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World War II occupied territories

  • German occupation of Estonia during World War IIThe German occupation of Estonia during World War II began in the summer of 1941 and lasted until 1944, a period that would leave a permanent mark on a small…
  • German occupation of AlbaniaOn the 8th of September 1943, Italy signed an armistice with the Allied forces. Within days, German troops were crossing into Albania, and the question of…
  • Italian occupation of FranceOn the 10th of June 1940, Italy declared war against France and Britain. Ten days later, Italian troops crossed into French territory.
  • Anglo-Soviet invasion of IranThe Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran began before dawn on the 25th of August, 1941, when Royal Air Force aircraft crossed into Iranian airspace and dropped…
  • Territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet UnionSeventeen days after Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, the Soviet Union sent its own forces across Poland's eastern border.
  • BizoneBizone is the name for the merged American and British occupation zones in Germany, created on the 1st of January 1947. After World War II, the Allies split…
  • Allied-occupied GermanyAllied-occupied Germany begins not with peace but with erasure. On the 5th of June 1945, the Berlin Declaration extinguished Germany as a sovereign state and…
  • Axis occupation of GreeceThe early morning hours of the 28th of October 1940 marked the beginning of a catastrophic chain of events for Greece. Italian ambassador Emanuele Grazzi…
  • Occupation of Czechoslovakia (1938–1945)On the 1st of October 1938, German troops crossed into the Sudetenland, and Czechoslovakia began to disappear. What followed was not a sudden conquest but a…
  • Protectorate of Bohemia and MoraviaOn the 16th of March 1939, Adolf Hitler stood at Prague Castle and proclaimed that for a thousand years the provinces of Bohemia and Moravia had formed part…
  • SudetenlandThe Sudetenland sits at the heart of one of modern Europe's most consequential territorial disputes. In September 1938, Adolf Hitler stood before a crowd at…
  • Italian East AfricaItalian East Africa announced itself to the world from the balcony of Palazzo Venezia on the 9th of May 1936, when Benito Mussolini addressed a crowd of two…
  • Soviet occupation zone in GermanyOn the 2nd of August 1945, the Soviet Union established control over a specific middle portion of Germany through the Potsdam Agreement.
  • Occupation of JapanOn the 2nd of September 1945, aboard the USS Missouri anchored in Tokyo Bay, Japan signed the instrument of surrender that ended the largest war in human…
  • Syria–Lebanon campaignThe Syria-Lebanon campaign of 1941 was a war fought between Allied and French forces - but the French on the other side of the line were not fighting for…
  • Allied-occupied AustriaAllied-occupied Austria came into being on the 27th of April 1945, when a provisional cabinet led by Karl Renner declared independence from Nazi Germany…
  • Battle of MadagascarThe Battle of Madagascar began on the 5th of May 1942, when British forces landed on a remote island in the Indian Ocean that most people had never given a…
  • General GovernmentThe General Government was a zone of German occupation carved out of the defeated Polish state in 1939, and for nearly six years it served as one of the most…
  • Occupation of the Baltic statesThe occupation of the Baltic states is one of modern Europe's longest and most contested erasures of national sovereignty.
  • World War II in YugoslaviaWorld War II in Yugoslavia was not one war but several, all happening at the same time. On the 6th of April 1941, the German Luftwaffe bombed Belgrade, and…
  • German military administration in occupied France during World War IIThe German military administration in France arrived in Paris in June 1940, and within weeks a swastika flag hung from the Hôtel de Ville while another flew…
  • Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern BukovinaIn 1812, the Treaty of Bucharest transferred Bessarabia from the Ottoman Empire to the Russian Empire. This region had been a vassal state of the Ottomans as…
  • German-occupied EuropeGerman-occupied Europe was, at its peak in 1941-1942, a continent where more than half the entire population lived under the direct rule or influence of Nazi…