The experience of life under Nazi occupation varied widely across Europe, shaped by geography, ethnicity, ideology, and the military situation. Yet certain grim realities emerged wherever the German jackboot landed: repression, fear, collaboration, resistance, and, for millions, death. The occupied zones became laboratories of oppression, where Hitler’s racial policies and military pragmatism dictated who would suffer and who would survive—if survival was even an option.
The Mechanics of Occupation
In the early stages of occupation—whether in Poland in 1939, France in 1940, or Greece in 1941—the Wehrmacht moved with bureaucratic efficiency to impose order. The speed of the Blitzkrieg meant that civilian populations had little time to react before their governments either collapsed or surrendered. German administrators, often former military officers or Nazi Party loyalists, swiftly assumed control, issuing decrees that set the tone for daily life: curfews, rationing, censorship, and the ever-present threat of execution for defiance.
In the East, particularly in Poland, Ukraine, and the Soviet Union, the Germans saw no need for the diplomatic veneer applied in Western Europe. Here, occupation meant annihilation. Einsatzgruppen—mobile killing squads—followed the frontline troops, massacring Jewish populations, executing political commissars, and instilling a climate of total terror. The local populace quickly learned that any infraction, real or imagined, could result in collective punishment. Entire villages were burned in reprisal for partisan activity.
Collaboration and Resistance
In occupied France, Denmark, and the Netherlands, the Nazis relied on local collaborationist governments to administer daily life. The Vichy regime in France, under Marshal Pétain, actively assisted in deporting Jews and suppressing resistance movements. In Belgium, the fascist Rexist movement cooperated with the occupiers, while in Norway, Vidkun Quisling’s government became so synonymous with treachery that his very name became shorthand for ‘traitor.’
But if collaboration was widespread, so too was resistance. In Yugoslavia, communist partisans led by Josip Broz Tito waged an unrelenting guerrilla war against the Germans and their Croatian Ustaše allies. The French Resistance engaged in sabotage, assassinations, and intelligence gathering, often at the cost of their own lives. In Poland, the underground Home Army (Armia Krajowa) mounted the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, holding out against the Germans for over two months before being brutally crushed.
Resistance was dangerous, and reprisals were savage. In Oradour-sur-Glane, France, in 1944, the Waffen-SS massacred 642 villagers in retaliation for resistance activity. In Greece, the Germans executed entire villages suspected of harboring partisans. The brutality was systematic: anyone suspected of aiding resistance fighters was liable to be tortured, shot, or sent to a concentration camp.
Daily Life: Hunger, Fear, and Survival
For civilians, daily existence was a grim battle for survival. Food shortages were universal. In cities like Warsaw and Leningrad, starvation became a weapon of war. People bartered on the black market, scavenged for scraps, or—if fortunate—relied on Red Cross aid. Rationing often left urban populations with barely enough calories to survive.
Fear pervaded everything. Jews, Roma, and political dissidents lived under constant threat of deportation to concentration camps. Families hid in cellars or attics, relying on the goodwill of neighbors. Many children grew up knowing that a single word overheard by the wrong person could mean death.
Propaganda infiltrated every aspect of life. In occupied France, newspapers were filled with Vichy-approved messages urging cooperation with the Reich. In the Soviet territories, German radio broadcasts spread anti-Bolshevik rhetoric, attempting to convince locals that Hitler’s armies had come as liberators rather than conquerors.
The End of Occupation
As the tide of war turned in 1944–45, the Germans retreated, often leaving devastation in their wake. In Italy, German troops engaged in a scorched-earth policy as they fell back before the Allies, destroying infrastructure and executing suspected partisans. In Eastern Europe, Red Army soldiers exacted brutal revenge on German occupiers and their local collaborators.
Liberation was not always the moment of unmitigated joy it is often portrayed as. For many, especially in Eastern Europe, it simply meant exchanging one form of occupation for another. Soviet ‘liberators’ imposed their own brand of totalitarian control, arresting suspected anti-communists and enforcing strict ideological conformity. In France, so-called ‘collaborators’ were humiliated, imprisoned, or executed in the chaotic weeks following the German retreat. Women accused of consorting with German soldiers were publicly shamed, their heads shaved in acts of mob justice.
Life under Nazi occupation was an experience of relentless control, arbitrary violence, and moral compromise. Some resisted. Some collaborated. Most simply tried to survive. But the occupation left scars—on cities, on landscapes, and on the psyches of those who lived through it. And for many, the trauma did not end with liberation.
