Nazism and the acts of Nazi Germany affected many countries, communities, and people before, during and after World War II. Nazi Germany's attempt to exterminate several groups viewed as subhuman by Nazi ideology was eventually stopped by the combined efforts of the wartime Allies headed by the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and the United States.
Jewish people
Of the world's 18 million Jews in 1939, more than a third were murdered in the Holocaust. Of the three million Jews in Poland, the heartland of European Jewish culture, fewer than 60,000 survived. Most of the remaining Jews in Eastern and Central Europe became refugees, unable or unwilling to return to countries that became Soviet puppet states or countries that had betrayed them to the Nazis.
Poland
The Nazis intended to destroy the Polish nation completely. In 1941, the Nazi leadership decided that Poland was to be fully cleared of ethnic Poles within 10 to 20 years and settled by German colonists to further their policy of Lebensraum.Volker R. Berghahn "Germans and Poles 1871–1945" in "Germany and Eastern Europe: Cultural Identities and Cultural Differences", Rodopi 1999 From the beginning of the occupation, Germany's policy was to plunder and exploit Polish territory, turning it into a giant concentration camp for Poles who were to be exterminated as "Untermenschen". The policy of plunder and exploitation inflicted material losses to Polish industry, agriculture, infrastructure and cultural landmarks, with the cost of the destruction by Germans alone estimated at €525 billion or $640 billion.Poles Vote to Seek War Reparations, Deutsche Welle, 11 September 2004 Remaining Polish industry was mostly destroyed, or transported to Russia by Soviet forces after the war.
The official Polish government report of war losses prepared in 1947 reported 6,028,000 war victims out of a population of 27,007,000 ethnic Poles and Jews alone. For political reasons, the report excluded the losses to the Soviet Union and the losses among Polish citizens of Ukrainian and Belarusian origin.
Poland's eastern border was significantly moved westwards to the Curzon Line. The resulting territorial loss of (formerly populated by 5.3 million ethnic PolesConcise statistical year-book of Poland, Polish Ministry of Information. London June 1941 P.9 & 10) was to be compensated by the addition of of former German territory east of the Oder–Neisse line (formerly populated by 11.4 million ethnic GermansThe Expulsion of Germans from Poland, Revisited , H-Net Review). Kidnapping of Polish children by Germany also took place, in which children who were believed to hold German blood were taken away; around 20,000A. Dirk Moses, Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History, Google Print, p.260 Polish children were taken away from their parents. Out of the abducted only 10–15% returned home.Tadeusz Piotrowski, Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918–1947, Google Print, p.22 Polish elites were decimated and over half of the Polish intelligentsia were murdered. Some professions lost 20–50% of their members, for example 58% of Polish lawyers, 38% of medical doctors and 28% of university workers were exterminated by the Nazis. The Polish capital Warsaw was razed by German forces and most of its old and newly acquired cities lay in ruins (e.g. Wrocław) or lost to the Soviet Union (e.g. Lwów). In addition Poland became a Soviet satellite state, remaining under the rule of a Soviet-controlled communist government until 1989. Russian troops did not withdraw from Poland until 1993, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
See also Nazi crimes against the Polish nation Expulsion of Poles by Germany Generalplan Ost German AB-Aktion in Poland The Holocaust in Poland Occupation of Poland (1939–1945) Operation Tannenberg Intelligenzaktion Chronicles of Terror
Soviet Union
About 26 million Soviet citizens perished as a result of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, including around 10,651,000 soldiers who died in battle against Hitler's armies or died in POW camps. According to Russian historian Vadim Erlikhman, Soviet losses amounted to 26.5 million war related deaths. Millions of civilians also died from starvation, exposure, atrocities, and massacres, and a huge area of the Soviet Union from the suburbs of Moscow and the Volga River to the western border had been destroyed, depopulated, and reduced to rubble. The mass death and destruction there badly damaged the Soviet economy, society, and national psyche. The death toll included c.a. 1.5 million Soviet Jews killed by the German invaders.Zvi Gitelman, History, Memory and Politics: The Holocaust in the Soviet Union The mass destruction and mass murder was one of the reasons why the Soviet Union installed satellite states in Central Europe; as the government hoped to use the countries as a buffer zone against any new invasions from the West. This helped break down the wartime alliance between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted until 1989, two years before the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Soviet culture in the 1950s was defined by results of the Great Patriotic War.
Close to 60% of the European war dead were from the Soviet Union. Military losses of 10.6 million include 7.6 million killed or missing in action and 2.6 million POW dead, plus 400,000 paramilitary and Soviet partisan losses. Civilian deaths totaled 15.9 million which included 1.5 million from military actions. 7.1 million victims of Nazi genocide and reprisals; 1.8 million deported to Germany for forced labor; and 5.5 million famine and disease deaths. Additional famine deaths which totaled 1 million during 1946–47 are not included here. These losses are for the entire territory of the USSR including territories annexed in 1939–40.
To the north, the Germans reached Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) in August 1941. The city was surrounded on 8 September, beginning a 900-day siege during which about 1.2 million citizens perished.
Of the 5.7 million Soviet prisoners of war who were captured by the Germans, more than 3.5 million died while they were in German captivity by the end of the war. On 11 February 1945, at the conclusion of the Yalta Conference, the United States and United Kingdom signed a Repatriation Agreement with the USSR.The United States and Forced Repatriation of Soviet Citizens, 1944–47 by Mark Elliott Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 88, No. 2 (Jun., 1973), pp. 253–275 The Allied program of repatriation of Soviet citizens saw 4.2 million people returned to the USSR. Statistical data from Soviet archives, declassified in the 1990s, attest that the overall increase of the Gulag population was minimal during 1945–46 and only 272,867 of repatriated Soviet POWs and civilians (or 6.5 percent) were imprisoned.
Belarus Belarus lost a quarter of its pre-war population, including almost all of its intellectual elite, and 90% of its Jewish population. Following bloody encirclement battles, all of the territory of present-day Belarus was occupied by the Germans by the end of August 1941. The Nazis imposed a brutal regime, deporting some 380,000 young people for slave labour, and killing hundreds of thousands of other civilians. At least 5,295 Belarusian settlements were destroyed by the Nazis and either some or all of their inhabitants were killed (out of 9,200 settlements that were burned or otherwise destroyed in Belarus during World War II). More than 600 villages like Khatyn were burned along with their entire populations. More than 209 cities and towns (out of 270 total) were destroyed. Himmler had announced a plan according to which 3/4 of the Belarusian population was designated for "eradication" and 1/4 of the racially purer Belarusian population (blue eyes, light hair) would be allowed to serve the Germans as their slaves (Ostarbeiter).
Some recent estimates raise the number of Belarusians who perished during the War to "3 million 650 thousand people, higher than the former estimate of 2.2 million. In other words, not every fourth inhabitant but about 40% of the pre-war Belarusian population perished (considering the present-day borders of Belarus)." This compares to 15% of Poland's post war borders and 19% of Ukrainian population in post war border and comparing to 2% of Czechoslovak population that perished in post war borders.
Ukraine Estimates of population losses in Ukraine range from 7 million to 11 million. More than 700 cities and towns and 28,000 villages were destroyed.
See also Drang nach Osten Forced settlements in the Soviet Union Generalplan Ost Hunger Plan Occupation of Belarus by Nazi Germany Operation Keelhaul Victims of Nazi Germany War crimes in World War II World War II casualties
Central and Eastern Europe The defeat of Nazi Germany and the postwar settlement transformed Central and Eastern Europe. As Soviet forces occupied much of the region in 1944-45, the USSR emerged with decisive influence there, a development that became a point of dispute among the Allies both during and after the Yalta Conference. In the years immediately after the war, occupying Soviet forces supported communist takeovers and the restructuring of governments and economies on a Stalinist model, forming what became known as the Eastern Bloc.
Economic reconstruction proceeded under central planning and within a separate Soviet-led sphere. The USSR opposed the U.S.-backed Marshall Plan and prevented Eastern European participation (including Czechoslovakia), and the program was therefore confined to Western Europe.
The postwar settlement also involved major population transfers, including the expulsion of millions of German-speaking civilians from parts of Central and Eastern Europe, contributing to a broader refugee and displaced persons crisis in postwar Europe. See also Formation of the Eastern Bloc Cominform Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944-1950)
Western Europe The defeat of Nazi Germany left Western Europe devastated and financially strained, contributing to Western Europe's relative decline in global power as the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as the dominant great powers. In the late 1940s, recovery in much of Western Europe became closely linked to U.S. economic assistance through the Marshall Plan (European Recovery Program), which aimed to rebuild production and stabilize the region.
The postwar crisis also weakened the capacity of Western European powers to sustain their overseas colonies. Decolonization accelerated after 1945 as European states faced financial constraints, rising anti-colonial nationalism, and shifting international norms, contributing to the rapid dismantling of colonial rule in Asia and Africa in the following decades. Western European governments also pursued new forms of regional cooperation intended to prevent a renewed war; early initiatives are often associated with the 1950 Schuman Declaration.
Yugoslavia