During the German occupation of Luxembourg in World War II, some Luxembourgers collaborated with the country's Nazi occupiers. The term Gielemännchen ("yellow men") was adopted by many Luxembourgers, initially to refer to German Nazis in general and later extended to Luxembourg collaborators, deriving from the yellow uniforms of the Nazi Party.
Pre-war period In the inter-war period, Luxembourg saw the emergence of several fascist movements, mirroring developments in the rest of Western Europe. These movements typically shared the following common characteristics: they were nationalist, anti-Semitic, hostile towards both capitalism and communism, and were made up of the lower middle class. In Luxembourg, they included a number of minuscule, unsuccessful movements such as the Faschistische Partei Luxemburg (Fascist Party of Luxembourg) and the Luxemburgische Nationale Arbeiter- und Mittelstandsbewegung (Luxembourgish National Worker and Middle Class Movement), but also two more significant organisations: the Luxembourg National Party (LNP) published the first edition of the National-Echo in 1936. After this high point, though, its history was marked by quarrels and a lack of funds, and a year later it had faded into obscurity, while attempts to revive it during the German occupation failed.
The Luxemburger Volksjugend (LVJ) / Stoßtrupp Lützelburg was more successful in gathering a determined core of young people, who followed Nazi ideology and saw Adolf Hitler as their leader.
A less overtly political organisation was the Luxemburger Gesellschaft für deutsche Literatur und Kunst (GEDELIT - "Society for German Literature and Art"), which likewise served as a recruitment source for later collaborators. GEDELIT was founded in 1934 to counter the activities of the highly successful Alliance française. From its inception, GEDELIT was under suspicion of being a tool of Nazi Germany, and an apologist for the latter's actions.
However, the extent of these pre-war organisations' influence on the general population's behaviour in occupied Luxembourg remains unclear, as does the continuity (or lack thereof) between these groups and the Volksdeutsche Bewegung (VdB) or Luxembourg sections of the NSDAP. Among these groups, only the LVJ was politically successful, rebranding as the Volksjugend in 1940 and being incorporated into the Hitlerjugend in 1941. The historian Émile Krier has maintained that the Volksdeutsche Bewegung made use of existing pre-war networks when it was founded: Damian Kratzenberg, for example, was the head of GEDELIT, and became head of the country's section of the VdB. However, the evidence for the grassroots membership of the VdB having been members of previous fascist organisations is inconclusive.
Volksdeutsche Bewegung and NSDAP
Collaborationist movements arose in the first few weeks after the invasion, but received no support from the German military administration, which was in place from May to July 1940. On 19 May, there was a meeting of 28 individuals who had belonged to several of the above-mentioned fascist movements, and who called for Luxembourg to be incorporated into Germany as a Gau. On 13 July, the VdB was officially founded. This included three factions: a group around Damian Kratzenberg, which had been Germanophile before the war and was most active in the cultural sphere; a group that was most interested in cooperating with the occupiers for economic reasons; finally, a third wing around a former journalist, Camille Dennemeyer. This last group was quite young, and exhibited an activism similar to that of the German Sturmabteilung. This wing was seen as harmful to the VdB's public perception, and in November 1940 Dennemeyer and his associates were dismissed from their posts in the movement.
Over the following months, the VdB was massively expanded: the country was divided into 4 districts (Kreise), which were subdivided into local branches (Ortsgruppen), so that by the end of the war there were about 120 local VdB groups. Membership rose until August 1942, when almost a third of the population were members.
The VdB was an ideological defender of Luxembourg's return to the German Empire. On 6 July 1940, when the VdB had not yet officially been founded, it released a public statement, declaring "Luxembourgers, hear the call of blood! It tells you that you are German by race and by language [...]" Its aim was to persuade Luxembourgers to become an indistinguishable part of Nazi Germany. Up until the end of the war, however, the VdB did not formulate a specific ideology, although its public discourse shows the following characteristics: vilification of Jews, condemnations of the Resistance and the grand-ducal family, and a strongly dichotomous argumentation, all of which does not constitute an ideology.
At the same time, the German occupiers were not interested in a self-sufficient collaboration movement. Senior posts in the movement were occupied by Germans, including 3 of 4 district leaders (Kreisleiter). Nevertheless, Nazism had such grave consequences in Luxembourg because there were people at every level of society who were ready to cooperate with the occupier, as illustrated by the 120 Ortsgruppenleiter (local branch leaders). Most of these men were Luxembourgers, and in fact the post was one of the highest that Luxembourgers could attain in the movement. The Ortsgruppenleiter performed continual informer services throughout the war which allowed the German occupiers to keep the country under control for 4 years. The authorities would ask an Ortsgruppenleiter for a political evaluation of an individual at many opportunities, for example when deciding whether to grant someone government benefits, membership in the VdB, access to education, leave for Wehrmacht members, or release from prison or concentration camps. Putting such power in the hands of the Ortsgruppenleiter also allowed them to pursue personal vendettas. These local officials also played a major role in the forced resettlement operations: the commissions in each Kreis that decided individual cases relied on reports from the Ortsgruppenleiter, who in turn used the threat of resettlement as a means of intimidation. Furthermore, they compiled and handed to the occupiers "blacklists" of potential hostages or "donors". After the "Three Acorns," a set of historic fortifications, were painted in the national colours of Luxembourg: red, white and blue, the Ortsgruppenleiter in Clausen presented the authorities with a list of 31 persons who would be able to pay the 100,000 Reichsmark that the occupiers demanded as punishment.
Apart from the VdB, the Nazis tried to cover Luxembourg with a net of political, social and cultural organisations. It became apparent that the VdB, being a mass organisation, was not suitable for forming a collaborationist elite, and so in September 1941 a Luxembourg section of the Nazi party was founded, which had grown to 4,000 members by the end of the war. Other Nazi organisations such as the Hitler Youth, the Bund Deutscher Mädel, the Winterhilfswerk, the NS-Frauenschaft and the Deutsche Arbeitsfront were also introduced in Luxembourg. These organisations subjected the country to a wave of propaganda, which aimed to bring the population "back into the [German] Empire" (Heim ins Reich). This propaganda was not restricted to a few large-scale public events, but attempted to reach the population day in, day out.
Social make-up Studies have shown that collaboration was a phenomenon in all layers of society. Civil servants, however, were over-represented among the collaborators, and farmers were under-represented, while workers made up the same percentage of collaborators as they did of the general population. If historians today regard the Nazi Party as a "people's party" but with an over-representation of the lower middle class, similarly Luxembourg collaboration found supporters in every part of society, but with some parts being more strongly affected than others.
Some further demographic observations can be made: on average, the collaborators were younger than the general population. Studies show that it was 30- to 40-year-olds who predominated; the Ortsgruppenleiter, however, were significantly younger than the local elites who would usually have filled political roles before the occupation.
In terms of geography, the north and centre of the country were under-represented among collaborators, while the east and south were over-represented. Having had previous contact with Germany was a significant factor for collaborators, as 23% of the Ortsgruppenleiter were either German or of German descent. Several of them had German wives, and those with university degrees had all studied in a German-speaking country. After 1933, Germany appeared to many of these later collaborators as an example to be imitated; when visiting their families or former classmates, they were impressed by the "orderly" appearance that Germany presented.
Military collaboration
With the forced conscription of Luxembourgers into the Wehrmacht from September 1942, the divide between the occupiers and the occupied population increased widened dramatically.Majerus, Benoît. "Kollaboration in Luxemburg: die falsche Frage?" In: ...et wor alles net esou einfach - Questions sur le Luxembourg et la Deuxième Guerre mondiale; exhibition book, published by Musée d'Histoire de la Ville de Luxembourg, Vol. X; Luxembourg, 2002; p. 126–140. However, according to German reports about 1,500 to 2,000 Luxembourgers had volunteered by August 1942 for the German armed forces, including 300 for the Schutzstaffel (SS), and this does not seem to have been pure propaganda.
Economic collaboration Germany was the most important trading partner of Luxembourg in the interwar period, but the manner in which these trade links developed and changed during the war has not yet been researched. The historian Émile Krier spoke of a process of "rationalisation and concentration" during the war, but this leaves the question as to who the beneficiaries and losers of this process were. Certainly, the Caisse d'Épargne, for example, profited enormously from the elimination of small banks.
According to one historian: "In a sense, one can argue that on 10 May 1940, it was not the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg that the Wehrmacht invaded, but ARBED."Artuso, Vincent. "Double jeu". In: forum, No. 304 (February 2011). p. 26–28. From the 1920s, ARBED had grown into a powerful multinational steel producer, which sold its products all over the world. Germany and Luxembourg were highly interdependent when it came to steel production: just before the war, Luxembourg imported 90% of its coke, an essential fuel for the blast furnaces, from Germany; by 1938, Luxembourg was exporting 47.22% of its iron and steel products to Nazi Germany, where these were badly needed due to the Nazis' rearmament programme. Luxembourg's iron ore reserves would make Germany self-sufficient in steel production; in the medium term, the Germans intended to combine the Luxembourg's steel and mining industries with those of Lorraine and the Saar.
From the first months of the occupation, then, the Germans tried hard to bring Luxembourg's steel companies, Hadir, Ougreé-Marihaye and ARBED, under their control. On 2 July 1940 Otto Steinbrinck, the Plenipotentiary for the Iron and Steel Industry in Luxembourg, Belgium and Northern France, called a meeting of the above companies' representatives. Whereas Hadir and Ougrée-Marihaye had their factories confiscated or placed under German supervision, ARBED was the only steel company to maintain its pre-war board of directors, including its managing director, Aloyse Meyer.