Occupation

• The Nazi occupation of Europe during World War II had contrasting impacts on Western and Eastern Europe
• The Channel Islands were occupied by the Nazis from June 1940 to May 1945
• Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands

  • Major decisions made by German commandant, but Channel Island politicians allowed to assist
  • Resistance and sabotage were difficult, some people collaborated while others resisted
  • Hitler announced the Channel Islands would become an "impregnable Fortress" as part of the Atlantic Wall, but most Channel Islanders refused to build the fortifications
• The Nazis quickly occupied territory in both the East and West during World War II
• Lebensraum


  The Nazi belief that they had the right to take land in the East that belonged to Germany
• After the Nazi invasion, Poland as a country no longer really existed, with the country split into regions merged into existing German lands
• Nazi policies in occupied Poland


  • Attempt to remove Polish culture and people, with hundreds of native Poles expelled and replaced by ethnic Germans
  • Polish culture attacked, with schools and universities closed
  • Poles viewed as racially inferior, with many murdered by the Army and SS, and others sent as forced labor to Germany
• The Nazis murdered around 3 million Polish Jews during World War II
• The Polish resistance movement was one of the largest in Nazi-occupied Europe
• The Netherlands was invaded by Germany on 10 May 1940, with the Dutch government surrendering on 14 May 1940
• Nazi occupation of the Netherlands

  • Dutch civil servants continued and education was unchanged at first
  • There was much initial compliance, but reaction began to change around 1941-1942
  • Deportation of Dutch Jews began in 1943, with 107,000 deported to extermination camps
  • By 1944, all Dutch men aged 16-60 had to report for forced labor, leading to increased resistance
• The Netherlands was liberated by Canadian soldiers on 5 May 1945, five years after the Nazi occupation began
• The Holocaust was a crime against humanity that took place during World War II, resulting in the murder of 11 million individuals, including 6 million Jewish people
• Stages of Nazi policy towards Jewish people

  1. 1938-1939: Forced immigration of Jewish people

  2. 1939-1941: Concentration of Jews in ghettos

  3. 1941: "Holocaust by bullets" - mass killings by Einsatzgruppen

  4. 1942: Announcement of the "Final Solution" and creation of death camps
• Before the Nazi occupation, Jewish people in Austria had equal status, but were then persecuted, beaten, and had their property looted and confiscated
• The Nazis were unable to force the emigration of Polish Jews, so instead concentrated them in ghettos to prepare for mass deportation
• The Vienna model of persecution was used to encourage immigration
• The Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939, having taken control of the Sudetenland in September-October 1938
• In September 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland
• There were only 3.5 million Jews living in Poland, which had the most Jewish people in Europe
• Forced immigration was not possible as Austria only had 192,000 Jewish people
• The Nazis planned to move all the Jews of Europe to a reservation, but did not own any suitable land
• Jewish people were put into ghettos to be ready for mass deportation
• Ghettos


  • Closed districts which isolated Jews from non-Jewish people
  • The largest ghetto was the Warsaw Ghetto, completed in November 1940 with 445,000 Jewish inhabitants in just 2.4% of the city's area
• Terrible conditions in the ghettos led to disease and death, particularly among the young and old
• The Holocaust by bullets

  1. Invading forces were given orders to purge the Soviet occupied territories of all 'hostile elements'

  2. Jews were targeted and rounded up by Einsatzgruppen mobile killing units

  3. Around 1 million people were murdered in the Autumn of 1941
• One of the worst crimes took place at Babi Yar in Ukraine, where 33,000 Jewish people were killed in a single day
• Operation Reinhard


  1. Ordered the killing of all Jews in the General Government area of Poland

  2. Death camps were created such as Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka to kill Jews using gas chambers
• Jews were deported from ghettos to the death camps, stripped of clothing and possessions, and killed in the gas chambers
• Some Jews managed to resist the process, such as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1944
• By the end of the war, 1.7 million Polish Jews had been murdered in Nazi death camps
• On 20 January 1942, the Wannsee Conference was held where Nazi leaders laid out plans for the mass murder of the Jews, known as the 'Final Solution'
• Auschwitz


  • Experiments to mass murder inmates using Zyklon B gas began in September 1941
  • By late 1941, Auschwitz was overrun with prisoners, so Auschwitz-Birkenau was created
  • Jews from across Europe were transported in cattle trucks to Auschwitz, where those deemed unfit for work were sent to the gas chambers
• It's estimated that 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz, around one in six victims of the Holocaust
• In January 1945, as the Soviet Army approached, the Nazis ordered the gas chambers at Auschwitz to be destroyed and the camp evacuated
• Collaborators


  People who worked with the Nazis and actively helped them in their occupation
• Accommodators


  People who put up with the Nazi occupiers but did not actively help them
• Resistance


  People who worked against the Nazis and resisted their occupation, ranging from passive to active resistance
• Collaboration in France

  • Coco Chanel became friends with Nazi officers and tried to take over a company by removing its Jewish directors
• Accommodation in France

  • Many French people complied with Nazi rule and cooperated with the occupiers, at least initially