The Third Reich occupied large swathes of Europe between 1938 and 1945. In 1938/39, massive political pressure led to the annexation of Austria, the Memel Territory (Klaipeda Region) and the Sudeten region as a result of a military invasion of the Bohemian territories. After the Germans had invaded Poland, half of the country fell under German occupation, followed in 1940 by Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of France and two of the British Channel Islands. Having already occupied Albania in 1939, Mussolini also had troops march into southern France in June 1940 and attacked Greece in October 1940. Following the German campaign in the Balkans in April 1941, Yugoslavia and Greece were divided up among several Axis states, while northern Slovenia and Serbia came under German rule, along with the Salonika region.
When Germany attacked the Soviet Union, it occupied eastern Poland along with the Baltic states, Belarus, Ukraine and parts of the Russian Federation – an area extending from Leningrad to the Caucasus. Romania was assigned an area of occupation in the regions around Odessa. In North Africa, German-Italian troops advanced through Tunisia to Egypt, while in November 1942 the Wehrmacht also marched into Vichy France. From 1943 onwards Hitler ordered the occupation of (formerly) allied countries, initially Italy, whose occupied territories were subsequently likewise invaded by German troops; German forces also marched into Hungary and Slovakia in 1944.
Differing administrative structures were established in the occupied territories: the Sudeten territories were fully integrated into the Reich, while Alsace, Lorraine and northern Slovenia were de facto annexed and administered by neighboring Reich territories; the west and north of Poland were assigned a special status, being given their own administration, as was the case with Bohemia and Moravia as a ‘Protectorate’. By contrast, civilian administrations ruled in Norway, the Netherlands, central and southern Poland (the ‘General Government’) and in the west of the occupied Soviet territories. Only Belgium, northern France, Serbia, the Salonika region and the eastern occupied territories in the Soviet Union came under military administration as actually provided for under international law; it was in these regions that the Wehrmacht generally had greater influence on occupation policy. By contrast, the SS and police apparatus acted more independently in eastern and south-eastern Europe. Domestic governments or puppet administrations were permitted in some countries, such as in the Protectorate, Vichy France, Denmark, Greece and Serbia, though these remained entirely dependent on the Nazi regime.
From the outset, the occupation of foreign territories was not chiefly motivated by the desire to revise the Treaty of Versailles. The key driving force derived from geostrategic German interests: in Poland, the Baltic states and the Soviet Union the aim was to acquire space for exploitation and settlement (‘living space’). This is why gigantic deportation and murder plans were drawn up, in particular the ‘Master Plan for the East’ of 1941/42. The indigenous population in Poland and the western part of the Soviet Union was to be largely expelled and replaced by ‘Germanic’ settler families, while all Jews in Europe were to be murdered. Local inhabitants, especially in occupied eastern and south-eastern Europe, were to be kept at bay through terror, with any resistance being suffocated by means of mass murder.
Nonetheless, the focus of occupation policy was economic exploitation within a German ‘Greater Economic Area’. In addition to raw materials essential to the war effort, Germany was primarily interested in agricultural products and manufacture for military purposes in western Europe and Bohemia. It soon became apparent that this policy of exploitation was not always more profitable than peacetime foreign trade relations.
From autumn 1941, German politicians focused on the recruitment of workers, increasingly in the form of forced deportation to the Reich. But the occupied territories were also plundered by German authorities and officials (and local authorities), and they were subjected to a financial policy that tacitly dispossessed local residents. According to internal German calculations relating to March 1944 alone, the occupation generated 90 billion Reichsmarks – about a third of Germany’s total income during the war. Half of this was spent on covering the costs of the occupation itself.
Around 200 million people came under German occupation: in Eastern Europe in particular they suffered from deteriorating living conditions and also starvation in many areas. Most tried to adapt to the situation of living under occupation, and many embraced the opportunities for collaboration – whether real or motivated purely by propaganda. Life always involved some degree of compromise with the German occupying forces – sometimes more, sometimes less. Many people worked with the Germans on a day-to-day basis in local administrations and police forces, also as support staff for German authorities or in the area of business and commerce.
Meanwhile, opposition was comparatively difficult. Those who were explicitly anti-German often fled or were arrested early on, while the vast majority expected German rule to last for a long time. Yet underground groups formed everywhere, supported in particular by governments in exile, with communist resistance also receiving assistance from Moscow from the summer of 1941 onwards. Partisan movements were established in Yugoslavia and in some areas of the occupied Soviet Union from 1941 onwards, while in Poland a kind of underground state was set up. From 1943/44 onwards, armed resistance developed almost everywhere in occupied Europe, reaching its peak in spectacular operations such as the Warsaw Uprising and the Slovak National Uprising in 1944.
When the turning point came in Stalingrad in early 1943, liberation of the occupied territories began, reaching most regions in 1944 and those close the Reich’s borders in 1945. In Eastern Europe, this liberation involved the installation of a new dictatorial rule wielded by the Soviet Union, while in many areas such as the Baltic states, eastern Poland and Greece, large-scale civil war had developed during the period of occupation.
With its policy of annihilation and exploitation, the German occupation left deep scars in Europe. Some 11 to 12 million people fell victim to German crimes, over 90% of them inhabitants of eastern Europe. A similar number were deported, with millions imprisoned for some period of time. Malnutrition and the experience of violence left a long-lasting mark that extends beyond the generations. The infrastructure and the economy suffered significant damage, particularly in Eastern Europe.
There were numerous links between Munich and the occupied territories, with a significant share of the personnel involved in the German occupation coming from the Bavarian capital. In the administration of the General Government in particular, there was a Munich ‘network’ around the Reich Legal Leader of the Nazi Party and Governor General Hans Frank; this included the head of the interior administration, Ernst Boepple, and the president of the labor administration, Max Frauendorfer. Munich officials also took up leading positions in other occupied territories, such as Wilhelm Harster, who was commander of the Security Police in the Netherlands. Wehrmacht and police units from Munich were deployed in the occupied territories, including sections of the 707th Infantry Division, which was largely responsible for the murder of Jews in the area around Minsk, and Police Battalions 71, 72, 73, 74, 253 and 302, most of which were from Munich. In the course of the war a total of around 5,000 police officers from the Munich area were on ‘foreign deployment’, including over 300 members of the Gestapo and the criminal investigation department, i.e. they were often involved in criminal operations in occupied territories.
Other Munich authorities were also involved in occupation policy, such as the Bavarian State Labor Office, which itself sent a commission to Ukraine to recruit for forced labor. Around 120,000 foreign men and women were deported to Munich from the occupied territories to work, around half of them from the occupied territories of Poland and the Soviet Union, some of them POWs. Most of the concentration camp inmates who were put into forced labor also came from the occupied territories. Many victims of persecution from Munich who had fled abroad were re-captured by the German troops: at least 250 Munich Jews were deported from the occupied territories, and many were arrested in exile, for example in Prague. Finally, it is important to note that the people of Munich benefited from the material exploitation of the occupied territories, too – whether through the looting carried out by Munich soldiers or the confiscation of food from Poland and the Soviet Union. As such, the occupied territories were closer to the city than one might assume given the geographical distance involved
