Europe on Trial: The Story of Collaboration, Resistance, and Retribution during World War II by Istvan Deak (review)

Prolific scholar Istvan Deak examines the spectrum of collaboration and resistance across Europe during the Second World War in Europe on Trial: The Story of Collaboration, Resistance, and Retribution during World War II. For Hungarian-born Deak, these themes have a deep personal resonance; he begins his account with the story of Bela Stollar, the fiancé of his sister and close friend from his youth who died resisting fascism in Hungary. Throughout the autobiographical account that opens this text, Deak recounts his life in war-time Hungary, followed by his refugee status in early Cold War Paris and his academic career at Columbia University.

In this concise textbook, Deak stresses that collaboration with the Nazi regime remained endemic in Europe until the tide of the war turned against Germany at the battles of Stalingrad and El Alamein. For Deak, European collaboration proved essential to furthering Nazi war aims, especially in implementing the phases of the Holocaust. Collaboration took different forms. In some cases independent nations aligned themselves with Nazi Germany in order to further their own national interests. For instance, Hungary sought to regain territories lost as a result of the Treaty of Trianon. For conquered nations, collaboration was indicative of self-preservation, especially if the German authorities permitted a modicum of autonomy. By supplying the German war effort and eschewing armed resistance, the Danes managed to preserve their parliamentary system throughout much of the war. Other nations, especially Poland, possessed fewer avenues of collaboration, but the widespread embrace of antisemitism led some Poles to aid the Nazis in ferreting out Jews.

What is the line between collaboration and resistance? How does one consider the question of fear and intimidation? Drawing upon Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men, Deak observes that even those involved in the actual murder of Jews had a remarkable range of options and could opt out from serving as executioners. But do we swing too far in the other direction and fail to stress the primacy of the Nazis as perpetrators of the Holocaust? How much autonomy did Hungary’s ruler, Admiral Horthy, have in chartering a foreign policy that challenged Nazi Germany? Even in 1944, with the Wehrmacht losing the war on both fronts, Horthy tilted away from the Nazis, only to be toppled by German troops with the support of Hungarian fascists. In the Netherlands in 1941, Dutch Jews resorted to violence, and Dutch workers waged sympathy strikes on their behalf. Deak observes that these actions were unique for occupied Europe, but also acknowledges how quickly they were suppressed by German forces.

How much weight should Deak give to the question of intention? The surrender of France in 1940 and the creation of the Vichy regime suggest a level of collaboration of the highest order. Many other governments, most notably those of Poland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Greece, refused to surrender when facing military defeat, continuing the struggle in exile.

Considering Europe on Trial made me reflect on my own encounters with the Second World War in my college textbooks in the late 1970s and ponder shifts in historiographical focus. During the Cold War the lines between good and evil seemed more rigid. In my introductory class, “The Atlantic Community and Contemporary World 1914–1945,” my professors at Drew University assigned Robert Edwin Herzstein’s Adolf Hitler and the German Trauma, 1913-1945 (1974) as the main text dealing with the Second World War. In this work, Hitler and the Nazi regime remain central to the story of World War II in Europe. Herzstein does not ignore collaboration; in fact the illustrations for this book include photographs of several infamous collaborators, and I have always been haunted by the Adolph Hitler quote that Herzstein used under one of the illustrations: “If I had a son, I would want him to be like Degrelle.” Herzstein, like scores of...