In Europe on Trial, István Deák examines several controversial issues about World War II and postwar Europe immediately after the war. Combining essay, memoir, and narrative history, he uses his vast knowledge of Central and Eastern Europe to craft an engaging and illuminating synthesis of collaboration and resistance during the conflict, as well as an evaluation of retribution at the end of the war. Two main features characterize his findings: complexity and diversity. Instances of collaboration, resistance, and retribution varied, of course, from place to place, as well as over time, as circumstances evolved. Determining factors remained in constant flux, playing with or off one another, and are thus difficult to pin down for easy analysis. As Deák narrates and discusses one situation after another, he assesses the conflict as Europe's greatest failure as a civilization—as a “crisis in compassion and humanity” (236).

Deák begins by reviewing the nature of, and responses to, foreign occupations in European history. Europeans had managed to decrease somewhat the level of brutality in war by the early twentieth century, but they would then revert to the greatest violence and inhumanity the world had ever witnessed. Deák addresses next Adolf Hitler's first three territorial acquisitions—Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland—before moving on to the Western campaign, the conquest of Scandinavia, the Low Countries, and France, with a focus on these countries' relations with the Reich: official and popular, as well as individual and collective. Austria provided the most enthusiastic collaborators overall, but even Czechoslovakia, which experiencing more brutal and repressive treatment, evidenced degrees of collaboration as well. Poland suffered Germany's full wrath: complete and total destruction and annihilation, which left hardly any opportunity for collaboration. Deák refers to the West's early occupation as “Europe's Honeymoon with Hitler” (41), where collaboration occurred in nuanced degrees: almost everyone collaborated, from Vichy leaders in France to those Dutch bureaucrats whose meticulous paperwork facilitated the German occupation, especially with regard to the identification of Jews. The author consistently distinguishes the relatively lenient German occupation in the West from more drastic conditions in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

In the East, where Hitler set up Axis alliances throughout the region, collaboration assumed a more overt and more readily identifiable form, as dictators pledged allegiance to the Führer, but in different ways and with varying degrees of commitment. Deák rejects the common notion that all Eastern allies uniformly served Hitler as mere “puppets” to the same degree. In fact, how far and in what ways each collaborated were characterized by a great degree of diversity. For example, Bulgaria never marched alongside Germany militarily and refused to surrender its Jews to the Germans for extermination. It was in this region, following the invasion of Yugoslavia, that actual resistance erupted, challenging collaboration as a response to German occupation. Though seeds of resistance had earlier taken root in both Axis Eastern Europe and in the West, resistance would henceforth assume a far more virulent form across all of Europe.

Another factor played an important role in this regard in the East: ethnicity. Enduring histories of enmities among the peoples of the region escalated the level of violence that characterized collaboration, resistance, and eventually retribution. The German invasion of the USSR then brought another dimension in its wake: Soviet Communism, which, by complicating personal choices and commitments, introduced new factors affecting the position individuals might take on these issues. Resistance there often merged with ongoing traditional ethnic disputes, as well as with civil wars among peoples fighting for or against the approaching Soviet Red Army. Who was a collaborator, Deák asks, under such conditions? Who was a freedom fighter? Who was a traitor—and to whom? Was someone who resisted the Soviets a traitor—or a patriot?

Questions of retribution dominated the closing phase and aftermath of the war. Even before the cessation of hostilities, the liberation of territory enabled underground resistors to surface and wreak vengeance on erstwhile occupiers and their collaborators. In both the West and East, local vigilante justice followed the tide of battle and dealt harshly with the defeated. From popular courts and mob rule at the grassroots level, up to the highest tribunal at Nuremberg, the victors exacted retribution, claiming justice as a guide, but more often allowing wartime passions, individual grievances, and politics to hold sway. As in the case of collaboration and resistance, retribution was lacking in restraint in terms of of humanity and compassion. The type of justice meted out reflected actual circumstances, individual as well as collective experiences, as well as other determinants such as ethnicity, personal grudges, and even international politics. It varied from case to case, place to place, and over time; contradictions and inconsistencies were the order of the day. Deák concludes that postwar retribution was yet another tarnished legacy for European civilization—though, in the end and for all its imperfections, Europeans got it right in the main: “Those who had been punished for good reason far outnumbered those who had been innocent” (208).

While providing the reader with an enhanced understanding of the complexities of collaboration, resistance, and retribution within the context of World War II, Deák stops short of making a final, authoritative statement. Europe on Trial would nevertheless make an excellent point of departure for a graduate seminar, but because it presumes some familiarity with the subject, it is best suited for more knowledgeable readers, both lay and academic.