Europe’s party systems fragmented internally over Germany, yielding collaborators in every party

Evidence

In the Munich crisis each party, from Right to Left, split internally on the only relevant political issue: who was for, who was against war with Germany. Each party harbored a peace faction and a war faction; none of them could remain united on major political decisions and none stood the test of Fascism and Nazism without splitting into anti-Fascist on one side, Nazi fellow-travelers on the other. That Hitler could choose freely from all parties for the erection of puppet regimes was the consequence of this pre-war situation, and not of an especially shrewd Nazi maneuver. There was not a single party in Europe that did not produce collaborators. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 657

Categorization

• XREF: Directly supports the claim that colonial-style rule and collaborator regimes, not just Nazi cunning, enabled occupation — connects to the reader’s postcolonial Islamophobia toolkit on how ruling powers co-opt local elites.