Voor Vlaanderen, Volk En Führer by Aline Sax

The lack of anti-Semitism as a motive for collaboration is remarkable. A wide range of reasons are highlighted: a New Order conviction, geopolitical motives, the fight against Bolshevism, the escape from circumstances, economic and financial gain, material advantages, the escape from employment in Germany, collaboration as a medium of exchange (to obtain or avoid something else), revenge, quarrels and rebellion, familial obligations, an escape from punishment, professional ambition, power and abuse of power, and aesthetic aspects. For this purpose testimonies of and about collaborators during the court proceedings were analysed. Then she investigated the reasons for collaboration. The reason is that convictions for military collaboration are by far in the majority. This group portrait mainly shows young men from the lower social classes. In the first place, the author performed a prosopographic study. The author used various methods to interpret the material.

Heuristics and method are the strong points of this book in which post-war legal proceedings are explored as a historical source for the history of collaboration. The recent research into transitional justice could undoubtedly have offered much food for reflection. The author paid relatively little attention to the parallels and differences between legal and historical research.

The accused had every reason to present himself to his greatest advantage, while the court searched for criminal acts, which is not the same as trying to find a (historical) explanation of the events. These are rich sources which, however, have to be read very critically by the historian. She took a random sample of one per cent of all Flemish collaborators sentenced for collaboration, which meant 326 different case files.

Sax looked for an answer to three seemingly simple questions: Who were the collaborators? Why did they do what they did? What was their view of the world? She looked for answers in the post-war criminal proceedings of collaborators who have been sentenced after the war. The decision to leave out French-speaking Belgians seems reasonable because different collaboration movements developed along both sides of the Belgian language border. This book is one of the first attempts to study Flemish (Dutch-speaking Belgian) collaborators from a bottom-up perspective. Up until now, collaboration with the National Socialist occupier in Belgium during the Second World War was mainly considered from a top-down perspective.

Voor Vlaanderen, Volk En Führer by Aline Sax