German-occupied Europe
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Between 1938 and 1945, Nazi Germany occupied or controlled vast territories of Europe. Peaking in 1941–1942, Germany and the other Axis powers (namely Italy) were governing more than half of the entire continent's population through direct administration, civil occupation, and military occupation, as well as by establishing puppet states. Germany's expansionist campaigns under the Nazi Party of Adolf Hitler ultimately led to the beginning of World War II in 1939. Also inside some of these occupied states, particularly Poland, was a large network of Nazi camps that facilitated what would later become known as the Holocaust.
The Wehrmacht occupied European territory:
- as far north and east as Franz Josef Land in the Soviet Union
- as far south as Gavdos in Greece
- as far west as Ushant in France
German weather stations within Europe existed as far north as Schatzgräber in Franz Josef Land's Alexandra Land. Although the Kriegsmarine operated globally during World War II, it was chiefly focused on establishing and maintaining hegemony in the North Atlantic, especially the North Sea.
History
Several German-occupied countries initially entered World War II as Allies of the United Kingdom or the Soviet Union. Some were forced to surrender before the outbreak of the war such as Czechoslovakia; others like Poland (invaded on 1 September 1939) were conquered in battle and then occupied. In some cases, the legitimate governments went into exile, in other cases the governments-in-exile were formed by their citizens in other Allied countries. Some countries occupied by Nazi Germany were officially neutral. Others were former members of the Axis powers that were subsequently occupied by German forces, such as Italy and Hungary.
Concentration camps
Germany operated thousands of concentration camps in German-occupied Europe. The first camps were established in March 1933 immediately after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. Following the 1934 purge of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the concentration camps were run exclusively by the Schutzstaffel (SS) via the Concentration Camps Inspectorate and later the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office. Initially, most prisoners were members of the Communist Party of Germany, but as time went on different groups were arrested, including "habitual criminals", "asocials", and Jews.
After the beginning of World War II, people from German-occupied Europe were imprisoned in the concentration camps. About 1.65 million people were registered prisoners in the camps, of whom about a million died during their imprisonment. Most of the fatalities occurred during the second half of World War II, including at least 4.7 million Soviet prisoners who were registered as of January 1945.
Following Allied military victories, the camps were gradually liberated in 1944 and 1945, although hundreds of thousands of prisoners died in the death marches.
After the expansion of Nazi Germany, people from countries occupied by the Wehrmacht were targeted and detained in concentration camps. In Western Europe, arrests focused on resistance fighters and saboteurs, but in Eastern Europe arrests included mass roundups aimed at the implementation of Nazi population policy and the forced recruitment of workers. This led to a predominance of Eastern Europeans, especially Poles, who made up the majority of the population of some camps. The ethnicities of captured people were various other groups from other different nationalities were transferred to Auschwitz or sent to local concentration camps.
Occupied countries
The countries occupied included all, or most, of the following nations or territories:
Governments in exile
Allied governments in exile
Axis governments in exile
Neutral governments in exile
See also
- Areas annexed by Nazi Germany
- Underground media in German-occupied Europe
- Drang nach Osten ("The Drive Eastward")
- Greater Germanic Reich
- Lebensraum ("Living Space")
- Neuordnung ("New Order")
- Pan-Germanism
Notes
Bibliography
- Bank, Jan. Churches and Religion in the Second World War (Occupation in Europe) (2016).
- Gildea, Robert and Olivier Wieviorka. Surviving Hitler and Mussolini: Daily Life in Occupied Europe (2007).
- Klemann, Hein A.M. and Sergei Kudryashov, eds. Occupied Economies: An Economic History of Nazi-Occupied Europe, 1939–1945 (2011).
- Lagrou, Pieter. The Legacy of Nazi Occupation: Patriotic Memory and National Recovery in Western Europe, 1945–1965 (1999).
- Mazower, Mark (2008). Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 9780713996814.
- Scheck, Raffael; Fabien Théofilakis; and Julia S. Torrie, eds. German-occupied Europe in the Second World War (Routledge, 2019), 276 pp. .
- Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010), on Eastern Europe.
- Toynbee, Arnold, ed. Survey of International Affairs, 1939–1946: Hitler's Europe (Oxford University Press, 1954), 730 pp. ; .
Primary sources
- Carlyle Margaret, ed. Documents on International Affairs, 1939–1946. Volume II, Hitler's Europe (Oxford University Press, 1954), 362 pp.