Life Under Nazi Occupation

Chronicles the horrors of the Holocaust, looking at events from Kristallnacht to the Allied liberation of the death camps.

A vivid account of German-occupied Europe during World War II that reveals civilians' struggle to understand the terrifying chaos of war In An Iron Wind, prize-winning historian Peter Fritzsche draws diaries, letters, and other first-person accounts to show how civilians in occupied Europe tried to make sense of World War II. As the Third Reich targeted Europe's Jews for deportation and death, confusion and mistrust reigned. What were Hitler's aims? Did Germany's rapid early victories mark the start of an enduring new era? Was collaboration or resistance the wisest response to occupation? How far should solidarity and empathy extend? And where was God? People desperately tried to understand the horrors around them, but the stories they told themselves often justified a selfish indifference to their neighbors' fates. Piecing together the broken words of the war's witnesses and victims, Fritzsche offers a haunting picture of the most violent conflict in modern history.

“If I find a Ukrainian who is worthy of sitting at the same table with me, I must have him shot,” declared Nazi commissar Erich Koch. To the Nazi leaders, the Ukrainians were Untermenschen—subhumans. But the rich land was deemed prime territory for Lebensraum expansion. Once the Germans rid the country of Jews, Roma, and Bolsheviks, the Ukrainians would be used to harvest the land for the master race. Karel Berkhoff provides a searing portrait of life in the Third Reich’s largest colony. Under the Nazis, a blend of German nationalism, anti-Semitism, and racist notions about the Slavs produced a reign of terror and genocide. But it is impossible to understand fully Ukraine’s response to this assault without addressing the impact of decades of repressive Soviet rule. Berkhoff shows how a pervasive Soviet mentality worked against solidarity, which helps explain why the vast majority of the population did not resist the Germans. He also challenges standard views of wartime eastern Europe by treating in a more nuanced way issues of collaboration and local anti-Semitism. Berkhoff offers a multifaceted discussion that includes the brutal nature of the Nazi administration; the genocide of the Jews and Roma; the deliberate starving of Kiev; mass deportations within and beyond Ukraine; the role of ethnic Germans; religion and national culture; partisans and the German response; and the desperate struggle to stay alive. Harvest of Despair is a gripping depiction of ordinary people trying to survive extraordinary events.

Acclaimed journalist Charlie Glass looks to the American expatriate experience of Nazi-occupied Paris to reveal a fascinating forgotten history of the greatest generation. In Americans in Paris, tales of adventure, intrigue, passion, deceit, and survival unfold season by season, from the spring of 1940 to liberation in the summer of 1944, as renowned journalist Charles Glass tells the story of a remarkable cast of expatriates and their struggles in Nazi Paris. Before the Second World War began, approximately thirty thousand Americans lived in Paris, and when war broke out in 1939 almost five thousand remained. As citizens of a neutral nation, the Americans in Paris believed they had little to fear. They were wrong. Glass's discovery of letters, diaries, war documents, and police files reveals as never before how Americans were trapped in a web of intrigue, collaboration, and courage. Artists, writers, scientists, playboys, musicians, cultural mandarins, and ordinary businessmen-all were swept up in extraordinary circumstances and tested as few Americans before or since. Charles Bedaux, a French-born, naturalized American millionaire, determined his alliances as a businessman first, a decision that would ultimately make him an enemy to all. Countess Clara Longworth de Chambrun was torn by family ties to President Roosevelt and the Vichy government, but her fiercest loyalty was to her beloved American Library of Paris. Sylvia Beach attempted to run her famous English-language bookshop, Shakespeare & Company, while helping her Jewish friends and her colleagues in the Resistance. Dr. Sumner Jackson, wartime chief surgeon of the American Hospital in Paris, risked his life aiding Allied soldiers to escape to Britain and resisting the occupier from the first day. These stories and others come together to create a unique portrait of an eccentric, original, diverse American community. Charles Glass has written an exciting, fast-paced, and elegant account of the moral contradictions faced by Americans in Paris during France's dangerous occupation years. For four hard years, from the summer of 1940 until U.S. troops liberated Paris in August 1944, Americans were intimately caught up in the city's fate. Americans in Paris is an unforgettable tale of treachery by some, cowardice by others, and unparalleled bravery by a few.

Daily Life in Nazi-Occupied Europe provides readers with information about political and military affairs, economic life, religious life, intellectual life, and other aspects of daily life in those countries occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II. By the end of 1940, the Nazis controlled most of Europe, and in 1941 they invaded the Soviet Union to complete their mission of domination. The pattern of human resistance to the occupation was equally widespread-in every country, at least a significant minority of the population fought for human dignity. Why did so many risk their lives and refuse to accept defeat? This book goes beyond the impact of the occupation on different European countries, examining that impact on individuals who, regardless of what country they lived in, faced a desperate search for food and the constant threat of death. This volume is intended to help readers to see the variety of struggles that contributed to the defeat of the oppressive occupation imposed by the Nazis. Readers will come away with an appreciation of the fact that there were as many types of daily lives as there were individuals under the occupation and that every person in the war had a unique experience.

Drawing on oral-history interviews and other sources, this work provides fascinating accounts of how Soviets, Jews, and Roma fared in the Russian city of Smolensk under the 26-month Nazi occupation. The 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union ("Operation Barbarossa") significantly altered the lives of the civilians in occupied Russian territories, yet these individuals' stories are overlooked by most scholarly treatments ofthe attack and its aftermath. This study, drawing on oral-history interviews and a broad range of archival sources, provides a fascinating and detailed account of the everyday life of Soviets, Jews, Roma, and Germans in the city of Smolensk during its twenty-six months under Nazi rule. Smolensk under the Nazis records the profound and painful effects of the invasion and occupation on the 30,000 civilian residents (out of a prewar population ofroughly 155,000) who remained in this border town. It also compares Nazi and Stalinist local propaganda efforts, as well as examining the stance of Russian civilians, thereby investigating what it meant to support -- or hinder --the new Nazi-German and collaborating Russian authorities. By underlining the human dimensions of the war and its often neglected long-term effects, Laurie Cohen promotes a more complex understanding of life under occupation. Smolensk under the Nazis thus complements recent works on everyday life in occupied Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic States as well as on the siege of Leningrad. Laurie R. Cohen is Adjunct Professor at the Universities of Innsbruck and Klagenfurt.

During World War II at least 13.5 million people were employed as forced labourers in Germany and across the territories occupied by the German Reich. Most came from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldavia, the Baltic countries, France, Poland and Italy. Among them were 8.4 million civilians working for private companies and public agencies in industry, administration and agriculture. In addition, there were 4.6 million prisoners of war and 1.7 million concentration camp prisoners who were either subjected to forced labour in concentration or similar camps or were ‘rented out’ or sold by the SS. While there are numerous publications on forced labour in National Socialist Germany during World War II, this publication combines a historical account of events with the biographies and memories of former forced labourers from twenty-seven countries, offering a comparative international perspective.