Europe under Nazi Domination, 1942

By late 1942, Nazi domination of Europe seemed complete. Between 1938 and 1939, Austria, most of Poland, and the ethnically Czech western portion of Czechoslovakia had been annexed to the German Empire. By summer 1940, the Wehrmacht’s blitzkrieg had brought much of Western Europe to heel. In Southeastern Europe, Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania joined the Axis ranks in late 1940, and in early 1941 the Germans and Italians launched a joint invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece, lasting only a month. Hitler then turned his attentions to his former ally, the Soviet Union, launching Operation Barbarossa in the summer of 1941 with the largest invasion force in history. The Nazis rapidly captured a vast amount of territory, the lebensraum (‘living space’) Hitler desired for the German people, before the operation stalled in the winter of that year. Despite this setback, by late 1942 Eastern Europe remained under Nazi administration, and the front line still extended well into Soviet territory, as the Wehrmacht pivoted away from Moscow and towards the oilfields in the south. In October, six of Stalingrad’s seven districts were under Nazi control, but the Soviets’ famous eventual victory there marked the end of the Nazi expansion in Europe. They were gradually pushed back, until Soviet victory at Kursk in mid-1943 virtually ensured Nazi defeat on the Eastern Front. Partisan campaigns in Yugoslavia gathered momentum; the Allies invaded the Italian mainland in late 1943; and D-Day, in 1944, sealed Germany’s demise.