Nazi occupation of Europe

[NomAnor15]

So I was talking to my uncle (who is a little bit of a history nut) the other day, and he came out with this really interesting question, that I had no idea how to answer. We discussed it for about an hour, but we didn't really get anywhere. So I figured I'd pose it here and see what people think.

Basically it's this; why were the Nazis so successful in their occupation of Europe? I don't mean the first weeks and months of conquest, but afterwards, when they had to oversee so many new territories. I mean, if you compare their performance to the US in Iraq now, the US looks pretty weak. So why is that? Was it that the Nazi regime was much more effective in controlling populations? Was it that whatever resistance there was was weak compared to (again, for example) the Iraqi insurgency? Or was it something else entirely?

[Wanderer]

First off the Germans deployed enough troops to keep a close on eye on things.

Second, they made better use of collaborators and were very good at cracking resistance cells by infiltration.

Third IEDs were a bit hard to come by and with no mass media medium such as the internet, amateur explosives nuts couldn't disseminate their knowledge and tips to how to make explosives very well.

Even so, the resistance against the Germans, especially on the Soviet Theater were able to pull off stunts that Iraqi Insurgents can only dream of.

[Lonestar]

I seem to recall the Germans needing to keep several divisions in Serbia due to resistance, for example.

Considering how bad the fighting was in Russia, every division that had to be deployed into Eastern Europe to maintain order was one more nail in the coffin.

EDIT: I might add that Wikipedia claims that the Yugoslav Partisans number 800,000 in 4 field Armies, which does not speak of a efficient occupation force to me.

[Coyote]

The Nazi Regime very effectively managed to turn their war effort into a "pan-European anti-Comunist" front. They recruited Dutch, French, and other battalions into the Waffen-SS and downplayed the "German-Aryan" exclusive-club mentality in favor of a "let's all go beat up filthy Commies!" mindset.

[MKSheppard]

Basically it's this; why were the Nazis so successful in their occupation of Europe? I don't mean the first weeks and months of conquest, but afterwards, when they had to oversee so many new territories.

I'm sorry, but is the only way to respond to the "success" and "efficiency" of Nazi Europe.

The Germans basically looted the place of everything that wasn't nailed down to keep the Nazi War Economy running, and it occured on just about every level from industrial to banking capital.

Wages of Destruction by Tooze is a very eye opening read; I'll summarize the German actions:

• They looted 4,260 locomotives and 140,000 wagons from the French, Dutch and Belgian railroads, to supplement German railroads -- during the 1930s, the Germans got some of the capital to pay for Hitler's programs by reducing the capital outlay on the Reich's railroads; causing them to become a severe bottleneck by the 1940s due to old, creaky equipment. Looting European railroads went a long way to remedying the shortage of capital in the 1930s. Of course, the consequences of this looting became a very severe problem later on.
• They instituted a deficit system that meant that Germany was making a net profit off imports of goods from Occupied Europe.
  
  Basically, instead of being paid in full by German companies for their goods, foreign companies were paid by their own central banks; who credited the difference between the Reichsmark and the Franc, etc to the Reichsbank's account.
  
  What it meant by the end of 1944, the following debts were owed by Germany to foreign companies:
  
  8.5 billion RM - France
  6 billion RM - Netherlands
  5 billion RM - Belgium & Luxembourg
  4.7 billion RM - Poland
• Whenever possible, German corporations took over foreign corporations in the occupied territories; IG Farben basically took over the entire French chemical industry through the Francolor dye trust; while the Reichswerke Hermann Goering took over the de Windel mining and steel conglomerate; and Rheinmetall took over NV Werkspoor and Staatlichen Artillerie Inrichtingen.
  
  Basically, if the company was essentially state owned or controlled, the Germans grabbed it up relatively easy. If it was a private company, they usually managed to evade German control by transferring ownership to offshore offices (Shell, Philips, and Unilever in Holland did this).
  
  Of course, it goes without saying that "Jewish" properties were aggressively "Aryanized".
• They diverted fuel from all over Occupied Europe to the Reich. A good example is France. From the summer of 1940 onwards, the French economy had to make do with only 8% of it's pre-war supply of gasoline. This horribly wrecked the French economy; for example, thousands of liters of milk were spoiled each day in the French countryside because no gasoline was available to ensure that it was collected on a regular basis. Even with the looting of Occupied Europe, the German fuel situation was so critical that 1941, the Wehrmacht was licensing drivers to be able to drive heavy trucks with only 15 kilometers of on-road driving experience. This of course caused horrible attrition of motor vehicles in Russia. Likewise, in November 1941, Opel had to close production at Germany's largest truck factory because it didn't have the gasoline needed to test the fuel pumps of vehicles coming off the line. A special allocation of 104 cubic meters of gasoline had to be arranged by the Wehrmacht's economic office to continue production.
• Because of the wholesale German looting of the rolling stock of European railways, coal production in Europe collapsed; because while the miners could still mine the coal, it just piled up at the pitheads, awaiting transport. Coal production in France plunged by 18% in 1940 alone, and never recovered. This shortage of coal did not take long to affect industry all across Europe; with French steel mills only getting half their pre-war allocation of coal, output of Steel in France plunged.
• German coal production began to decline as well, because of the lack of trained workers, who had been drafted into the Wehrmacht. To make up for this loss, by the spring of 1941, Sunday shifts were instituted in the Ruhr's mines; meaning that the miners didn't get any rest at all, causing output to further decline as people became overworked. To correct this, the Wehrmacht was eventually persuaded to release trained miners; but this wasn't enough - and by May 1941, there were 70,000~ foreign workers in German mines.
• The entire European farming system began a collective freefall. The farms of Europe mainly relied on imported animal feed from overseas. The British blockade of Europe closed off these sources. Normally, some equilibrum could have been restored by utilizing German and French grain production, but they relied on large amounts of synthetic nitrogen-based fertilizers; which could only be supplied at the expense of explosives production. Additionally, as Germany began to loot Europe of manpower and horsepower; the labor and livestock intensive farms of Europe were easy targets for the Germans. Thus, France's grain harvest in 1940 was less than half of her 1938 harvest, and German production of grain also plunged. This combined with relatively weak harvests in Romania, et al; put the Germans in a quandary.
  
  To make up this enormous freefall in food production and still feed Germany's population (The Nazi party considered one of the major reasons that Germany lost the war in 1918 was that the German population had starved to feed the Army at the front); the only solution was to significantly cut the official food rations of the occupied territories and use the excess to feed Germany. Thus, the official food ration in Belgium and France given to 'normal consumers' was as little as 1,300 calories per day, while in Norway and Czechslovakia, they hovered around 1,600 calories.
  
  By way of comparison, recommended daily intake is around 2,500 calories for men, and 2,000 calories for women. Of course, physically active people will need more; and with the reduction of Europe to a pre-gasoline existence, more manual labor was of course needed; yet there wasn't enough food for this.

Thus, from 1940 to 1945; no Western European country's economy grew at all.

From an outside standpoint, it's really fiendishly simple -- people being kept at near starvation level don't have the excess energy needed for guerilla activities; though I doubt that was the German aim -- they just wanted to keep the German economy running to avoid a repeat of WWI, and to do so, they ruined the Economies of Europe.

By the way, as an aside, the Germans in TBOverse are even worse off; they now have to feed and supply Britain; which was a significant importer of quite a lot of materials; and the US no doubt will have put in a blockade of Europe; so I would expect that food stocks in TBO Europe are spread even thinner; probably about 200-300 calories less than in @, which over time, builds up to virtually all of Europe being malnourished to an extent that's hardly imaginable in modern times; and so when agriculture in Europe simply collapses following the small scale "Nuclear Autumn" brought on by TBO; well, a lot of people are going to die post-war, even with foreign food aid from the US, South America, and Canada.

[thejester]

So I was talking to my uncle (who is a little bit of a history nut) the other day, and he came out with this really interesting question, that I had no idea how to answer. We discussed it for about an hour, but we didn't really get anywhere. So I figured I'd pose it here and see what people think.

Basically it's this; why were the Nazis so successful in their occupation of Europe? I don't mean the first weeks and months of conquest, but afterwards, when they had to oversee so many new territories. I mean, if you compare their performance to the US in Iraq now, the US looks pretty weak. So why is that? Was it that the Nazi regime was much more effective in controlling populations? Was it that whatever resistance there was was weak compared to (again, for example) the Iraqi insurgency? Or was it something else entirely?

The Nazi's were never able to master military active partisan fronts in both the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, both of which alone would have seen far more fighting than the Iraq misadventure. They also failed to dismantle active partisan/resistance networks in virtually every other occupied nation and (IIRC) ended up facing outright revolts in France, Norway, Poland and Slovakia.

[NomAnor15]

So given all these things (that there were active partisans, and they remained active for so long), why could the Germans continue? Stated slightly differently; why wasn't their army stretched to its limit (this part may actually have a really simple answer that I'm missing for some dumb reason), and why wasn't there the massive public disapproval that there is in the US now? Lack of mass media? Fear of the Gestapo? Personal adoration of Hitler? Propaganda? Some combination of all of these factors?

[Broomstick]

So given all these things (that there were active partisans, and they remained active for so long), why could the Germans continue? Stated slightly differently; why wasn't their army stretched to its limit (this part may actually have a really simple answer that I'm missing for some dumb reason), and why wasn't there the massive public disapproval that there is in the US now? Lack of mass media? Fear of the Gestapo? Personal adoration of Hitler? Propaganda? Some combination of all of these factors?

The Nazi/Germans apparently had zero misgivings about shooting misbehaving civilians in the head.

Seriously, I don't see why none of you have mentioned this before.

Granted, certain groups were more likely to be killed than others, but one thing that has hindered US operations in both Viet Nam and currently in Iraq is a reluctance to kill people who might be civilians, as opposed to enemy combatants (in or out of uniform)

If you were caught as part of a resistance movement you were shot. In addition, your entire family might be shot, or sent to one of those horrific camps we've all heard about. If the Nazis weren't sure who sabotaged something or blew something up they might just take any random grouping of suspects/villagers/bystanders and shoot them as examples. It was pretty brutal. It meant that, unless your entire family was in the resistance (as opposed to trying to lie low and just survive the mess) they would pressure you to behave, or might even turn you in. Neighbors would either pressure neighbors, or inform on them.

Nazis also had no hesitation in conducting searches of homes and businesses and removing anything that could be used against them, even if it was something useful in civilian terms. as wells as anything just plain useful (like food and trains). If that made things inconvenient for the locals too fucking bad.

They looted systematically, depriving the locals of food, fuel, weapons, etc.

They shot anyone showing the least hint of dissatisfaction with this state of affairs.

[K. A. Pital]

In the East, Nazis had used the method of destroying cities wholesale, with the population.

But instead of supressing the partisanship, it only made more and more people go into partisans.

[Broomstick]

Yes, because if you destroy entire cities people no longer have anything to lose and lose all incentive to capitulate.

Selective culling of the occupied populations is what is needed, not wholesale slaughter. If you give people the incentive of survival via cooperation with the occupation a significant number will go along with that.

[PeZook]

Yes, because if you destroy entire cities people no longer have anything to lose and lose all incentive to capitulate.

Selective culling of the occupied populations is what is needed, not wholesale slaughter. If you give people the incentive of survival via cooperation with the occupation a significant number will go along with that.

This didn't actually work, though. Poland was the subject of all those measures: for every partisan attack, the nazis shot a crapload of people in retribution. They starved the population and destroyed rebelling cities wholesale.

Didn't work at all. By 1943, the Home Army (the biggest partisan organization) exceeded 300 thousand active soldiers in strenght, and God knows how many informants and collaborators. They were able to perform sophisticated operations in the middle of occupied Warsaw, including prisoner rescues, assassinations, sabotage, espionage and in 1944 - an outright rebellion which took two months to put down.

The Iraqi insurgency is very different than that, of course - Iraqis have never managed to, say, rescue prisoners held in American custody by engaging in direct combat with American troops, winning, and then disappearing with the prisoners. Or regularly assassinating high-level Gestapo and SS soldiers. Or grabbing an entire V2 rocket and moving it to England. All despite drastic measures taken by Germans to counter the resistance.

Yugoslavians, for example, actually managed to defeat the regular German army using their partisan forces - a feat never accomplished afterwards.

In short, the German occupation was never all that effective. Today's world is much different than that one, and life is easier for partisans in some respects (The AK-47, cell phones,RPGs, the Internet) and harder in others (helicopters, body armor,fast communications, night vision), but it all comes down to the simple fact that there is no "wonder strategy" for occupations.

[PeZook]

In the East, Nazis had used the method of destroying cities wholesale, with the population.

But instead of supressing the partisanship, it only made more and more people go into partisans.

Heh, this reminds me - the Soviets were actually far more succesful in fighting local partisans than the Nazis.

It is a little known fact that post-war Poland was seeing a large-scale partisan insurgency fighting against the new Soviet-imposed government. The Soviets were much better at fighting the insurgency, though, and managed to succesfully defeat it.

They had the key advantage of not declaring they want to kill off the entire country, though. And, naturally, the Poles were tired of war after five years of struggle.

I guess it works wonders for your COIN operations when you don't actually try to murder everyone in an area and have sufficient forces on the ground.

[wautd]

Or grabbing an entire V2 rocket and moving it to England.

Sweet mother of

[K. A. Pital]

If you give people the incentive of survival via cooperation with the occupation a significant number will go along with that.

Killing large numbers of people as hostages, in reprisals against partisans, works as a piss poor policy. PeZook is right, that measure is only alienating the populace and forcing them to arms. The USSR was careful in handpicking the armed resistants themselves in Eastern nations when it installed client states post-1945, and did so successfully - most people started to view the partisans as distraction, as enemies of peace and trouble-makers, contributing to their demise. Germany, on the other hand, relished in wanton destruction and incredibly severe reprisals, even by war standards. This caused people to view the Soviet partisans as fighting a just rebellion against a super-brutal enemy who can kill on a simple suspicion, and helped them despite the risk of death.

[PeZook]

The USSR was careful in handpicking the armed resistants themselves in Eastern nations when it installed client states post-1945, and did so successfully - most people started to view the partisans as distraction, as enemies of peace and trouble-makers, contributing to their demise.

The Soviets have also enjoyed the not-insignificant advantage of actually having access to collaborators. While the myriad resistance movements active in the occupied Eastern States were all united in their hatred for Nazis, plenty of partisans were more than willing to co-operate with Soviets.

So, Soviet commanders could use them to their advantage. For example, a village could never be sure if Polish-uniformed Polish-speaking partisans asking for help were "genuine" partisans opposed to the Soviet-imposed government, or collaborators who would later point the NKVD at whoever helped them. This and other measures slowly eroded the popular support for these partisans, and without outside assistance, the partisans withered and died. Even then, it took more than a decade to stabilize the country completely. The notable thing about this campaign is that no wide-scale random retribution was undertaken at all. Targetting your repression really pays off in these cases.

[Broomstick]

Yes, because if you destroy entire cities people no longer have anything to lose and lose all incentive to capitulate.

Selective culling of the occupied populations is what is needed, not wholesale slaughter. If you give people the incentive of survival via cooperation with the occupation a significant number will go along with that.

This didn't actually work, though. Poland was the subject of all those measures: for every partisan attack, the nazis shot a crapload of people in retribution. They starved the population and destroyed rebelling cities wholesale.

And controlled Poland from 1939 to 1945, yes?

Of course, towards the end resistance was climbing and becoming more effective because the Nazis were overdoing their strategies. Too many people who would have otherwise cooperated were being mowed down in retributive actions, so they no longer had an incentive to cooperate.

The Iraqi insurgency is very different than that, of course - Iraqis have never managed to, say, rescue prisoners held in American custody by engaging in direct combat with American troops, winning, and then disappearing with the prisoners. Or regularly assassinating high-level Gestapo and SS soldiers. Or grabbing an entire V2 rocket and moving it to England. All despite drastic measures taken by Germans to counter the resistance.

A little off-topic, but that reminds me of the POW's who built a glider for purposes of escape in the attic of Colditz prison (you'll have to scrolll down) right under the noses of the Germans.

[PeZook]

And controlled Poland from 1939 to 1945, yes?

Of course, towards the end resistance was climbing and becoming more effective because the Nazis were overdoing their strategies. Too many people who would have otherwise cooperated were being mowed down in retributive actions, so they no longer had an incentive to cooperate.

Well, without outside assistance, no resistance movement would've mattered, of course. The OP question was:

"Was it that the Nazi regime was much more effective in controlling populations? Was it that whatever resistance there was was weak compared to (again, for example) the Iraqi insurgency? Or was it something else entirely?"

I just demonstrated that resistance movements in conquered countries (some, at least) were far from "weak". In fact, the Iraqi insurgency has nothing on the WWII Yugoslavian one, for example.

Thus, Germans failed to pacify the conquered populations effectively. Given more time, naturally, they would've simply slaughtered everybody in Eastern Europe and re-colonized the place, which is the ultimate mean to control the population...

A little off-topic, but that reminds me of the POW's who built a glider for purposes of escape in the attic of Colditz prison (you'll have to scrolll down) right under the noses of the Germans.

Heh...yeah, that place was full of cool escape stories