ABSTRACT
When the North American media deal with the topic of occupied Europe during World War II, they usually present a predictable, if substantially correct, image of countries overrun by Nazi armies, populations terrorized by the Gestapo, summary executions, and concentration camps. The behaviour of the occupied peoples is also depicted in standard fashion: the ‘good’ people invariably resisted the Nazis while the ‘bad’ collaborated. The essence of this version of the war is that the Nazis were the universal and exclusive enemy and that the only acceptable behaviour during World War II was to fight against them.
