Hi, I'm a high school student studying World War II... I need help interpreting this map...
Okay, what is the difference between something being within the borders of the German Reich, German-occupied territory, and an "Axis satellite nation"?
This is a weird thing for me to figure out, because it seems like Norway (because of the Quisling regime) would be considered a "satellite nation" or whatever. And why is it that Hitler incorporated 2/3 of Poland into the German Reich's borders but no other nation? Please help!
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You can't separate peace from freedom because
no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
Well Engel, your 1942 map is a proof of the very subtile Hitler's way to encounter political and internatinal problems looking always, as a true politician, an open door behind him to. In reality he was not the omnipowerful leader of the (western) legend.
a) The "Axis powers" was a propagandistic theme created by Mussolini in 1936 meaning Germany and Italy.
This alliance was signed only in May 1939 and was joined, then, by
Slovakia (March 1939)
Albania (Apr. 1939)
Romania (July 1940)
Bulgaria (March 1941)
Hungary (Apr. 1941)
Croatia (Apr. 1941)
Montenegro (Apr. 1941)
Finland (June 1941)
Some German occupied countries formed local, "authonomous" governments which considered themselves "at war" against the Anglosaxons and USSR
(Norway, 1942; various nationalities form the Caucasus and ex soviet Middle East, 1942; Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Slovenia 1943, Bielorussia, Ukraina, Russia, 1944).
In other occupied countries there were many popoular moviments (in Low Countries about 25% of the people), which begin at first, in 1940, picking up volounteers for the German Army or SS against the classic British capiltalistic imperialism and developed, since 1941, in a much more important anti-communist mood (Danmark, Norway, Low Countries, Belgium, France, Serbia and Greece). Many local governments of democratic or military nature helped these movements. Others volunteers arrived from Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Switzerland, Sweden and Middle East Arab countries.
The confront between your map and an European post 1991 one is an interesting one. As you can see some old German (or, better, Austrian, dreams) are back. - Someone call them nightmares, it's a question of democracy as I think that anyone has the right to have got his own opinion about the German problem - Slovenia and Croatia (with her Bosnia appendix) are again indipendent states under the German economic spehre of influience. Serbia is by consequence balanced; Montenegro is a semi indipendent reality; Slovakia is indipendent again, like in 1939-1945 while the Czech Republic (not mention the old, classic B.(u) M. name, for God's sake) is united at the German economics (think at the Wolkswagen-Skhoda connection), like Poland, the baltic states and Ukraina. The Russian influence is dominant in Bielorussia but this country is alaways and indipendent one. Berlon and Moscow seem to have an entente like the one dreamed by so many Germans generals in 1917-18 and during the Twenties, not to mention the Molotov-Ribbentrop 1939-1941 pact and the following hopes of a new German-Russian agreement since Oct. 1941 until late Sept. 1943.
The European policy is a funny (and tragic) thing, I'm afraid. Hoping all this may be useful for your studies,
sincerely EC
Few corrections to your post. Montenegro was not independent state but under occupation and part of the Italy. I believe the destiny of Montenegro, Albania and Greece was under Italian occupation and destined to be a part of New Roman Empire. Your comparison with today's political developments in Europe to WWII is ridiculous. This is especially important to mention that this new division and creation of new states in Eastern Europe did not create balanced Europe and this temporary state of affairs will be changing with change in world political dynamics, disillusionment with United Europe, and Weak and destroyed Russia and of course with decline of influence of the New Rome.
States, which had some sort of organized collaboration with Germany, can be considered as Collaborationist nations/states (e.g. Norway, Croatia, Baltic States, Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria)
States which did not have organized institutions designed to have function of state and were controlled by Germany or Italy were states under occupation (e.g. France, Serbia, Greece)
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of our liberty
Montenegro
Loses small territories to Italian Albania but gains the Sandjak from Serbia. At first nominally a kingdom under Italian military occupation; after Italy leaves the war in Sept. 1943, it has a puppet administration subject to German military rule. Evacuated by German forces from Nov. 1944 to Jan. 1945.
After WWII "Montenegrin nation is imposed violently, by the Yugoslav Communist Party leadership... It is unique example in Europe that inhabitants of one province, or republic, practically overnight become members of another, new nation (similar example does not exist). Free manifestation of peoples will was halted by oppressive measures of communist reign."
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of our liberty
Finland was never an Axis nation. Finland took great care not to be too closely associated with Germany, and consequently never joined the Axis pact nor made any other formal alliance with Germany. Consequently, the Finnish Continuation War was officially a separate war from the Barbarossa. The official term for the Fenno-German relation was 'co-belligerency'.
Finland did join the Anti-Comintern pact in autumn 1941 to ensure steady flow of food supplies from Germany, and during the critical days of Soviet offensive in June 1944 President Risto Ryti gave a personal pledge not to conclude separate peace, again to ensure flow of German help and supplies. After Ryti resigned, he was succeeded by Marshal Mannerheim and peace with the Soviet Union was soon concluded.
In fact the Reich was not only extended into Poland.
1) Austria was annexed in March 1938.
2) A large part of Bohemia-Moravia (Sudetenland) and a small part of Slovakia were annexed of Czechoslovakia at Munich later that year.
3) The rest of Bohemia-Moravia and Memel (Lithuania) were annexed in March 1939.
4) The Free State of Danzig was annexed in September 1939.
5) Border areas of southern Denmark were annexed in April 1940.
6) French Alsace and Lorraine, Luxembourg and border areas of Belgium were annexed after June 1940.
7) Parts of Slovenia were annexed to the Reich in April 1941. Technically the Bilaystok region and Galicia were taken off the USSR in 1941 (although both had been part of Poland in 1939).
9) From late 1943 Italian South Tyrol was administered by the Reich, but not openly annexed in order not to undermine Mussolini.
There were never realised plans for further annexations in both east and west.
One of the problems in defining German occupation policy is that virtually no two areas were administered in the same way as each other. At one end you have got Italy, which in 1940-41 ran a "parallel war" and so was then a full blown ally. At the other end you have areas like the Sudetenland which were almost entirely German populated and were enthusiastically absorbed into the Reich without trace or deifferentiation. In between is every possible gradation of adherence to Germany you care to mention. I will leave it up to someone with more stamina to go through them one by one.
Being a WWII enthusiast for a long time, it has been only recently that I realized I still harbor many misconceptions about the war in Europe.
Here are some questions pertaining to the puzzle of the Axis/Axis-Satelleite/Collaborationist Nations that I am beginning to ask myself... hopefully you guys can help me sort it out?...
1) Enrico: You speak of Hitler not being "the omnipowerful leader of (Western) legend". I have begun to suspect just that very thing, now that I am exploring outside of standard television documentaries and school textbooks. So my question is... did Hitler really want to conquer the world, conquer Europe, or simply create a German sphere of influence where he could economically and politically influence Europe and/or the world?
2) According to Nazi Racial Policy, the Slavs are untermensch that must be either exterminated or enslaved (at least, in my knowledge of the Holocaust). So... why did Hitler ally with Croatia and Slovakia (or Japan, for that matter)? Slovaks and Croatians are certainly Slavic peoples (and the Japanese are definitely nowhere near Aryan!). Not to mention the Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, etc. volunteers in the Wehrmacht... why did the Nazis in power allow that to be? (Some people that I have asked about this suggest that they might have been using non-Aryans as tools... but if they wanted to do that, why not just send off Jews to the front as cannon fodder? So that can't be the right answer...)
3) Why did Franco, another Fascist leader with the same ideals as Hitler, Mussolini, Ionescu, Quisling, etc. not join the Axis?
Any help would be appreciated
-----------------------------
You can't separate peace from freedom because
no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
Hitler's foreign policy was fairly consistent since the conception of Mein Kampf: the union of Volksdeutsche into a single German Reich and the colonization of the fertile eastern soil by German pioneers. The conquest of Poland was the first experimental implentation of "Greater Germany" and Himmler's beloved theories of Blut und Boden.
War with the Western powers (Britain, France) was undesirable to him, and America wasn't even on his political radar-- aside from maintaining her neutrality.
The alliance with Japan was purely pragmatic, although there were certainly Nazi personalities that admired Japanese culture and their "Aryan" warrior spirit. An alliance with Japan would threaten the colonial holdings of the Western powers were they to declare war on Germany; moreover, Hitler believed the Japanese could be useful allies in the destruction of Bolshevism.
Similiarly, the Balkan states had much to fear from the Soviets and thus were willing to join the crusade against Communism.
I've heard somewhere that the ideological emphasis on "racial purity" switched to a anti-Communist tone in various schools during this time.
Also, it's just as well that Franco didn't enter the war. Just would have been more coastline for Germany to defend.
Well Engel,
your questions are some huge ones and I dont'think that any serious historyan may grant a final answer (only some journalists and Hollywood screenpalyers could do it but, as you said before, we mean business, here not the usual low grade trade).
As you were so kind to aks for my own opinion I can give it and I'll wait here for your broadside (or the one of any reader):
Hitler program was, since the so called Hossbach memorial, 5 Nov. 1937, a simple one. To be able to fight (possibly attacking the first) the USSR without the danger of a French (and British) hit in his neck.
It's difficoult or, better, almost impossible, to reconstruct the right atmpsphere of most of the German public opinion of the Twenties and Thirties, today. The same poeple who voted, at least, in a democratic way for the nazi party allowing it to do a final, fatal allinace with the christian nationalist of Von Papen and Von Schleiter, were truelly afraid by the Soviet scare. The usual history of Europe and Germany of the last 100 or so years has been manipoluated by some strategic cuts. This happened, of course, in any time but the consequences of these cover-ups seem to be of exceptional latitude and range.
You may consider, by example, the same Jew "problem". According the usual stories the germans hated and murdered jews in any time of their history coming, at least, to the final extarmination during the Hiter'syears.
Ther's, of course, a great part of true in this version but it's true, too, that the Jews were considered, during the Kaiser Whilelm II long reign, the most trueworthy component of the German dream of power in Europe (and in the Middle East). The Sionist idea was a German one and was made up with the German help only until Autumn 1917. (Jon Kimche, the Second Arab Awaking, ed. 1970).
Forgetting this "category" (according the Kant structure) seems to broke forever a ring of the chain of knowledge; the consequences are the still today not very clear ideas which dominate the M.E. common opinion and many western politics, the French one, for example, with the subsequent clash with today's Washington DC government. What a pity for countries who shared in their common histroy characters like La Fayette, De Grasse, Rochambeau, Peshing and so on.
Lenin revolution (or putsch, if you prefer) was considered, by most of the European (and US) common opinion since 1917 until late Twenties, a jew affair. This was not a correct and exact concept of the Bolshevik power and, above all, development since the 1934 "great purgues" but most of the poeple believed, in an honest way, that this was realty. They were not going, of course, in Germany like in France, Italy, UK ect, to exterminate anyone but the equivalence Jew=communist=slaughter of the not proretarian people and their families was a very sperad one. the experiences, since 1918 until 1921 in Germany, Austria and Hungary were very convincing. It'simpossible to study the European history forgetting what happened during these years. The red scare was a great phenomenon (and not a totally invented one).
Hitler declared purpose, since Nov. 1918, was to fight the Soviet manace. His common people (he was a poor, self educated Austrian) basic (and I replay; very diffused) idea of the equivalence Jew=Commie, summed up with his paranoic but very efficent will led to the fateful consequences of horrors we all know quite well.
He was a very flexible leader too, a true politician, ready to use any tool. The alliance with Italy (in spite of his comrades very different opinions about the doom of the Alto Adige-Sud Tyrol region) was a clear example of his methods. The Crot, Slovak ect. matters went on according this same line of thought. Wait and see, this was his real motto. The only stronghold was his idea to be the only German who could really fight with success the USSR danger (do not forget that the first Moscow 5 Years plan started in 1927; it was a all military minded program and that USSR had arrived, on 1932, to have a number of tanks greater than all the rest of the world one. The German elector voted for the Nazis too remebering what had happened him, not less than twelve years ago, in a similar situation, with the army disbanded and Russians, the Czechs and the Polish at the gates. Today we could call it a pre emptive policy).
The same Aryan policy was not so a strict one for him (Himmler, in June 1942, when was at least unlashed by the sudden Heydrich's, had some different, criminal ideas but now Hitler was quite a POW of himself in his always too much far HQs and had lost the grip of the German internal affairs - according the èolitica structure and efficiency Nazi Germany was a blunder in comparison, for istance, with Fascist Italy. The Germans were able to get very much as they were, first of all, Germans and were 80 millions too but wastes (like in USSR, from the beginning until the final crash of 1991) were huge and by the state, party and laws points of view Nazi Germany was, since 1941 or even before, more a Turkish Ottoman empire style collection of sanjaks, banates, feudal overlords ect. than a modern state. The same Nazi ideology, in front of the Fascist one, is a very poor religion of brute force with an old style socialist main of paint than a true ideolgical, philosophy and coherent system).
Franco, according the documents available, was ready to join his Axis partners. His only problems were oil and food. His autonomy was a some weeks (not mounthes) one. The British blockade was a strict one since Sept. 1939. He could so enter in the war only five minutes before its end. A prudent leader (and not a true Fascist) he had to wait until the Alled blockade was so terrible, during Spring 1944, to reduce him to ste strictiest neutrality. The final offence, as the blockade went on until 1953, was to deliever the ex French Premier Laval to the US Fifht Army on 31 July 1945 after two mounthes of exile in Spain. A man of honour Laval accepted to sing a document for Franco where he said he was going to come back in Austria, via Switzerland, by his own will. A decent chap, poor Laval.
Hoping to have cleared at least some of the crucial points you had the courage (or incosciency?) to put on the table,
The confront between your map and an European post 1991 one is an interesting one. As you can see some old German (or, better, Austrian, dreams) are back. -
Doesn't Italy have the same dreams? :)
As you can see some old German (or, better, Austrian, dreams) are back. - Someone call them nightmares, it's a question of democracy as I think that anyone has the right to have got his own opinion about the German problem - Slovenia and Croatia (with her Bosnia appendix) are again indipendent states under the German economic spehre of influience.
First of all both Slovenia not Bosnia are independent countries for the first time in their history, so they're "not again independent states". Also Croatia spent much of its time under foreign rule if we don't take into consideration that brief period of 1941-1945.
Secondly, I really want to know on what basis do you claim Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia being today firmly positioned in the German sphere of influence?
Serbia is by consequence balanced;
It is interesting that a traditional Serbian ally Russia is today slowly loosing its centuries long influence over Serbian internal affairs. This can not be seen on outside though, but it is happening.
What do you mean by "consequently balanced", I don't know. Maybe by the fact that Italy wa sthe only country, besides Russia and China, to making some dubious economical and weapons contracts with Milosevic's Yugoslavia in the late 1990s? :)
Montenegro is a semi indipendent reality;
Of course, a usual you haven't been much detailed about Italian influence in Montenegro (->Queen Jelena) no?!?! nothing about significant Italian influence in Albania?!?!
while the Czech Republic (not mention the old, classic B.(u) M. name, for God's sake) is united at the German economics (think at the Wolkswagen-Skhoda connection)
?!?! I see. So your statement of these countries falling into German spehere of influence was purely based on pure economical reasons such as German Volkswagen overtaking Czech Skoda factory. Well, dear Cernuschi, if we would follow this example of yours then we can freely put Croatia under Italian spehere of influence since Italy is today the most important foreign trade partner for Croatia (and nedless to say Italy is the biggest importer to Croatia) and secondly if we follow this logic of yours this would mean that Italy is falling under some Libyan influence since "good old chap" Colonel Moamer Gadaffi is buying a certain amount of stocks (shares) of Fiat Factory from Torino and FC Juventus.
The fact is that certain states in Europe, Italy, Germany, Russia and France in particular, will slowly have to accept the fact that Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovakia, Ukraine, Slovenia and other newly formed independent countries that have emerged from the collaps of the former Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Soviet Union in the early 1990s are not some sort of quasi colonial states but fully independent states who can think with their own head and take responsibilitis for their own actions. We don't need any big brothers aka Italy or France to tell us during each international chrisis of what is right or wrong. You surely know what has Patrice Lumumba said to the Belgian King Badouin after his egoistic speech in Kinshasa when the Belgians when Congo was becoming independent, do you?
(Norway, 1942; various nationalities form the Caucasus and ex soviet Middle East, 1942; Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Slovenia 1943, Bielorussia, Ukraina, Russia, 1944).
We cannot put all nationalist and non-nationalist movements into one and the same basket. There is a difference between Nasjonal Samling, Action Francaise, NSB on one side and Slovene conservative parties and various liberation committies, that have emerged in USSR after German invasion!
Lp,
Klemen
US PGA Commentator - "One of the reasons Arnie (Arnold Palmer) is playing so well is that, before each tee shot, his wife takes out his balls and kisses them .... Oh my god!!!!! What have I just said?!!!"
The fact that the current map of the Balkans resembles that created by Hitler is no coincidence. Hitler (and Mussolini) correctly identified almost all the major ethnic fault lines in the Balkans and exploited them pragmatically. A high proportion of the security duties in the Balkans were actually carried out by the various Balkan peoples themselves, most of whom had historical reasons that made them willing to police their neighbours.
As a result, the occupation of the Balkans (as opposed to deployments made against a possible Anglo-American invasion) tied down virtually no front line German or Italian divisions of more use on a major battlefront.
Hello Sid,
an excellent analysis. The only doubt maybe if the 1st German Arm. Division sent in Greece in June 1943 could to do the difference at Kursk (in Sicily the ferry situation would not let transfer from the continent that division in time; it was inevitable to chose between the 1st or the HG one; by the military value I think that the 1st was, anyway, better but as only number annhilate it's an academic debate): as at Kursk there wes a total of 41 german Divisions I don't think that the 1st Arm. absence was decisive there too.
Bye Ec
I am sure that 1st Panzer Division was sent to Greece to counter a possible Allied invasion and to rebuild after heavy losses on the Eastern Front. If it engaged in anti-Partisan duties it was only as a by-product of these other reasons. The same goes for 4th SS Division which replaced it.
The only front line German division that seems to have spent an unnecessarily long time in the Balkans is 1st Mountain Division. It was certainly sent to Greece to rebuild after very heavy losses in the Caucasus in the winter of 1942-43. However, it did not return to a main battle front after it had been rebuilt. It may have been retained in the Balkans because of the Partisan threat, but I am by no means sure of this. It might equally have been part of the German anti-invasion deployment.
IIRC in summer 1943, there were many doubts about where allies had launched their strike after occupation of north africa...thanks to a disinformation campaign too, germans didn't know if allies had attacked in sicily, sardinia, balkans or elsewhere, so they had to place some mobile unit in each one.
More, during summer, there had been the concern about what to do in case of an italian defection for which would have been essential crushing italian units as fast as possible. All good reasons to keep good and mobile units at the hand...
Technically the Bilaystok region and Galicia were taken off the USSR in 1941 (although both had been part of Poland in 1939). 
