Nazi Collaborators in the Soviet Union during and after World War II

Abstract

Based on documents for the Russian archives, which in the early 1990s became open to the researchers, the author gives an account of the problem of collaborating with Nazi Germany in the USSR during World War II. He discusses the role of special punitive detachments, formed from the local populations in the occupied territories, in assisting Nazis in their policy of terror and genocide. A brief history of the infamous 667th punitive battalion, "Shelon, " and some of its members serves as an illustrative example. The author also explains why so many Nazi collaborators from the former Soviet Union managed to escape punishment and settle in the Western countries, Canada and the United States in particular, and also traces the history of some of them.