Collaborators

"By contrast, French mobs in liberated towns behaved appallingly badly. In the épuration sauvage, or unofficial purges, at least 14,000 alleged collaborators were killed. In Brittany, one-third of them were women. French people as well as allied troops were sickened by the treatment meted out to those accused of collaboration horizontale. After undergoing the humiliation of having their heads shaved they were paraded through the streets, occasionally to the sound of drums, as if France was re-enacting the Reign of Terror in the French revolution. Some were daubed with tar, others stripped half naked, many painted with swastikas."