sophisticated than that runs the risk of becoming WP:SYNTH, especially if we start comparing countries and how it happened in one country compared to another. Such comparisons should only be drawn from WP:RS where the comparisons are explicitly stated, in order to not have any WP:OR. I also think that some cases are too short to deserve their own article (unless someone comes along in the future to expand them, which might never happen). So, in the case of British Somaliland, I would be in favour of a redirect page called Collaboration in Italian-occupied British Somaliland or something similar pointing to a section of the article Italian invasion of British Somaliland, because that seems the most logical.--Cukrakalnis (talk) 20:03, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

I am against renaming the article to Collaboration with Fascism in Europe, because that is far too vague and strays far too much from just about what happened in World War II, which is the scope of this article. Plus, we already have one word that we are having difficulty finding a neat definition for (Collaboration), but adding another one about which academics and WP:RS have much debate about (Fascism) will only make it far harder for us. There's also the matter of who is considered part of Europe as well as what to do with collaboration in European colonial empires that were in continents besides Europe. Cukrakalnis (talk) 20:08, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

• No such move please. "Axis powers" refer to specific states. "Fascism" is something more poorly defined. There is nothing wrong with having such list-like page for as long as it is organized by countries. My very best wishes (talk) 20:37, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

  Ok so "Collaboration with Italy in World War II' and "Collaboration with Germany in World War II"? Elinruby (talk) 01:45, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

  That isn't going to get us too much further, but we could spin off co

  ountrifrom there Elinruby (talk) 01:47, 5 April 2023 (UTC)es

Given that Germany and Italy were very close allies during the war, separating their supporters to different pages does not make much sense. My very best wishes (talk) 18:03, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

True and so was Japan, which is already spun off. I repeat, tho, I am fine with with any classification that allows me to remove central asia from europe. but if we can't quite find consensus for either European collaboration with the Nazis or Collaboration with Germany and Collaboration with Italy, all I am proposing is that we move to some other name than this one, since it misrepresents the article. Alternately we could agree on a split proposal. There's definitely consensus for a reorganization of some type though, I'm pretty sure. Count me as a yes for anything that takes Central Asia out of Europe. [Elinruby] 03:43, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Existing articles about military collaboration

One of the possible approaches discussed above was to collect all the paragraphs within individual country sections about foreign volunteers for the Axis (e.g. the Charlemagne Division and the Vlasov army) and then put the result into either a separate subsection of this article or into a separate article of its own.

Just for other editors' information, I discovered (through a circuitous CfD route) that there already several overlapping articles and categories about this matter:

• Category:Foreign volunteer units of the Waffen-SS
• Category:Foreign volunteer units of the Wehrmacht
• List of Waffen-SS units
• Wehrmacht foreign volunteers and conscripts
• Waffen-SS in popular culture
• Non-Germans in the German armed forces during World War II

Should there be another consensus (executed this time, as it wasn't before) to regather all the relevant country military collaboration paragraphs into a new section or a new article, it may worth consulting these existing articles, some of which are basically just lists. —— Shakescene (talk) 14:41, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

I've taken a pretty good look at that and will be coming back to it after the evidence phase at ARC closes. This doesn't mean I don't need help. So far I've established to my own satisfaction that the Charlemagne unit was indeed composed of ideological volunteers. I question this for some of the other units, especially the ones where half the unit defected and joined the Free French or whatever. The list in this article is almost entirely unsourced and the only source I found for one of the units says that there is no evidence it ever existed. I found at least one instance where two entries were different names for the same unit. (I don't remember if I fixed that). Unless we have an unsuspected regimental history expert amongst our current contributors my thinking is that ideally we should ask someone with a background in the area to comment on the categorization. Complicating this is the fact that there are two other overlapping lists which someone had proposed a merger for, but this proposal seems to have been abandoned because some of the "volunteer" units on that list might not actually have been volunteers, and the further complicating observation that even if some joined to get out of a prisoner of war camp, the prisoners who did not join probably regarded those who did as collaborators. So yeah. I'd been working on this until recently, mainly because it needed doing, and I currently plan to come back to it, but if someone else is interested in untangling it I'd be very happy to hand it off and go back to my two other large messy projects that are currently languishing. Elinruby (talk) 20:27, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

(on re-reading) yeah, the two articles they were thinking of merging were non-Germans in the German armed fores and Wehrmacht foreign volunteers and conscripts Elinruby (talk) 21:43, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Fwiw I asked Kansas Bear if they know if such a.topic expert Elinruby (talk) 07:49, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

YAP (Yet another proposal) -- pls vote

Trying to get consensus to cohere. Please reply y/n and if necessarily briefly address the following numbered items:

1. Article should be split up
2. Article should become an index to individual articles about countries, topics, or regions
3. Article should (insert proposal) because (summary of ten words or less) Elinruby (talk) 22:55, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

PoD

K then.

How about the same proposal with a 25-word summary? As a writing prompt how about User:Slatersteven User:Bobfrombrockey and/or User:Scope creep, indicate whether they are variously or not interested in myself somewhat am but have some catching up to do. There was a unit with British POWs, I remember that, and the Channel Islands and Lord Hee Haw would be in scope...youknowyouwantto. Also, somebody s]hould really do something with guingette, just to make the world a better place. I suggest cross-refere. ncing Renoir and turn of the century Paris Maybe somebody that needs a break from the slaughter?

Also, we really could use some help with WW2 regimental history; if that's you send up a flare or something,, ok? Elinruby (talk) 04:39, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

A piecemeal suggestion

I'm beginning to think that there will be no split of this article as easy as my spinning off Collaboration with Imperial Japan — an enormous subject over a helf-century from 1895 to 1945, which sadly seems to have attracted no subsequent edits, clarifications or filling in of big gaps.

But progress may be piecemeal in what remains. Ideally this should in, of and by itself, provide some kind of coherent overview of reputable students' evaluations of collaboration as a whole with Hitler and Mussolini, followed by succinct but adequate summaries for each country and/or theme (economic, military, persecuting, etc.)

This all a very long build-up to my specific idea to start off with. As now, so far as I can see, there are no stand-alone articles about collaboration in the Baltic states. @Marcelus: has done an enormous amount of research and writing for the Baltic section of this article, which should not go to waste but is out of proportion to the rest of this article. My suggestion or thought is that perhaps our Baltic sections could be spun off into an article of its own (an article on World War II Collaboration in the Baltic states would have the added advantage of being open to adding material about collaboration with Stalin, a topic that's closely intertwined in the Baltic states with collaboration with the Nazis, i.e. collaborate with Devil A to fight oppression and exploitation by Devil B, who then might turn out to be even worse).

And then this present article could have a summary that's succinct but more informative than what had been here six months ago.

On the other hand, I may be gaily and presumptuously proposing even more work for anther editor or editors who've already contributed a huge amount of time, worry and effort into what's here now — and may not be able to devote any more.

Sorry this rambles; I'm kind of sleepy. :-) —— Shakescene (talk) 14:49, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Russian Liberation Army

An editor thinks the members of this unit were Nazi by definition. Their article says Vlasov, a Soviet general, agreed to collaborate with Nazi Germany after having been captured on the Eastern Front. The soldiers under his command were mostly former Soviet prisoners of war but also included White Russian émigrés, some of whom were veterans of the anti-communist White Army from the Russian Civil War (1917–23). Asking for an opinion from topic experts.

Also, can we please not revert one another? I'm bragging about how well y'all are getting along.

Thanks.Elinruby (talk) 13:34, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

What do RS say? Slatersteven (talk) 13:37, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, but I started a new Talk section about this before seeing this section. I'm posting here what I had written, in case any of it's of any use in this discussion.

Were Vlasov's soldiers Nazi by definition?

Nazi Russians with POA (Russian Liberation Army) shoulder patches, 1944

I changed this caption to

"Soldiers wearing the shoulder patches of Gen. Andrey Vlasov's anti-Soviet Russian Liberation Army ("POA"), 1944"

from the previous caption:

"Nazi Russians with POA (Russian Liberation Army) shoulder patches, 1944"

saying that not every member of Vlasov's army was a Nazi, but was reverted by another editor who said they were "by definition".

This seems to be a matter of definitions. Technically Nazis were members or supporters of the NSDAP, the Austrian DNSAP, the Danish DNSAP, the Dutch NSB and allied parties (not to mention post-war groups like the American Nazi Party and various National Socialist Movements).

As I understand it (without scholarly sources ready to hand) every member of the regular or "civilian" SS (Allgemeine SS) had to be a member of the NSDAP and thus entitled to wear the red Nazi armband with white disc & black swastika).

But I thought this was not true of those recruited for the military or Waffen-SS, especially outside Germany and especially from nationalities that were not strictly Nordic.

The broader question, which pervades this whole Collaboration article, is whether collaborating with the Nazis (or even fighting for the Axis) made you into a Nazi.

From what I know of Vlasov's army, they thought they were fighting against Stalinist Communism, rather than for Nazism (whose long-term policies for the East, involved halving the Slavic population to free land for German pioneer settler-soldiers).

Perhaps my revised caption is tilted too far the other way (I struggled to find neutral wording); what do other editors think? —— Shakescene (talk) 18:12, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

I think that is a good question, to the extent I understand it. It is also why there are so many overlapping lists of German military units. K.e.coffman was in a merge discussion about two of those lists and might have an opinion about them. As I recall this was exactly the sticking point -- who was a volunteer. I am pretty sure the men in that one unit that deserted en masse and joined the FFI weren't in that unit out of ideological fervor, though. There were *a lot* of countries where a nationalist group(s) accepted weapons from the Germans. Daunting as resolving this question seems, this question underlies a lot of differences about the histories.

(Also, some of the units appear more than once under different names.)

I have in the past proposed a standard of taking at least one overt action on behalf of the Germans. I don't think anyone either agreed or disagreed with that at the time, but it's the best I was able to do. Since then, I seem to recall seeing that there was a unit that fought one battle, against the Polish AK, so the exact definition sort of really does matter. We don't have to solve thid exact question right now, though. There is, in general, a question about which units were conscripts and which were ideological zealots, with respect to who was a Nazi and who was a collaborationist, total

alitarian, monarcsympathized or appreaser. Or puppet state for that matter. Slatersteven would you be interested in starting a review of the sources to find out? I think we pretty much all agree that there will be a divergence of opinion, but maybe if we start writing some names and quotes down we could maybe start a discussion? I think I saw this caption dispute but I don't remember the details -- is thus the one where someone said that if they were in that unit they were Nazis? Elinruby (talk) 00:52, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Just checking in on this. I think that this is matter of ONUS, or that the person who wishes to make a statement needs to support it if challenged. The "Nazi" statement has been challenged and has not been supported. That's the way it looks to me. Several of these "volunteer" units seem to have relied heavily on conscripts, so at the moment we can't say for a fact that the men meet the voluntary criterion we've been using Elinruby (talk) 18:04, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

That was my inclination, too: to wait for a couple of more days, ping @Lute88:, and then revert back to my original caption if there's no further discussion or suggested alternate language. —— Shakescene (talk) 18:47, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Keep in mind that there were 2 Russian nazi armies, ROA (Vlasov) and RONA (Kaminsky). While the 1st contained opportunistic contingent, the 2nd (the one in question) was pretty rabidly Nazi, and as such was used in the suppression of the Warsaw uprising. So much so that it had to be disbanded.--Aristophile (talk) 20:30, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

If I may add a couple of dissenting comments to this statement: 1) I'm not sold on the idea of Kaminski's RONA being "rabidly Nazi" as opposed to opportunistic. As with Vlasov's army, it emerged during the war as the Germans advanced victoriously. Plenty (most?) of the troops were former PoWs, and the fact that the unit conducted itself like a bunch of savages in suppressing the Warsaw uprising hardly means they were ideologically motivated (plus IIRC Kaminski was an ethnic Pole himself - if his motivation for the killing of Poles were a feeling of racial superiority he might as well have shot himself to start with). I'd put that down to indiscipline and opportunism (the 'joys' of looting, raping, etc.) instead. If anything, the fact that some NTS cadres worked with Vlasov in trying to elaborate a political programme points to his formation having a more ideological background, although I would not simply equate the NTS's solidarism with Nazism by any stretch of the imagination, either. 2) There was a third Russian collaborationist formation, the Russian Protective Corps that operated in the Balkans, comparable in size to Kaminski's force, and made up of former White troops. The Corps was ideologically motivated inasmuch as they saw their collaboration as a way to continue their fight against Bolshevism, but they didn't necessarily buy into Nazism wholesale either (plus they were led by Boris Shteifon, who was Orthodox by religion but of Jewish ancestry through his father - not easily reconcilable with the racist Weltanschauung of the Nazis, but more easily overlooked by pre-revolutionary Russian anti-Judaism, more narrowly focused on religion). This being said, and just as a general comment addressing the original question, saying any of these formations were Nazis may be inaccurate (I would reserve the label of "Nazi Russians" to the grouplets active in interwar Europe who actively embraced Nazism as an ideology), but since as all three formations collaborated with the Nazis they can rightly be called Nazi collaborators.Ostalgia (talk) 09:45, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

If we have to go to a survey of sources over whether a particular unit was or was not "Nazi" I think the people who want that should be contributing to the discussion about whether the units we are listing as Nazi collaborators are in fact Nazi collaborators. And do you really want all this drama over a caption? We need content. Write some then if you want this article to call this unit Nazi, but it will need to be really well sourced. Meanwhile ONUS has not been met. Elinruby (talk) 20:48, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

So, did the men in the picture wearing RLA/POA patches belong to Vlasov's Russian Liberation Army or Kaminksky's RONA ? —— Shakescene (talk) —— Shakescene (talk) 20:52, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

And looking at these pictures from Wikipedia's article on the Kaminski Brigade, it appears that these soldiers are wearing a different RONA armpatch from the ROA one in this Collaboration article:

The RONA insignia

—— Shakescene (talk) 21:06, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Ok well. I don't think we can even say they are RONA then. Comparing armpatches is also a bit OR. If we had a solid source for it, perhaps we could say that. And if we're not sure whether we have a picture of RONA or RLA what do we have a picture of then? Elinruby (talk) 23:57, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

De-Cossackization says "soldiers of the ROA, who had been recruited from POW camps and Red Army defections, most soldiers of the German Cossack units had never been citizens of the Soviet Union."

Y'all tell me, but that looks like cause for doubt to me Elinruby (talk) 01:45, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

___

References

Elinruby (talk) 01:45, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

UK sources

Appeasement, fascists? Channel islands? Elinruby (talk) 01:29, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Historians believe the Duke of Windsor actively collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War CBC Docs · Posted: Nov 10, 2022

WaPo fact check

How British High Society Fell in Love With the Nazis, Tom Sykes, Daily Beast, How British High Society Fell in Love With the Nazis

Germans and Nazis: The Controversy over 'Vansittartism' in Britain during the Second World War, Aaron Goldman, Journal of Contemporary History volume 14 1979 p 155

Italian resistance

Clandestine resistance front of the Carabinieri Italian guerrilla war in Ethiopia Elinruby (talk) 03:03, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

also for the slo-mo improvement effort in the volunteers Section: Georgian Legion (1941–1945). Btw the redlink above is because I forgot I was looking at a translation of the it.wiki article. One of these days I will dig up the Italian article title. Elinruby (talk) 19:13, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

What is collaboration: sources

[https://www.jstor.org/stable/20619792 Elinruby (talk) 03:53, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Netherlands

https://www.timesofisrael.com/dutch-archives-on-accused-nazi-collaborators-to-open-to-the-public-in-2025/amp/ Elinruby (talk) 04:50, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Jewish collaborator section

It's only about Poland. Elinruby (talk) 06:24, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

WP:JUSTDOIT Marcelus (talk) 06:54, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

I hear you. I did post at NPOV, but I am already going to go to wikihell for something I do here so...may as well . I hate deleting stuff but this is a case for it Elinruby (talk) 07:44, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Regarding this removal. If it's about Poland, then maybe it should be merged (but it was split from Polish section following the discussion seen in Talk:Collaboration with the Axis powers/Archive 7); see also Talk:Collaboration_with_the_Axis_powers/Archive_6#How_to_best_title_the_section_related_to_Category:Jewish_Nazi_collaborators?? Or split into its own article. We have Category:Jewish collaboration with Nazi Germany with no main article, to which this section was arguably its equivalent in prose, and redirects like Jewish collaboration which you've just made to point to thin air. It is a very controversial subject, but IMHO we should improve this content, not erase it. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:13, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

I have no opinion about the controversy and no objection to the material going elsewhere. My objection to it is solely based on weight, in that it is solely about individuals in a single country, whereas there are entire massacres in other countries that aren't yet mentioned, and the article is oversize. I do suggest that you review my failed verification tag and consider deleting that one guy, as all the source provided claims is that he was known to call fellow prisoners "dirty Jew". Or sourcing his mention better. However, I did review several of the other names mentioned and agree that those were collaborators. Elinruby (talk) 09:49, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

@Elinruby Since you already removed the content, and given your arguments, I'd suggest that you copy the removed content (minus stuff that failed verification) to the redirect I linked above. Interested editors can work to expand / improve the content there, or, if necessary, AfD the resulting article if they feel it is unsalvageable. Then you can add a see also entry to this article (or consider summarizing this in a much shorter form and retaining a much shorter section). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:59, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Ok. I considered copying it to the talk page; I agree that the redirect would be better. Probably tomorrow. A summary would require reading all of it, and possibly research to avoid generalizing too much, and my interest is minimal; more interested in the guy who became president of the European Parliament. It seems to me there is an issue of power that needs to be weighed. Definitely a time sink, but I'll commit to copying it to the redirect. Elinruby (talk) 10:11, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Please either re-add the removed content or add it to the redirect when you can, I am happy to edit and summarize it today and tomorrow. Shouldn't be WP:BLANK such info, even if it could have been better incorporated into the article. LegalSmeagolian (talk) 16:43, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

If you are going to remove large blocks of cited text just for being undue, discuss first and allow time for a consensus to form on which page it is due. WP:PRESERVE WP:NORUSH. Sennalen (talk) 17:07, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

This is an overview article about collaboration with the Axis everywhere in the world. Which needs to be cut. I just removed some other text which had been tagged as unsourced since 2011. Nobody else is addressing any of this, except in Poland. I posted to draw attention to the question of whether a woman who informed on other Jews to save her parents is more important than a massacre in Malaysia, which is what we had. I am inclined to say no and am feeling a bit impatient with the concept. Was her choice deplorable mmmmyes but I am glad I didn't have to make it. Is it notable enough for an article about Jewish collaboration in the Warsaw ghetto? Most likely but I would have to do a lot of reading to make that call. I am not questioning whether such collaboration existed, as it did in other places I am more familiar with. As an aside I think the article should be completely rewritten and probably also split so if we wind up with a collaboration in Eastern Europe it may become DUE there. As it is as a prelude to a rewriting, I have my hands full fixing copyvio and NPOV and sketchy referencing with respect to large groups of people, not just individuals.

I am about to be unavailable for several hours. If anyone wants to get started on working on the material, feel free to copy it over yourself. I have no objection, although I suggest you read it over with a critical eye as one of the names failed verification and the sourcing for several others is a Times of Israel article saying that the Polish government is wrong. It does mention these names though, down near the bottom. As RS though, there must be something better.

Meanwhile if it is somehow important that I be the one to do it, I've said I will, but I will miss lunch if I don't go now and while I am there I have offline tasks to do Elinruby (talk) 19:57, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Regardless of whether or not one source is bad and whether the section needs re-writing, this is not a case of WP:BLOWITUP. Most of the content in that section was well sourced, and since the topic was already lacking a new article, some of the information became at risk of being lost if other editors did not notice this. There are many documented instances of such collaboration, see https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Category:Jewish_collaboration_with_Nazi_Germany so I just don't understand why you would delete such information? I am not going to be the one to make a new article on such a controversial subject, but nearly all the text you removed was indeed sourced, so I am just confused why you did not rephrase it to state how small a minority actively collaborated. If you could just revert your previous edit for now I don't think that would cut into your lunch break. LegalSmeagolian (talk) 20:17, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

please take yes for an answer and go read up on due weight. Elinruby (talk) 23:15, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

@Elinruby the above user (LegalSmeagolian) can’t edit that topic area (30/500). You should discuss massive removal of source content first, don’t just delete it. - GizzyCatBella🍁 00:16, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

The section is on the small side for an article. It might fit at Nazi crimes against the Polish nation. Sennalen (talk) 00:49, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

That’s not an appropriate article, these collaborators weren't Nazis. - GizzyCatBella🍁 02:14, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

what's wrong with Collaboration in German-occupied Poland? I don't see these people mentioned in the section about Jewish collaboration or the one about individual collaboration. Elinruby (talk) 04:05, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

I seriously suggest better sourcing though. Elinruby (talk) 04:07, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

That seems ideal. Sennalen (talk) 04:10, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

A summary there would be good, yes - just like here. But we need a main article for the phenomena of Category:Jewish collaboration with Nazi Germany, per WP:CATMAIN, and the content here is relevant, no? There is stuff in that category that is not Poland related and can be used to globalize this topic beyond Poland (ex. Lehi_(militant_group)#Activities_and_operations_during_World_War_II). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:21, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Oh you're here now, Piotrus. I guess I don't have to fix my mention of you. I hear you on catmain. But I leave that in your capable hands. I have copied the material to the redirect as you requested. For now I'm removing individuals from this article, unless they had choices, like Pétain and Bousquet. Did you ever comment on the split proposal? Because that would relieve the size pressure and might be one way to solve this. Elinruby (talk) 04:34, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

I did minor c/e to at Jewish collaboration, activating CATMAIN and such. Hopefully editors will improve this article in the future. PS. I don't think I was ever called a "template" before... :P _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:46, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

@GizzyCatBella: but I'm supposed be polite when he lectures me on Wikipedia policy? I don't see why material about Poland should be treated differently than other material. I'm back and will now carry out the edit request cough demand as I told Piotrus I would. Elinruby (talk) 04:15, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Not trying to lecture you, just refresh you. LegalSmeagolian (talk) 13:10, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

It's pretty insulting no matter what you call it. But fine. I still think you should read up on due weight. Have a nice day. Elinruby (talk) 13:44, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

—— Shakescene (talk) 04:22, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

• I think this section should be completely removed from this page (no specific opinion about such sections in other pages). This is because page "Collaboration with the Axis powers" is about (and should be about) collaboration by states or mostly by states. Singling out a specific ethnic group, same as was singled out by Nazi, does look antisemitic to me. Normally, I would just remove such section myself right now, so I did, no matter that we have the standing arbitration . My very best wishes (talk) 16:48, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

  Most of the collaborations described in the article did not take place at the state level, moreover, some cases such as Romania and Hungary should be removed or truncated because these countries were allies of Germany, not its collaborators. Collaborations between Estonians, Lithuanians, Belarusians, Poles, Azerbaijanis, etc. also took place on a personal level, sometimes organizations, but not states. There is a conversation to move away from a state-based description at all, and focus on a more problematic description of the phenomenon. Marcelus (talk) 17:44, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

But this page is organized "by states" right now. I do not like the suggestion to organize collaborators by ethnic groups because that would imply a collective responsibility of ethnic groups, where the alleged responsibility of Jews for their own persecution would be just the most outrageous example. The collective responsibility of ethnic groups was an idea by Nazi ideologists. Not only Nazi of course. For example, a propaganda narrative that "Ukrainians are neo-Nazi" is claiming the same. Unfortunately, using such ethnicity-based categories is unavoidable in cases of inter-ethnic conflicts, such as Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. However, the Holocaust and other crimes by Nazi was not such historical inter-ethnic conflict between Jews or any other peoples (like Polish people, etc.), even though Nazi did exploit the anti-Jewish sentiment in all countries they occupied. My very best wishes (talk) 17:54, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

I said that the coverage of the subject should be problematic rather than ethnic/state; I.e., to describe collaboration as a phenomenon, and not to be a mere enumeration of collaborating formations, individuals, and organizations. And it is not true that currently the article is organized "by states", there is a section with a geographical breakdown, there is a section on volunteers, a section on economic collaboration, and so on. Even in its current form, the article is clearly heading in this direction.

The section on Jewish collaboration absolutely did not suggest responsibility of Jews for their own persecution, this is a baseless allegation. Please restore the section you removed. Marcelus (talk) 18:08, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

I justified the removal in my comments just above, and stand by it. My very best wishes (talk) 18:21, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

And I refuted your arguments, if you still refuse the revert you are simply WP:STONEWALLING; also WP:NOTCENSORED applies here.

I would revert your changes, but I'm on 0RR, and I think you are aware of that. Marcelus (talk) 19:36, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Also, this is basically a content fork of such section on page Collaboration in German-occupied Poland; it belongs there if anywhere. My very best wishes (talk) 17:30, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Not true, Jewish collaboration did not take place only on the territory of Poland, but also in other countries: the Baltics, Belarus, the Netherlands, Palestine etc. Marcelus (talk) 17:45, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Please, self-revert. Marcelus (talk) 17:46, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, indeed, that was not only about Poland. Which makes such section even worse per my comments above. If anyone wants to revert my edit, I will not revert back again per WP:BRD. My very best wishes (talk) 18:24, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm not going to revert. However, the topic seems notable and coverage by RSs is good. If the topic of this article is defined in the way MVBW thinks it should be - "collaboration only by states" - then I wonder if anyone would object to Marcelus creating an article on Jewish collaboration with Nazi Germany. Since the topic is well suitable for antisemitic propaganda, fringe theories, shocking trivialisations and all kinds of bullshit, I think it would be desirable to have a well-sourced and balanced Wikipedia article on it. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 12:45, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Ops! An article on the topic already exists - sorry, my mistake. Well, perhaps Marcelus's text can be added/merged to that one, I don't know. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 12:48, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

I think that the topic will sooner or later come back to this article, because it's within the WP:SCOPE of it; but probably after the article will be remodelled. Marcelus (talk) 13:45, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

I actually think so that is entirely possible as well, but there is also the matter of appearing to single Jews out, when there are other transnational groups as well, but we don't have sections on them. Cossacks come to mind and so do Roma and various Yugoslavian groups like the Cham. (I think most of them were nationalists though, and that's a difference.)

Also, does anyone object to me starting a draft for Yugoslavia? Elinruby (talk) 22:43, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Do you think it might be helpful to create a Collaboration, etc. , Wikiproject ?

Collapsed per WP:OWNTALK. Either all of it or none of it. Original discussion is here.

[copied from a User's Talk Page] Hi, Elin, I was just thinking that with all the overlap and cross-referencing, it might be helpful to create a Wikiproject or Wikigroup for something like "Invasion, Collaboration, Occupation and Resistance during World War II" (a more logical order would be IOCR, but this arrangement could be more euphonisouly acronymised to ICOR) to gather together all those articles like German occupation of Byelorussia during World War II, Collaboration with Imperial Japan, Collaboration with the Axis powers, Vichy France, Chetniks, Partisans, List of World War II puppet states, Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Azad Hind, Slovak Republic (1939-1945). White Rose, Manchukuo, Vidkun Quisling, Vel' d'Hiv Roundup, Einsatzgruppen. Otto Abetz. etc. (There may already be a Wiki Project on the various resistance movements.) On the one hand, this might help with overlap and cross-checking; on the other, it might either pretend to become some Universal Law-Giver or else sit around empty, unvisited and unused. There's also a more-distant danger of just coalescing onto one project page all those angry ArbCom-worthy debates on topics such as Jewish collaboration or Comfort women. @Mathglot, @User:Piotrus @User:Marcelus, @User:Scope creep. @User:Volunteer Marek —— Shakescene (talk) 02:19, 2 May 2023 (UTC) Morning @Shakescene: That is a interesting idea. It would certainly something that could focus the group efforts and we could have a participants lists. Morning @Elinruby: I've been doing research on collaboration and found a book on collaboration, the meaning of Nazi collaboration and the many forms its took depending on the particular country or region, the demographics, the people that were there, economy and so it. It seems to be the defintive book, but is probably one amongst many, but it excellent at describing the various aspects of it and why each country/group decided to go with, particularly the early ones, their motivations and so on. I found a review and it pointed me to a Italian academic who held the last conference on nazi collaboration for researchers on the subject. I'm going to contact him and see what he says in terms of the lastest sources and see if we can get any pointers. I'm still on the Lister article at the moment, so this is on the back, but I have some direction for the collaboration article. scope_creepTalk 07:34, 2 May 2023 (UTC) Another promising source might be Hitler's War Aims, volume 2 ISBN 039333290X —— Shakescene (talk) 19:04, 7 May 2023 (UTC) I'll probably be low-activity for the next month or so, but I'll watch with interest, and contribute when I can. Mathglot (talk) 09:04, 2 May 2023 (UTC) I think it's a good idea. I had been wondering if everyone got run off by the current Arb case, and was.thinking of making a post about that. Certainly it would improve the visibility of the effort. As for.attracting the angry, that may be inevitable, whether we start a formal project or not. If it gets too bad we can maybe ask for discretionary sanctions, which this article currently only falls under with respect to Poland. I think that holding fast to verifiability will help a lot with creating something useful that neither blames nor praises. Elinruby (talk) 16:26, 2 May 2023 (UTC) As I suspected there is already some Resistance stuff falling within the WW2 MilHistory projects. There's also this collapsible category guide (or whatever you call it) [[Category:World War II resistance movements]]. P.S. I looked at the Collaboration with Imperial Japan article that I created by splitting off 16 k from Collaboration with the Axis Powers earlier this year, and it's now nearly doubled to 28 k, which is exactly what I was seeking. Most of us know something about Vichy France or Eastern Europe, but nearly nothing (except what we've found in Wikipedia) about modern Asian history — far better to attract those who have a greater interest in and knowledge of modern Asia than to stumble our own way through darkly (and perhaps wrongly). —— Shakescene (talk) 17:45, 2 May 2023 (UTC) New projects, even ones you'd think have broad interest, frequently go dark. A subtask of WP:MILHIST may be a good route to consider. MILHIST is a huge project with many task forces for subtopics, and is not going to become inactive. If a new "collaboration" subtask is created and has little input for some time, it won't disappear as long as MILHIST exists. Plus, it may attract crossover interest from members of other MILHIST task forces that wouldn't have noticed it as a standalone project. So that's one thing to consider. Mathglot (talk) 18:50, 2 May 2023 (UTC) Except we've been removing military history. Just saying Elinruby (talk) 19:05, 2 May 2023 (UTC) Fair enough; maybe another project then; WP:POLITICS? Mathglot (talk) 19:07, 2 May 2023 (UTC) —— Shakescene (talk) 20:34, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Either here or there, but not both. See Template:Discussion moved to. Mathglot (talk) 22:35, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

It makes more sense to keep it here than on one user's variegated and over-filled Talk Page. We often pick each other's minds and knowledge on User Talk Pages before deciding to move the discussion onto a subject article's Talk Page, where more contributors would think to look.

At least, that's been my experience. See, for example, User_talk:Shakescene#List_of_NYC_mayors continued at Talk:List_of_mayors_of_New_York_City#Mayors_who_died_in_office

—— Shakescene (talk) 01:31, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

I have no objection to the discussion being moved, but have never looked up the policy on doing so. Not an issue to me at least fwiw Elinruby (talk) 03:46, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Maybe a taskforce of something? I doubt a WikiProject for such a niche topic would live long. Best to use talk pages like we do here, IMHO, and ping folks if some discussions happen at less often frequented ones. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:31, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

seriously now: page split

Several of the people who have contributed various parts to the page have separately agreed that splitting it is a good idea. However it would be really nice to be sure there is a consensus for this, so would all you fine people please be so kind as to express your opinion of the following proposal:

1. move long-enough sections to their own articles. Belarus, Estonia, France, and Lithuania come to mind. Probably also Poland. Belgium and Netherlands probably also are.well-dwvelopped enough for a start.
2. make sure each section has its own Main link

Elinruby (talk) 04:01, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

The article should be splited and remodelled Marcelus (talk) 06:43, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree. And we can work out what "remodelled" means later. I would prefer that we get away from a country by country approach -- most likely by spinning off the articles where that is appropriate, like Denmark or France -- and talk about some wider trends and transnational groups like the Cossacks. However going with summary format in the meantime is probably the next good step. pinging some people who have previously opined on this article. Feel free to add any others I miss. I am contemplating just doing a bold move if we're back to people being afraid to touch the article. The Arb case is over, people, and there was no complaint about what we're doing here. @Shakescene, Peacemaker67, Zero0000, Mathglot, My very best wishes, Piotrus, and Scope creep: Elinruby (talk) 19:34, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

@Cukrakalnis: Had to look up the spelling of your name. Are you still interested? Elinruby (talk) 19:37, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

I've just decided that I need to step back from this overwhelming subject-cluster (inccluding other huge, vast subjects like Axis occupation and the Resistance) for a while until my heart and brain clear up.

On the one hand, there's this huge (and partly realized) danger that (unlike the fairly limited and discrete Collaboration with Imperial Japan) this becomes an impossibly long (almost but not quite limitless) Christmas Tree like Puppet state and List of World War II puppet states, carrying an ever-increasing load of separately-hung ornaments, some of them drawing emotional and drawn-out wrangles.

But, on the other hand, a purely abstract, formal, theoretical discussion would draw little outside, non-expert interest without illustrative examples. The theory might not even make much sense without examples. How do you discuss the issues about Vichy France in the abstract without discussing Vichy's history?

If I continue further, I'll probably just sleepily babble.

@Elinruby, @Peacemaker67, @Zero0000, @Mathglot, @My very best wishes, @Scope creep, @Piotrus

Regards to all —— Shakescene (talk) —— Shakescene (talk) 20:09, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

there's a lot of work, yeah. If you need a break from it, welp, happens to us all. I am thinking it will be less overwheming if addressed in a manner that doesnt require balancing the channel islands with the Soviet Union. Can I take this to mean you have no objection to spinning off the section on France? Now I think of it @Slatersteven and Bobfrombrockley: Elinruby (talk) 20:27, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

French collaboration with Nazi Germany redirects to Vichy France Elinruby (talk) 22:53, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. We do have Collaboration in German-occupied Poland. If the section here is growing too long, merger there is reasonable, although I think something should be left here. Looking at Template:Collaboration with Axis Powers by country, I see that Byelorussian collaboration with Nazi Germany exists. French, Estonian and Lithuanian ones do not (as you note correctly, French link is just a general redirect to Vichy, a broader concept) and I think it's reasonale to create them based on what we have here, then shorten those sections if the lenght of the main article here is an issue. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:29, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

I think we've bought a little time on the size issue by splitting off Collaboration with Imperial Japan. It isn't so much (imho) overall length at this point as balance. France is longer than everything else. Soviet Union is too short and MVBW says that not discussing the the prior pact is an egregious omission. I think we still have Central Asia under Europe because of Russia. I think Lithuania and Estonia are both well-developed enough to spin off, and Belgium isn't too bad...getting back to Poland, if we are adopting summary style, we should probably check to make sure the balance is right there between the article and the summary here, if you have time to check that. I need to think about Vichy. I also think we should start a draft with the writers. A lot of the current entries in Category:Collaboration with the Axis powers are people like Lord Haw Haw and Tokyo Rose, I noticed, and this article currently doesn't mention them. Meanwhile, what do you think about spinning off and expanding that business collaboration section? Elinruby (talk) 06:11, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

Elinruby (talk) 06:11, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

Still interested, thanks for the tag. I was offline for quite a bit because it just so happened that my laptop had been (and still is) causing me problems for half a month by now, but now I am back and running on another laptop. Cukrakalnis (talk) 09:58, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

i have been reading up on Yugoslavia because nobody else seems to want to tackle it. Ditto the volunteer regiments. If anyone wants to do that instead please speak up and I will go back to North Africa, which I semi-understand. Elinruby (talk) 20:04, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

was planning to spin some articles off this weekend. This may get postponed (for... reasons) but if anyone has some input now is a good time to speak up Elinruby (talk) 03:35, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

My first inclination might be to do another geographical split: between Western and Eastern Europe (including Finland). German objectives (where they desired local collaboration) were quite different looking East & Southeast from looking West and North, for two principal reasons:

1. Germany's adversary in the East was Soviet Russia (who had her own westward-looking, irredentist ambitions), while on the West, Germany was facing (or had faced, or could potentially face) Britain & the British Empire, France & her empire, and the United States.
2. The Nazis' long-term racialist ambitions also differed. In the Northern and Western lands that they occupied, the Nazis could see fellow Teutons or racial allies, while their Eastern plans (going back to Mein Kampf) envisioned clearing out. halving or enslaving the existing Slavic, Jewish and Gypsy inhabitants to create Lebensraum for an imagined Teutonic warrior-farmer élite.

This division (as seen, for example, in the relative treatment of imported foreign labour and prisoners of war) seems clear, but is very far from absolute. The Reich absorbed and Germanised lands and peoples on all sides: Luxembourg and Alsace-Lorraine; Austria and the Sudetenland; Danzig, West Prussia and the Warthegau.

But collaboration in the West often occurred within existing state frameworks in France, the Low Countries and Scandinavia; while Eastern European collaborators were often collaborating against some long-standing enemy in the reorganised wreckage of the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian and Tsarist Empires (Slovaks vs Czechs, Croats vs Serbs, Albanians vs Greeks, Magyars vs Roumanians, etc.) The four Einsatzgruppen, small units of around 300 each, could only commit such vast and systematic genocide with the help (or at least acquiescence) of local collaborators, but only in the East — there were (so far as I know) no Western or Scandinavian Einsatzgruppen.

¶ On the other hand, I suppose you could say that these comparisons are an argument for collecting the Western examples in one part of the existing article, and the Eastern ones in another, but on the same page (or in the same article) so that the hypothetical reader can more easily see the differences in kinds of collaboration.

I'm too sleepy to continue lucidly, so I'll stop here. —— Shakescene (talk) 19:07, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

That's a good observation and afaik quite true. Maybe it should be an organizing principle for this article. I was thinking of doing the spinoffs by country, perhaps to be merged later if that seems appropriate. Here's my rationale: This is the first time a rough consensus has formed in a single place for any kind of split, although several people have separately said that they think this should happen. I'd like to pull out of the stall we are currently in and move forward on productive work. 06:07, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Draft reorganised article

After some of the discussion above, I've made a draft reorganisation of this article at User:Shakescene/Collaboration. The main difference is separating this article into sections for Beyond Europe, Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the USSR. One possibility is to convert these sections into stand-alone articles, as I did with Collaboration with Imperial Japan. I gave my rationale for splitting off these articles (who are now approaching 200k total) above in #seriously now: page split.

But there are some counteracting considerations, which I'm to sleepy to elaborate fully, such as how do we handle the Military and Business collab sections; and the fact that the likes of Hjalmar Schacht, Albert Speer, Fritz Todt and Fritz Sauckel just wanted food (available from France, Belgium and Denmark, as well as the East European plains), labour (from everywhere) and military supplies (from Central Europe as well as the West), no matter where they came from (or how they got them).

I'd appreciate any reviews. responses and comments, either here or on my user draft's Talk Page. —— Shakescene (talk) 02:41, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

thanks for biting the bullet. I am still engrossed in the Balkans -- which I will happily hand off to anyone who is interested -- but will take a look a little later tonight. Elinruby (talk) 05:57, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

a couple of thoughts: the Business collaboration section (although I am not sure that is the best name for it} is basically a list, although it is not in list form. The point is, there is a lot of material and room to expand, and I think it can become its own article. Piotrus, who wrote much of the existing section, has expressed an interest in doing this spin-off, although I don't know what his time looks like and of course other suggestions are welcome. The military section is an unsourced morass and I for one object to conscripts being called collaborators. Spinning this off will require dealing with two overlapping articles with an unclosed but dormant RfM. Ive been researching this, although this too is a task I'd be happy to turn over to anyone else who is interested. For purposes of this discussion, I don't think either of those need be an impediment. I haven't had a chance to take a look at the draft yet[ got sucked into something else last night. Elinruby (talk) 13:51, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

I am indeed interested in the topic of business collaboration with murderous regimes. But how much time I'll have to work on this is another issue. Feel free to ping me if a spin-off article is created and I'll certainly watchlist it. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:28, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Had a quick look. It avoids the silliness of Central Asia being in Europe because of Russia, which is a big point in its favor. I also very much liked the point you made above:

• in Western Europe the collaboration came from the government (or some version thereof, yes yes this is a contested point, and yes this ignores the Charlemagne unit and the like)
• in Eastern Europe the collaborators tended to be nationalists resisting the Russians

Someone will probably yell SYNTH right around here, so to avoid that we will need some sources. While we may have independently made the observation it really is fairly obvious given a little digging, so I am certain that sources are out there. Several someones have no doubt written treatises on collaboration as an abstract issue.

France is still too long, even if we trim out some military history, so spinoffs may still be necessary, but offhand I like this structure, and the "Beyond Europe" addresses the objection that not all of the countries in Europe have empires. My suggestion would be to convert to this structure and summarize and spin off from here. Elinruby (talk) 13:36, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

If we keep W. Europe, E. Europe, the USSR, and Beyond Europe in separate sections, we may not need to make any synthesis or comparison ourselves; just let the reader make any comparisons or draw any conclusions that may come to her or his mind. If there's a separate section intro to Eastern Europe and/or the USSR, one of us could probably cite a work like Mark Mazower's Hitler's Empire, Norman Rich's Hitler's War Aims or Alexander Dallin's German Rule in Russia —— Shakescene (talk) 15:48, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. Just need to watch out for that particular pitfall. I haven't read up on that editing issue much, nor have I ever been seriously accused of it, so I am not really up on all the intricacies of the policy, but as I understand it, it isn't SYNTH or OR if it can be properly cited; alternately one can avoid drawing conclusions that aren't directly based on a text. I am pretty sure this *can* be cited, but I think eastern europe vs western europe is a natural enough dividing line apart from this consideration that we don't need to cite our reasons for organizing in this way. There are also other common factors, such as the perceived Aryan-ness of say the Danish vs the Serbs or Romanians for example. I am in favor. Let's see if anyone else wants to weigh in. Elinruby (talk) 16:26, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

\

British Somaliland

I have a haunting feeling that we may only even still have this section because I thought it was a good idea at one point. If so mea culpa. I spent some quality time on the main article last night and really, it's like four degrees of collaboration and there isn't much of that: British Somaliland and French Somaliland had plans for a joint defense. Vichy sent a new commander who was ignored for a couple of weeks then recalled. The French commander who was in place ignored Vichy and continued to cooperate with the British against the Italians. So we have a brief difference of opinion in the next country over about whether Vichy was the legitimate government of France, very brief in duration, with few if any consequences. No doubt this is an over-simplification, but I did look through the main article rather carefully, and without going to the academic databases, that is all the that collaboration I see.

How do other people feel about just deleting the section? There may well be a collaborationist story to be told about something that happened around Djibouti, but I don't think it is in the military history of British Somaliland, and I have no idea what the original author of that section was thinking. It may have been part of the conflation of military operations with collaboration that pervaded the article (?) Elinruby (talk) 13:12, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

OK with me; that whole imperial/mandatory section looks a bit questionable to me. E.g. Darlan was a hardline Vichyssoise but I'm not sure that his actions in North Africa show any collaboration with Italy or Germany (at least as occupiers rather than as external allies against Britain). And he turned everything over to the Allied expedition anyway. —— Shakescene (talk) —— Shakescene (talk) 15:55, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

IMHO he did initially collaborate, if following military orders from Vichy is collaboration. I somewhat question that, and definitely question it for the average grunt, but it's a distinction that the original editors of this article seem not to have made. Darlan is of interest since he switched sides and issued the order to stop shooting at the Allied troops landing in Algeria. Although I think that there have since been decisions that say that soldiers have a duty to refuse to follow illegal orders, I think the bar for that is pretty high, no? Even members of the SS weren't individually charged unless it could be demonstrated that they themselves had committed an atrocity. Someone who is indeed a collaborator would be the Hungarian general who made a side deal with the Nazis to allow them to cross Hungary to invade Yugoslavia, in the interests of regaining lost territory, against the wishes of his country's legitimate government. No question he caused or at least facilitated a whole lot of carnage. For nationalist reasons. On a smaller scale, someone who signed up for the Charlemagne unit in order to show those Jews what was what would also be a willing collaborator. This distinction is what makes the whole volunteer section so thorny, and in some places apparently wrong. Intentions aren't everything -- Vichy still collaborated, even if in their minds they were saving French lives, and they had more power than the average man on the street to refuse to do so. There was still a calculation that French soldiers were worth more than foreign Jews, so intentions or not they were voluntary participants however reluctant some of them may individually have been. And some of them were eager participants -- look at the rafle in Marseille Elinruby (talk) 16:53, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

text removed from Netherlands section

Might be appropriate elsewhere if dead link fixed: During the war, famous actor and singer Johannes Heesters made his career in Nazi Germany, befriending high-ranking Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels and living in houses stolen from wealthy Jews. Elinruby (talk) 05:58, 29 May 2023 (UTC) Elinruby (talk) 05:58, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Polish Institute of National Remembrance

I found two references to their books in the Lithuania section. Based on the latest Arbcom case, I am pretty sure we should not be citing IPN for anything. If anybody needs this explained let me know. Elinruby (talk) 11:55, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Byelorussia

Schutzmannschaft-Brigade Siegling became the unit (30th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS} where they kept shooting the German officers and joining the Free French. Article is almost entirely sourced to knowledgeable-sounding hobby websites however. There is one source that looks quite excellent though. I am not clear on whether Holocaust in Poland rules apply, but I am saying that the ones that are there need to be replaced not because they aren't academic journals but because are self-published and in at least one case anonymous. The 30th Waffen article's sources seem to mostly be in German, which may be in their favor but is a deeper dive than I want to sdo just now. However, it also uses the Williamson source that was used in the Ukraine section of this article, although it looks like it is a German translation (?) as Macht="power". This is a also a deeper dive than I want to make just now but fwiw the English-language version on Google Books has no reviews and was published bt MBI Publishing, which also publishes calendars and books on tractors and railroads, so I am going to say that that is likely not an academic publisher and probably we shouldn't use it. Elinruby (talk) 13:41, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

however Williamson is a notable enough military historian to have his own wikipedia article, so perhaps I am wrong. Leaving as a questoin for my future self or others. Elinruby (talk) 13:46, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

tagged unreliable?

Russell King, Nicola Mai, and Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers. The New Albanian Migration. Sussex Academic Press, 2005

am I missing something? Elinruby (talk) 06:04, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

That's reliable. I guess the issue is the book is not about the period in question, but that doesn't make it unreliable. I'll change tag to better source. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:56, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

thanks It might even have been me that did that, possibly because I suspected it might be a self-publisher. Don't remember doing it but I put in some long hours on the sources a while back. Any other feedback you might have is welcome. I saw your other comment also. I am noting here that either you or I should name that source and re-use it there, but I blew all my fuses on the Ukrainian section earlier. Also, I asked you a while back if you were still interested in the British Fascist Party; it looks like enough people have now expressed a desire for a split in one section (which was the problem before) to suggest that a rough consensus has now been documented. And if we are doing spinoffs we will no longer be so concerned about due weight of Lord Haw Haw versus ongoing pogroms. Give it some thought. In any event, thanks for your help with those two sourcing tags. [Ellinruby] 17:14, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Sir Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists & National Socialists are something I actually know about (or at least have read half-a-dozen books about, including Mosley's My Life). At the start of the Anglo-German War (3 September 1939), Mosley ordered his followers to collaborate not with the Axis but with H.M. Government (including serving in the armed forces). I don't know how much this was followed, and how much was a screen against internment and other repressive measures (which happened anyway), but there were so far as I know relatively few BUF collaborators in the U.K. with Germany. William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw), who I think had already parted from the BUF, left British soil on the outbreak of war. There were British broadcasters to Britain over four German radio stations (New British Broadcasting Service, Christian Peace Movement, Workers' Challenge and Radio Caledonia); I'm not sure how much about them (if it isn't in Wikipedia already) belongs here and how much in List of Allied traitors during World War II or maybe a new article specifically about Axis broadcasters (Tokyo Rose, Axis Sally, Subhas Chandra Bose, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, et al.)

A more difficult problem is the position of the Communist Parties in Great Britain, France and the United States between the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (August 1939) and the German invasion of the U.S.S.R. in June 1941 (Operation Barbarossa), as well as the positions of various other left parties {such as the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party of the United States) who believed in the "unconditional defence of the Workers' State (i.e., the U.S.S.R.) They often provoked or fomented strikes in defence plants and other vital industries, while agitating for peace with Germany (or in the U.S. against intervening on Britain's side), following Lenin's policy of revolutionary defeatism. Soon after the Fall of France, the editors of the French Communist newspaper, L'Humanité, appealed unsuccessfully to German authorities for permission to continue publishing, since their position would still align with Germany's against the British Empire. Much more to say (and think over), but I'll stop now. —— Shakescene (talk) 19:20, 29 May 2023 (UTC) @Elinruby: , @Carrite:, @Bobfrombrockley:

I know little aboout this, but I guess the pertinent question is how well existing articles cover this and whether it would be DUE, which sounds like an interesting discussion that I will follow with interest, as I didn't know about L'Humanité either. But my hands aseem to be pretty full anyway. Elinruby (talk) 23:52, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

SWP only had a few hundred members in this period and weren't in a position to provoke or foment strikes for any purpose, let alone in pursuit of a convoluted defense of the USSR during the Yanks Aren't Coming period. I suppose one could write a paper on the various positions within the SWP during this period, but it's probably a movement easily ignored for WP's purposes. Carrite (talk) 01:53, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

This is really interesting. I'd say definitely w e want to expand the BUF section along these lines. The left groups feel to me not "collaboration with the Axis powers" exactly even if they were objectively anti the Allies at that point. Trotskyists also maybe too marginal to be DUE, but in France for example the Communists were a major part of the landscape so if it did fit it would be DUE BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:20, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

(1) My memory was a little confused (and corrected by Bing Chat) about l'Humanité. The Daladier government (the Third Republic's last) had banned the paper after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (Aug. 1939), and the editors unsuccessfully sought German permission to resume publishing. Bing Chat (which I'm not using as a Reliable Source) also says the (illicit) paper did not attack the German occupation until August of 1940.

(2) Wikipedia really needs an article on Neutralism and isolationism in World War II to deal with all those Communist, Leninist, Marxist, socialist, anarchist, pacifist, quietist, fascist, super-nationalist. separatist and chauvinistic groups, parties, unions, churches, writers and speakers who (for some radically different reasons) opposed military struggle against the Axis. It's not really collaboration, although writers like George Orwell insisted that this was a distinction without a difference: opposing Allied action was aiding the Axis. And I can't see a current article in Wikipedia about individuals and groups who claimed neutrality, as opposed to Neutral countries in World War II which deals with national governments like those of Sweden and the Irish Free State. Again I'm running out of juice and will stop here. @Elinruby:, @Carrite:, @Bobfrombrockley: —— Shakescene (talk) 20:01, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

1) ok 2) agree Elinruby (talk) 08:43, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Agree with WWII neutralism as a topic, although one might want to take that on on a nation-by-nation basis to limit scope a little bit... Carrite (talk) 17:24, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Business collaboration

Draft:Business collaboration with the Axis powers now exists. It is still identical to the section, but that will change. Just notifying anyone interested that the first step has been taken in this process. Elinruby (talk) 11:22, 1 June 2023 (UTC)