Oh, Occam's Razor. So unnecessary for when you have someone for whom this is a major interest and also highly personal family history. I have an entire book just on how folklore and jokes were used by the Norwegian resistance to undermine the Nazis, for example.
Norway is a very different country than the Netherlands. Distaste was evident and the Norwegian underground was strong, but not only was there a neutral border, we need to not underestimate the woods and mountains. People--Jewish or Gentile--who didn't make it as far as the Swedish border had a more than reasonable chance of survival in Norway itself in WWII, outside the population centers. A lot of them did it. No, really: a lot. There were lots of upland pasturing huts and weird mountain caves where you could stash people indefinitely. If you read The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, he talks a lot about how mountain regions serve as an outlet for empires all the time in Southeast Asia, France, Appalachia--well, Norway is basically nothing but that region. Contrast with Holland, where not only is there no border with a neutral country, there's nothing to hide you in the countryside if you stay in your own occupied country. Settled farmhouses are easily searched by these standards. Holland is flat. Poland is flat. France is not universally flat--France has its own issues but is far more culturally dissimilar from Norway than Holland in this regard. But I would like to find a book that goes into regional success of the French resistance, because what I know so far indicates that geography has a lot going on there.
The other thing with this discussion is that flattening out the distinction between allies and other voluntary co-belligerents and conquered nations is going to obscure some major differences. We talk about neutral Sweden. Guess who else took in Jewish refugees? Finland. The same Finland that was co-belligerent with the Nazis. (The difference between allied and co-belligerent is that Finland didn't declare war on anyone but Russia and was not under any treaty obligation to do so. Finland was fighting its own, separate but contemporaneous war--which was, incidentally, a war of Russian aggression--and which had to be ended with a separate peace.) There were former German Jewish army officers who went and fought for the Finns. This is a very, very different situation from being a conquered country. Comparing the two is completely unfair and misleading. Finland didn't have any stage of the war (until the very end, when things got complicated) when German troops were killing any of its citizens or when Germany was allowed to set any of its policy. This made the experience of these northern nations vastly, vastly different, and it made the means available to them in protecting their Jewish citizens vastly different.
Denmark? Conquered. Bulgaria? Not conquered. Also not co-belligerent. Actively allied. Major differences. Yes, both succeeded in protecting their Jewish populations, and yes, that's important. But Bulgaria did so from the perspective of a nation that was at least theoretically Hitler's little buddy, not from the perspective of a nation that had just had troops steamroll over every crevice of it. So the pressure Hitler was applying was not the same kind as the pressure he applied to the loyal Danes he shot in the streets of their own country. I'm glad that Bulgaria tried to sign on for a limited amount of the worst evil. I'm glad someone demonstrated it could be done. But it really changes the dynamic, how much depends on geography, how much depends on the structure of the original government, etc. I feel like grouping countries separately makes a lot of sense here. Bulgaria's main comparison here is Hungary--and with the re-rise of right-wing politics and their attendant anti-Semitism in Hungary, it's pretty damn timely. I wish it wasn't.
Someone in Hungary put pig trotters at the foot of one of the memorial statues of Raoul Wallenberg last week. Pig trotters. I read that in The Economist and cried. Oh, Hungary.
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rosecarmine
(no subject)
Date: 2012-08-12 12:43 pm (UTC)Norway is a very different country than the Netherlands. Distaste was evident and the Norwegian underground was strong, but not only was there a neutral border, we need to not underestimate the woods and mountains. People--Jewish or Gentile--who didn't make it as far as the Swedish border had a more than reasonable chance of survival in Norway itself in WWII, outside the population centers. A lot of them did it. No, really: a lot. There were lots of upland pasturing huts and weird mountain caves where you could stash people indefinitely. If you read The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, he talks a lot about how mountain regions serve as an outlet for empires all the time in Southeast Asia, France, Appalachia--well, Norway is basically nothing but that region. Contrast with Holland, where not only is there no border with a neutral country, there's nothing to hide you in the countryside if you stay in your own occupied country. Settled farmhouses are easily searched by these standards. Holland is flat. Poland is flat. France is not universally flat--France has its own issues but is far more culturally dissimilar from Norway than Holland in this regard. But I would like to find a book that goes into regional success of the French resistance, because what I know so far indicates that geography has a lot going on there.
The other thing with this discussion is that flattening out the distinction between allies and other voluntary co-belligerents and conquered nations is going to obscure some major differences. We talk about neutral Sweden. Guess who else took in Jewish refugees? Finland. The same Finland that was co-belligerent with the Nazis. (The difference between allied and co-belligerent is that Finland didn't declare war on anyone but Russia and was not under any treaty obligation to do so. Finland was fighting its own, separate but contemporaneous war--which was, incidentally, a war of Russian aggression--and which had to be ended with a separate peace.) There were former German Jewish army officers who went and fought for the Finns. This is a very, very different situation from being a conquered country. Comparing the two is completely unfair and misleading. Finland didn't have any stage of the war (until the very end, when things got complicated) when German troops were killing any of its citizens or when Germany was allowed to set any of its policy. This made the experience of these northern nations vastly, vastly different, and it made the means available to them in protecting their Jewish citizens vastly different.
Denmark? Conquered. Bulgaria? Not conquered. Also not co-belligerent. Actively allied. Major differences. Yes, both succeeded in protecting their Jewish populations, and yes, that's important. But Bulgaria did so from the perspective of a nation that was at least theoretically Hitler's little buddy, not from the perspective of a nation that had just had troops steamroll over every crevice of it. So the pressure Hitler was applying was not the same kind as the pressure he applied to the loyal Danes he shot in the streets of their own country. I'm glad that Bulgaria tried to sign on for a limited amount of the worst evil. I'm glad someone demonstrated it could be done. But it really changes the dynamic, how much depends on geography, how much depends on the structure of the original government, etc. I feel like grouping countries separately makes a lot of sense here. Bulgaria's main comparison here is Hungary--and with the re-rise of right-wing politics and their attendant anti-Semitism in Hungary, it's pretty damn timely. I wish it wasn't.
Someone in Hungary put pig trotters at the foot of one of the memorial statues of Raoul Wallenberg last week. Pig trotters. I read that in The Economist and cried. Oh, Hungary.