The collaborators of the Occupation finally faced the law. The judicial records, gradually made available to historical research, shed light on a mechanism that examined tens of thousands of complaints and conducted thousands of trials. Through these trials, a whole world emerges, with conflicting memories, testimonies, and perceptions of justice and injustice. With one foot firmly in the courtrooms and the other outside, in the political and social processes that affected the work of Justice, the author of this book maps a dark area of modern history that remained taboo for the public memory of the war for decades. This first record of the work of the Special Collaborators' Courts and the administrative purges implemented in the early post-war years intersects the Greek experience with that of other European countries, offering a skewed look at the turbulent 1940s and challenging established stereotypes, such as the impunity being a Greek peculiarity, that the collaborators of the conquerors were few and insignificant, or that the boundaries between resistance and collaboration were already established and sealed.

Justice not only undertook to ensure the continuity of the state in conditions of extreme polarization but also constituted one of the most important factors in shaping collective memory of the war and the Occupation. The judicial records allow us to follow the mentalities, behaviors, and motives of the historical subjects before the ideological frameworks that determined which aspects of the recent past would come to light and which would be abandoned by the public sphere were formed - or, rather, while they were being formed. Their study gives us the opportunity to follow who judged and who was judged, which acts were judged, which criteria prevailed for the judges' verdict, which well-known and unknown politicians, military personnel, economic factors, or ordinary citizens took on the role of representing the perspective of one side or the other in the courtrooms. It also allows us to discern which compromises and alliances were sealed, who were the few who paid for their actions, and who were the many who were reintegrated into the state apparatus or into the political, economic, and intellectual life of the country.