Hitler’s Europe 1075Lithuania, or those parts of the Soviet Union that were behind German
lines were “repatriated” to Germany, or settled in the newly conquered
territories (see Map 26.4).
German policies were different in Poland and Russia, whose peoples
Hitler considered to be racially inferior. Following the fall of Warsaw, Hitler
had sent five special “action” squads to Poland with orders to wipe out the
Polish upper class. All over the country, businessmen, political leaders,
intellectuals, and teachers were executed or sent to extermination camps.
Norway and Denmark, deemed by Hitler to be sufficiently “Nordic” or
“Aryan” to be “Germanized,” were allowed relative autonomy. In Denmark,
where the only elections in any country under a Nazi regime took place, the
Danish Nazi Party won a paltry 2 percent of the vote. Hitler left Germany’s
central and southern European “independent” allies with some autonomy,
depending on the extent to which they followed his wishes. Admiral Miklos
Horthy ruled Hungary under increasingly close German supervision, par
ticularly after Hitler learned that he tried to play both sides by getting in
touch with the Allies in 1942. Slovakia, which had been denied indepen
dence by the Versailles settlements, had become autonomous when Ger
many marched into Czechoslovakia in 1938, splitting the country into two
parts. Pro-German nationalist fascists held power in Slovakia. In wartime
Romania, the fascist Ion Antonescu ruled. Hitler divided Yugoslavia into
the states of Serbia, Montenegro, and Croatia. Placing Serbia under direct
German administration, he put Croatia and Montenegro under the rule of
an authoritarian leader informally responsible to Mussolini.
The Germans imposed crushing obligations on conquered lands, includ
ing enormous financial indemnities and exchange rates that strongly favored
the German currency. Germans operated factories and shipping companies
in occupied countries. In France, the Germans first took movable raw mate
rials and equipment useful for war production. As the war went on, German
demands became greater; the occupation authorities closely regulated the
armament, aircraft, mining, and metal industries. Some French businesses
made the best of the situation, eagerly working with German firms. A few
quietly subverted German demands and expectations for cooperation.
The “Final Solution”
Hitler s obsessive racial theories had become official policy in Nazi Ger
many before the war (see Chapter 25). For the Nazis, the process of forging
the “national community” meant the elimination of groups they considered
to be “outsiders.” They made a temporary exception of foreign laborers,
upon whom the economy depended during the war. In 1939, Hitler had
ordered the killing, often by injection, of Germans who were mentally defi
cient and handicapped. At least 70,000 mentally retarded people perished,
including children, before public objections that the victims were German
halted this practice in August 1941. In addition, the Nazis sterilized between