LEVELS OF COLLABORATION - A COMPARATIVE-STUDY OF GERMAN OCCUPATION REGIMES DURING THE 2ND-WORLD-WAR

Collaboration of local elites with an occupier for other than ideologi cal reasons can be seen either as pursuing their own interests and tho se of the populace they represent, or as a tendency towards the self-m aintenance of social systems subdued by an overpowering foreign system . With a combination of these two views, an effort is made here to ana lyse occupation regimes according to the top level of the collaboratio n. The crucial coupling between the occupation authorities and the con quered nation can take place at the macro-level. Then, the state syste m of the subjugated people remains more or less intact and - like in t he case of Denmark or France during the Second World War - the king, o r president, and his Ministers constitute the collaborating top. If th e government of the occupied country goes into exile - as was the case in 1940 in Belgium, The Netherlands and Norway - the main burden of a ccommodating the enemy tends to devolve on top civil servants and cent ral figures in industry and commerce, operating at the meso-level. Fin ally, an occupier can try to eliminate the indigenous state system alt ogether and solely engage - if need be - municipal and regional offici als of the conquered society. The Germans utilized this form of collab oration, restricted as much as possible to the micro-level, during Wor ld War II in Poland and western parts of the Soviet Union. These three types of occupation regime are compared as to (1) the reasons why a s pecific collaboration level was selected as the highest one, (2) the f unctional requisites of the exploitation system in question, and (3) t he costs and benefits for the rulers and the ruled. This analysis lead s to the conclusion that the higher the top level of their interorgani zational relations the more the occupier and the occupied benefit and the less they suffer. However, for both sets of actors, one also suspe cts the presence of positive correlations between the height of the le vel of collaboration and the risks run, the military-strategic nature on the part of the conqueror and the political and moral nature on the part of the conquered.