German-occupied Europe, or Nazi-occupied Europe, refers to the sovereign countries of

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

which were wholly or partly militarily occupied and civil-occupied, including

puppet state A puppet state, puppet régime, puppet government or dummy government is a State (polity), state that is ''de jure'' independent but ''de facto'' completely dependent upon an outside Power (international relations), power and subject to its ord ...

s, by the (armed forces) and the

government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive (government), execu ...

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

at various times between 1939 and 1945, during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, administered by the Nazi regime under the

dictatorship A dictatorship is an autocratic form of government which is characterized by a leader, or a group of leaders, who hold governmental powers with few to no Limited government, limitations. Politics in a dictatorship are controlled by a dictator, ...

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...

.Encyclopædia Britannica
German occupied Europe.
World War II. Retrieved 1 September 2015 from the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

. The occupied European territory: * as far east as Franz Joseph Land in

Arkhangelsk Oblast Arkhangelsk Oblast ( rus, Архангельская область, p=ɐrˈxanɡʲɪlʲskəjə ˈobɫəsʲtʲ) is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject of Russia (an oblast). It includes the Arctic Ocean, Arctic archipelagos of Franz ...

Russian SFSR The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russian SFSR or RSFSR), previously known as the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and the Russian Soviet Republic, and unofficially as Soviet Russia,Declaration of Rights of the labo ...

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

(1943–1944) * as far north as Franz Joseph Land in Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (1943–1944) * as far south as the island of

Gavdos Gavdos ( ) is the southernmost Greek island, located to the south of its much larger neighbour, Crete, of which it is administratively a part, in the regional unit of Chania. It forms a community with surrounding islets and was part of the forme ...

in the

Kingdom of Greece The Kingdom of Greece (, Romanization, romanized: ''Vasíleion tis Elládos'', pronounced ) was the Greece, Greek Nation state, nation-state established in 1832 and was the successor state to the First Hellenic Republic. It was internationally ...

* as far west as the island of

Ushant Ushant (; , ; , ) is a French island at the southwestern end of the English Channel which marks the westernmost point of metropolitan France. It belongs to Brittany and in medieval times, Léon. In lower tiers of government, it is a commune in t ...

in the

French Republic France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

In 1941, around 280 million people in Europe, more than half the population, were governed by Germany or their allies and puppet states. Outside of Europe, German forces controlled areas of

North Africa North Africa (sometimes Northern Africa) is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region. However, it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of t ...

, including

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

Libya Libya, officially the State of Libya, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to Egypt–Libya border, the east, Sudan to Libya–Sudan border, the southeast, Chad to Chad–L ...

, and

Tunisia Tunisia, officially the Republic of Tunisia, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered by Algeria to the west and southwest, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Tunisia also shares m ...

between 1940 and 1945. German military scientists established the Schatzgraber Weather Station as far north as

Alexandra Land Alexandra Land () is a large island located in Franz Josef Land, Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia. Not counting detached and far-lying Victoria Island (Russian Arctic), Victoria Island, it is the westernmost island of Franz Josef Land. It is the site ...

in Francis Joseph Land. Manned German weather stations also operated in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

included three in

Greenland Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. It is by far the largest geographically of three constituent parts of the kingdom; the other two are metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenlan ...

, Holzauge, Bassgeiger, and Edelweiss. German

Kriegsmarine The (, ) was the navy of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It superseded the Imperial German Navy of the German Empire (1871–1918) and the inter-war (1919–1935) of the Weimar Republic. The was one of three official military branch, branche ...

ships also operated in all oceans of the world throughout World War II.

History

Several German-occupied countries initially entered

Allies An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not an explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are calle ...

of the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

or the

. 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

were officially neutral. Others were former members of the

Axis powers The Axis powers, originally called the Rome–Berlin Axis and also Rome–Berlin–Tokyo Axis, was the military coalition which initiated World War II and fought against the Allies of World War II, Allies. Its principal members were Nazi Ge ...

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 The chancellor of Germany, officially the federal chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, is the head of the federal Cabinet of Germany, government of Germany. The chancellor is the chief executive of the Federal Government of Germany, ...

. Following the 1934 purge of the SA, the concentration camps were run exclusively by the 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

, 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 Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural and socio-economic connotations. Its eastern boundary is marked by the Ural Mountain ...

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 Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschw ...

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

Notes

References

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). * * Scheck, Raffael; Fabien Théofilakis; and Julia S. Torrie, eds. ''German-occupied Europe in the Second World War'' (Routledge, 2019), 276 pp
online review
* 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
online review

full text online free

Primary sources

* Carlyle Margaret, ed. ''Documents on International Affairs, 1939–1946. Volume II, Hitler's Europe'' (Oxford University Press, 1954), 362 pp.

External links

BBC – History – Germany advances through Europe (pictures, video, facts & news)
{{WWII history by nation World War II occupied territories

Axis powers Nazi Germany