Occupation Flashcards
1
Q
What was the Polish occupation like?
A
- In September 1939, the Nazi’s invaded to take the lebensraum (living space) they thought they deserved.
- By October, Poland had ceased to exist and was split into 5 regions. 4 regions would be incorporated into Germany.
- The fifth and largest region was called the General Government and was rules by Hand Frank as Governor General.
2
Q
How did the Nazis plan to remove Polish culture?
A
Removing culture: In May 1940, Polish culture, education (schools and universities) and leadership were all systemically destroyed. Around 30,000 of the most talented Poles were arrested.
Removing Slavic poles: Slavic Poles were considered racially inferior and 1.9 million non-Jewish citizens were murdered by the SS and Wehrmacht (German army).
Removing other Poles: Between 1939 and 1945, 1.5 million other Poles were sent to do forced labour in Germany. The Polish Decrees established rules for these workers, paying them less and humiliating them.
Removing Jewish Poles: The worst fate was experienced by the Polish Jews. The 3.5 million population was ghettoised and 3 million would be murdered in death camps.
3
Q
How did the Polish people resist?
A
- The Polish government, which had escaped to London in 1939, helped to establish Delegatura, a secret state within Poland.
- In August 1944, the Poles staged an uprising in Warsaw, a bitter struggle against Nazi rule that lasted for 2 months. The Nazi’s brutally crushed this, with 200,000 killed.
4
Q
How did the Nazi’s occupy the Netherlands?
A
- The Dutch were seen as having the same ethnic background as the Germans so were treated more as equals.
- Civil servants were allowed to continue working if they chose to, although 30% of town mayors stepped down.
- The Dutch education system wasn’t changed.
- A Dutch brigade of SS soldiers was created.
- On 29 June 1940, many Dutch people wore a white carnation, the flower of their now exiled royal family, but no one was punished.
5
Q
How did the Nazi’s change their tactics to reduce Dutch resistance?
A
- In February 1941, 425 Jewish men were rounded up for deportation.
- Dutch communists called for a strike in retaliation. Trams stopped working and strikers marched in the streets in many Dutch towns.
- The German shot at the strikers. 9 were killed and hundreds were arrested.
- On 13 March 1941, the first death sentences against Dutch citizens were issued.
- 3 strikers and 15 members of the Dutch resistance were shot.
6
Q
How did the Nazis intimidate and act violently towards the Dutch in 1943?
A
- In April 1942, all Jewish people had to wear the Star of David.
- In 1943, the Nazis began deporting Jewish people to extermination camps. 107,000 Jewish people (76% of Jewish population) were deported.
- With German men fighting on the front lines it was decided that Dutch men would be used as forced labour. By 1944, all men between the ages 16-60 had to report for forced labour. 500,000 ended up working in Germany. 1/3 of all eligible men.
- Dutch resistance grew as a result of this. They hid 300,000 men from forced labour and illegally published anti-Nazi leaflets.
- 20,000 resistance members were arrested. Most were sent to the 4 Dutch concentration camps.
- Living conditions has slowly worsened through the was but in winter of 1944-45 food shortages became severe. 20,000 Dutch people died of starvation.
- On 5 May 1945, the Netherlands was liberated by Canadian soldiers.
7
Q
What was the Holocaust?
A
- 11 million individuals, including Jewish people, Slavs, Sinti and Roma, Communists and gay people, had been murdered by the Nazi by 1945.
- Nearly 6 million were Jewish whom the Nazis systematically eradicated.
- As the Nazis occupied more countries in the east they controlled larger populations of Jewish people. They saw this as a ‘Jewish problem’ that needed a solution.
8
Q
How did the Nazis eliminate the large numbers of Jewish people?
A
- With 3.5 million Jewish people in Poland, forced emigration wouldn’t work.
- The Nazis decided they would move the Jewish people of Europe to a new reservation (an area of the Soviet Union was discussed) but in 1939 they didn’t have the land to do this.
- At a first step towards this they concentrated Jewish people into ghettos (enclosed districts in most towns) so they would be ready for deportation.
- Ghettos varied in size and there were hundreds in German-occupied Poland alone.
- The largest ghetto was in Warsaw. Completed in May 1940, by March 1941 the ghetto had 445,000 Jewish inhabitants. A third of the Warsaw population lived in 2.4% of its area.
- Overcrowding led to disease and death, particularly in the young and old. In its 3 year existence, over 140,000 died.
9
Q
What was the mass murder of Jewish people?
A
- The Einsatzgruppen were mobile killing units of SS men, police and auxiliary units recruited from the local population.
- 4 Einsatzgruppen (A,B,C and D), each consisting of 500-1000 men, followed the Wehrmacht as they invaded the Soviet Union.
- As they reached villages and towns, Jewish people and Communists were rounded up. Taken to a secluded area, often in woodland, the victims were forced to dig a large pit, then lined up and shot.
- In the winter of 1941, 90% of the victims were Jewish, around 1 million people.
- One of the worst crimes was at Babi Yar in Ukraine where 33,000 Jewish people were murdered in a single day.
10
Q
How were the Jewish people is occupied Poland murdered?
A
- With no reservation found, in the autumn of 1941, the Nazi’s decided they would exterminate Jewish people in the General Government (Operation Reinhard).
- They began at Chelmno, where Jewish people were based to death in vans by exhaust fumes.
- New extermination or death camps were created, the sole purpose of which was to murder. By 1942 Belzec (March), Sobibor (May) and Treblinka (July) were all operational.
- Each of the camps was kept in great secrecy. Managed by only 25-30 officers, the camps were all in wooded area away from large towns.
- Jewish people were deported from the ghettos and would arrive at what appeared to be a train station. They were then stripped of their clothing and possessions before being gassed in chambers, which had been made to look like showers.
- By the end of the war, 1.7 million Polish Jews had been murdered in the camps.
11
Q
What was the plan in 1942?
A
- In January 1942, in a 90-minute meeting at Wannsee, Reinhard Heydrich introduced the plan.
- The Jewish people of occupied Europe would be removed from their home countries and transported in trains to the General Government, where they would be murdered by gassing.
- Adolf Eichmann, a senior SS officer who was at the meeting, was put in charge of organising this mass murder.
12
Q
What was Auschwitz II-Birkenau was the most famous extermination camp?
A
- 4 gas chambers and crematoria (where the bodies would be burned) were designed and built to kill and dispose of thousands of Jewish people at the same time.
- Jewish people from across Europe were transported to the site in cattle trucks, packed like animals, with no water or toilet facilities.
- When the trains arrived, the prisoners formed two lines of men and women. SS guards and doctors then began a selection process.
- The fit and able were sent to the right to be forced to work in the factories connected to the site. Everyone else (75%) were sent to the left to be gassed immediately.
- The gas chambers were designed to look like showers. Zyklon B pellets were dropped in through the roof. The victims were dead within 20 minutes.
- Sonderkommandos (groups of Jewish people forced to work for the Nazi’s) would then enter the chambers, wearing gas masks, and remove the bodies to be burned in giant ovens.
- Up to 12,000 individuals were murdered per day.
13
Q
How did the inhabitants of occupied countries decide to respond to Nazi rule?
A
Collaborate - Work with or for the Nazi’s, actively helping them in their occupation.
Accommodate - Tolerate or put up with Nazi occupiers but do nothing to actively help this.
Resist - Work against the Nazis, actively resisting their occupation. This stretched from very small to large acts of terrorism.
14
Q
How was France split into the northern occupied zone and southern ‘free’ zone?
A
- The ‘southern zone’, known as Vichy France, was ruled by the 84 year old, right-wing French nationalist Philippe Pétain. The northern zone was directly ruled by the Nazis.
- Both zones suffered hardships. Hundreds of thousands of French men were sent to Germany as forced labourers. Over 70,000 French Jews were deported to death camps.
- Some people joined the French Resistance, who fought against Nazi rule by passing intelligence to the Allies or sabotaging Nazi rule.
- Other people took part in more minor resistance like listening to BBC on the radio.
15
Q
Who was André Trocmé?
A
- A Protestant pastor of the small village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in south-east France.
- When the authorities in Vichy France began putting foreign Jewish people into concentration camps, he felt that he had to act.
- Between December 1940 and September 1944, Trocmé arranged for 5000 Jewish people, mainly children, to be hidden around his Parish.
- The local population worked together to place them in homes, hotels, farms and schools. They forged identification cards and ration cards, and in some cases led escapes to Switzerland.
- In February 1943, Trocmé was arrested. Eventually released after 28 days, he continued his work. But, in late 1943, he had to go into hiding himself for the rest of the war due to fear of further arrest.
