While the French longed for Liberation, they also feared its destructive and divisive potential. Given diminutive conventional French forces, de Gaulle counted on popular resistance to symbolize the participation of the French people in their own liberation. However, the fear that a “national insurrection” would cause great slaughter, and benefit the communists, caused planners to define down the concept. The STO crisis and emergence of the maquis phenomenon seemed to offer political opportunities to various players. However, the réduits maquisards played at best a marginal role in the Liberation, while their destruction offered another “black legend” of betrayal by the Gaullists and the Allies, one promoted by the PCF. The liberation of Paris served as one of the Second World War’s iconic moments, both as a milestone in the rollback of Nazi power and as a consecration of France’s republican resurrection. De Gaulle’s GPRF moved rapidly to assume the levers of national power, forcing a resistance that had consecrated, democratized, and legitimized him to step back into the ranks. De Gaulle’s acclamation removed any lingering reservations, even in Washington, that he was the legitimate leader of France. The levée was finished, the emergency over, and former FFI would henceforth fight the Germans “amalgamated” as soldiers in the regular army, not serve the political ambitions of resistance leaders and communists facilitated by the interface services.

This chapter explores how the Germans judged the effectiveness of the ‘Jewish Councils’ in Western Europe throughout the course of the war. Throughout the occupation, the German (and Vichy) departments involved in Jewish affairs increasingly wanted to consolidate their control over the Jewish bodies, either to gain more power at the cost of their rival institutions or to speed up the process of anti-Jewish legislation and persecution. This is important for our understanding of the ways in which these organisations interacted with their German (or Vichy) overseers – including the SiPo-SD, the Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives (in France), the Military Administration (in Belgium and France) and the Civil Administration (in the Netherlands) – and sheds light on the broader dynamics of occupation in each of the three countries. The chapter demonstrates that whereas the Germans were reasonably satisfied with the organisational effectiveness of the Dutch Jewish Council, they took issue with how its Belgian and French counterparts functioned. It is argued that this difference is primarily caused by (limited) cooperation of individual leaders, the (lack of) leaders’ absolute power and the existence of powerful alternative representations in Belgium and France.

This chapter deals with the establishment histories of the JR, the AJB, the UGIF-Nord and the UGIF-Sud (the ‘Jewish Councils’ in Western Europe) in 1941. It shows that German officials improvised and copied blueprints from elsewhere, and that rivalry between the various German institutions involved in Jewish affairs affected the form and function of these organisations in Western Europe. It furthermore demonstrates that various German institutions interpreted the exact remit of each of the Jewish organisations differently. As a result, the Jewish organisations in Western Europe were all organised in different ways and all functioned differently, despite the strong German desire to unify anti-Jewish policies. The chapter furthermore examines the impact of the rivalry between the various German institutions on the Jewish organisations, arguing that the increasing influence of the SiPo-SD in the Netherlands, together with an overlap of functions, resulted in a rapid succession of anti-Jewish measures in this country. In Belgium and France, by contrast, institutional rivalry not only hampered the establishment of the AJB and the UGIF, but it also resulted in postponements and, from the German perspective, in a looser grip on the Jewish organisations.

Chapter 2, “The Killing Years,” explains the two-wave Nazi police genocide against the intelligentsia in 1939–1940, its fallout, and how these initial killing campaigns shaped the Nazi German occupation administration for Poland. German anti-intelligentsia campaigning was bloody but ultimately drove the resistance it attempted to thwart. The first campaign, codenamed Operation Tannenberg, was coordinated with the military campaign in 1939 but delayed in Warsaw because of the siege. Tannenberg went awry and was complicated by the circumstances of the invasion and incoming occupation. After Nazi Germany established a civilian occupation under general governor Hans Frank, Frank revived anti-intelligentsia killing with his new campaign, the Extraordinary Pacification Action (AB-Aktion). This campaign’s violence shocked Poles and provoked the resistance it was intended to achieve. This chapter argues that the two Nazi genocidal campaigns failed but shaped the nature of Nazi occupation administration, and encouraged the first violent Polish resistance in response.

Chapter 9, “Home Army on the Offensive: Violence in 1943-1944,” dissects mature intelligentsia military resistance. As the tide of war turned and the Germans endured their first battlefield defeats against the Soviet Union, the consolidated Home Army grew aggressive. Its most effective move was a 1943 assassination campaign targeting Wehrmacht officers, Nazi police, and German administration personnel called Operation Heads. Heads intimidated the Germans and shifted occupation policy. The Home Army’s perceived success and the advance of the Eastern Front toward Warsaw in 1944 convinced underground military leaders that they were facing their last opportunity to launch a city-wide insurrection. Their rebellion, now known as the Warsaw Uprising, failed. Remaining German personnel in the city were reinforced and crushed the insurrection, slaughtered civilians, and destroyed the city. This chapter argues that military conspiracy, like Catholic resistance, had its successes but was ultimately dependent on the international situation and could not secure the practical support of the Grand Alliance in the face of both German and Soviet opposition.

Mendelian notions left a clear mark on the legislation of the 1935 Nuremberg Laws, the most important anti-Jewish legislation during the Third Reich. Degrading the status of Jews to second-class citizens, the Nuremberg Laws also redefined who was to be considered a Jew, half-Jew, quarter-Jew or German-blooded. These definitions were not only informed by Mendelian reasoning; they were also propagated as such. This was true in the public domain, and found explicit manifestation in German high schools, where Mendelism and racial theory were intimately intertwined, in complex and surprising ways. As opposed to the ruling assumption in current historiography, which portrays racial diagnosis as lacking any biological logic, the praxis of racial diagnosis was also influenced by Mendelian assumptions. Finally, Mendelian anxieties about the re-coupling of recessive Jewish traits shaped Nazi policies toward the Jewish Mischlinge. These biological anxieties, shared by Nazi leaders up to Hitler himself, successfully merged with prior and even competing modes of anti-Jewish hatred, to yield a radical policy against the Jewish Mischlinge.

Chapter 3 discusses the key characteristics and numbers of internees. It argues that here, too, the similarities across the zones were greater than is often assumed, but that important differences emerged. It shows that internee numbers were higher in the western zones than is often believed and that most internees in every zone were middle-aged men. The chapter examines competing claims about internees’ Nazi incrimination and distinguishes between different organizations and tiers of the Nazi Party hierarchy. It shows that there were more lowly than highly ranked personnel in every zone, but that seniority levels were higher in the western (and especially the American and British) zones and that only there were significant numbers of SS members interned. Yet one should not overlook the personnel of the broader Nazi repressive apparatus nor downplay the responsibility of even the lowest-ranked Party officials who were interned in the Soviet zone in large numbers. The chapter also argues that the Soviets interned fewer adolescents, Social Democrats, and members of other postwar political parties than is often believed and that some were targeted for Nazi-era offences. Nevertheless, their number had no equivalent in the west and even more were prosecuted by Soviet Military Tribunals.