Talk:Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy/Archive 9

"Self-defense"

Within nations occupied by the Axis powers in World War II, some citizens and organizations, prompted by nationalism, ethnic hatred, anti-communism, antisemitism, opportunism, self-defense, or often a combination, knowingly collaborated with the Axis Powers.

The USHMM source doesn't support the "self-defense" claim. The "self-defense" claim should either be sourced or removed. CJ-Moki (talk) 05:24, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Edited. I believe it is true to the source now. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 07:03, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the edit. CJ-Moki (talk) 07:36, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Is a separate Political collaboration section still needed?

The section near the end entitled Political collaboration covers, rather briefly, just three occupied already covered in rather more detail in their country sub-sections above: Denmark, France and Greece.

No doubt, this was a product of the way Wikipedia articles are usually built by different editors in succeeding months and years. But would it make better sense now to merge these three paragraphs with their respective national sub-sections, and then to delete Political Collaboration?

—— Shakescene (talk) 19:26, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Four actually (brief mention of Norway in same paragraph as Greece) but I agree and can merge them. Elinruby (talk) 20:06, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

done Elinruby (talk) 23:54, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Marseilles roundup conflated w/ Battle of Marseilles

Need to verify this and fix Elinruby (talk) 06:13, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

• Verified that these are indeed completely different events and fixed. Also addressed claim the French police "assisted" the Gestapo. The reverse might be more true, but I changed that to "worked with". Elinruby (talk) 04:05, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Note to self: Jackson ref (currently #8) came from France section of this article yet not in list of Works cited, may need to be replaced Elinruby (talk) 08:51, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

• Done

Also, in Equatorial Africa: they weren't the Free French Forces yet, just a gleam in De Gaulle's eye. Also fix this in Liberation of France. Needs rewrite to focus on initial allegiance to Vichy not FFF Elinruby (talk) 09:33, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

• Done

Axis

There is still collaboration in those stories. In progress, midnight Pacific Elinruby (talk) 07:57, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Poland : failed verification

Not one of these has a page number. "Unlike the situation in other German-occupied European countries, where the Germans installed collaborationist authorities, in occupied Poland there was no puppet government." Elinruby (talk) 06:57, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Was there a collaborationist Polish goverment installed by the German authorities during the Occupation of Poland? Did you check all 6 sources you removed? Did you check talk page archives Elinruby? - GizzyCatBella🍁 07:21, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict) yes I did check all six sources. This is the second time today that you've gotten upset that I am verifying sources. Do I really need to link to WP:V? It doesn't require that a source be online, I grant you, but six (!) sources in a row that can't be verified is special. Here is what I was trying to add just now:

*Steinhaus: url does go to page 291, my mistake. However page 291 is a list of people arrested and does not support the text.

* Strahan: archived publisher cover page, no page number provided.

*Piotrowski: ditto Elinruby (talk) 07:41, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

PS: please lose the tone Elinruby (talk) 08:14, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

@Elinruby - I’m sorry that my tone (?) upsets you, I did not mean to do that. How about I'll share with you yet another source (with a quote) that says there was no collaborationist Polish puppet government during the war, unlike in most European countries, and you'll restore what you removed? Deal?

Source: Rethinking Poles and Jews

Quote:

During the war, while in most European countries the Germans found collaborators that set up puppet governments, Poland had no such collaborationist governments. The Germans arrested masses of Polish intellectuals, whom they perceived as a threat. As a result, thousands of Poles lost their lives during that occupation. - GizzyCatBella🍁 07:52, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

@Elinruby and feel free to choose more from this basket - GizzyCatBella🍁 07:58, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Well, the claim is hardly controversial. I won't comment on "Unlike the situation in other German-occupied European countries" because maybe there was some other exception, but as far as I know no scholar would disagree that "in occupied Poland there was no puppet government". Here are some sources with quotes:

• Rubinstein (2014). Genocide. Routledge. P.183 Unlike many other parts of Nazi-occupied Europe, Poland was not allowed to form even a puppet government -> note he says many others, not all others
• Olson and Cloud (2010). For Your Freedom and Ours. Random House P.204 Poland was the only occupied nation in which the Nazis were unable to find quislings to form a puppet government
• Weinberg (2014). A World at Arms. Cambridge University Press. [1] The possibility of some kind of subordinate puppet government in a portion of occupied Poland was temporarily left open, but any such concept would be dropped quickly: German policy made collaboration impossible for self-respecting Poles and any individuals still so inclined were turned away by the Germans in any case.

PS. Thanks for trying to verify the sources. Increasingly these days I think each reference we add should have a quotation, to address exactly such issues as we are seeing here. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:01, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

@Piotrus: I get that it isn't controversial. But I got asked here to help with Vichy France and... Well, as you see. I probably can't make it a thing of beauty but seriously, there was a lot of stuff that needed to be addressed, France not the least of it. I think we should at least try to fix this stuff, don't you? @GizzyCatBella: I will when I come back Elinruby (talk) 08:23, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

@Elinruby Of course we should fix it and I commend you for your efforts. My only concern for this particular instance is that if a content isn't controversial, removing sources that failed verification and leaving that content with a may be better than removing it outright. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:30, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

tuff to know what's controversial sometimes. Conversely, if someone is going reference non-controversial matter in a lede, six times over, it's a bad look when none of the six references work. Seriously, afk for about 30 minutes now. Plus double-check that you don't just think it's page 35, will do that as soon as I come back. Elinruby (talk) 08:40, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

@Piotrus I'm always supplying quotations to almost all references I use for at least a year (if not longer). - GizzyCatBella🍁 08:10, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Any verifiable reference is fine for what I am doing right now. I will be offline for a short time, if you want to check the rest of Poland. Or address any of the above for that matter. Elinruby (talk) 08:09, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

@Elinruby How about the text you removed? You can resort it. You were given suplementary references. - GizzyCatBella🍁 08:11, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

I think it fine to restore it but with the new references, quoted above. Rethinking Poles and Jews (2007) by Cheery and Orla-Bukowska, published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers that you cite above (page x), seems good too. Huener (2003), Auschwitz, Poland, and the Politics of Commemoration, 1945–1979, from Ohio University Press [2] is also good (There were certainly collaborators in occupied Poland, but there was no collaborationist government executing Nazi policy, p.64 I think?). I'd ask User:Elinruby to kindly restore the sentences using one or more sources cited here. TIA. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:22, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

@Elinruby If you only inspected the talk page history, you would see that text you removed, was composed after lengthy debate. You removed that text (along with sources) overlooking prior consensus regarding that text. Please kindly restore it. - GizzyCatBella🍁 08:36, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

@GizzyCatBella Let's agree we agree, or that everyone is right. The text is correct and should be restored, but Elinruby is also right that it should be backed up by verifiable references. New, reliable and verifiable refs have been found, I think Elinruby said on their talk page that they'll restore the content soon, so - win-win, right? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:43, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

They should mark it quotation needed - not removed it. @Piotrus I believe back at that time people didn’t bother (unlike now) with quotations. Folks are more cautious now, at least I’m. A full quote always. - GizzyCatBella🍁 08:53, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

GizzyCatBella I have already asked you once tonight to check your tone.

It's 2.22 am my time and I am back in here to deal with your very rude edit request demand. I get why you want me to be the one to do it, and I was fine with that until I came in here to tell you that I do see the statement in the first link you posted. And wow.

I have go back over there now because you didn't give me a freaking page number, which I really do recommend recommend going forward. But I can cope with a three-page preface and I did find it, whereas I'm emphatically not going to go through a 300-page book. I am on a mobile and don't have a right-click menu available to me. Nor should you expect your readers have one, or to even know how to comb the page archives.

It seemed POINTy to put a flag after each one of six references. Why so many, anyway? And no, I am not going through the talk page archives. I *might* if it was a featured article, but seriously? I am biting my tongue. I probably will like Piotr's links better but I am tired and I consider this pro bono work. For now the first one in the list is acceptable. I will restore the sentence that most people would have deleted, with that meh reference, because it is at least verifiable, which is what I was working on until you came over here and started stamping your foot.

Consider less use of bold front weight, less sense of entitlement and less impatience when speaking to other editors, say I as politely as I can at the moment, as a volunteer who is getting yelled at for not jumping fast enough when GizzyCatBella said jump. I said about three times in this that I would be afk for a short time.

Please provide a page number in future. That is all.Elinruby (talk) 10:54, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Actually.... Inspect the edit history? Piotr please. Come get Gizzy, who clearly hasn't looked at the edit history their own self. No, just no. I am all over the talk page making myself available to discuss. My finger hurts from typing. Nobody has been in here but me and Shakescene and Zero. And some bots. If you're trying to enforce a consensus on the page, then you should be maintaining it let alone watching it. Ugh. Elinruby (talk) 11:07, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

@Elinruby, relax and take a WP:CUPOFTEA or just rest, sleep. There is no hurry - this page will be here tomorrow, sources will wait, the sentence missing from the article for a few hours or a day is not affecting anything, much. You can review sources and chose the best ones later; I tried to provide quotations and page numbers for the ones I found most relevant. Take your time; I am sure we all here want to improve Wikipedia. Let's focus on positives of what we all do, folks. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 14:30, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Piotrus I did see your page numbers, which you provided unprompted, thank you for that, and for the one you provided for Gizzy's reference as well, which I didn't see until later. I was tired, as I said and you've noted. I intend to look at your references sometime this evening when I come back to the page. I am sure they are extremely on point and I thank you for the brainpower you have applied to this. If that appeared to not be the case, I regret it.

This is probably a good place to say that I would describe all of our interactions, here and elsewhere in the past, as courtly, if anything. And there is no question that you know more about this topic than I do.

The reference that is there right now meets the minimum standard of verifiability, which was what I was working on last night, but makes some other statements that might be controversial, is what my issue is with it. Given how fraught the topic is, we should probably avoid extra fraught-ness if we're only using one reference. Is there a diversity to the references you provided? That would be a reason to add several. Peace ✌️ out Elinruby (talk) 20:15, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Diversity in terms of author/publisher or what they say? In either case, you can check both since I list author/publisher/quote above. If there is not much diversity, we can just add 2+ most reliable / clear. You make a good point that most people are not familiar with this topic (true for anything, really) and hence, what is "obvious" to a few is certainly not to most. Hence for major claims like this, multiple references (with quotes) are best practice. PS. One thing that would be good to clarify - the references are not super clear on that - was Poland the only country with no collaborative government, or one of the few? I admit I am not intimately familiar with all other cases, and you've been reviewing other country sections on this page, from what I see? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:45, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

{[ping|Piotrus}}I have a little expertise on France in World War 2. There is zero question that the Vichy government was collaborationist. Cases of individuals are fuzzier.

But yes, I am trying to reference going down the page. With all due caveats about how Wikipedia is not RS etc, several other governments' policy seems to have to keep the economy going and attempt to minimize the damage. Belgium, Holland, Denmark and Greece come to mind. Was it all countries? I haven't looked at all countries yet, just the ones in the article. If I understood Lithuania correctly, they were occupied like Poland. I would suggest we shy away from statements about ALL anything. I haven't gotten to Ukraine yet, also, and wasn't that occupied? <<= This is a question. @Piotrus:Elinruby (talk) 03:10, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

@Elinruby I'd support a non-definite statement, "Unlike the situation in most German-occupied European countries" > "Unlike the situation in other German-occupied European countries" (current). Also b/c Rubinstein seems more reliable (academic) than Olson and Cloud (see quotations above). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:00, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Ok. Also, Luxembourg was annexed, I just noticed (according to this article, see caveats above). Come to think of it, I would want to check, but I believe they annexed Alsace (France) again. Bottom line, I am on board with that rewording; just hadn't noticed that yet. Working myself up to doing another deep dive on Poland. Elinruby (talk) 04:15, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Fwiw: "Although it was never formally annexed, Alsace-Lorraine was incorporated into the Greater German Reich, which had been restructured into Reichsgau." (History of Alsace) Elinruby (talk) 05:04, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

To everyone, comment on content not users. Slatersteven (talk) 11:10, 19 February 2023 (UTC)<- this is not helpful either, @Slatersteven: It's ok to complain that I haven't done something within two minutes of saying I needed to go afk for a few, but I can't say Please provide a page number in future. That is all. This rebuke is particularly ill-founded and comes once the matter already is settled, adding insult to insult on top of injury. I'm definitely out of here at this point. Elinruby (talk) 11:49, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Its policy. Aimed at everyone. Slatersteven (talk) 14:46, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Slatersteven It is indeed policy, but you're doubling down on missing the point. This *was* a content discussion, and I do not think it was "commenting on editors" to ask one to consider how they were speaking to and about me. If your comment was directed to that editor, you should, with respect, have dropped the "everybody". But even that editor based their comment on their behavioural expectations, erroneous in my opinion, but nonetheless not about me per se, however spiky-ly they expressed them.

Now. With that said, I am going back to the discussion. Elinruby (talk) 19:48, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

• I am not sure what you guys disagree about here. Are you talking about Polish government-in-exile? If so, it just should be linked in the first phrase of the section. My very best wishes (talk) 22:17, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

@Myverybestwishes: I think it is resolved (although not quite finished). I had a verification issue with the first sentence (now back), and as with several other chunks of the text above from other parts of the article, moved it here hoping this would prompt someone to work on it. I think we now agree (?) that while it may be blindingly obvious to a Pole that the government of Poland at the time was German Nazis and not Polish collaborators in the vein of Vichy, Denmark or Belgium, if we are going to reference the statement (and IMHO we should), the references should be verifiable. I will likely further refine the referencing per Piotrus. Thanks for your thoughts. Your thoughts on the current Soviet Union section,or any other section for that matter, would be very welcome if you feel so moved. I did quite a bit of work on Lithuania for example, and it is now more complete, but is it *complete*? Elinruby (talk) 22:50, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

@My very best wishes:

@Elinruby. I do not know who wrote this nonsense about USSR: During the German invasion of Poland and Western Europe (1939–1941) the Soviet Union presented a friendly stance towards Germany with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, a joint military parade.... First of all, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was singed before the war, not during or after how this text implies. This is critically important since the war started because they singed the Pact (the secret protocols to the Pact included an agreement about the attack on Poland). Secondly, that was not just "German invasion". That was Invasion of Poland which included Soviet invasion of Poland. And so it goes. That needs to be completely rewritten starting from things before the war, i.e. see German–Soviet Commercial Agreement (disambiguation) (Stalin was helping Hitler economically, and for a good reason), but unfortunately, I do not have time for that. My very best wishes (talk) 03:05, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Yeah I kinda suspected it might be that bad. I haven't been in there at all yet (kinda scared) but I will make an attempt despite a near-vacuum of knowledge.

please do let me know if I say something stupid. I do understand your point about the causal nature of the pact though, and also the joint nature of the invasion of Poland, and I promise to fix that.Elinruby (talk) 03:21, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

That was written by Cloud200 (inactive) in this edit in March 2018. It's easy to find out the answer to such questions using the Who Wrote That? tool, which I heartily recommend. Mathglot (talk) 03:33, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Oh hi Mathglot! Thanks. That may come to be useful. Elinruby (talk) 03:58, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, that was a rhetorical question. It does not matter who wrote it. This just needs to be rewritten. But I probably will not be around for some time. My very best wishes (talk) 03:39, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

👍 Just saying, your thoughts are welcome if you find you have the bandwidth. Not trying to sign you up for anything.Elinruby (talk) 03:58, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

References

References

Polish puppet government considered but rejected by Germans

I won't trawl through, let alone add to, the controversy above, but I do have two easily-checked sources that say that Hitler considered the possibility of setting up a quisling Polish government but decided against it. It's too late at night for me to quote, cite and reference them in detail, but the books are.

Hitler's Europe: How the Nazis Ruled Europe, by Mark Mazower, Penguin Books 2008 (paperback), Chapter 14, "Eastern Helpers", pages 446-47 (ISBN 978-0-14-311610-3)

Nazism, a history in documents and eyewitness accounts, 1919-1945, Volume II: Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination, edited by J. Noakes and G. Pridham, Schocken Books (paperback), 1988, (ISBN 0-8052-0972-7) Chapter 35, "The German Occupation of Poland", pages 922-996, especially the introductory pages 922-27 and Document 651 (page 932), where Himmler proposes that the leadership of various non-Germanic nationalities in Poland be no higher than mayor or policeman.

Hans Frank's General Government replicated the department structure of the Greater German Reich, headed and staffed by Germans, and answerable (in theory) to Frank himself as General Governor, rather than to some body of Poles.

—— Shakescene (talk) 06:17, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

There are some further details and sources at Collaboration_in_German-occupied_Poland#Political_collaboration. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:05, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

The controversy is kinda resolved, I think. Not worth the trawling, I'll look, thanks. I realize that verifiability doesn't necessarily require online sources, but they are vastly preferred, especially in contentious matters. None of the sources for Kosovo can be checked at Google Books for example. Elinruby (talk) 06:54, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Going to need a split

(moving here from UTPs)

Given the scope this was always going to need to spin off daughter articles once it started to be balanced (cough)... Africa.

Some approaches, in no particular order:

• Originally was organized by continent
• An attempt was made to group countries in Africa by colonial empire (but Indochina, and Hong Kong, Angola and Macao)
• is it possible to distinguish Holocaust from collaboration? Rounding Jews up for camps is definitely collaboration though if you are doing it to your own citizens, right?
• Maybe distinguish governments of occupied countries from politicians of a country acting against that country's interests? (see Hungary...which is, yes, an Axis country... But there really was collaboration there...)

I am agnostic on the spit approach.

Meanwhile, the stuff I added needs to be trimmed, and I am doing that. Also somebody that did a lot of work on eastern Europe left in all the Google Books parameters, and I will try to trim that on this pass also. Not going to be enough but will help. I've fixed the reference errors. Looking for orphaned named references too as I go. Some of the really old reference errors in the legacy sections will probably be beyond me at least for tonight.

Getting tired so may not comment further in the interest of getting through the tying up of loose ends on my work tonight.Elinruby (talk) 11:04, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Probably makes sense to split into (at least) two articles for collaboration with Japan and for collaboration with the European Axis (Germany, Italy & satellites). It's interesting to compare East & West, but they were rather different.

Japan also presents the question of how to treat Formosa (Taiwan) and Korea — incorporated into Japan by 1910. Were those who upheld the Emperor there collaborationists against the national resistance? The closest European parallel, which, interestingly doesn't yet have a separate section, would be Austria (neither is there a section for the Free State of Danzig, a condominium which, I understand, never worked very well and didn't have much of a national consciousness or resistance).

—— Shakescene (talk) 20:29, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Shakescene That's a thought: who they collaborated *with*. You're forgetting Italy; not that I claim to understand the ins and outs of Libya and Somalia. I haven't looked at Austria yet. We also don't have Spain or Portugal. Elinruby (talk) 02:44, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Also, Sweden and Finland? Elinruby (talk) 04:25, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Argentina, Brazil, ... where do you stop?

We have to draw the line somewhere and in some way if we want to keep this article manageable and readable.

The U.N. Charter was signed in San Francisco on 24 October 1945 by the representatives of fifty independent, sovereign countries, plus India, the Philippines, the Ukrainian S.S.R., and the Byelorussian S.S.R. And that included no members of the Axis or their satellites, almost no microstates save Luxembourg and few countries that had (like Switzerland and Spain) stayed neutral right until V-E or V-J Day. But, besides all those countries, the U.N. now includes (in addition to a dozen other former S.S.R's and half a dozen former Yugoslav republics) about a hundred former colonial possessions that are now independent, raising the total current membership to 197 (including Palestine).

Almost all of these countries (even, say, Malta or the Solomon Islands) were affected by the war in some way, and almost all of those that weren't directly occupied by Germany, Japan, Italy or their satellites and proxies had some inhabitants, rulers, writers or visitors who sympathised with or worked for the interests of the Axis, and/or against those of the Allies.

So (while I'm not sure what else to rearrange), we should definitely have what most readers would look for, an article on Collaboration with Japan from 1931 to 1945, and (I think) a separate one for collaboration with the European Axis countries from 1934 to 1945. When most readers think of "collaboration", they're more often than not thinking of collaboration with a foreign occupier (as happened with the U.S.S.R. in Eastern Europe after 1939).

Although collaboration is one word for outside assisters of the Axis, it might be just as well to entitle articles about the other lands something like Co-operation with the Axis or Collusion with Japan in World War II.

Were I less sleepy, this disquisition would, I suspect, be shorter and better-concentrated.

—— Shakescene (talk) 03:40, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

• @Scope creep: Weren't you working on German resistance? your thoughts invited on this or any of the other questions on this page Elinruby (talk) 04:25, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Found this in Nanking: "In 1937, the Empire of Japan started a full-scale invasion of China after invading Manchuria in 1931, beginning the Second Sino-Japanese War (often considered a theater of World War II).[81]" which would seem to say we should include the Second Sino-Japanese War. Assuming that reference is authoritative. Not getting any hits on Google, but that could be a language issue. Elinruby (talk) 04:15, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

If the content grows, creating subarticles is a common solution. They already exist for a number of topics here. Heck, we even have a Template:Collaboration with Axis Powers by country... _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:19, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

We definitely need a split. Apparently there is some sort of upper limit to article size beyond which the hamsters get confused and the wheels don't turn. Ran into this at Panama Papers, Operation Car Wash and 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. I think we are already there in this article.

But pending re-organization or redefinition of the tropic I think we should be wary of excluding countries. South America may have had something to do with supply lines; I am a bit afraid to open that Pandora's box, and we have enough going on right now. Spain's official policy was actually to co-operate with Germans, and refuse to repatriate its Jewish nationals. It was widely ignored by individual Spanish diplomats, but that policy was definitely the cause of far more deaths than, say, collaborators in the Channel Islands. Or Brittany, where the toll was zero, I think. Maybe we should also consider splitting people who actually pushed fellow citizens into boxcars away from people who just made speeches, not that I don't think that's collaboration, because it incited violence ....

The question is how. I think the above proposal is good, except that we don't have much on Japan in this article. I've tried to remedy this a little, but I am ill-equipped to formulate any text on the topic. But the thing is, splitting Japan-Axis would give us a small article and another one that's probably still too big. What I have seen going through is that for the most part collaborators collaborated with one other country, so maybe collaboration with German Nazis, collaboration with Italian fascists, and collaboration with Imperial Japan? If some entity collaborated with both Germany and Italy, oh well, we put it in both (?)

I don't pretend to have all these answers, but I think I favor a 3-way split right now. To avoid consternation and wikidrama we should probably start drafts and copy rather than move the text, until the articles are ready and everything is somewhere

I've also proposed spinning off military collaboration, see below. That can't be *removed* from this article because the volunteers and military units were so entangled in the Holocaust, but my thinking was that in this survey article in it would be good to get away from stuff about regiment x becoming brigade y and then merging into the SS or whatever. This genealogy is very important in milhist articles, but that is not what this is.

A lot of these countries have their own articles about collaboration and some of those contributed text to this one. Maybe I should start a list of those, so we can coordinate with them not duplicate too much. Pinging @Shakescene and Piotrus: because if we can agree on a 3-way split, that would be a plurality of the people working on the article and maybe we could start. And what Shakescene said: kind of fried on this, sorry if the above rambles and mumbles a bit Elinruby (talk) 23:06, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Briefly (because I want to catch the news), I think it might also make sense, after peeling off collaboration with Japan (a significant but hardly wholesale reduction), we could distinguish between collaboration with the German occupation in Western Europe, collaboration in Eastern or Southeastern Europe, and perhaps collaboration in Central Europe (beginning in 1938).

One complication is that collaboration with the U.S.S.R. sometimes meant colluding with the Axis and sometimes (after June 1941) active or passive resistance to the Axis. An especially-difficult definitional problem arises with the series of wars and peaces between Finland and the USSR.

Another consideration is that's it would be too gnarly to try to separate collaboration with Germany from that with Italy, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania, in (say) Greece and Yugoslavia.

No more time now to write. Good luck to all. —— Shakescene (talk) 23:25, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

PS Switzerland (and Argentina) was where the money went. Is that collaboration?

Switzerland_during_the_World_Wars#Financial_relationships_with_Nazi_Germany (plus Bergier commission, World Jewish Congress lawsuit against Swiss banks prev dels) probably warrants a subarticle. As to whether it was or wasn't collaboration, I'd defer to what RS say (and I am sure it is "controversial"). Btw, see also List of companies involved in the Holocaust. As for Argentina, this seems less prominently discussed on Wikipedia (Argentina_during_World_War_II#Nazi_Presence). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:32, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Re Argentina; Yeah, that's what I was talking about. Are you declining to comment on a split? If so ok, just trying to follow all of the discussion protocols Elinruby (talk) 03:30, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Re companies, thanks. The article has a section but I would call it inadequate Elinruby (talk) 03:32, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Request for Input

I don't pretend to expertise in this area outside of Vichy France, where I do have some. Most of what I am doing in fleshing this article out is importing pertinent text from other wiki articles. Noting here for anyone else who wishes to edit some countries where I am not immediately finding any discussion of collaboration, possibly due to gaps in the articles I've looked at, or where subject matter experts would be otherwise especially welcome.

• Kenya: definitely had soldiers fighting with Allies. All I found so far
• South Africa: I see ethnic and and anti-British sentiment, but did it amount to collaboration?
• Lebanon : some stuff about the Grand Mufti, not finding a discussion of overt collaboration

To be continued Elinruby (talk) 00:34, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

• PS: France is an unfocused mess, and lacks a discussion of the very importantforced labor program. I can do this, unless somebody else really wants to, in which case, by all means.
• PPS: I am not sure I agree with all of the entries currently under the Soviet Union, but have no plans at the moment to change that. Elinruby (talk) 00:34, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

The current South Africa section contains nothing about collaboration and should be deleted if that can't be fixed. The Mufti of Jerusalem was not Lebanese and he spent only a short time in Lebanon, leaving just after the war started. So there is nothing there about Lebanese collaboration. On the other hand, Lebanon was under Vichy control for most of the war and the collaborationism of the Vichy government held there too. But I think that overseas territories controlled by Vichy France should be in the French section unless there is substantial material on local collaboration. Zero^talk 03:01, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

@Zero0000: I've been working on South Africa and just brought over a reference from a page on one of the nationalist groups. That page says they engaged in sabotage, to the point that this broke up the ruling coalition. Let me make sure the reference also covers that and if so I'll address it sooner rather than later. If not, I do think there is some there there and will dig further. Is sabotage in wartime collaboration? I'm thinking yes but am not adamant about this.

• Unrelated, but since we're talking: I saw what you said about Australia. I don't have strong feelings about whether there is more to that item, but we are struggling a little as you see with scope, and I want to run a call past you since I may be biased. For Canada, I only found two fascist guys in Montreal who were interned for the duration of the war. I take it you would also call that one UNDUE, assuming I find nothing else? Elinruby (talk) 04:48, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
• Also, re France: At the time Algeria was a département and definitely comes under Vichy France. The protectorates are a work in progress and I need to research their relationship with Vichy some more. Morocco apparently had at least a little autonomy to ignore its agent-general... TL;Dr I'm listening, have questions Elinruby (talk) 04:58, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Sabotage in war-time is collaboration if the purpose was aid of the Axis. Not necessarily if it was in pursuit of some unrelated struggle. I'm reminded that the Irgun sabotaged British military and government assets (and people) in Palestine during the war. This is very rarely called collaboration with the Axis, though the British called it that; see this 1944 announcement that I uploaded. About Canada, I don't think that a mere handful of people makes the grade. There are enough examples of mass/major collaboration here without needing individuals. Zero^talk 05:29, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

K. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't standing on guard for thee, esp given Grabowski. So...do you think Irgun should be mentioned? Elinruby (talk) 06:06, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

No, because very few of those "reliable source" things call it collaboration. I was just making the point that action against an allied power shouldn't be added as collaboration with the axis powers unless reliable sources call it that. A better case can be made for the Irgun's smaller offshoot Lehi which actually offered to fight for Germany. But in that case Germany doesn't seem to have responded to the offer, so it was more an intention to collaborate rather than actual collaboration. Zero^talk 12:00, 18 February 2023 (UTC) a

(1) The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem — definitely a Nazi sympathiser (photographed with Hitler and I think broadcasting from Berlin) — belongs under a Palestine Mandate subsection of British Empire in Asia;

Note that he is in the article twice already, also he fled Palestine a few years before the war started. Zero^talk 12:00, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Raises the general question: what do we do with all those foreign patriots, idealists, fools, revolutionaries, criminals and traitors who broadcast over Axis foreign radio, the most notable examples that come to my mind at present being — besides the Mufti — Subhas Chandra Bose, Lord Haw-Haw (Wm Joyce), Axis Sally, Tokyo Rose, Ezra Pound, and P.G. Wodehouse. Some background might be found in the essays and radio scripts of George Orwell, who, while broadcasting in the Allied interest to India, had access to the BBC's transcripts of Axis broadcasts. —— Shakescene (talk) 18:52, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

(2) The Phalange (founded after the 1936 Berlin Olympics) definitely aligned itself with European fascism, so it's possible that it or its members collaborated under the Third Republic, under Vichy or after the Allied invasion;

I'll take a look at that article. History of the Jews in Lebanon completely skips World War 2 Elinruby (talk) 06:06, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

(3) If we respect technicalities with the three Algerian départements, the Channel Islands, although they come under the British crown, are not juridically part of the United Kingdom;

Interestingly, one of them (Jersey?) allegedly deported a few people to German-occupied France, and they died in a concentration camp. I don't remember if that was referenced. Something to come back to. Re Algeria, a département is just as much part of France as Paris. This mattered for Liberation of France, which we started from Operation Torch.Elinruby (talk) 06:06, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

My principal point about départements was that, using the same standard, the Channel Islands don't technically belong under the U.K. but perhaps (?) standing alone under Europe. The Channel Islands are, besides Vichy and Scandinavia, one German occupation I've read a couple of books about (although unscholarly ones). The late conservative Times columnist, Bernard Levin made some disturbing discoveries about the Channel Islands, collaboration, Alderney and the Jews (perhaps 10 deported to France), accompanied by a suspiciously-timed fire at the wartime archives of Jersey.

They are in the article. I don't actually think they *do* belong under the UK, but meh. (Not a shire, right?). Nor do I really care a whole lot about what happens with French possessions, except that Algeria was France then, not just a possession, and I've already discussed this beyond all reason at Liberation of France. But this second I am more concerned with due weight. Going to work on that today. If you think the Grand Mufti was doing Hanoi Jane stuff then I think that counts, as Louis-Ferdinand Céline was definitely considered a collaborator. But I could use a reference on that broadcasting, buddy. Tried fairly hard on Gemayel, also, and so far haven't found sources that say he was more than an admirer. Going to try to verify some references as well in Soviet Union and Poland, which also needs to be a priority. I think I have smoothed a lot of rough edges, and you're doing well on presentation. We need references. Verifiable references. Elinruby (talk) 20:29, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

(4) More generally, especially given this article's current combination of length, density and superficiality, we should split this piece between something like Collaboration in Axis-occupied territory and Axis collaborators in Allied and neutral countries. Relations with an occupier is different in kind from external support.

Totally on board with splitting, but how? By colonial empire? Elinruby (talk) 06:06, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Happy Presidents' Day weekend —— Shakescene (talk) 05:30, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

• Nigeria: nothing so far Elinruby (talk) 06:06, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
• Portugal and the Holocaust, visas? mixed
• Spain and the Holocaust, [[History of the Jews in Spain] - mixed actions on visas and refugees, failure to repatriate, German support for Franco Elinruby (talk) 19:29, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

France

Posting here to err on the side of transparency; I can do France unless somebody comes along who wants to help, in which case these notes may be useful.

• Brittany: possibly undue. What's there says the Germans liked them, but does not mention actual collaboration. Will look at the linked articles before deciding this for sure.
• per discussion under "Input Requested", putting Vichy activity in Syria and Lebanon under France for moment. I am not certain this is the way to go. If we put all French possessions under France, that section will be *very* long. But this *is* the Vichy army. It's discussable. i do feel strongly that Algeria was part of France at the time. In the interests of length, I cut out RAF action against Vichy in Syria, as not collaboration.
• Still need to add STO, very important as an example of Laval collaborating and as a major impetus for the Resistance. Elinruby (talk) 07:51, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Iraq

probably will need its own section given Anglo-Iraq war. Just imported a mention of the coup d'etat, think it may be needed in Syria for context. You guys tell me if you know. Elinruby (talk) 08:54, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Correction, not the war that is pertinent but the German-friendly government it deposed. Same problem as / Lebanon though, sympathizers yes but collaborators?Elinruby (talk) 18:22, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Moved out of Lebanon section:'On 1 April 1941, after a coup d'état, Iraq, on the eastern border of Syria, came under the control of nationalists led by Rashid Ali, who was willing to appeal for German support. The Anglo-Iraqi War (2–31 May 1941) led to the installation of a pro-British government.' Elinruby (talk) 19:02, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

References

Lebanon and possibly South Africa

Still unclear whether sympathizers or collaborators. I think they can be sourced but it is heading into undue and I need to stop. Need to spend time on other countries when I come back, as a priority. Elinruby (talk) 13:58, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

• Brittany: I did find indications of collaboration or at least allowing themselves to be used against France but it looks pretty aspirational and/or minor. Will look again later. Channel islands: a few people do seem to have died, and they were actually occupied, but that section seems to need a trim. Elinruby (talk) 20:43, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Reichskommissariat Ostland

The Byelorussian S.S.R. and the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (independent between ca. 1920 and ca. 1939) all came under the Reichskommissariat Ostland. Would it be more or less convenient or useful to readers to group them together under an RK Ostland heading? (The Einsatzgruppen apparently considered them as a whole, as compared to, say, Reichskommissariat Ukraine. ) —— Shakescene (talk) 20:11, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm ok with that but not sure I know enough to make the call. @Moxy: I noticed you working on the Forest Brothers article, so I wonder if you have an opinion on this? 20:38, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

It seems like Moxy is busy or declines to comment. Do you want to do this? Elinruby (talk) 03:36, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

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

I'm no expert, and I've done quite enough for one night. And classification (by pre-war status or Greater Reich division) doesn't matter here as much as it would in an article directly discussing German rule in Occupied Europe. It's really a matter of taste. —— Shakescene (talk) 03:58, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

/me mumbles something about COMMONNAME. I think what you would up doing is a better idea. Elinruby (talk) 08:03, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Needs work: no discussion of collaboration

Apparently there were associated militias, but you would never know it from the following:

"==== Brittany ====

Main articles: Breton nationalism and World War II, Bezen Perrot, and Breton Liberation Front

Breton nationalists such as Olier Mordrel and François Debeauvais had longstanding links with Nazi Germany because of their fascist and Nordicist ideologies, linked to the belief that the Bretons were a "pure" Celtic branch of the Aryan-Nordic race. After 1940, they returned and their supporters such as Célestin Lainé and Yann Goulet organized militias that worked in collaboration with the Germans.' Elinruby (talk) 01:28, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

South Africa

South Africa

On the eve of World War II, the Union of South Africa was closely allied with the United Kingdom, as a co-equal Dominion under the 1931 Statute of Westminster. The South African Prime Minister and head of government on 1 September 1939 was J.B.M. Hertzog – the leader of the pro-Afrikaner and anti-British National Party.

The National Party had joined in a unity government with the pro-British South African Party of Jan Smuts in 1934 as the United Party. When Britain declared war on Germany, short but furious debate pitted those who sought to enter the war on Britain's side, led by Smuts, against those who wanted to keep South Africa neutral, led by Hertzog.

Prior to the war, Afrikaner nationalist movements styled after German Nazism such as the Grey Shirts, the Ossewabrandwag, and Oswald Pirow's New Order had been popular in South Africa.

References

High-priority: Estonia

See long blockquote that makes up almost the entirety of Estonian Self-Administration. The Estonian section is almost word for word. This has to be fixed. PS: There *is* a footnote but it's way at the end of the paragraph. Elinruby (talk) 03:00, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Made a start, needs more Elinruby (talk) 06:08, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

References

Note on references

Just realized that at least some of the references without a url are in fact available at Google Books. Most still don't have a page number -- there are a lot of those --- and some of the ones that do don't have that page available . But at least two were available full-text. So there's that `Elinruby (talk) 10:09, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Adrian Weale

As a subject expert, a blog by him might well be an RS, per wp:sps. Slatersteven (talk) 10:15, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes, as noted in the edit summary. Looking for comments on that. Elinruby (talk) 10:55, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

If he is not used for controversial claims, maybe it's ok. But then, a lot of the stuff in this article is controversial. Could tag with {{better source needed}}, perhaps, and move on if you think this is a low-priority issue. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:01, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Channel Islands. They did deport three women, who died at Auschwitz. But if we're considering scale ... Elinruby (talk) 23:20, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Volunteers -split proposal

I propose that we consolidate mentions of people voluntarily joining German forces in the volunteer section, then consider splitting thar section off. Some discussion of them will have to remain in country sections since they participated in so many atrocities, but consolidating a discussion of these would allow us to not get bogged down in unit consolidations and renaming.

Note, Shakescene has made a couple of other good proposals, which I will leave to them to discuss here if they like. I personally like the idea of splitting into collaboration with Germany, collaboration with Italy and collaboration with Japan. We're not very well equipped for the latter, though. Elinruby (talk) 00:50, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

slow-walking this as I have discovered a merge proposal and a bunch of people discussing at [[3]] so we should co-ordinate with them. We still should discuss the volunteers in the volunteer section. Because so many of these units were involved in the Holocaust we can't just move it all, so this will lead to some duplication that is necessary for context. Maybe the country sections should *follow* the more general sections that are now at the end. Elinruby (talk) 19:57, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

• many sections currently solely about volunteer batallions. Elinruby (talk) 21:12, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Kosovo

I think this is currently under Soviet Union, which looks pretty wrong: 20th-century history of Kosovo Elinruby (talk) 08:33, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes it is, Kosvo is not part of Russia. Slatersteven (talk) 10:16, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

My mistake, it's under Yugoslavia, which is less wrong since it was part of that kingdom when the war began, but also under Albania. Presumably it was split? The whole area of Greece and the Balkans could really use some expertattention Elinruby (talk) 21:22, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

The last paragraph of Kosovo#Kingdom of Yugoslavia begins thus, followed by details of collaboration:

After the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, most of Kosovo was assigned to Italian-controlled Albania, with the rest being controlled by Germany and Bulgaria. ...

—— Shakescene (talk) 22:05, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Greece

Parts of this, especially the lede, correspond word-for-word to a journal article I've currently misplaced in the many windows I now have open. (So I can't report the copyvio, but they're swamped and I am more interested in fixing it than in who did it.)

Needs a rewrite. Please also see the cry for help in the Kosovo section above, which goes triple for Macedonia. Elinruby (talk) 21:59, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

made a start,needs more Elinruby (talk) 03:34, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Hong Kong

Finding discussion of multiple atrocities, on a fairly superficial search so far...but no evidence or even mentions that anyone but Japanese soldiers was involved. Leaving for now as we do have non-Japanese in the police force, but this seems a bit thin. Any comments anyone? Elinruby (talk) 08:36, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Sweden

I am quite confused about the lack of any mention of Sweden in the article. Was it there and removed for some reason? I recognize that this is a sensitive article, but with the long description of Danish collaboration, I'm confused about why Sweden isn't covered. Paulehoffman (talk) 16:47, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Did the collaborate, or sell to? Do any RS say they collaborated? Slatersteven (talk) 16:54, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Good question,

@Paulehoffman

The same question has come up with, among other countries, South Africa, Argentina, Brazil and Switzerland. But, in order to keep the article focussed and not too long, I think that most editors here would like to keep the narrowest reasonble defintion — collaboration with a foreign occupier — and cover Axis-helpers in unoccupied countries (whether Allied, neutral or independent within the Axis, e.g. Finland, Bulgaria) in new articles for something like "Collusion with the Axis" or "Co-operation with Japan in World War II". Collaborating with an occupier (whether Germany, Japan or the U.S.S.R.) is different in kind from aiding an Axis country from the outside. Where Ezra Pound or Lord Haw Haw (William Joyce) would fit, I don't know. —— Shakescene (talk) 18:47, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Nazi propagandists jn Allied countries? Elinruby (talk) 00:13, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

See the links: Lord Haw-Haw, a pre-war British fascist activist, broadcast to Britain from Berlin. After his claim that, because he'd been born abroad, he was not a UK citizen was denied, he was convicted and hanged. Ezra Pound, an American who made outstanding contributions to poetry and criticism (somewhere between T. S. Eliot and Allen Ginsberg), but also a vocal anti-Semite who had a Jewish mistress, broadcast abroad from Fascist Italy, was then imprisoned by the Allies, and only escaped criminal penalties by (supported by many influential American writers, doctors and politicians) being declared mad (opinions still differ) and being committed to St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington. —— Shakescene (talk) 01:58, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

@Paulehoffman: Whoever decided what to include is no longer working on the article. Several other countries were missing. We really do need to split this article, though and right now I am focused on sourcing what's here. To answer your actual question though, *I* haven't specifically looked Sweden up. Or Finland. While clicking around looking at references I haven't found much actual collaboration in Sweden. The most notable thing I have found is that it accepted Jewish refugees from Denmark, which is the opposite of collaboration. There may who have been Swedes who joined the Germanic units of the German military, which we cover in other countries, probably too much IMHO -- see split proposal -- and possibly it was denying visas early in the war, which we aren't currently covering anywhere and maybe should, but that would mean we need sections for at a minimum Spain, Portugal the UK and the US. If you have specific knowledge about Sweden, please do educate us. But wasn't Sweden neutral? We have consensus that the following are collaboration: helping to round up fellow citizens for the gas chambers, and voluntarily enlisting in the German military. In addition Vichy and Belgium definitely had collaborationist governments, and I added Hungary even though it joined the Axis, because the tipping point for that was one fascist general making a private deal with Germany. There is indeed an imbalance with the long Denmark section. I've trimmed it a bit but most of what is there is on-topic and I'd rather balance things out by adding material elsewhere. It looks like the sections on individual countries were written by topic specialists who parachuted in, and nobody has been looking at the overall picture. Hope that helps, input welcome. Elinruby (talk) 23:16, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

@Shakescene: Also Louis-Ferdinand Céline.

Madagascar: this is milhist, needs a home

Madagascar

Madagascar remained under Vichy jurisdiction after the Battle of France. To seize the island and deny the Imperial Japanese Navy the use of Madagascar's seaports, in 1942 a six-month British-led campaign known as the Battle of Madagascar seized the island, to safeguard Allied shipping routes to India, Australia and Southeast Asia and resulted in the November 8th transfer of administration to Free France from Vichy.

References

Lead paragraph

• All* of the sources in the lede discuss France specifically Elinruby (talk) 03:54, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

There's also a copyvio in the second paragraph Elinruby (talk) 05:25, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

I think I have fixed that copyvio (3rd one I have found in this article) so I removed the tag for that. I have also re-written the lede to be less simplistically accusatory, but it is still very focused on France. Possibly unduly, possibly not; France is a very well-known example, and one of the less controversial. nonetheless until we split this article, its scope is still world-wide, and there are other countries in the world besides France. Working on referencing. Elinruby (talk) 03:41, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Sources in #Jewish collaboration

Several sources in the section are tagged as "unreliable". Some of them can be removed per WP:APLRS, along with the statements to which they're attached. François Robere (talk) 12:14, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Channel Islands

i really feel like the length is undue, but I can't come up with a way to condense the multiple sentences about the collaboration accusations being unfounded. Moving past it to other problems but I do see it. There are also still discussions of volunteer units that should be summarized and moved to the draft, but I am getting tired and just want to smooth out any problems created by the major snippage I just did. Elinruby (talk) 13:11, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Egypt

I hear the people saying it's UNDUE. I think it may tie into Abyssinia, but would be ok with the text getting copied to the talk page, here for example, while we figure that one out. Elinruby (talk) 15:25, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

British collaborators

seem to be missing at present. See British Free Corps as well as John Amery, [[ George Johnson Armstrong]], Norman Baillie-Stewart, Leonard Banning, Victor Carey, Dolly Eckersley, Gertrude Hiscox, Jessie Jordan, William Joyce, John Lingshaw, Arthur Owens, Jack Trevor etc. Possible sources:

• Pryce-Jones, David (31 October 2020). "Britain's Nazi collaborators". The Critic Magazine. Retrieved 3 March 2023.
• Philpot, Robert (17 September 2018). "The men and women who plotted to stab Britain in the back during WWII". The Times of Israel. Retrieved 3 March 2023.

BobFromBrockley (talk) 12:07, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

• No, as this is a general article, and we should not have lists of every collaborator. Slatersteven (talk) 12:27, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

• However,I did just discover that Wikipedia has a List of Allied traitors during World War II with an ample UK section. But I may add a brief line here about Lord Haw Haw and his colleagues. —— Shakescene (talk) 14:06, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

• I think Haw Haw is notable enough on his own to be mentioned here. Slatersteven (talk) 14:20, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

We've been taking out individuals for space reasons, unless they were political decision-makers. I'd rather not make exceptions to that since I think we should delete the appallingly-sourced section on Jewish collaborators that was POINTily reverted back in.

However I was thinking that there is probably enough material for an article about propaganda broad broadcasters. Another such was Louis-Ferdinand Céline, and it seems to me that I noticed a couple of Japanese-Americans when I was clicking around in the category, which is, on the other hand, totally about individual people. Elinruby (talk) 23:27, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Morocco

The Morocco subsection refers to Vichy — both administrative arrangements and anti-Semitic campaigns, but unless we can show that the Vichy anti-Semitism in these cases was directly done to please, placate or obey German (or even less likely, Italian) occupiers, the whole subsection is irrelevant to this article's topic and should therefore be excised or moved somewhere else. French anti-Semitism (like French philo-Semitism) has it own deep, rich roots long preceding any Axis occupation — no one attributes the anti-Dreyfus campaign to collaboration with foreign powers.

—— Shakescene (talk) 04:11, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

a good point. Give me a little time to mull it over though; I need a break from this article. Or if you copy it here to be worked on or moved. I am probably ok with whatever but would prefer not to need to track the material down in the history Elinruby (talk) 20:49, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Review for national pride

The comments in the British section have reminded me that a lot of the country sections seem to seek to minimize the extent of collaboration in particular countries. I propose that we scrutinize them all, as there actually seem to have been a lot of British collaborators, as long as we aren't defining collaboration to require occupation. Also see Belarus and Denmark. Just a something to mull over; I know we all have multiple other irons in the fire. Elinruby (talk) 23:47, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

¶ I don't think that (relatively speaking) there was that much opportunity for British collaboration. Most of what we might consider collaboration (restricted as we try to be to collaboration with an occupier, as opposed to treason, sabotage or defeatism in a threatened but unoccupied country) was just assistance to the Axis from outside. The exceptions here are those Britons who either absconded to Germany (like Lord Haw-Haw [William Joyce]) or found themselves under Axis occupation, e.g. the Channel Islanders and P.G. Wodehouse living in France when the Germans came.

National pride and Yugoslavia

To raise up a hornet's nest from a question (like Poland's) of mortal interest to Serbs, Croats, Communists and anti-Communists, do we need to balance the discussion of the Chetniks' sometime collaboration with Germany and Italy with the ever-problematic German–Yugoslav Partisan negotiations? Although they might have led to a more lasting arrangement, the resulting understandings lasted only a few weeks or months until Adolf Hitler ordered an end. Whether included or excluded, they pose gnarly questions of neutrality, balance and WP:Undue weight and could, if incorrectly or improperly handled, invite very heated debates, reversions, counter-reversions, and special pleading (q.v. the long contention over Jewish collaboration balanced against Polish collaboration). —— Shakescene (talk) 01:33, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

I have looked at that but there is a steep learning curve. My best suggestion at the moment is a lot of talk page discussion. It seems a lot of what went on was in the category of welcoming what was perceived as outside help with ethnic nationalist disputes.Elinruby (talk) 23:12, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

France

For a long time France maintained that Vichy was not a legitimate government, presumably to downplay French responsibility. 00:42, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

"volunteers"

For clarity:

I'm working on the "volunteers" off in my sandbox. The section is pretty much uncited, except for the references I had added to the French section. The articles the wikilinked in the list are almost all completely uncited also. I am expecting this to become a separate article, or perhaps a different section here if if this text turns out to also be impossible to substantiate and a lot of of it has to be cut.

One of the reasons for consolidating discussions of volunteer units is that scattered all through this articles are Lots of sentences like: Unit A was recruited from place x and sent to place y where they committed a massacre in village x₁. The unit was renamed to B, and merged into Army M.

I considered a draft but for whatever reason I'm not longer autopatrolled and I'd get a barrage of reference tags., which would annoy me and maybe make me uncivil.

I'll share it here when I have something coherent. Meanwhile most of the material was copied, not removed, from the article, but for decision-making purposes, if other editors are working on articles, it would help this initiative if you could make notes below here. For some countries, if we remove volunteer military units almost no information will be left. We do have a rough consensus, I think, that voluntarily enlisting in an Axis Army would make you an Axis collaborators. What I am trying to figure out is which of these volunteer units was truly voluntary.

Reading through the article I have seen mentions of

• Ideological true believers (Norway? Or was that appeasement? Belgium? France)
• Lied to (Denmark?)
• Conscripts
• Hungry (POWs?)

So anyway, please let me know here if you find applicable stuff in the sections you are working Elinruby (talk) 04:42, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Task distribution

Here is my understanding of the situation:

Shakescene -- in charge of sanity, format, pointy questions about balance, Did or is doing work on puppet states and collaboration with Japan

Marcelus - discussing Jewish collaboration, has done some work on Estonia that improved that section. Maybe a bit too milhist but I'm thinking it's a first draft and it's still better than the rewritten copyvio that we had there.

Gitz6666 - seemed to be suggesting he cover Italy after the Germans invaded it. Has not actually confirmed that.

Me: deep dives, getting yelled at.Elinruby (talk) 04:53, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

BRD fail: moving text here in the absence of discussion

Enough is enough: the following text was reverted back into the article then abandoned. if someone can fashion a well-sourced summary out of this we can discuss including that. i personally don't think Jewish collaborators should get extra focus Elinruby (talk) 00:59, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Extended content

<! -- == Jewish collaboration == --> See also: Jewish collaboration with Nazi Germany Though Germany was trying to kill all Jews in the Holocaust, there were a few Jews who, under the threat of death, collaborated with the Germans. The collaborators included individuals such as Gestapo collaborators Abraham Gancwajch and Stella Kubler, concentration-camp kapos like Eliezer Gruenbaum, Judenrat (Jewish council) members and bosses such as Chaim Rumkowski, and organizations such as Żagiew or Group 13 in the Warsaw Ghetto. Individual and group collaborators with the Gestapo operated in other cities and towns across German-occupied Poland—Alfred Nossig in Warsaw, Józef Diamand in Kraków, Szama Grajer in Lublin. Around the early 1940s, the Gestapo has been estimated to have had around 15,000 Jewish agents in occupied Poland. Jewish agents helped the Germans in return for limited freedom and other compensations (food, money) for the collaborators and their relatives, or simply under the threat of "collaborate or die". One of their assignments was to hunt down Jews who were in hiding; one of the most infamous cases involved about 2,500 Jews being lured out of hiding and subsequently captured by the Germans in the aftermath of the Hotel Polski affair in which Żagiew agents were involved. Jewish collaborators also informed Germany's Gestapo of Polish resistance, including on its efforts to hide Jews. and engaged in racketeering, blackmail, and extortion in the Warsaw Ghetto. During the war, some Jewish collaborators were executed by the Polish underground and the Jewish resistance. After World War II, a number of others were tried in Jewish transition camps and in Israel, though none of them received sentences of more than 18 months' imprisonment. References

• Agree with the removal: the contents is not suitable in the present state. Moreover, most of it is about Poland, so if anything should be covered in the already existing section, when better sources are presented. --K.e.coffman (talk) 03:48, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
• As per my comments here and here. François Robere (talk) 10:48, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
• I also agree with the removal. However, the corresponding article, Jewish collaboration with Nazi Germany, needs to be attended and should not be left in its current state. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 11:03, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

  I agree, but I have my hands full here. I still have the problem of "volunteers" who may or may not have been conscripts or POWs. And the Soviet Union and the Balkans. And maybe Finland and the rest of this talk page. If you care to tackle the spinoff page, Gitz, I'm certainly not going to argue with you. I don't think anyone is working on it. The last time I checked it, it looked very much like the above, minus the reference tagging. Elinruby (talk) 12:02, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

• Agree with the removal and the new article (which has the same content) should be BLAR'd back to here. Levivich (talk) 16:43, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

User:Elinruby, you say that this text was reverted back in but having checked the article history meticulously, I don't see where this text was even removed in the first place, much less "reverted back in". Maybe I missed it. Can you provide the diffs where someone is removing it and then where someone is restoring it? The closest I can find is the text just being moved from the Poland section to its own section. Volunteer Marek 16:35, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

special:Diff/1141031634 Levivich (talk) 16:41, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Ah ok, so a completely uninvolved editor restored it, which is why I missed it because I was looking for the "usuals". Perhaps someone should ping them? Volunteer Marek 16:56, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

By all means: @User:Sennalen Gitz (talk) (contribs) 17:35, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I said it shouldn't be removed until it existed on another page like Jewish collaboration with Nazi Germany. After that page was made, I said it was fine to remove it here. There is no more disagreement about the content. Elinruby continues being mad about it for unclear reasons. Sennalen (talk) 19:05, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

There never was any disagreement. I posted to the Noticeboard because there was nobody here to discuss it with but my Vichy France buddy, who knows a trainwreck when he sees one and was busy with collaboration with the Japanese. Piotrus, seeing the post, asked me to put it on the redirect and I agreed, then you came along with your magic revert pen, into a situation where there previously had been collegial disagreement and an agreed-upon course of action, and created a freaking problem that made me spend hours documenting what I had already seen. That's what I am mad about. But fine, you refused to discuss and made me bring all these people in here to do it for you. Brah voe Elinruby (talk) 23:01, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

If there is a consensus to put it back here or TNT it there or whatever, I am not an impediment to any of that. My only red line was deleting it while there was an unresolved Talk page discussion on what to do with it. Sennalen (talk) 19:07, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

multiple requests to undo on their talk page Elinruby (talk) 18:04, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

You two need to move that discussion over here. Volunteer Marek 18:26, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

All discussions about this content should be in one place, here. I've BLAR'd the recent spinout back here and left a message on that talk page pointing to this discussion. This content needed WP:TNT and basically somebody, whoever wants to, should propose some content, or at least some sources for some content, and see if there's consensus to include it in this article. We only need a spinout if and when the content gets too long for this article. Levivich (talk) 18:34, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

The phenomenon was not limited to Poland. Judenrats (or analogous institutions) and ghetto police were everywhere there were ghettos, so for example in the Soviet Union or Lithuania. We also have the special case of Georg Kareski in Germany. So it seems to me that the phenomenon as such is worth describing. Albeit taking into account the peculiarities and describing the special situation in which Jewish communities were in during the Holocaust. It seems to me that this should be the main topic of the article. Certainly, one should be wary of narratives along the lines of "Jewish co-responsibility for the Holocaust," etc. And the different attitudes taken by figures such as Czerniaków, Rumkowski and Gancwajch cannot be put on an equal footing. This is my opinion when it comes to the Jewish collaboration with Nazi Germany article.

While as for a separate section in this article. It is a matter of consideration whether it is needed at all, or whether perhaps it is better to describe the displays of Jewish collaboration in the sections of individual countries (Poland, Lithuania, etc.). I do not have a definite opinion on this subject.Marcelus (talk) 20:57, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Good sources:

Good sources: Blum, Alain; Chopard, Thomas; Koustova, Emilia (2020). "Survivors, Collaborators and Partisans?". Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas. 68 (2): 222–255. Finder, Gabriel N.; Prusin, Alexander V. (2008). "Jewish Collaborators on Trial in Poland 1944–1956". Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry. 20: 122–148. Finkel, Evgeny (2017). Ordinary Jews. Choice and Survival during the Holocaust. Levine, Herbert S. (1975). "A Jewish Collaborator in Nazi Germany: The Strange Career of Georg Kareski, 1933-37". Central European History. 8 (3): 251–281. Mędykowski, Witold (2006). "Przeciw swoim: Wzorce kolaboracji żydowskiej w Krakowie i okolicy" [Against Their Own: Patterns of Jewish Collaboration in and around Kraków]. Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały. 2: 202–220. Person, Katarzyna (2022). "Rehabilitation of Individuals Suspected of Collaboration: The Jewish Civic Court under the Central Committee of Jews in Poland, 1946–1950". In Le Bourhis, Eric; Tcherneva, Irina; Voisin, Vanessa (eds.). Seeking Accountability for Nazi and War Crimes in East and Central Europe: A People’s Justice?. pp. 261–282. Marcelus (talk) 20:57, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

My objection to this section is that it puts a woman who informed in an effort to save her parents on a par with the French government rounding up French Jews for transport. I am not excusing the woman, but I am grateful nobody ever forced that choice on me and I question how much agency she had.

And by the way, @Sennalen:, you completely misread the situation. Piotrus asked me to move it to the redirect rather than delete, and I agreed, (possibly on my user page?) because I am trying to clean up *this* page and I'm an inclusionist, and have no objection to material getting cleaned up. But there was no discussion, there hadn't *been* any discussion in the weeks I'd been working on it, except for an editor I'd been working on France with and a few somewhat helpful drivebys. As it was, OK, I was bold, you reverted and then you refused to discuss.

And left the text abandoned here. It sucks. I haven't investigated who wrote it but look, just look, at that referencing. I want nothing to do with it. If somebody can write a verifiable summary then maaaayyybe, but I personally don't think we should have a badly-referenced special section for Jews in Poland, masquerading as a worldwide phenomenon. Elinruby (talk) 22:18, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

There was discussion. I said I have no more objections to you proceeding with your plan. I don't know what you want to keep discussing. Sennalen (talk) 22:45, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

@Sennalen: I am putting you down for "I have no intention of discussing my actions", is that correct?

It all happened before you got there. And yeah, I did some discussing on your talk page, which you stonewalled, but my experience is that the revert-happy are also quick to claim edit-warring. This is a fraught topic and frankly I didn't trust you. You were sufficiently mistaken in your preconceptions to yell OWN, and claim I was responsible for the appalling condition of this article. That's not discussion. Read a little further before you ride in like the Lone Ranger next time. Bah. Timr for a cup of tea. Better yet, stay out of problems that you aren't there to solve. Elinruby (talk) 23:16, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

@Sennalen: I am putting you down for "I have no intention of discussing my actions", is that correct?

This also seems to me to be the main probleme. The "Jewish" section was the only one that described in detail individual collaboration, it is a matter of finding the right WP:BALANCE. If a separate section were to exist it would have to describe the phenomenon of Jewish collaboration skillfully and in an appropriate tone. Marcelus (talk) 23:11, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Ok. I would like to look at that, but propose something quick in case they topic ban you for trying to fix that other article. If it is along the lines of my rewritten lede tho, it might be a possible plus. I tried to explain motivations in the lede without either blanket-blaming or excusing. Escapees from the ghetto are conceivably a reason to separately discuss Jews come to think of it, but you'll have to be really open to input if it is going to do you or the article any good. But I am willing to work in good faith with you if you do the same. (And I also welcome input on the lede, and the ongoing question of what is a collaborator) Elinruby (talk) 23:25, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Re The "Jewish" section was the only one that described in detail individual collaboration is a relevant consideration and is also the reason why I think that the section shouldn't deal with Georg Kareski [4] and with most of the "Good sources" listed in the collapsable box. A section (or self-standing article) on "Jewish collaboration with the Axis powers" shouldn't be a list of Jews who collaborated with Nazism. We'd better distinguish between "Jewish collaboration" and "collaboration by Jews" (or "Jewish collaborators"): while "Jewish collaboration" may be a relevant subject (though basically identical/overlappig with Judenrat), "Jews collaborators" has much less historical significance. Do we have articles on "Frenchmen who collaborated with the Nazis", "British citizens who betrayed their country", etc.? Since the other sections in the article don't usually deal with individuals unless they are in positions of authority, the subject of a Jewish section should also be insititutionalised cooperation by representatives of the Jewish communities, or at least Jewish organisations and groups of people. To quote from the removed text, no Gestapo collaborators Abraham Gancwajch and Stella Kubler, concentration-camp kapos like Eliezer Gruenbaum, Judenrat (Jewish council) members and bosses such as Chaim Rumkowski, please. (By the way, a section on Italian collaboration is still missing: Italian Social Republic) Gitz (talk) (contribs) 00:47, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Well, you speak Italian... But please both of you, let's voluntarily restrict ourselves for purposes of this page to what can be verified online, since there are so many areas of dispute. And you mean collaboration *with* Italian fascists, right? Elinruby (talk) 01:05, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

No, collaboration by Italian fascists with Nazi occupiers (following the Armistice of Cassibile, Italy was no longer an "Axis power"). Gitz (talk) (contribs) 01:09, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I stand corrected. We've been having a messy discussion about what exactly is a collaborator. I think that the scope you have just defined would be ok even with the people complaining about including countries that at some point were Axis powers (Hungary,Soviet Union). Go ahead and start working on that period then. There is also a huge unreferenced mess in areas occupied at some point by Italy. (Yugoslavia!) I really really want some page numbers though, mkay? Just saying. Peace love and understanding Elinruby (talk) 01:54, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

The split-out content has been redirected back here: [5]. So now it is efffectively deleted; and I don't think we have consensus for that. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:41, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

@Levevich: phone for you. Meanwhile, Piotrus please take a look at the reference tagging on the section I removed from the article. Elinruby (talk) 05:04, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

@Levivich: Elinruby (talk) 05:06, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

So meanwhile -- Piotrus, there actually was a consensus. You haven't been working on this article. I realize you have your hands full but the article has been sitting around tagged like this for days and days and days now. If you want to work on other article instead, I'm fine with that, but you should examine the tagging above, and you aren't an editor that is currently working on *this* article. Your contributions have amounted to reasoning with GCB, and while this has actually been invaluable, when I have to post to noticeboards to get some tags responded to, you aren't exactly active on the page are you. Sorry to say. Elinruby (talk) 05:19, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Apart from any Redirects, {{@Piotrus}}, Elinruby pasted the full text of this article's former "Jewish collaboration" section at the top of this discussion topic. Just open up the light green bar entitled "Extended content" —— Shakescene (talk) 05:34, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, and as the version in "Extended content" above shows, that text is worse than the tags on the spin-out indicate. Much of it was sourced to an unreliable source (see RSN discussion). Much of it was tagged failed verification. It's all highly controversial content (see WP:EXCEPTIONAL). Despite having been removed and restored like 10 days ago, apparently none of the problems have been fixed. Elin was right to remove it from the page -- it clearly doesn't have either local consensus here or meet the global consensus of our policies, and in BRD, doing the "R" without the "D" is also known as "stonewalling". Per WP:ONUS, the disputed content should stay out until there is consensus for inclusion. And if it doesn't have consensus here, it doesn't have consensus on a stand-alone page, either, nor does the spin-out have consensus, either. Most importantly, we should avoid splitting the discussion: this is the place to discuss what content to include and where. Levivich (talk) 06:22, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Fair enough, we can do better then a newspaper (I thought that was removed a while ago). Marcelus listed some good sources above. This section / topic likely needs a major rewrite with scholarly, not newspaper, sources. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:38, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

re tagging: in fairness to Piotrus the tags came after the spinoff. I am fairly certain that I told him there were reference problems (discussion would be in Archive 9 above) but I started tagging after the text was reverted back in, systematically checking through the references and tagging as I went because hey, I am capable of error and if we were going to do BRD I wanted to be able to talk specifics. Piotrus those failed verification tags don't include any of the sources that don't have a preview, and is in addition to those. I don't know if Levivich is right about spinoffs but Sennalen was over her head and should not have reverted the text's removal. *I* don't want to rewrite the text and am ill-equipped to do so especially since I don't think this article should have that section. Marcellus was making a proposal earlier though and I said I was willing to discuss it if he produced a draft. Maybe you could work with him on that? Elinruby (talk) 07:38, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Piotrus that the section/topic needs a major rewrite with scholarly, not newspaper, sources. I don't have any interest or intention of writing it, but anyone who wants to can propose some draft language or make a bold edit. In case it matters, an edit would not be "reverting" me if it was an expansion with new language (as opposed to replacing the old language). Levivich (talk) 02:33, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Is it collaboration if:

• You keep the trains running?
• You allow Nazis to use your ports or airspace?
• You export food to Nazi Germany?
  • What if it's tobacco?
• You deport Jews or other people knowing they will be killed?
• You maintain a list of Jews?
• You publicly espouse anti-Semitism?
• You accept funding from the Nazi government?
• You allow them to use you in their propaganda, ie portray you as Nordic übermenschen?
• You turn back refugees from your borders?
• What if you refuse them transit visas?
• You sabotage your own country, which is not occupied by Nazis?
  • What if it isn't occupied by Nazis but is fighting them elsewhere?
• You voluntarily enlist in a Fascist army?
• You enlist in a Fascist army to get out of a POW camp?

I could go on. All of these are real; there are no trick questions. I am looking for a way to break up a big topic. Comments welcome. Elinruby (talk) 01:46, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

If RS say it was, yes. Slatersteven (talk) 10:19, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't believe definitive definitions are possible as to what comprises "collaboration" and what comprises "resistance." In both cases the gray areas are wide. To my mind, the great majority of the people in the occupied countries of Western Europe were passive collaborators to some extent and only a small minority (1-3 percent) were part of the organized resistance to German occupation. Most people tolerated the Germans to survive, or prosper, or with the opinion that they could serve their country best by cooperation with the Germans where cooperation was possible. I wouldn't be too hard on the passive collaborators -- nor buy into exaggerations of the participation in and accomplishments of the resistance. After a war everybody likes to claim they were on the winning side. Smallchief (talk) 11:54, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

It’s collaboration if the reliable sources say it is. Editors deciding what is and isn’t collaboration is original research. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 12:32, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Well, many sections of this article have no source -- reliable or not. I agree that only reliable sources should be used on wikipedia -- but an editor has to use discretion, honesty, and impartiality in evaluating the information in so-called "reliable sources." In controversial topics such as this, nationalistic fervor often trumps a search for reality. I'm not a robot. Smallchief (talk) 14:59, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

No they do not as that violates wp:or. But in one repct you are rioght, and that is why wp:rs is clear, sources have to be third party. So one can argue that if a source is published by a party with a wp:coi it is not an rs. Slatersteven (talk) 15:08, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Give an editor some credit as he sorts though contradictory "reliable sources" and selects a tone that is fair to all of them. Using reliable sources, a biased editor could portray resistance movements as brave, noble, and successful or as back-biting, fragmented, partisan failures. Both interpretations have some truth to them. Smallchief (talk)

They asked for comments, they have received them. No one has so far done any more than say "we go with what RS say". Slatersteven (talk) 15:25, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

And I am interested in them. We're going to have to split the article pretty soon and doing so by continent is awkward because of the colonial empires. I think everybody agrees that Vichy was a collaborationist régime, but we have all of the above in different countries. One thought I recently had is that a Belgian (for example) voluntarily joining the SS is definitely collaborating, and such instances are scattered through the country sections. If we consolidate those and spin it off that would reduce the article size and allow somebody to get into gray areas like POWs who joined because they didn't think they would survive the camps.

All suggestions and comments welcome. I am trying to remediate the referencing as dispassionately as possible. 02:35, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

@Shakescene: another idea. We could do both? @Mathglot: you might be interested if you aren't too busy, or want a break from what you're busy with Elinruby (talk) 04:31, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

As far as Europe is concerned, it is hard to go past Raphael Lemkin's Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. There are more specific texts on collaboration in different countries, but I have found with Yugoslavia that it is important to examine the possible national biases and the eminence of academics when deciding whose views determine the academic consensus. For example, it is not difficult to find Serb or Croat academics published mainly or only in Serbia or Croatia who seek to justify or downplay collaboration by Serbs and Croats. In such cases, you only have to look to subject matter specialists who, while they sometimes have family ties to the former Yugoslavia or were even born there, are published outside the former Yugoslavia by high quality university presses (Tomasevich, Hoare, Pavlowitch etc). I am sure the same would apply elsewhere in the world. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 06:26, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, that is helpful. FYI, Belarus is completely unsourced and while Kosovo has references that superficially look reliable not one of the dozen or so I just checked can be verified through Google Books; they either have no page number in the reference or no preview. Which doesn't mean they aren't just fine, but it's a problem in this context Elinruby (talk) 06:47, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Scope should correspond with the lede. From current lede: "In nations occupied by the Axis powers in World War II, some citizens and organizations collaborated..." and "Collaboration has been defined as cooperation between elements of the population of a defeated state and representatives of the victorious power." (emphasis mine) Romania and Bulgaria were Axis members, not occupied, and therefore should be removed from here. Along the similar lines, Hungary was only occupied after 1944 coup, so everything previous should be trimmed. There are Axis Powers, Responsibility for the Holocaust, and dedicated country specific articles for that stuff. Only a small part of Egypt west of El-Alamein was occupied, and current content is completely irrelevant to that. Whole "business collaboration" section has literally nothing to do with collaborating with an occupying power.--Staberinde (talk) 22:00, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

@Staberinde agree. This article was recently laboriously edited by a single editor. This is the most correct version editors might consider regressing to eliminate mistakes addressed above. - GizzyCatBella🍁 14:10, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

@Staberinde Or begin removing mistakes such as removing Axis power countries such as Romania etc. but that would take time. I would revert to the correct version and then maybe examine what could be saved later. - GizzyCatBella🍁 14:21, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

It would be better to rewrite the lede. And I'm lumbered with a long section of misrepresentation that was reverted back in. The Middle East needs to be revisited, that's true, but if as proposed we spinoff all the regimental history, some of it may be important. we aren't sure what to do about individuals who broadcast propaganda. Pending a split, we are trimming out mentions like "and there was this one guy, he was definitely a notorious anti-communist." Most of the material GCB so dismissively proposed to revert is referencing, so *that* is a bad idea. Elinruby (talk) 23:32, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

PS - The Business collaboration section Was written by Piotrus, I believe he said; he definitely suggested expanding it. I actually agree with him -- these manufacturers were deeply involved in the forced labor programs, so they definitely bear responsibility for many hundreds of deaths. Yet that is lost in the current list-like section. I'd actually like to spin it off and expand it. Let's see what @Piotrus: thinks Elinruby (talk) 01:08, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Regarding spinning of a list, we already have the List of companies involved in the Holocaust... _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:44, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

So... Is everything in the section covered somewhere else? Elinruby (talk) 03:04, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

By the way, "collaborationist" is almost exclusively used with respect to Vichy. Maybe we should move that to France. Elinruby (talk) 03:04, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes, and has a specific, different meaning than "collaborator", although non-specialists often conflate them. Mathglot (talk) 10:18, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Jewish collaboration with Axis nations

For a consolidated discussion of this topic, please go to /Jewish collaboration.

—— Shakescene (talk) 17:58, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

All Jewish collaborators were Polish?

I encountered this assertion in a troll through the archives last night. This seems to explain why the removed section only dealt with Polish Jews. I am NOT suggesting its return, and definitely not in its currently form, but surely kapos existed elsewhere, and surely, at least in the form of trying to survive, this is not just a Polish phenomenon? Or Jewish for that matter?

I feel the need of a reality check, this assertion having been made with such utter assurance. Elinruby (talk) 20:02, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm working on Jewish collaboration section in my sandbox (you can see here: User:Marcelus/sandbox10), I was planning to post here for discussion, because it's almost finished.

And to answer your question: no they weren't all Polish Jews. Yehuda Bauer for example as two the most "collaborationist" Judenrat leaders lists David Cohen and Abraham Asscher from Amsterdam ghetto. Judenrats (or similiar bodies) existed everywhere where German set up ghettos, so Poland, Soviet Union, Baltic countries, but also in Bohemia, Netherlands etc. Marcelus (talk) 20:09, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Ok. Thank you, I sort of needed to hear that from someone. I think, if you would, hold off on starting another thread until we get some sort of decision on archive format; I will go read your sandbox later today. And maybe reply here? We should have a decision soon on archiving, and right now I need a break; the archives were pretty discouraging. Elinruby (talk) 20:34, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

@Marcelus: based on a fast skim I think I like where you're going with it, and you do provide a rationale for a separate section about Jews. You need more references though. Pinging @Zero0000: who was telling me something about Lehi a while back. Elinruby (talk) 20:49, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Archiving the Jewish collaboration sections (copied from a User talk page)

Talk:Collaboration with the Axis powers

Hi, I'm not sure I understand the move of the discussion to a sub-page: [6]. It would be difficult to find the discussion (Talk:Collaboration with the Axis powers/Jewish collaboration) unless you spot the diff in the article history. The discussion also appears to be still active. Could you clarify? -- K.e.coffman (talk) 21:11, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

(1) Thanks for a very useful comment (about the visibility and retrievability of this archive page). While I was able to do something similar a few years ago at Talk:War of 1812 [7], I couldn't format the added index item very elegantly (I think because the articles used different archive bots), but you can see that I did insert a pointer. If you have greater skill and knowledge with this kind of formatting, please go ahead.

(2) The main reasons I sent two "Jewish collaboration" topics to an archive were (a) because of the physical size of the then-existing Talk Page (pressing beyond the recommended limit of 100,000 bytes), (b) because the enormous length of this topic's extended disputes hampered my reading of other Talk Page items, and (c) to keep several current and future Talk Page discussions of Jewish collaboration together and thus more coherent (not duplicating points in ignorance of earlier discussion). See, for example, my rationales at Talk:Collaboration with the Axis powers#With this talk page again approaching 100k, what could be archived?.

@Elinruby and K.e.coffman: —— Shakescene (talk) 03:53, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I support keeping the discussion together and have mostly left matters of layout to Shakescene. I largely caused the space crunch by copying the text to talk, as I don't want to delete work that isn't duplicated elsewhere, and the current state of the section tagging is indicative of my reason for preferring to put my time elsewhere. It is notable that the size of the thread tripled overnight.

However, while I rather like the idea of a subpage, I see the point about difficulty finding that subpage. I was envisioning something like a pinned post at the top of the page. Is something like that possible, @Mathglot:? I was looking under the impression that the thread was close to done, but maybe I just wanted to to be.

I take it that you are participating, K.e.coffman? If so I appreciate that. Incidentally, I noticed earlier today that much of the material is duplicated at Collaboration in German-occupied Poland. Ping me if there are any questions about this response. Elinruby (talk) 04:18, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

It's not conventional to move a discussion to a subpage (other than an Archive), although I've seen various highly specialized supporting information (like references for the Buddha, or definitions of gender-related terms) placed in a subpage, which is then referred to from the Talk pages; but the content of the subpages themselves did not contain any discussion at all, just information. Imho, the information moved from Talk to the subpage should be reinstated, and the subpage should be deleted. Just because the discussion is long is no reason to move it to a subpage. As far as pinning it, it's technically feasiable but that's usually reserved for some topic of lasting importance that should always be visible to all editors and never be archived; does this page meet that standard? Mathglot (talk) 05:11, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Not really.

Speaking for myself, I deleted the section weeks ago, thinking well, it will still be in the history. Somebody parachuted in and reverted that and proceeded to do nothing with it. Nor did anyone else. I've essentially tag-bombed it, but I stand by those tags, and nobody did anything about them or the problems they represent, including the heavily used source that got scoffed at at RSN. Levivich has posted that he is not going to rewrite the section. Marcelus seemed somewhat interested but now seems more interested in the Baltics, where we do need him. So. The question is, is this text still needed, for rewrites or for the Arbcom case? I think the arbitrators can navigate article histories, and anyone who might want to do a rewrite is a long-standing editor. Maybe we should stick to the letter of policy with this article, hmm? Whatever that is; don't think I have ever looked up archiving policy. I don't want to ping all those people here to Shakescene's talk page. What I *could* do if it seems like a good idea is do the pinging in a post on the talk page asking if anyone is going to rewrite the section and saying that on second thought the thread is simply moving to the archives. Elinruby (talk) 05:48, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

¶ Although I rather dread the possible results, I'm copying this section of my Talk page to a new section of Collabo Talk. I just hope that this discussion won't convert into yet another interminable, dense contention that clogs up everything else.

And, of course, thanks to everyone for his or her comments. —— Shakescene (talk) 06:07, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

[User:Shakescene|—— Shakescene]] (talk) 06:04, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

@Elinruby: Yes, I wanted to check on the discussion but could not find it, until I looked through the article history.

@Shakescene: Hi, I don't think this addresses the issue still: [8], since these threads are not searchable via the archive box. And as I mentioned, I wanted to comment further, so it did not look to me that the discussion has concluded. I suggest the thread(s) be restored to this page, and be allowed to be archived by the bot in the regular way. Meanwhile, I changed the archiving period from 90 to 10 days, for while the Talk page is very active. Hopefully, this will help alleviate the clutter. --K.e.coffman (talk) 04:14, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

(1) I'm too sleepy now to consider and explore this right now, but by copying from an earlier version of Talk:War of 1812, I was able (purely for illustration) to post at the top of this page a sample of the expanded archive box (including /Jewish collaboration) that I was trying to make.

There are technical problems with this that I don't know enough to adjust (e.g. specifying Miszabot as the archive), but simply by appearance, it should clarify what I was hoping to achieve. As with the War of 1812 example, there is also space to insert the dates covered by each archive page. On the other hand, this sample box can be modified or removed for technical reasons, once its illustrative purpose has been served.

(2) "Who won?" was a perennial topic at Talk:War of 1812, so, without a dedicated archive, one would have to search through all those twenty-odd archives to find, learn from, and avoid duplicating earlier discussions covering the same ground. And the other active and archive pages became bloated with this one particular question, making it hard to find and comment on other topics. Something similar can be said about the nomenclature disputes at Talk:The Bronx. But I did go through the titles at Archives 1 to 7 of this Talk page and did not find a similar backlog of disconnected discussions of Jewish collaboration — which makes consolidation less of a consideration, although the two closely-related discussions of Jewish collaboration did come from separate archives. The current consoldated archive would also make a relevant, connected space for any future dicussions of Jewish collaboration

(3) I still believe that restoring the latest discussions here would increase both the physical bloat and the impediment to navigating all the other topics worth discussing.

Enough for now. Best wishes —— Shakescene (talk) 07:50, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

it was an endless topic because an editor kept asserting with a straight face that Canadian history was a fringe theory, mumble. But that is another matter. I see merit in both positions here, but since I a still annoyed about the war of 1812 and am weary of Poland in the Holocaust. I am going to stay out of this discussion. Elinruby (talk) 08:08, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Actually, I guess I shouldn't. I don't see anything in help: archiving about doing this. I certainly didn't agree with it at War of 1812, but as I recall I was preoccupied with getting dragged to some drama board for daring to suggest that the American version of events might be incorrect, even though I wasn't in fact advocating a change. I mention this not to relitigate the way Deathlibrarian kept getting shouted down, but to say that much as I disagree with the existence of the section, especially in its current state, I don't think that Wikipedia should segregate attempts to discuss that way. We only have a couple of sections on this topic. If the threads proliferate (and I am about to start another) it might in fact be a good idea to maintain a duplicate dedicated archive. But maybe we should stick to policy and refrain from novel formatting. Elinruby (talk) 19:50, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps solution is to pin, as I have done, #Jewish collaboration with Axis nations to the top (no.1) of this current Talk Page, where it reads

For a consolidated discussion of this topic, please go to /Jewish collaboration.

I think that this pointer and item no. 2, the invaluable and handy set of questions posed by Elinruby, #Is it collaboration if:, should stay at the top of this Talk Page and not archive over time. Those interested in discussing the topic would see it on the Table of Contents (or at first scroll) and be directed to a page with all the previous discussion. —— Shakescene (talk) 01:23, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Basically, as long as people can find the Jewish collaboratiin thread I personally am ok with whatever. But it is very important that people be able to find the thread. And btw Marcelus is indeed drafting a rewrite. I also think that those questions are important, but then I would. More importantly they are currently mostly unanswered,Elinruby (talk) 07:01, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

@Shakescene:, while there is precedent for creation of Talk subpages in certain situations (like grouping lists of definitions, or lists of references), they are not used as an alternative to discussion on the main Talk page. Your creation of the /Jewish collaboration subpage is problematic for a couple of reasons: it's confusing to people, as it isn't clear whether it is an archive (therefore, no further discussion should take place there), or if it's open to further discussion, and it's fragmenting the discussions, because it isn't clear where to look or comment. If it is an archive page, then it should follow the standard naming sequence, which at this Talk page is numeric; if it's a discussion page still open to further comment, then the content belongs here on this page, per WP:TALK. (Claims of this page getting too big to contain it are a red herring; this page is very far from being large enough to cause problems.)

So, I think you have two choices:

• If the page is not open to further comment, then please rename it in standard archiving name sequence. (Don't worry about incoming links to the current name; a redirect-from-move will take care of that.)
• If it is still open to further comment, then copy the content here to the Talk page. (Combined size would be 90kb, which is nowhere close to too large.) If you are worried about your scrolling finger getting tired because of that added section, that is not a problem: we can collapse it.

Please pick one, as the current situation is causing confusion, and is contrary to Talk guidelines. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 20:55, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

I've moved the content of the subpage back into this page, which can be found here. Feel free to collapse it, if you wish. In either case, it will get picked up by the bot, and archived at the appropriate time, if there are no further replies that section. The old subpage has been moved to Draft. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 10:09, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Proposal for the "Jewish collaboration" section

Link, feel free to comment, I'm waiting for opinions and I'm open to changes Marcelus (talk) 11:31, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

@Elinruby nobody made any comments, I think we can move the section from my sandbox to the article and work on it there, what do you think? Marcelus (talk) 10:17, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

I read the draft and I think it's good. It adequately addresses the concern I had raised above (the subject of a Jewish section should also be insititutionalised cooperation by representatives of the Jewish communities, or at least Jewish organisations and groups of people) and is supported by good sources. Two minor remarks

• After the sentence (from the draft) "In some of the larger ghettos, the Judenrats were forced to prepare lists and hand over people to the Germans for deportation", we could following Bauer 2001 more closely and specify that Only in some of the larger ghettos were the Jundenräte forced to provide the Germans with lists and cooperate in the handing over of victims. In most places this never happened (verbatim quotation from p. 143).
• Re Jewish police, we could mention the case of Calel Perechodnik, since we have a dedicated article. E.g., immediately before the sentence "In 14 ghettos, Jewish police cooperated with the resistance movement" (from the draft) we could have "In his memoir, the Jewish policeman Calel Perechodnik tells of handing over his own wife and daughter to the killers and of his subsequent remorse".

Gitz (talk) (contribs) 10:18, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

I am reading too many things at once. My brain just exploded. More comments later, but yeah, although I still think that it should be its own article, for now I agree that it doesn't need to be in a sandbox. It's a vast improvement in referencing over what was there. I still think that if it is worth covering as a global phenomenon then it's worth its own article, but that growth will be easier here where people can find it. Is Amsterdam in the article? If we're taking it out of the Poland section, which I am not necessarily against, we need to discuss more than just the Warsaw ghetto, on the other hand. Mmmyeah go ahead and move it in, I think. I am planning to move more stuff about volunteers into my sandbox, and try for some organization there. Anyone have any objection to any of that, feel free to comment. I would like to do a copy edit to that draft, but preoccupied right now. Still needing volunteers for Italy, Balkans, Greece, Japanese occupation, Finland etc. Unsure if anyone is doing Soviet Union. And as noted above the references need work. Please discuss which one we should standardize on if anyone chooses that task. Sorry for the brain dump.

Would dearly love to discuss architectural changes also. Probably gone for the next twelve hours at least if somebody wants to avoid edit conflicts. Elinruby (talk) 10:47, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Are we still trying to avoid a focus on individuals? Methinks it depends on whether we are spinning the section off as an article and how soon. On the Judenrāte, the going along to protect the group isn't all that different that what Vichy did. we should discuss this but my primary concern is that we avoid oversimplification. Personally. Elinruby (talk) 10:53, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

@Elinruby I wrote this section with the idea that it is a summary of an article that is not yet written. For this reason, I purposely did not focus on specific individuals. Except for Gancwajach and Stern, whom Bauer clearly identifies as leaders of the collaborationist organizations. Therefore, I would not add Perechodnik at this point. I believe that the article should include many more cases and a comparison between them (for example, the leaders of the Judenrats and the different stances they took).

I'll add a section with an addition proposed by @Gitz6666 Marcelus (talk) 11:12, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

summary of an article not yet written sounds like we are on the same page. Elinruby (talk) 11:16, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

With this talk page again approaching 100k, what could be archived?

This talk page is now around 86,000 bytes (of which nearly 10,000 is just importing the Jewish collaboration section from the Article page).

At some point, we'll need to move some of this page as it now exists either into #/Archive 9 or into a fresh Archive 10.

I'd like to know which current Talk Page sections other editors here think could be archived and which they'd like to keep here, either because the topic hasn't been fully resolved, or because they'd like to keep it handy for reference purposes (e.g. #Is it collaboration if: or various sets of sources and citations).

On the other hand, some simple queries or discussions of topics now settled (e.g. should we split between Asia and Europe/Africa?) can probably be safely moved to Archives with no significant loss to useful current discussion. Any candidates for archiving or keeping here? —— Shakescene (talk) 21:52, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

first top six sections can go unless you need something there. I was looking up how to archive and I'll get Madagascar and Brittany, which should help quite a bit, but I want to find a home for the text. The French Navy too. The very long BRD fail section has an active discussion. I'm not sure we're done with British collabotators. HtH Elinruby (talk) 22:29, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

And yeah, splitting off Asia is settled Elinruby (talk) 22:30, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

All right (if jumping the gun), I went ahead and moved about three dozen sections from this page to #/Archive 9, whose contents page now reads as follows:

== Contents ==

• 1 * "Self-defense"
• 2 * Is a separate Political collaboration section still needed?
• 3 * Marseilles roundup conflated w/ Battle of Marseilles
• 4 * Axis
• 5 * Poland : failed verification
  • 5.1 * References
• 6 * Polish puppet government considered but rejected by Germans
• 7 * Jewish collaborator section
• 8 * Going to need a split
• 9 * Request for Input
• 10 * France
• 11 * Iraq
• 12 * Lebanon and possibly South Africa
• 13 * Reichskommissariat Ostland
• 14 * Needs work: no discussion of collaboration
• 15 * South Africa
  • 15.1 * South Africa
• 16 * High-priority: Estonia
• 17 * Note on references
• 18 * Adrian Weale
• 19 * Volunteers -split proposal
• 20 * Kosovo
• 21 * Greece
• 22 * Hong Kong
• 23 * Sweden

Of course, anyone who wants to move any of these back here for further discussion should feel free to do so.

—— Shakescene (talk) 02:39, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Added * 24Madagascar: this is milhist, needs a home to contents of #/Archive 9 —— Shakescene (talk) 05:18, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I've moved the Jewish collaborator section of Archive 9 into a new /Jewish collaboration archive page, together with the BRD fail section formerly here (on the current Talk page). This new archive already has 40,000 bytes, and moving those sections here significantly cuts both this page and /Archive 9, while giving us more breathing room here to consider all the other questions and queries. —— Shakescene (talk) 15:10, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm not at all sure about this. I had missed this comment and I spent 5 minutes looking around for our recent discussions on "Jewish collaboration". Having them here doesn't look halpful to me. I suggest we move them back either to this talk page or to Archive 9 or to a newly created Archive 10. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 09:58, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

It has been reverted back; the subpage link above links back to this page now. Also: 100k is not a problem for server load, this isn't 1998. If the size of the page is a problem for your scrolling finger, collapsing a few sections (but leaving them here) will solve that. If you're not sure how to collapse, reply below with a suggestion of what to collapse, and if there doesn't seem to be any objection, I can collapse it for you. I've also added a "Skip" nav box at the top, to get you instantly to the bottom of the page, no scrolling needed. Mathglot (talk) 17:32, 15 March 2023 (UTC)