Paul Roland - Life Under Nazi Occupation: The Struggle to Survive During World War II

The author wishes to express his gratitude to the following for providing archival material and sourcing academic publications Michael Roland (Head Researcher) and Dany Deville. Also thank you to the following for indicating secondary sources: George Fotakis of Crete, Nikola Stojanovic, Jan Bogucki, Karen Swartz, RS Romain, Jeremy Chateau and Stig Slatuun.

Thank you also to Barbara Eldridge of the Anne Frank Fonds for permission to quote extracts from Anne Franks diary ANNE FRANK FONDS Basel, Switzerland.

When diplomacy ends, war begins.

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler had envisaged establishing by force a New Order in Europe, which Germany would govern with an iron fist. Conceived as the natural successor to the Holy Roman Empire of 8001806 and the German Empire of 18711918, the Third Reich would last a thousand years, would leave imposing ruins to compare with those of ancient Rome and would make either subjects or slaves of all the nations of Europe. Hitler believed himself to have been chosen by Providence to lead the revolutionary struggle against Bolshevism and to raise a defeated and humiliated nation from its knees and urge it on to glory.

In speech after speech, he repeated his assertion that he had been entrusted with a quasi-religious mission, that of ridding the continent of inferior races and of establishing the Germans and their Aryan brothers as the Master Race. No sacrifice would be too great to attain this end; no suffering would be too much to ask. And if the Untermenschen, or subhuman races, were eradicated in the process, then so be it. They were expendable.

Alliances would be made and promises broken with impunity. The end would justify the means. The bermenschen superior men would not be restrained by laws, morality or religious dictates. National Socialism was the new religion, a pseudo-pagan cult with Hitler as its figurehead, Mein Kampf as its bible and the swastika supplanting the Christian cross.

Once the tanks were rolling across Europes borders, the Fhrers enemies routed, their cities reduced to rubble, German troops would march in triumph through the streets, fulfilling their destiny. All would be humbled and bow before them.

Adolf Hitler believed the Third Reich would last a thousand years and would leave imposing ruins to compare with those of ancient Rome. More than that, he wanted to make subjects or slaves of all the other nations of Europe.

This was a despots dream, the febrile vision of a megalomaniac, but few in Germany, or in Hitlers native Austria, could see the abyss to which he was leading them. As Chancellor, he had done so much in a short time to restore German pride. As for his threats to eradicate the communists, the Jews and the undesirables, this was surely only rhetoric to whip up support among those who blamed Germanys enemies for their defeat in 1918. These excesses would be curtailed in time and moderation would prevail.

The old enemy, France, and its allies, Britain and America, dreaded the thought of another war. They were weary after fighting the last one, which they had prayed would be the war to end wars, and were all too eager to secure peace at any price. Britain had its appeasers and America its isolationists and at the time of the Munich crisis in September 1938, it seemed that their fear of another war might force them to come to an accommodation with Herr Hitler who, in defiance of the Versailles Treaty, had rearmed Germany and seemed in unseemly haste to put its new weapons, air force and highly disciplined troops to the test.

Too few had read Mein Kampf, in which the former corporal in the Bavarian army made no secret of his plans to conquer Eastern Europe, enslave the Slavs and implement the Final Solution to the problem posed by the Jews: the persistent, pernicious myth that they exercised undue influence in world affairs to the detriment of hard-working, God-fearing Aryans.

The Nazis imposed laws and decrees on the conquered people of Europe that denied them their rights under international law, specifically the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. The law of military occupation as defined in the Conventions does not grant the invader unlimited power over the population and yet, the Nazis, together with their Axis allies and various puppet regimes, deprived the conquered people of their security and protection to which they were entitled in time of war.

But the Nazis were inconsistent in their treatment of their occupied territories across Europe. They initially treated Nordic nations with some degree of sympathy and even consideration, in the hope that they might persuade the Danes, the Norwegians and the Dutch to join their mythical crusade against inferior races. Meanwhile, the countries of Eastern Europe were to be Germanized by the forced eviction of the indigenous people and the settlement of German colonists. Denmark, Norway and Holland were to be assimilated into the Reich, while France was to become a German dependency. Poland and its neighbours were to be erased from the map, their property and businesses requisitioned and resources plundered.

In the first year of the occupation (194041), the Nazis issued many of the 330 decrees that were later collected in Raphael Lemkins Axis Rule In Occupied Europe (1944), a damning indictment of Nazi policies which would be cited by war crimes investigators and the Allied occupation forces in post-war Europe. These reveal the contradictions and indecision that beset the regime, which had no co-ordinated policy in many significant areas and seemed to have been concocted from Hitlers informal table talks. The Nazi leadership was deliberately vague when it came to describing the nature of their envisaged empire. Speaking to German newspapermen in April 1940, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels said, If anyone asks how you conceive the new Europe, we have to reply that we dont know When the time comes, we will know very well what we want.

But a lack of unity and vision within the Nazi leadership would lead to confusion and a fierce, destructive rivalry. In their arrogance and naivety, Nazi party officials and department heads assumed that those in the occupied countries would accept the invasion of their territories and the displacement of their people without putting up a fight. But almost everywhere resistance was fierce and came from the most unlikely quarters. Ultimately, the will to survive while retaining some semblance of dignity and individuality proved the most potent force in the face of Nazi oppression.

It could be argued that the German occupation of Europe began on 7 March 1936, for on that day German troops reoccupied the Rhineland in open defiance of both the Versailles Treaty and the Locarno Pact which guaranteed the borders of sovereign states.

This 30-mile (50 km) demilitarized strip along the Rhine bordering Germany and its old enemies France, Belgium and the Netherlands had been intended as a buffer zone to deter any future invasion by a belligerent and vengeful Germany. But Hitler was determined to demonstrate his disregard for the punitive restraints imposed on his country by the Allies after Germanys defeat in 1918 and also to establish his authority before a sceptical High Command which resented taking orders from the former corporal.

It was an audacious gamble. Had the French soldiers forced the Germans back, Hitler would have been humiliated, his plans for invading Europe postponed, or even abandoned. There was also a distinct possibility that disaffected members of the German General Staff might have been sufficiently emboldened to attempt a coup.