Episode 15- Resistance and Collaboration in the French Basque Country

Like most other Europeans, the Basques of southern France had to endure a puppet government and Nazi occupation during the Second World War. What was it like to live under occupation? How did Basque culture influence the ways in which French Basques both collaborated with and resisted the Germans? For the third part of our series on the Nazis in Iberian history, Professor Sandra Ott takes an ethnographic approach to answering these questions, using the stories of individuals and families to reveal just how complex and difficult different individuals’ strategies for living under occupation could be. Danger, duplicity and revenge are all themes in these real-life tales fit for a spy novel.