“Nazi Collaborators” is a heartbreaking, shocking documentary that provides magnificent insight to how the evil ideals of Nazi Germany was able to permeate into other countries and quickly cause fear among the politicians and their countrymen which would lead to unthinkable atrocities. Well-researched, featuring wonderful narration and a documentary series that is highly recommended!
© 2012 Shanachie Entertainment Group. All Rights Reserved.
DVD TITLE: Nazi Collaborators
SERIES DATE: 2010
DURATION: 13 Episodes (650 Minutes)
DVD INFORMATION: Color, B&W, 16:9, All-Region
COMPANY: Shanachie Entertainment Group
RATED: Not Rated
RELEASE DATE: October 16, 2012
Directed by Nick Aarons, Michael Wadding, Martin Hughes, David Berry
Produced by Nick Aarons, Michael Wadding, Martin Hughes, John Terp, David Berry
Executive Producer: Matthew Barrett, Richard Wise, Mark Young
Line Producer: Phil Howard Jones
Archive Producer: Rebecca Hickie
Muisc by DeWolfe
Edited by Antony Oliphant, Jo Wall, Graham Dean, Guy Federico
Starring:
Greg Stebner as Narrator
Alisdair Simpson as Narrator
13 part documentary currently airing on the Military Channel focused on the surprising collaborations that went on between Adolph Hitler’s Nazi regime and those that shockingly helped their rise to power.
When one learns about the persecution of the Jews by the Nazi regime, one’s accustomed of hearing primarily about Hitler and his men and how these men were responsible for the deaths of millions of people.
But for the people of those countries that were killed and suffered due to Adolph Hitler and the Nazi’s, there is also a hatred towards those of their country who conspired with them and eventually led to the death of their people.
Who were these people? Why did they conspired with the Nazis? Was it for power? Financial gain? Or perhaps they had no choice but to collaborate with them, in order to save as many people as they can.
In 2010, the 13-episode documentary “Nazi Collaborators” focuses on these collaborators and explore their rise to popularity, winning the people’s support but what they did to betray their countrymen and side with the imperialist Germans. And now in October 2012, this documentary will be released on DVD courtesy of Shanachie Entertainment Group.
“Nazi Collaborators” focuses on the following individuals:
- Chaim Rumkowski – The Polish Jewish Ghetto
- Pierre Laval – The French Vichy Government
- The Arajs Kommandos – The Latvian Holocaust
- The Belgian Collaborator – Degrelle and his SS
- The Croation Collaborator – Sakic’s Concentration Camps
- Vidkun Quisling – His Puppet Norwegian Nazis
- The IRA – Sean Russell and His Group’s Aid to the Nazis
- The Grand Mufti – The Collaborator of Jerusalem
- Jews in Germany who Fought For Hitler and Supported Him
- The Dutch Collaboration – Mussert, the Shadow Fuehr
- The Greek Collaborator – Rallis and His Puppet Government
- The Good Collaborators? Finland’s Nevalinna
- Hitler’s Killer Police – The Schutzmannschaft Squad
VIDEO & AUDIO:
“Nazi Collaborators” is a documentary that utilizes a lot of color and B&W archive footage (the footage was taken from 4000 hours of archival film) and also featuring modern footage with interviews of those who survived and their feelings towards those individuals that were featured. Picture quality is mixed with archive footage (archive footage has white specks and dust as expected but for the most part good quality), interviews were taken from archival sources as well, but overall, picture quality is good.
Audio is clear and narration is well-done and easy to hear and understand.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
“Nazi Collaborators” comes with no special features.
“Nazi Collaborators” is a documentary that captures the horror of what happened to Jewish people of various countries and how many of them were betrayed by their own people or their own country.
The 13-episodes featured are well-researched and with the archive videos provided, giving remarkable and raw insight to how the Nazi regime was able to instill fear but to many around the world but also showing that they accomplished their campaign of death and fear due to the people who collaborated with them.
The documentary begins with Chaim Rumkowski, a Polish Jew that many Jews put their faith and lives in his hands. When the Jews sent many of the Polish Jews to the ghetto, Chaim Rumkowski was the German Nazi-nominated head of the Jewish ghetto. He was responsible for providing food, heat, housing and health and welfare services to those in the ghetto.
Rumkowski felt that to spare the lives of the Jewish people, he must work with the Nazi Germans and by doing that, showing how the Jewish people can work and in the ghetto, there will be an established school, hospital and mail service. And the Germans used him to make his people think that they were being spared because of their hardwork.
But many Jewish people have heard that the Germans were killing their people. Sending them to some unknown place, and these people never came back. This led to clashes among a Jewish group who wanted no collaboration with the Nazis, while Chaim Rumkowkski felt that these people were going against him, that he ended up becoming a Fuhrer in the ghetto and made people suffer if they didn’t follow his way.
But while 7,000 people in the ghetto did survive, it is still debated among those who survived if Rumkowski was a traitor/collaborator and worked against the Jewish people or was a man who had no choice but to do what the Germans demanded in ordered to keep as many people from being killed.
In France, Pierre Laval was responsible for part of an area France when the Nazi’s occupied the country. In 1942, Laval ordered all Jews (that were not French citizens) in France to be rounded up and transported to Poland. Laval went beyond orders of the Germans by allowing Jewish children under 16 to be deported, even though he was given permission to spare them. Not only was Laval successful in expelling many Jews from France, he led to their deaths in the Nazi death camps.
The third episode focused on the Arajs Kommandos, a volunteer group of Latvian men who were known for rounding up the Latvian Jewish population, Roma and mental patients, having them rounded up and stripped and all shot and killed. A total of 26,000 Jews were killed.
The Belgian Collaborators focuses on Leon Degrelle, a Belgian politician who founded Rexism. He was a man who studied at a Jesuit college, worked as a journalist for a conservative Roman Catholic periodical. But in 1936, after a meeting with Mussolini and Adolph Hitler, he changed and began to reconstruct Rexism to be closer with Nazism. He joined the Walloon legion and became a member of the SS and became a decorated soldier. Unlike other collaborators who were killed or faced a court trial, Degrelle escaped to France where he became a Spanish citizen and was protected by Spain, preventing him from being killed by a firing squad in Belgium for treason. And continued to be active in the Neo-Nazi, continuing his polemic support until his death in 1994.
The fifth episode focused on Dinko Sakic, a convicted Croatian war criminal who was the chief of the Jasenovac concentration camp for Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascist Croats. He is known for using torture with a flamethrower on inmates and would hold public performances of people being hanged.
The sixth episode focuses on Vidkun Quisling, a politician who asserted himself to create a new government for Norway after it was invaded by the Germans. The new government would collaborate with Adolph Hitler and the puppet government of Norway began. Because Quisling believed that if Norway supported Germany, the country would not be annexed by them. But instead, Quisling and his countrymen realized he was used as a puppet by Hitler and Nazi would go as far to eradicate many Norwegians who tried to escape the country and that he would be known to collaborate with Hitler in the Nazi occupation of Norway. To his death by firing squad, Quisling believed that what he did was in the best interest to protect Norway. But to many, he is seen as a mini-Hitler in his role of allowing Nazi Germany to occupy the country.
The seventh episode featured the IRA and Sean Russell. In 1940, Russell was trained by German intelligence in German explosive ordinance and working on sabotage materials. Because he looked towards Hitler for political and military support for the IRA’s quest to reunify Ireland by force. It is debated if Sean Russell was a collaborator or cared of what Nazi Germany was doing. There are those who felt strongly that because of his ideals and working with the Germans, that he is. While others believe he is an idol to traditionalist republicanism in Ireland and has a memorial honoring him in Dublin.
The eighth episode is about the Grand Mufti, the highest official of religious law in a Sunni or Ibadi Muslim country. A report was found to show that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (Haj Amin al-Husseini) was working with the Nazis, and that Nazi would use him as the leader after the conquest of Palestine. He was financially paid by the Nazis, Muslims were recruited by the SS and that the Grand Mufti would be Palestine’s leader after the extermination of the Jewish population.
The ninth episode featured on the Jews in Germany who supported and fought for Hitler.
The tenth episode focuses on Anton Mussert of the Netherlands, one of the founders of the National Socialist Movement (NSB) and worked with gestapo in stopping those who fought resistance to the Nazi occupation. Mussert was responsible for establishing the Nederlandsche SS (Dutch SS) as a division of the NSB. And in December 1942, Adolph Hitler declared Anton Mussert to be the Fuhrer of the Dutch people.
The 11th episode focuses on Ioannis Rallis, the third and last collaborationist prime minister of Greece during the Axis occupation of Greece. The Germans used him to form a government (a puppet government to Nazi Germany) and create an anticommunist front against the Ethniko Apeleftherotiko Metopo (EAM) and the Ethnikos Laikos Apeleftherotikos Stratos (ELAS). He was responsible for creation “Security Battalions” and the persecution towards the resistance groups.
The 12th episode focused on Rolf Nevanlinna and segment called “good collaborators”. While a man who will be known for being one of the famous Finnish mathematicians and his work on complex analysis, because of his half German ancestry, Nevanlinna was the chairman of the SS Volunteer Committee (to oversee strained relations between Finland soldiers and German superiors) in Finland but was chosen to oversee the committee because they did not want their men being infected by Nazi ideology.
The final episode focuses on the Schutzmannschaft Squad (SS), collaborationist auxiliary police battalions of native policemen from occupied countries in the East. Created to fight resistance during World War II, this killer police were comprised of Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Russians, Estonians, Lithuanians, Latvians and Tars. The SS were killing squads responsible for rounding up the Jews and murdering them. These men were paid by German authorities with funds that were confiscated from the Jews.
“Nazi Collaborators” gives insight to the non-German Nazi collaborators out there.  I have watched a number of documentaries about the Jewish holocaust but I have never seen a documentary about the non-German collaborators, especially those who were used to head puppet governments loyal to Adolph Hitler.
There are some episodes that are not only heartbreaking but also thought-provoking. For episode 1 about Chaim Rumkowski, here is a man who is despised for collaborating with the Nazi’s and being hard on those who worked against him or did not believe in his ideals. But there is a survivor interviewed who said that she didn’t see him in a negative light because thousands of Jews did live because he was able to collaborate with the Germans and keep the ghetto running long enough for them to survive. I know this is a hotly debated topic and the survivor did ask the question, if you were in his position, would you kill yourself by not working with the Nazi Germans or would you do all you can in order to keep as many Jewish people alive.
The Arajs Kommandos was heartbreaking. Propaganda drove up the fears that Latvians had towards the Jewish population and to hear how these innocent people were killed is heartbreaking.
And the shock of seeing actual footage of people being shot and killed or people stripped and headed to the pit where they would be shot or buried alive is very difficult to see but also to believe that people would engage in something so evil. It’s hard to fathom.
The documentary also showed how Adolph Hitler and his strategists knew how to use these people in giving them false hopes in order to betray their country and essentially leading to the occupation of their country by Nazi Germany. But also driving fear to these countrymen that these countries would have people join the killer police squads sent to round up Jewish and other ethnicities plus the mentally disabled and slaughter them.
With each episode are raw footage of these individuals who collaborated with Nazi Germany and the consequences that happened afterward.
Overall, “Nazi Collaborators” is a heartbreaking, shocking documentary that provides magnificent insight to how the evil ideals of Nazi Germany was able to permeate into other countries and quickly cause fear among the politicians and their countrymen which would lead to unthinkable atrocities. Well-researched, featuring wonderful narration and a documentary series that is highly recommended!
