Nazi Collaborators - 13x

This series looks at the many people who chose to collaborate with the Nazis. It is at times, uncomfortable viewing, but it's also totally absorbing too. It’s a simple question. “How could they have done it?” How could anyone have collaborated with the Nazis? And yet so many did. From Pierre Laval in France to Chaim Rumkowski, who ran the Jewish administration in the Lodz ghetto, from Quisling to the IRA, from the 1600 Belgians who served in the SS to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem - all worked with the Nazis. Many of these people did what they did out of the best intentions. Others felt they had no choice. Others still had darker and more disturbing motives. This series will draw upon WMR Productions unrivalled 4000 hours of archive, much of which has never been seen before. At the heart of this 13 part series lies one uneasy question. If you had faced what these people had faced, might you have done the same thing - and danced with the devil? All the stories are told through the experiences of individuals who were prominent collaborators. Through this we will give the full background of collaboration in nations and places across Europe and the Middle East.It is one of the final unexplored topics in the history of the war – as most of these secrets have been kept firmly locked away in the post war era.

Part 1: Chaim Rumkowski
To some Chaim Rumkowski was a man of immense courage. To others he is simply a traitor; a Jew who worked with the Nazis and assisted them in the Final Solution. When the Nazis began herding Polish Jews into ghettoes, the Jews faced a terrible reality. Rumkowski firmly believed that there was hope and felt he could turn the Lodz Ghetto into a haven of Jewish culture. It could, he thought, become a thriving community with businesses, factories, social services, even schools. He did a deal in which his people would provide labour to the Nazis in exchange for food and it worked. But inevitably there was a price. Rumkowski had to confiscate all property and coerce the able bodied into forced labour. Many grew to hate him.
The result though was that the Lodz Ghetto lasted two years longer than had been expected. Undoubtedly some owe their lives to its prolonged existence.
Rumkowski was deported to Auschwitz in 1944 where he and his family died.


Part 2: Pierre Laval
Pierre Laval was a French politician who held several cabinet posts including Foreign Minister and was Prime Minister in 1931-32 and 1935-36. After the Nazis occupied France in 1940, Laval developed a close relationship with Adolf Hitler and proposed that the two countries should collaborate. In 1943 Laval created the Milice. Within six months they were playing the leading role in capturing Jews and left-wing activists and deporting them to Germany. After Liberation (1945), he was arrested, found guilty of high treason, and executed by firing squad. This film tells the story of Laval’s rise to power and his relationship with Hitler.He is still one of the most detested men in French history.


Part 3: The Arajs Kommando
Leon Degrelle , was a Walloon Belgian politician, who founded Rexism and later joined the Waffen SS which were front-line troops in the fight against the Soviet Union. After World War II, he was a prominent figure in neo-nazi movements. In any other age, Leon Degrelle would have been a hero. He was rich, young, charismatic. He ended up however a resolute Nazi Collaborator and soon became embroiled in murder. At the end of the war, he fled to Spain. His legacy still divides Belgium and leaves those who knew him to reflect on the choices they made and the “Belgian Collaborator” they followed.


Part 4: The Belgian Collaborator
During World War Two, a gang of merciless Latvians rampaged throughout their country on behalf of the Nazi’s. Started by a junior police officer, Viktors Arajs, the Kommando were formed of students, builders and accountants. They were attracted by excellent wages and healthy rations including endless vodka. By war’s end the Arajs Kommando were directly responsible for at least 26,000 murders. In the summer of 1942 the Arajs Kommando were the chief co-ordinators of the second largest single mass murder of Jews during the War. In a forest ten kilometres from the Latvian capital Riga, three vast pits were dug. Over the course of two days thousands of Jews from the Riga Ghetto were herded to the forest by the Arajs Kommando and executed. After the war many of the Kommando escaped justice. It took until 1975 for Viktors Arajs to surface and be tried for his crimes. This documentary contains many extraordinary interviews with those at the heart of the story as well as rare film footage.


Part 5: Croation Collaborator
In 1941, when German tanks rolled into Yugoslavia in the second year of World War Two, it should have been a tragedy. However for many of the country’s Croats it was seen as something else. It was an opportunity to break away from Yugoslav rule and set up the first ever independent Croat State. As the war unfolded, Croatia became a nation of Nazi collaborators. One of the most enthusiastic was Dinko Sakic. He ran one of the most brutal and notorious death camps of World War Two. Some 80,000 people were killed in the name of a free Croatia.It was known as the Auschwitz of the Balkans. Sakic survived the war by fleeing to Argentina before he could be brought to trial in Europe. He lived a long and peaceful life until he made a serious error of judgement in the late 90’s. Believing he was no longer a wanted man he bizarrely agreed to be interviewed by Argentinian TV.


Part 6: Vidkun Quisling
Vidkun Quisling was leader of the Norwegian Fascist party Nasjional Samling – National Union – which he had founded in 1933 to counter Norwegian Communism. When the war broke out in September 1939 Quisling realised that Hitler’s war plans needed Norway. He travelled to Berlin in December 1939 and met the Fuhrer. He did a deal – to take over as leader in Norway and stage a coup d’etat that would allow the Nazis to keep a military presence in Norway – he even gave the Germans military secrets on Norway’s defence plans.In return, he believed Hitler would make him the “Norwegian Fuhrer”. Quisling had betrayed his country and paved the way for the Nazi invasion of Norway in April 1940. Throughout the war, Quisling cruelly oppressed the people of Norway and urged them to fight for Nazi Germany. He even oversaw the execution of dissenters and collaborated in the deportation to Auschwitz of Norwegian Jews. As the war came to a close, this puppet leader became delusional. In the end, he was arrested and stood trial for his crimes. Today, “quisling” has become a synonym for traitor.


Part 7: The IRA
Just eight months before the outbreak of World War Two a series of terrerist attacks were felt all over England. Bombs exploded in power stations and substations from Northumberland to Manchester, from Liverpool to London. Seven people were killed and 96 injured. This was the work of an Irish terrorist group, The I.R.A. and as war approached, the Nazis took a keen interest in their activities. Believing they shared similiar goals, The I.R.A's leaders travelled several times to Germany to discuss collaboration. In return the Nazis sent several spies, thousands of dollars in cash and radio transmitting equipment to Ireland. On the 5th of May 1940, German Spy Hermann Gortz parachuted into Ireland with plans for the invasion of Northern Ireland. It was called plan Kathleen.With Germany's defeat in The Battle of Britain however, Hitler cancelled any plan he may have had to invade Ireland. By the end of the war almost all of the I.R.A had been locked up or executed. Nevertheless, an unprecedented level of secret co-operation between British and Irish intelligence foiled all of the I.R.A.'s plans and allowed Winston Churchill to focus on the real enemy. Had the I.R.A succeeded in their mission, it could have lost Britain the War.


Part 8: The Grand Mufti
Of those individuals who have been accused of collaboration with Hitler and the Nazis during World War two, it is perhaps Mohammed Amin al-Husseini who is the most controversial of all. Debate still rages to this day as to whether his apparent pact with the National Socialists was a purely individual act or whether al-Husseini was a mouthpiece for the wider, fanatically anti-Jewish Arab world. That he was sympathetic to the Nazi cause is in no doubt. But what were his motives? And how much did he really support the Nazis intentions towards the Jews? This film takes a detailed look at the life of al-Husseini and explores the true nature of his collaboration with the Nazi’s. It examines the legacy of his actions during World War Two and explores the impact of his influence on the Middle East in the 21st century.


Part 9: Jews who Fought for Hitler
Imagine your country strips you of all your rights, threatens you and deports you. This is what happened to the Jews in 1930s Germany, thanks to Adolf Hitler’s racial policies. This terrible situation was faced not only by Germany’s practising Jews but also by Germans who didn’t even think they were Jewish. Most were Christians – who just happened to have distant Jewish relatives.
The Nazis had a name for them, the “Mischlinge” or half-breeds. Amazingly, many “Mischlinge” and even some Jews would still fight for Hitler. Some even joined the murderous SS. It begged the question: “Why?” This is the strange story of the Jews who fought for Hitler. Told through the amazing personal stories of those Jews or so-called “Mischlinge” caught up in Hitler’s hateful policies. Some of them are still alive today and provide testimony in the first person. Now they explain in their own words what it was like to fight for the very country that wanted to kill them and their relatives.


Part 10: The Dutch Collaborator
On 10th of May 1940 Germany invaded Holland. Hitler's Blitzkreig or lightening war took neutral Holland completely by surprise. Anton Mussert, leader of the right wing national socialist movement, known as the N.S.B.,offered his support to the occupiers. They would play part in the extermination of 74% of Holland's Jewish population. One such victim was Rudi Oppenheimer.Rudi explains in his own words how he, his elder brother and his sister only just survived Belsen.


Part 11: The Greek Collaborator
During the Nazi occupation of Greece, Ioannis Rallis was one of three men who ran the country’s Government, effectively a puppet regime installed to do Adolf Hitler’s bidding. It would be an over-simplification however to say Rallis and his colleagues were simply Nazi collaborators. The story of Greece from 1940 through to 1944 is one of unthinkable conditions for its people, intense political infighting, and powerful resistance groups who would fight not just the Nazis but each other to the death. At the end of the war Rallis would be accused of being a collaborator. Was Rallis however just a staunch anti-Communist who shared Hitler’s hatred of Bolshevism? What was the truth behind Greek collaboration? The country was occupied between 1941 and 1944 but after liberation, Rallis himself was sentenced to life imprisonment for collaboration and died in jail on October 26, 1946. In jail, he wrote a memoir filled with remorse.


Part 12: The Good Collaborators
Finland today is one of the most prosperous countries in the world but in World War Two, it was fighting to survive against the odds. This is the story of how the Finns negotiated an alliance with one of the most evil regimes the world has ever seen. It details the compromises they made, or felt they had to make to ensure their country remained free of communism and of Russian rule.


Part 13: Hitlers KIller Police
During the Nazi occupation of the Soviet Union the collaborators of Lithuania and the Ukraine became a vital part of Hitler’s genocide against the Jews.
Many signed up to Nazi death squads, rounding up and shooting Communists and Jews in hundreds of towns across the occupied area. Many of their victims were fellow neighbours and countrymen.
One fundamental reason for this collaboration was that they hated the Russians and had bought Hitler’s line that Jews and Communists were the same thing

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