Vlas Chubar was one of the most powerful Ukrainian officials in the Soviet Union, serving for more than a decade as the head of government of Soviet Ukraine. Although he witnessed the devastating effects of Stalin’s forced collectivisation and even warned Moscow that people were dying from famine...

Gottlieb Hering was a German police officer who once opposed the Nazi movement and was even nicknamed the “Nazi eater.” Yet after joining the Nazi Party, his career took a radically different path. He served in the Aktion T4 euthanasia program before becoming commandant of the Bełżec exterminatio...

Ivan Frolov was a former Red Army officer who became one of the leading commanders of the Russian National Liberation Army, better known as RONA or the Kaminski Brigade. After being captured during the German invasion of the Soviet Union, he joined the collaborationist force and rose to become on...

Franz Böhme was an Austrian-born German general whose command in occupied Serbia became associated with some of the largest reprisal executions carried out by the Wehrmacht during the Second World War.

Appointed chief commander in Serbia in September 1941, Böhme enforced a policy under which 100...

Hilde Lisiewitz was a German SS guard who served at the Grünberg subcamp of Gross-Rosen before being transferred to Bergen-Belsen in March 1945. She is also believed to have guarded a death march from Grünberg to Guben during which 1,400 of approximately 2,000 female prisoners died. At Bergen-Bel...

During the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944, the collaborationist RONA forces of Bronisław Kaminski entered Warsaw’s Ochota district as part of the German operation to crush the Polish resistance. Over the following days, Polish civilians were murdered, robbed and subjected to widespread violence a...

Adriana Valkenburg was a Dutch prostitute and brothel owner who became one of the most notorious collaborators in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. After initially presenting herself as someone willing to help persecuted Jews find hiding places and escape deportation, she began working with the German-con...

Siegfried Fehmer became one of the most feared Gestapo officers in Nazi-occupied Norway. Based in Oslo, he specialized in hunting members of the Norwegian resistance, particularly Milorg, and became notorious for personally taking part in interrogations and torture. Prisoners were beaten, deprive...

Hitler’s 6th Army became one of Nazi Germany’s most infamous formations on the Eastern Front. Under Walter von Reichenau, it supported mass murder, enforced starvation policies and assisted SS killing units in crimes against civilians and Jews in occupied Soviet territory.

In 1942, now commanded...

Pyotr Krasnov rose from the Imperial Russian Army to become one of the most prominent leaders of the Don Cossacks. A fierce opponent of Bolshevism, he fought against the communists during the Russian Civil War before leaving Russia for exile.

When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, K...

Günther Quandt built one of Germany’s largest industrial empires and became a major supplier to the Nazi war machine. His companies produced ammunition, rifles, artillery and batteries essential for German submarines and V-2 rockets, while his relationship with the Nazi regime helped expand his w...

Josef Pfitzner was a Sudeten German historian who rose from respected academic circles to become Deputy Mayor of Prague during the Nazi occupation. After German forces occupied the Czech lands in March 1939, Pfitzner used his powerful position in the Prague administration to promote the Germaniza...

Elisabeth Volkenrath became one of the most notorious female guards in the Nazi concentration camp system. At Auschwitz, survivors testified that she brutally beat prisoners, including during exhausting roll calls, and participated in selections of women who were sent to the gas chambers. In Nove...

In October 1941, German troops of the 717th Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht, the German armed forces, carried out mass reprisals in Kraljevo, occupied Yugoslavia. After resistance attacks left German soldiers dead and wounded, civilians were arrested in large numbers and systematically execute...

In January 1946, eight senior German occupation officials and military commanders were brought before a Soviet military tribunal in Riga for crimes committed across the Nazi-occupied Baltic territories. The most notorious defendant was SS commander Friedrich Jeckeln, held responsible for the deat...

Walraven van Hall was a Dutch banker who became one of the most important financiers of the resistance during the Second World War. Known as the “Banker of the Resistance,” he helped establish the National Support Fund, which financed people in hiding, supported hundreds of Jews, aided resistance...

The Kaminski Brigade was one of the most notorious collaborationist formations created from Soviet citizens during the Second World War. Emerging in German-occupied Soviet territory, RONA grew from a local militia into a force of thousands, including former Soviet prisoners of war.

The brigade f...

Klaus Barbie became one of the most notorious Nazi war criminals in occupied France. As Gestapo chief in Lyon, he earned the name “Butcher of Lyon” for his brutal persecution and torture of members of the French Resistance and the deportation of thousands of Jews.

Among his victims was legendary...

In the summer of 1943, German troops of the 1st Mountain Division “Edelweiss” descended on the Greek village of Mousiotitsa in Epirus. During two attacks, soldiers looted and burned homes and murdered 153 villagers, including 63 children. The massacre was part of a wider campaign of brutal repris...

In May 1945, as the Second World War ended in Europe, Croatian Ustaša forces, Slovene Home Guardsmen, other Axis collaborators, and civilians fled Yugoslavia toward Austria, hoping to surrender to the British. Instead, many were handed over or returned to Tito’s Yugoslav Partisans.

What followed...

Oswald Englebin was a Belgian Rexist collaborator who became mayor of Greater Charleroi under the Nazi occupation. A loyal supporter of Léon Degrelle, he publicly welcomed Rexist and SS troops and became a prominent figure of collaborationist authority in the region.

On 17 August 1944, resistanc...

Hans Möser was one of the most brutal Nazi guards at Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, where prisoners were exploited as slave labor for the production of V-1 flying bombs and V-2 rockets.

After serving at Hinzert and Auschwitz-Monowitz, Möser became one of the most powerful SS officials at Mit...

Elisabeth Becker was just 21 when she became a female guard at the Stutthof concentration camp in September 1944. Indoctrinated with Nazi ideology from her youth, she became known for brutally abusing prisoners, beating women with her hands and a whip, and participating in selections that sent wo...

Five days after the Allied landings in Normandy, French Resistance fighters attacked a German military train at Mussidan in southwestern France. The German response was brutal.

On 11 June 1944, soldiers of the 11th Panzer Division, joined by German security forces and French collaborators, round...