High Treason and Collaboration in Europe

by Hans Vogel

Hans Vogel argues that Europe’s elites lack a moral compass. However, they do apply moral standards: to their opponents in their zeal to cling to power.

At the end of the Second World War, savage reprisals were taken against those who had worked with or for the Germans. Many who had collaborated were left unharmed, and many who were killed for being collaborationists were not guilty. Therefore, to say the least, it was a very rough and totally arbitrary settling of accounts. The victims, it was asserted, were punished for collaborating with the Germans and for treason and high treason.

In France, at least 100,000 people were murdered, often in the most beastly way, for having been a real or imagined collabo, as collaborationists were called in France. The perpetrators, usually self-described “resistance fighters,” were never made to answer for their crimes and remained unpunished. The postwar outbreak of violent revenge in France has no equal in modern European history. In Western Europe, Belgium comes in second, with thousands of people killed by both “resistance fighters” and hastily appointed officials. At least 700,000 files (for an adult population of a little over four million) were made for collaboration with the Germans. Tens of thousands were convicted, many were sent to state dungeons or to do forced labor in the coal mines. All were deprived of their civil rights. In the Netherlands, more than 100,000 people were sent to concentration camps taking the place of Jews, resistance fighters and dissidents.

Pierre Laval, leader of the French government from 1940 to 1944, known as the “Vichy government,” was dragged before a kangaroo court, sentenced for high treason and executed by firing squad. The leader of the Dutch National Socialist Movement (NSB), Anton Mussert, was also sentenced to death for high treason by a kangaroo court and shot. Both were among the small number of European political leaders killed for what countless others had done also but were not punished for. Other notable figures were Norway’s Vidkun Quisling and Slovakia’s Jozef Tiso. Belgium’s most hunted “collaborator,” Léon Degrelle, who made it to general in the Waffen-SS, managed to escape to Spain at the very last moment.

Neither collaboration nor treason were well-defined from a legal point of view. Moreover, with a consistent application of the definitions observed by the authorities, the courts and their minions, so many people would have had to be shot, thrown in jail or sentenced to do forced labor that all of “liberated” Europe would have become a depopulated hellhole. Nevertheless, on this point (as well as on most other issues) both the collective Western historical narrative as well as the various national historical narratives have duly constructed and maintained a version of history that does not take into account any nuances.

What official history (such as taught in the educational system and presented in the media) fails to mention is that some of the most enthusiastic “collaborators” were left untouched after 1945. The reason? They were usually quite rich, powerful and well-connected, such as Frits Fentener van Vlissingen, the single most powerful Dutch businessman, sitting at the boards of all the major Dutch firms. He was appointed president of the state commission set up to purge Dutch business from Nazi collaborators (!).

Now, as regards those war years when the Germans occupied much of Europe, what precisely was collaboration, what was considered treason, what high treason?

Collaboration was considered to be doing work for the Germans, doing business with them, or even having an affair with a German soldier. However, after France the Netherlands and Belgium all surrendered to Germany in the spring of 1940, under international law (the recognized rules of warfare) the Germans then actually constituted completely legitimate power there, albeit with local variations. This meant that it was absolutely neither illegal nor morally wrong to work for or with them and to do business with them. Soon after their governments and armies had surrendered, and their governments and many political leaders had fled to England, Europeans under German occupation realized that in order to live they needed to work, and that often meant working for and with the Germans. Millions of others from those occupied nations went to work in Germany, where salaries and labor conditions were better. That is until the English and Americans began to bomb German cities.

Hundreds of thousands of Europeans joined the Wehrmacht and the SS. From Western Europe, these include 25,000 Dutch, 20,000 French and almost 20,000 Belgian SS volunteers. What few still fail to realize is that even joining the German armed forces did not constitute a clear-cut case of “collaborationism,” since many did so out of a genuine desire to fight communism. Many Europeans loathed Soviet communism and were prepared to risk their lives to prevent a Soviet takeover of Western Europe, which at some point seemed a very real possibility.

Ever since the postwar purges and wave of revenge, a core element of the official narrative has been that as the Germans left, all who had collaborated with them needed to be punished as a requisite for social and economic reconstruction. Anyone who takes the trouble to check the facts will conclude this is a fairy tale. Today the concepts of collaboration, treason and high treason are exclusively mentioned in connection with the German occupation during the Second World War. These are never mentioned with respect to other, comparable historical events, such as the French Revolution and Napoleonic Europe. Between 1793 and 1815, the French occupied much of Europe, enjoying widespread “collaboration” from all social levels of the occupied nations. Yet after Napoleon left the stage, no one in Europe was accused of collaboration, treason or high treason and no one was punished for it. The same goes for other wars in Europe during which a victorious enemy occupied a defeated nation, except the Second World War.

High treason is, of course, a special case, if only because by definition only a very small number of people are able to commit it. One has to have access to classified government info, or be physically near the highest levels of bureaucracy or government. After all, according to Roman Law, where the concept of perduellio (high treason) originated, it is an attempt to oust or kill the highest state officials and thus bring down the national government or the head of state. Treason in wartime is the act of doing things that are detrimental to one’s country, benefiting enemy interests. In peacetime it is doing things detrimental to one’s country, benefiting foreign interests.

If the theory and practice of postwar European treatment of collaborationists, traitors and high traitors were applied to present-day circumstances, what would the result be? Are there any suspects of high treason, treason or collaboration?

Well, yes there are! In the first place, anyone serving his country in a high or official national capacity should and is, in the first place, to be expected to defend the interests of his own nation and his fellow citizens, that is, the people he represents. Acting NATO Gensec Mark Rutte, for instance, when he was prime minister of the Netherlands from 2010 to 2024. Rutte was also intimately associated with the World Economic Forum as a so-called Young Global Leader.

So whose interests did Rutte represent during all that time? Whose interests does German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock represent, another Young Global Leader? What about Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb, also a Young Global Leader? What about Young Global Leaders Emmanuel Macron and former PMs David Cameron (UK), Matteo Renzi (Italy) and Leo Varadkar (Ireland)? The offical WEF site boasts: “Aligned with the World Economic Forum’s mission, we seek to drive public-private co-operation in the global public interest. We are united by the belief that today’s pressing problems present an opportunity to build a better future across sectors and boundaries.” (my emphasis).

Therefore, the global public interest is given precedence over national interests and this is even stated as the official policy of those who have become a Young Global Leader. If that does not constitute treason, or even high treason, one should wonder what does. If postwar purge criteria are applied, it sure as hell is treason, and the perpetrators deserve to be tried and sentenced. Perhaps even to a firing squad, but that decision should be left to a judge.

Besides these and hundreds of other high traitors all over Western Europe serving the interests of the WEF, the WHO and other NGOs to the detriment of many of their fellow citizens, for instance by going to WEF meetings, there are countless collaborationists, again according to the criteria established and applied in the immediate postwar period. These collaborationists, again according to the standards established eighty years ago, include people working at lower levels for dozens of NGOs, usually in projects directed or coordinated by USAID, which is being dismantled because it is a criminal organization.

They also include the tens of thousands of members of NATO armed forces (all volunteers today!) taking part in the illegal US-led campaigns and expeditions against Yugoslavia, Serbia, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan. What precisely is the essential difference between what they did and the wartime SS volunteers? They may consider themselves lucky they were never made to answer for their actions and that they are still alive instead of having perished in a wave of vindictive public anger.

Now that Donald Trump has started the fight with the evil monster called Globalism, there is a good chance that Europeans may join him. At any rate, it is about time that the criminals leading the various EU regimes and their minions (such as the presstitutes working for the MSM) are made to answer for the terrible crimes they committed, not the least of which is to have forced their fellow citizens to take anti-Covid jabs.

Comparing the orgy of vengeful violence against “collaborationists” and traitors at the end of the Second World War with the carelessness with which so many of our contemporaries collaborate, aiding and abetting war crimes and committing all sorts of crime, yet another glaring contradiction is added to the many that surround us already.

Like so many others, this contradiction also results from a combination of mindless exaggeration and intentional blindness. The postwar settling of accounts was woefully outrageous. Moreover, the ease with which so many today are committing crimes for which they really should be punished is conditioned by a systematic distortion of history: all Germans were supposedly bad, while all the Allies and “resistance fighters” were supposedly good.

Now that especially the Germans in the original Federal Republic have duly internalized and accepted their eternal guilt and responsibility for all the crimes committed during the Second World War, the descendants of especially the Western Allies seem to believe they can do whatever they like and get away with it. They are all descendants of the very people who were instrumental in unleashing the dogs of war in 1939.

Today, that same War Party is clamoring for a war with Russia. As a matter of fact, the whole world can now see they are committing the worst kind of treason: pushing for a war that most constituents absolutely do not want.

Some people never learn.

Buy Hans Vogel’s How Europe Became American here.