An Iron Wind

An Iron Wind
Author: Peter Fritzsche
Publisher:
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2016-10-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0465057748

From a prize-winning historian, a vivid account of German-occupied Europe during World War II that reveals civilians’ struggle to understand

Life Under Nazi Occupation

Life Under Nazi Occupation
Author: Paul Roland
Publisher: Arcturus Publishing
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2020-04-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1839404728

When the Nazis invaded, they did not intend to govern fairly. Instead they stripped defeated nations of their treasures, industry and natural resources, with the aim of asserting German supremacy and imposing Hitler's New Order in Europe. Paul Roland tells the story of daily life under Nazi rule - in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Guernsey and the Channel Islands- to be brought to heel by bribery and brutality, rape and torture, inducement and intimidation as the Germans carried out their vile policies. We hear of quislings and collaborators who conspired with their captors, the 'enemies of the Reich' including Jewish citizens who were rounded up and exterminated, as well as stories of incredible courage by individuals who struck back against the Führer. Featuring haunting photographs of the people and places under occupation, this shocking book confronts us with the reality of the Nazi rule - a regime which would have swept the entirety of Europe, had Germany won the war.

The Holocaust and Life Under Nazi Occupation

The Holocaust and Life Under Nazi Occupation
Author: Peter Darman
Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group
Total Pages: 66
Release: 2013
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 144889235X

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

Daily Life in Nazi-Occupied Europe

Daily Life in Nazi-Occupied Europe
Author: Harold J. Goldberg
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2019-10-25
Genre: History
ISBN:

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.

Harvest of Despair

Harvest of Despair
Author: Karel C. Berkhoff
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 492
Release: 2008-03-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780674020788

“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.

Hitler's Slaves

Hitler's Slaves
Author: Alexander von Plato
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 567
Release: 2010-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1845459903

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.

Smolensk Under the Nazis

Smolensk Under the Nazis
Author: Laurie R. Cohen
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 379
Release: 2013
Genre: History
ISBN: 1580464696

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.

Survivors

Survivors
Author: Jadwiga Biskupska
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2022-02-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1009027557

Survivors tells the story of life in Nazi occupied Warsaw, a city that was ruthlessly and brutally targeted by Nazi Germany from 1939 to 1944. Jadwiga Biskupska traces how Germany set out to dismantle the Polish nation and state by targeting the Warsaw intelligentsia and explores the intelligentsia's resistance to Nazi occupation.

Occupation in the East

Occupation in the East
Author: Stephan Lehnstaedt
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2016-11-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1785333240

Following their occupation by the Third Reich, Warsaw and Minsk became home to tens of thousands of Germans. In this exhaustive study, Stephan Lehnstaedt provides a nuanced, eye-opening portrait of the lives of these men and women, who constituted a surprisingly diverse population—including everyone from SS officers to civil servants, as well as ethnically German city residents—united in its self-conception as a “master race.” Even as they acclimated to the daily routines and tedium of life in the East, many Germans engaged in acts of shocking brutality against Poles, Belarusians, and Jews, while social conditions became increasingly conducive to systematic mass murder.

Life and Death in the Third Reich

Life and Death in the Third Reich
Author: Peter Fritzsche
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2009-09-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674254015

On January 30, 1933, hearing about the celebrations for Hitler’s assumption of power, Erich Ebermayer remarked bitterly in his diary, “We are the losers, definitely the losers.” Learning of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, which made Jews non-citizens, he raged, “hate is sown a million-fold.” Yet in March 1938, he wept for joy at the Anschluss with Austria: “Not to want it just because it has been achieved by Hitler would be folly.” In a masterful work, Peter Fritzsche deciphers the puzzle of Nazism’s ideological grip. Its basic appeal lay in the Volksgemeinschaft—a “people’s community” that appealed to Germans to be part of a great project to redress the wrongs of the Versailles treaty, make the country strong and vital, and rid the body politic of unhealthy elements. The goal was to create a new national and racial self-consciousness among Germans. For Germany to live, others—especially Jews—had to die. Diaries and letters reveal Germans’ fears, desires, and reservations, while showing how Nazi concepts saturated everyday life. Fritzsche examines the efforts of Germans to adjust to new racial identities, to believe in the necessity of war, to accept the dynamic of unconditional destruction—in short, to become Nazis. Powerful and provocative, Life and Death in the Third Reich is a chilling portrait of how ideology takes hold.