During World War II, Germany conquered and occupied most of Europe : Poland, Czechoslovakia, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Greece, Crete, Italy, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union. The experience of Nazi soldiers varied greatly depending on the degree of cooperation or resistance in the conquered country and the stage of the war. In relating to the local populations, soldiers were variously conquerors, tourists, policemen, or bureaucrats; they humiliated the local people and were humiliated in return; they were the targets of resistance fighters and instruments of revenge. But friendships and even romances also developed between German soldiers and the people whose countries they had conquered. The soldiers' experience in France, the largest and most prosperous of the occupied countries, illustrates many aspects of life for the German army in occupied countries.

Soldier-Sightseers

Weary from the brief...