The Weight of Occupation: A Continent Transformed

The Second World War left Europe not just physically devastated but morally scarred. As Belgian Foreign Minister Paul-Henri Spaak observed, five years of occupation had fundamentally altered social norms across the continent. Where once civic virtue meant honesty and lawfulness, survival under Nazi rule had bred new “virtues” – deception, black marketeering, and mutual suspicion. This psychological transformation created a complex moral landscape that liberation alone could not erase.

The experience of occupation varied dramatically across Europe. In Western nations like France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, the Nazis actively sought local collaborators to administer their conquests. This created intricate webs of complicity that entangled civil servants, police forces, and ordinary citizens. Eastern Europe faced a different horror – direct German rule with minimal pretense of local participation, except where ethnic minorities could be exploited as tools of division.

The Violent Dawn of Liberation

As Allied armies advanced in 1944-1945, Europe entered a period of chaotic transition between occupation and stable governance. This interregnum became known as the “wild purge” period, where long-suppressed rage found violent expression. In France, approximately 10,000 suspected collaborators met extrajudicial deaths, many at the hands of irregular “Patriot Guards.” Italy saw nearly 15,000 killed in similar reprisals, particularly in the industrial north.

The nature of these purges revealed deep social wounds. Women accused of “horizontal collaboration” – sexual relationships with German soldiers – became particular targets of public humiliation. The shaving of women’s heads in town squares became a common spectacle across Western Europe, a ritual that combined sexual shaming with collective catharsis. As Simone de Beauvoir noted, such acts represented more than punishment – they were attempts to cleanse the humiliation of occupation itself.

The Legal Reckoning: Defining the Indefinable

With stability came the challenge of formal justice. European governments faced a novel legal dilemma: how to punish acts that had no precedent in pre-war law. The concept of “collaboration” itself required new definitions. France’s solution – prosecuting under Article 75 of its penal code for “intelligence with the enemy” – proved problematic when many defendants had technically served the Vichy regime rather than directly aiding Germany.

The scale of prosecutions varied dramatically. Norway, with just 3 million people, tried 95,000 cases. The Netherlands investigated 200,000 individuals. Yet in France, where collaboration had been state policy, fewer than 0.1% of the population received prison sentences. Many mid-level functionaries successfully argued they had merely continued their pre-war duties under new management.

Eastern Europe’s Fractured Justice

Behind the Iron Curtain, justice took distinctly political turns. In Czechoslovakia, People’s Courts handed down 713 death sentences, including that of Father Jozef Tiso, the Slovak leader. Yugoslavia’s Tito used war crimes trials to eliminate political rivals alongside genuine Ustaše war criminals. The Soviet approach treated fascism as a capitalist pathology, focusing purges on economic elites rather than racial ideologues.

These processes often served Stalin’s territorial ambitions. In Poland, surviving Jews became targets of postwar violence, with over 1,200 killed between 1945-1946 – often by former anti-Nazi partisans who now saw them as Soviet sympathizers. The bloodiest incident occurred in Kielce in July 1946, where 42 Jews died following blood libel rumors.

The Limits of Denazification

Germany presented the greatest challenge. The Allies initially pursued aggressive denazification, dismissing Nazi Party members from public positions. But reality soon intervened – in Cologne, 18 of 21 water department engineers were former Nazis whose skills were essential for reconstruction. By 1949, West Germany had quietly reintegrated most low and mid-level party members.

The Nuremberg Trials (1945-1946) established crucial legal precedents but had limited impact on German attitudes. Polls showed persistent Nazi sympathies – in 1952, 37% of West Germans still believed the country would be better without Jews. The Soviet zone pursued more thorough purges but often replaced Nazi functionaries with equally authoritarian communist cadres.

The Price of Forgetting

Europe’s remarkable postwar recovery required collective amnesia. Countries constructed usable pasts – France’s Resistance myth, Germany’s “zero hour” narrative – that obscured uncomfortable truths. As Italian writer Guglielmo Giannini lamented in 1944, this produced widespread disillusionment: “I am the man who looks around and says: ‘These are the methods and institutions of the fascists.'”

The compromises were often stark. Industrial collaborators like Fiat’s Vittorio Valletta escaped punishment for economic necessity. Many Nazi scientists found employment in Allied programs. This pragmatic forgetting enabled reconstruction but left moral debts that would resurface in later decades.

Enduring Questions

The postwar reckoning left fundamental questions unresolved: Can collective guilt be adjudicated through individual trials? How does a society punish acts that weren’t crimes when committed? Where does collaboration end and survival begin? These dilemmas continue to resonate in contemporary discussions of transitional justice.

As Europe rebuilt, the tension between memory and forgetting shaped national identities. The Czech resistance’s 1946 declaration that “the honor of the nation demands stern, just sentences” competed with Adenauer’s call to “let bygones be bygones.” This tension – between justice and reconciliation, memory and moving forward – remains the unresolved legacy of Europe’s darkest hour.