Strategos' Risk
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Vichy France was led by some odd turncoats if you think about it. Petain was a national hero whose claim to fame was smiting Germans. Laval was a former Socialist - though admittedly, he perhaps he was as ambivalent about it as Mussolini was.
Wang Jingwei and the Reorganized National Government in China is another key example, given how he was the leader of the left-Kuomintang faction. Though admittedly here too, Wang's doomerism about China's chances against Japan easily led him to seek accommodation with the fascist Axis. Also China at that time had an oddly positive working relationship with Germany which cut through obvious left-right distinctions. (And meanwhile, Chiang Kai-Shek wanted the Soviets on his side to fight Japan after he was done squashing the Communists.)
More Frenchmen, and some Belgians:
I suppose Andrey Vlasov qualifies- for some reason I had assumed he was an ex-White Russian but he had joined the Red Army during the Russian Revolution so it works. Easier for a military man to be have fewer ideological scruples than a politician, though. At least, easier to hide the ambiguity.
And for a fictional example, the late John J. Reilly's C.S. Lewis althist obituary has Lloyd George of all people as the Petain-Laval put in charge of Mosley's Britain.
Here's a historical list of WWII puppet states.
Would Sukarno being a Japanese collaborator count? I'm not sure how liberal he really was, so I'm not sure if it's truly ironic. The ex-colonial movements hitching their rides to the fascists was a opportunistic, but perhaps rational for the time, thing to do.
What about a Viet Minh puppet government within the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere headed by Ho Chi Minh himself, championing an "Asian socialism"?
Or even a situation where Azad Hind carves out a Japanese puppet state, Subhas Bose still meets an unlikely end, and his successor is... Gandhi?!?
Also what about the ironic opposite for Soviet client states in the Cold War that were run by former right-wingers or even ex-fascists. Supposedly the East German Stasi was lousy with the type.
In the interwar period and the run up to Barbarossa these political ideologies were pretty new, so it was perhaps easy to confuse what left and right really were. So I think that explains some of the switching which today seems awfully paradoxical and oxymoronic. So what are more interesting alternate cases?
Wang Jingwei and the Reorganized National Government in China is another key example, given how he was the leader of the left-Kuomintang faction. Though admittedly here too, Wang's doomerism about China's chances against Japan easily led him to seek accommodation with the fascist Axis. Also China at that time had an oddly positive working relationship with Germany which cut through obvious left-right distinctions. (And meanwhile, Chiang Kai-Shek wanted the Soviets on his side to fight Japan after he was done squashing the Communists.)
More Frenchmen, and some Belgians:
David T said:France was far from the only country where former leftists supported collaborationist regimes. (BTW, Paul Faure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Faure_(politician) and Marcel Déat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Déat were Socialists long after Laval had broken with the party--and of course Doriot had been a Communist... ) There was Henri de Man in Belgium: "This war is in reality a revolution. The old social order, the old political regime are collapsing. Hitler is a kind of elementary or demoniac force, he accomplishes a kind of destruction that has in all probability become necessary..." https://books.google.com/books?id=4oHq-ROPJWoC&pg=PA289 "After the "capitulation" of the Belgian Army in 1940, he issued a manifesto to POB-BWP members, welcoming the German occupation as a field of neutralist action during the war: "For the working classes and for socialism, this collapse of a decrepit world, far from being a disaster, is a deliverance..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_de_Man
Anneessens said:De Man is the most obvious person to look for if you want a (formerly) leftist Belgian to play an active rol in a German collaborationist regime. One should also note that many believe the fact that he opted for collaboration was not just an opportunistic move. By the 1930s, he had clearly developed a distinct line of thought, which some believe prepared the way for his later choice: notably, he was against philosophical materialism and against the idea of a class based party, and had sympathetic views of nationalism as a phenomenon.
De Man played a a rather minor role during the occupation, although that might also be because he wasn't trusted by others in the collaborationist scene. He was close to Leopold III during the early days of the war (one of the few top politicians to remain loyal to him). So perhaps Leopold and De Man are the duo to look for if you want a Pétain-Laval analogue in Belgium.
I suppose Andrey Vlasov qualifies- for some reason I had assumed he was an ex-White Russian but he had joined the Red Army during the Russian Revolution so it works. Easier for a military man to be have fewer ideological scruples than a politician, though. At least, easier to hide the ambiguity.
And for a fictional example, the late John J. Reilly's C.S. Lewis althist obituary has Lloyd George of all people as the Petain-Laval put in charge of Mosley's Britain.
Here's a historical list of WWII puppet states.
Would Sukarno being a Japanese collaborator count? I'm not sure how liberal he really was, so I'm not sure if it's truly ironic. The ex-colonial movements hitching their rides to the fascists was a opportunistic, but perhaps rational for the time, thing to do.
What about a Viet Minh puppet government within the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere headed by Ho Chi Minh himself, championing an "Asian socialism"?
Or even a situation where Azad Hind carves out a Japanese puppet state, Subhas Bose still meets an unlikely end, and his successor is... Gandhi?!?
Also what about the ironic opposite for Soviet client states in the Cold War that were run by former right-wingers or even ex-fascists. Supposedly the East German Stasi was lousy with the type.
In the interwar period and the run up to Barbarossa these political ideologies were pretty new, so it was perhaps easy to confuse what left and right really were. So I think that explains some of the switching which today seems awfully paradoxical and oxymoronic. So what are more interesting alternate cases?