Under the Shadow of the Swastika: The Moral Dilemmas of Resistance and Collaboration in Hitler's Europe

This incisive study of the ethics of war is the only work to focus on the moral dilemmas of resistance and collaboration in Nazi-occupied Europe. Rab Bennett provides a comprehensive guide to the harrowing ethical choices that confronted ordinary citizens as they tried to survive the Nazi onslaught. Bennett explores how the Resistance responded to German security policy that had at its foundation the doctrine of collective responsibility. He shows how Nazi tactics, including the systematic taking and killing of hostages, reprisal killings, and the destruction of entire villages, complicated the attempts of the Resistance to fight back. He also includes a detailed discussion of the controversial role of the Jewish police. Under the Shadow of the Swastika analyzes morally questionable methods of resistance, such as torture, the mutilation and killing of German prisoners of war, and guerrilla warfare. By assessing their conduct in relation to the laws of war and the just war tradition, Bennett mounts a revisionist challenge to longstanding myths about the Resistance.