Nazi collaborators Nazi collaborators
Dutch patriots round up townspeople suspected of collaborating with the Nazis in October 1944 in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Keystone/Getty Images)

The names of more than 400,000 suspected Nazi collaborators during Germany's occupation of the Netherlands during World War II have been published online.

The 425,000 names include individuals investigated and tried as part of a special legal system established at the end of the war, the BBC reported. Among those, 150,000 were sentenced and received punishments meted out by the courts.

Previously, the only method of accessing the archive of names was by visiting the Dutch National Archives in The Hague, the report said. The Huygens Institute, which aided in digitizing the archive, said the publishing of the names will make it easier for people to study the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands from 1940 to 1945.

"This archive contains important stories for both present and future generations," said the Huygens Institute, the BBC reported. "From children who want to know what their father did in the war, to historians researching the grey areas of collaboration."

The database contain files on war criminals, the roughly 20,000 Dutch who enlisted in the German armed forces, and the alleged members of the National Socialist Movement -- the Dutch Nazi Party.

The names of those found innocent are also included. The archive doesn't tell users who was convicted and who was not -- or even why they were only suspected. That info is in the suspects' files in the National Archives.

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