Contraction of socioeconomic space as part of the domain of losses can help us understand not only the onset of genocide in certain instances, but even the extent of collaboration with the initiators as a form of cynical or brute force realpolitik. In the following analysis, states to be examined are those with indigenous governments unfettered by military occupation and having some freedom of policy choice. Perpetrators are states that openly collaborated with the Nazis in victimizing their own Jewish citizenry. Exceptions are states that did not do so and will be examined in chapter 16. I choose these cases because only here can we observe either (1) the indigenous genocidal impulse, (2) willingness to comply with German genocidal policies, or (3) the ability to resist German pressures for Jewish deportation. These instances stand in contrast to cases of direct occupation or absolute dependence on the genocidal state that preordain the policy outcome.

All European states in the Nazi orbit were examined for the extent of their decision-making autonomy in regard to their own citizenry. All countries directly occupied by German forces ultimately dedicated to the slaughter were excluded. These include Czechoslovakia (occupied from March 1939), Poland (September 1939), Norway (April 1940), Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg (May 1940), Greece and Yugoslavia (April 1941), the Soviet Union (June 1941; partial occupation), Denmark (August 1943), Albania (September 1943), and Hungary (March 1944).