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Czech actress, German film star, and mistress of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. In 1934, she moved to Germany at the invitation of the Ufa Film Studio, where she was introduced to Hitler and made an enormous impression on him due to her resemblance to his dead lover, AngelaRaubal. She would visit him privately in the Reich Chancellery for tea. Baarovaachieved stardomin Germany with the release of the film Barcarolle (1935). She turned down an invitation to Hollywood and a seven-year contract with MGM Studios, later coming to believe that she could have surpassed the worldwide fame of Marlene Dietrich. She gave in to her neighbor Goebbels’ persistent advances(Magda Goebbels suggested Baarova "find a compromise" and "share Joseph"), but theaffair was ended by Hitler at the request of Magda after Goebbels resigned and sought to divorce her and move abroad with Baarova. Hitler refused to let him go and forbade the minister from seeing his mistress, which drove Goebbels to attempt suicide on October 15, 1938. Baarova was banned from cinema, and none of her films were shown. In 1941, she moved to Italy, and after the American occupation, to Prague. In April 1945, she was arrested by the Americans. Instead of facing execution for working for the Nazis, she was sentenced to prison, having proven in court that she was filming in Germany before World War II. During the investigation, her younger sister committed suicide. Lida was freed by an admirer with family ties in the post-war government of Czechoslovakia who fled with her to Austria. Baarova spent the last 20 years of her life in obscurity and poverty in Salzburg. In 1995, she published her memoir, The Bitter Sweetness of My Life, in which she wrote about the elite of the Third Reich and admittedher affair with Goebbels, which she had denied all her life.

German actress, director and photographer. She became famous with the release of her film The Blue Light. In 1932, impressed by Hitler's campaign speech, Riefenstahl wrote to him seeking a meeting. From the moment they met, she had his full support. She directed three iconic propaganda films, which became classic examples of ideological documentaries: The Victory of Faith (1933), Triumph of the Will (1935), and Day of Freedom: Our Wehrmacht (1935), which were followed later by the two-part film Olympia (1938), the American and British premieres of which were cancelled due to the news of the Night of the Broken Glass. After World War II, she denied knowing about the killing of “racially inferior” groups, butthere is evidence that on September 12, 1939, she and her film crew witnessed the mass murder of Jews by Wehrmacht soldiers in Konskie, Poland, and in 1940 she used the unpaid labor of 120 gypsy prisoners from concentration camps, despite knowing their ultimate fate, to film Valley. Most of them later died in Auschwitz. Riefenstahl was the most famous and successful cultural figure of the Third Reich and a member of the Nazi elite. In April 1945, she was first arrested by American soldiers. At several denazification trials, she was acquitted and found to be a “sympathizer.” Later she abandoned film for photography, where she once again pioneered new themes and approaches in world culture: at 53 she started shooting African Nubian tribes, and at the age of 71 she began taking underwater photographs. In 1987, she published her memoir, an all-time best-seller. In 2001 she received the Gold Medal of the International Olympic Committee. She died two weeks after her 101st birthday. Until the end of her life she insisted that she “knew nothing.”

World famous French fashion designer. In 1940, she remained in occupied France. After the war, rumors began to circulate about her connections with the Nazis and in 2011, information that Chanel was an agent of the German military intelligence was confirmed. She was the mistress of German Abwehr officer, Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage, who became an intermediary in her relations with the occupation authorities and paid for her permanent accommodation at the Ritz in Paris. Von Dincklage recruited the 57-year-old Chanel as Agent F-7124 under the code name “Westminster” (she had an affair with the Duke of Westminster at the same time). As a result of the collaboration, Chanel freed her nephew from a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany, and tried to gain full control over the perfume business (she sold it under license to a Jewish Wertheimer family in 1924, and then applied for “Aryanization”). She publicly advanced the theory of a Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy and was famous for her anti-Semitic statements. She had the nickname of a “horizontal collaborator,” because of alcove connections with high-ranking occupiers. She closely communicated with the chief of the Third Reich’s political intelligence, Walter Schellenberg.
She was not directly involved in espionage, but helped the Nazis through connections with influential people in Spain and England. As part of the Operation Model Hat, she was supposed to secure separate negotiations between the Nazis and the British government, but the operation was thwarted by the MI6. After the war, she fled to Switzerland and escaped trial on charges of collaboration, presumably thanks to the intervention of either Churchill or the British royal family. After returning to France, she bribed everyone who could testify to her connections with the Nazis, including Schellenberg, whom she helped to emigrate, and in return he did not mention her in his memoirs.

Pre-war glamor icon, trendsetter and avid party-goer King Edward VIII of England abdicated in 1936 to marry Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee. After the abdication he received the title of Duke of Windsor. It is widely known that Wallis had an affair with Foreign Minister of the Third Reich Joachim von Ribbentrop (he sent her 17 red carnations for every night she spent with him?). The FBI released the information that Mrs. Simpson was an agent of Nazi Germany with access to secret papers of the British government. The couple were openly sympathetic to the Nazis – in 1937 they met with Hitler. The photo shows Eduard throwing up his hand in a Nazi salute (he later claimed that he was just waving his hand). In 1940, they were in close contact with German diplomats in Portugal, when the former king said in an interview that Great Britain was about to surrender to the Reich. In 1945, US troops discovered shocking German archival documents dubbed the Marburg Files. The papers also included the Windsor File with information about the Operation Willi of 1940: as part of it, the Duke of Windsor was persuaded that his brother, King George VI, and Prime Minister Churchill, had joined in a conspiracy to assassinate him. Because of this, the duke was compelled to collude with the Nazis. He was also supposed to be kidnapped in order to blackmail the royal family and force Great Britain to surrender. There were plans to return Edward to the throne and recognize his wife as queen in exchange for the free movement of German forces in Europe. There is correspondence in the Marburg Files proving that the duke supported the bombing of England in order to force the government to negotiate a peace treaty. However, the family did not disown Edward; he and his wife lived in France until his death in 1972.

In 1997, Hugo Boss publicly acknowledged that the company had collaborated with the Nazis and sponsored research into this fact in order to save the brand's image. It turned out that the founder of the company, Hugo Boss, made military uniforms for the Wehrmacht at a huge profit. His factory employed 140 Polish and 40 French prisoners. Contrary to rumors, the designer of the black SS uniform was not Boss himself, but German officer and artist Karl Diebitsch. When it was found out that in summer black absorbs sunlight and causes profuse sweating, it was replaced by gray. Black was used only for the dress uniform of senior SS officers – and it was produced by the Boss factory. In 2007, Hugo’s son Siegfried publicly admitted that his father had collaborated with the Nazis for personal reasons and voluntarily joined the NSDAP. Therefore, his factory was registered as a military enterprise of special importance and received large orders. All of the companies’ executives were staunch Hitlerites. After the war, Boss was tried and ordered to pay a fine of 100,000 marks; later he was partially rehabilitated and his status was changed from “accused” to “sympathizer.” After the research was published, the company posted an official statement on its website expressing its “profound regret to those who suffered harm or hardship at the factory run by Hugo Ferdinand Boss under National Socialist rule.” Since the 1990s, the black uniform, by that time recognized as the most beautiful uniform of all time, became an element of the new political movement Nazi chic, most of whose adherents came from neo-Nazi circles in Japan.

Spouses and writersDmitry Merezhkovsky and ZinaidaGippius emigrated from Russia in late 1919. By the start of World War II they lived in France and occupied leading positions in the émigré cultural circles. They perceived fascism and Nazism as the only force capable of destroying the hated communism. Since the end of the 1930s Merezhkovsky had become infatuated with fascist ideas. He met with Mussolini and considered him a savior of Europe in opposing communism. Gippius did not share his views. She detested any tyranny but thought Hitler was a leader capable of crushing the Bolsheviks.
After Germany’s attack on the USSR in the summer of 1941, friends brought Merezhkovsky to a German radio station without telling Gippius. He made a speech comparing Hitler to Joan of Arc who saved the world from the devil. He spoke about the moral values brought by German chevaliers on their bayonets. Having heard about this, Gippius was infuriated but continued defending her husband. Indicatively, she herself sympathized with the Russian collaborationists who sided with Germany. Gippius wrote about “Russian boys who are conducting a new sacred struggle for Russia in the 1940s of our horrible century, side by side with their new allies (these allies will not leave them!).” A Russian Nazi newspaper immediately reprinted Merezhkovsky’s article. After this, the spouses had to face boycott.
Merezhkovsky died on December 7, 1941. Before his death he became disillusioned with fascist ideas, having seen their implementation in practice – the media regularly covered German atrocities in the USSR. But it was too late. Only a few people came to his funeral. It was no longer possible to clear his name of the stigma of a Nazi supporter.

The posthumous publication of diaries by Russian and Soviet writer and order bearer Mikhail Prishvin dealt a blow at many of his fans. In these diaries, he openly wrote about his support for the Hitler regime and his hatred of communists and Jews. He noted that he did not believe that the goal of the Nazis was to destroy Slavs and wanted Germans to conquer the USSR. This is what he wrote after the occupation of France in 1941: “The Germans have approached the Seine. I feel pleased for some reason but Razumnik does not (the writer’s friend Ivanov-Razumnik, who sided with the Germans after their attack on the USSR and fought against the Russians – ed. note). Razumnik stands for the French (it seems to me) because now they are against us. During the last war, he sided with the Germans because they were against us (we are the worst of all). Lyalya (Prishvin’s second wife Valeria Liorko – ed. note) also switched to his side. She is against the Germans now because they are victors and she feels sorry for the French. In the meantime, like a bitted horse, I supported Hitler.” “I prefer the cause of Hitler to that of the allies because they are ready to buy everything whereas he is ready to take everything.” Spring of 1941: “I stand for the victory of Germany because Germany is a nation and a state in its purest form…” 1940-1941: “My support for Hitler is my rejection of our sectarian intelligentsia but probably it is also a result of my faith since the God is not entirely indifferent to human blood and sympathizes with healthy blood.”
“Nowadays people think we will not avoid the Germans: if we help them, they will turn us into a colony; if we oppose them, they will crush us and conquer us. The Jews and all of their associates hate Hitler to death. Their hatred has filled half the world from Rothschild to a Russian intellectual pauper married to a Jewish woman. On the other hand, the other half of the world has opposed the Jews.” “Deep-seated nationwide sympathy for the Germans is a peculiar manifestation of Russian patriotism (dating back to the invitation of Rurik).”
In 1943, in time for his 70th birthday, Prishvin was awarded with the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. On February 15, 1945, he wrote: “After the defeat of Germany was announced in Crimea, a critical question was raised: What are the Germans dying for? What is the point of their heroism?”
His diaries were first published in 1982. They came as a shock to the publishers but were issued without abridgements.