Talk:Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy

France: do we need this milhist here for context?

it could probably help another article if not: Vichy was also reluctant to either disarm or surrender its naval fleet in North Africa to the British, who worried that it might fall into German hands. Eventually the British Royal Navy sank or disabled most of the French Navy, killing over a thousand French sailors in a July 1940 attack on the Algerian naval port at Mers-el-Kébir.

References

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 11 April 2024

Please correct the opening comment tag and the opening reference tag in the following text in the References section:

<~-- ref name="WSP-Ponary">{{in lang|pl}} Czesław Michalski, [http://www.wsp.krakow.pl/konspekt/konspekt5/ponary.html Ponary – Golgota Wileńszczyzny] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070207041704/http://www.wsp.krakow.pl/konspekt/konspekt5/ponary.html |date=7 February 2007 }} (Ponary – the Golgoth of Wilno Region). ''Konspekt'' nº 5, Winter 2000–2001, a publication of the [[Academy of Pedagogy in Kraków]]. Retrieved 10 February 2007.</ref> -->

I think that the correction should be:

<!-- <ref name="WSP-Ponary">{{in lang|pl}} Czesław Michalski, [http://www.wsp.krakow.pl/konspekt/konspekt5/ponary.html Ponary – Golgota Wileńszczyzny] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070207041704/http://www.wsp.krakow.pl/konspekt/konspekt5/ponary.html |date=7 February 2007 }} (Ponary – the Golgoth of Wilno Region). ''Konspekt'' nº 5, Winter 2000–2001, a publication of the [[Academy of Pedagogy in Kraków]]. Retrieved 10 February 2007.</ref> -->

Thanks 76.14.122.5 (talk) 02:07, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

 Done Jamedeus (talk) 04:26, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Spain

Why Francoist Spain isnt here? we literally have an article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfram_Crisis telling us how Franco provided the Reich wolframium to make bombs. The Spanish Civil War was a rehearsal for ww2, at least for mussolini's italy and nazi germany: both fascist (as franco) regimes used the spanish conflict to test on weapons, tactics and more. No mention of the Hendaya interview neither? (as spaniard this feels like the same american revisionism that allowed Franco to died in Bed) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.53.113.209 (talk • contribs)

Philippe Pétain has an RfC

Philippe Pétain has an RfC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Emiya1980 (talk) 04:44, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Add scientific and technical collaboration?

I was wondering if there's anyone qualified and willing (perhaps in some History of Science group) to add a section about non-German, non-Italian cooperation with Axis research and development projects.

I know that the Polish cryptographic mathematicians who began the breaking of the ULTRA cypher first found refuge in France after Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939, and then, after the Fall of France in 1940, in England where they worked on Ultra at Bletchley Park. I don't know if the Germans were able to make use of (or even know of) any of these cryptographers who might have remained within Axis lines.

I also know that nuclear research had already progressed significantly at the Collège de France in Paris by 1940; I think (but honestly really don't know) that some of the scientists escaped to Allied or neutral territory and also that the Allies and the Resistance tried to learn about any further research there (which would have been conscious or unconscious, willing or unwilling, collaboration with Germany's atomic research programme).

I also wonder if any of the scientists who worked on V-1 and V-2 rocket and missile technology at Peenemünde could be classified as non-German collaborators (perhaps the Germans considered this too sensitive to be seen by any other eyes than those of unimpeachably loyal, trustworthy citizens of the Reich).

I am utterly ignorant of any possible collaboration with Axis projects in germ, gas and biological warfare.

On the other hand, Business Collaboration, which this article does discuss briefly, would merge into industrial technology.

¶ Anyway, while my ignorance is almost complete, I still think that this sub-topic deserves mention in this article (even if just to say that there was no significant collaboration).

Are there any contributors to this page who might know of someone qualified and interested in this sub-topic of World War II scientific warfare?

@Elinruby and Mathglot: —— Shakescene (talk) 02:15, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

@Shakescene Polish cryptographers for the most part escaped abroad, where they were mostly sidelined, in an example of rather inefficient sci and tech collaborations of the Western Allies with Poland. See Cipher_Bureau_(Poland)#Bureau_abroad; it states, with a ref, that "Some [that remained in Poland] were interrogated by the Gestapo, but no one gave away the secret of Polish mastery of Enigma decryption"

Anyway, yes, the topic of technical scientific and technical collaboration with and within Axis is interesting; one would expect there would be neutral powers who would work with them (just like today many are working with Russia...). The only item I recall right now, however, is the USSR-Nazi pre'41 collaboration. A bit is discussed here (concerning some tech and sci fo cooperation that mostly waned by 1933), and we have an article on German–Soviet economic relations (1934–1941); overall the direction was that Nazis supplied tech/sci ot USSR, in exchange for raw materials etc. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:48, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

I was wondering if forced collaboration was included—I would have thought not, as that doesn't seem to fit the meaning of collaboration for me—but there's a scoping statement right there in the first sentence, and it is included by that definition, meaning that forced labor on, say, V-2 rockets is included. I happen to have known a Dora survivor who did exactly that, and he explained how he and other prisoners at Dora worked together to sabotage the rockets as much as possible by various means. This article says nothing about that, but the Dora article does. Mathglot (talk) 03:12, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

Common problem with slippery boundaries leading to issues discussed here and at other collaboration-themed articles again and again. Was a shopkeeper who sold food to Nazis a collaborator? A railway worker on a train transporting German soldiers or Holocaust victims? Heck, one of my academic co-authors in 2022 was a Russian. The paper was almost finished by the time the war started and we - the other three co-authors - decided to finish it and publish it... according to some broad defs, yeah, I am a collaborator with the Putinist regime... sigh _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:04, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

For Enigma and U-2 the answer seems to me to be, no. A few of the Enigma Poles, though none of the top minds, were left behind in Poland after the evacuation to Romania and were interrogated, but the Germans didn't know they were handling someone important. At least was one was left behind in Paris but his phony papers were accepted and he wasn't even interrogated. Nobody blabbed, it seems. Everybody at the Peenemünde artillery proving ground (turned rocket laboratory) was either a German with a security clearance, or didn't know anything technical. There was one case where a foreigner escaped to the Allies and said he had guarded barrels of water. Allied intelligence guessed it was heavy water and had something to do with atomic energy, and bombed the place. After the war it was found to be heavy water on its way from Norway to somewhere else. The V2 rocket factory was indeed full of foreigners but apparently all they knew was how to do the particular little bit that the Germans told them. Of course, before the war, there was much international scientific collaboration on nuclear chemistry, as it was called then, and correspondence about the possibilities of rocketry, but the war cut it off. Jim.henderson (talk) 06:37, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

¶ Looking at History of France's military nuclear program#Suspension of research in France (1940-1945), it does not appear that the Germans were able to make use of any of the nuclear research begun by the Curies at the Collège de France:

Excerpt from History of France's military nuclear program

Researchers at the Montreal Laboratory in 1944, including Frenchmen Hans Halban, Pierre Auger and Bertrand Goldschmidt. Germany's invasion of France in May 1940 forced work to stop. In early June, the laboratory was hastily moved from Paris to Clermont-Ferrand, but the war was already lost. On June 18, 1940, as General de Gaulle launched his famous appeal on the London radio, Hans Halban and Lew Kowarski embarked at Bordeaux for the United Kingdom, taking the heavy water. The uranium was hidden in Morocco and France. Joliot did not leave, remaining in France to care for his ailing wife, returning to his post at the Collège de France but refusing to collaborate. He officially joined the Resistance in 1943. The exiled members of the Collège de France delivered French secrets to the Allies, but were excluded from the American nuclear program for economic (the three patents) and political (distrust of de Gaulle and Joliot) reasons. Isolated at the Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge, then at the Montreal laboratory from the end of 1942, they contributed to the work carried out by an Anglo-Canadian team. This work was to be decisive for the resumption of French research in this field. Under the direction of Louis Rapkine, a scientific office for the Free French Delegation was set up in New York shortly after the United States entered the war in December 1941. It was through this office that French scientists in exile, such as Pierre Auger, Jules Guéron and Bertrand Goldschmidt, were integrated - not into the American teams themselves, as they refused to take the nationality - but into the Anglo-Canadian project headed by Halban. References

@Elinruby, Mathglot, Jimhenderson, and Piotrus:

—— Shakescene (talk) 03:14, 1 February 2025 (UTC)