Academic research on the history of the police is still quite limited. In the light of modern developments in social and political historiography this is strange. Not only because the police have increasingly become a ubiquitous and ostentious part of society, but also because police forces usually have a crucial part to play when a real struggle for political power is going on.This book focuses on the impact of World War II on policing in North-West-Europe, in particular in the cases of Belgium, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. It is the result of a symposium that was organized in the framework of a comprehensive research project on the Dutch police in the twentieth century. The comparative analysis of the papers written by renowned historians in this field pinpoints a number of key questions that relate to policing in times of war and thereby provides a starting point for further research on this topic.