To be able to return to peace after the upheavals of World War II both Denmark and Norway passed through a period of rigorous and far-reaching legal purges during the years 1945–50. Alone among the Scandinavian countries these two kingdoms had been overrun by Nazi Germany in 1940 (Sweden managed to stay neutral and Finland waged its own wars with the Soviet Union) and were liberated only through the general German surrender in May 1945. During the parliamentary elections, which took place in both countries in the fall of 1945, all political parties, together with the triumphant Resistance movement, demanded an immediate, swift, and thorough purge of those citizens who had defected the national cause during the war. Popular emotions ran high, demanding draconian punishments of any traitor, any offender of the national cause. It was as if a wave of public rage swept through the formerly occupied countries demanding a heavy cleansing of society before normal policies could be pursued.

In any modern country that has experienced enemy domination – militarily, politically, or even economically – the return to normalcy quite regularly presupposes some sort of legal purge, conducted through a process of extraordinary justice so as to emphasize the quality of transition, of passing from one state to another. After World War II the scope of these purges may be summarized as follows for the German-occupied countries in Western and Northern Europe (penalized collaborators per 100,000 inhabitants):

With Denmark and France on the milder side, and Norway and the Netherlands on the more severe side of the spectrum, these figures altogether show a rather uniform tendency of measuring out punishments for Nazi fellow travelers in these countries: enormous purges occurred, swelling the normal prison population in the years immediately after the liberation.