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Documents and Readings in the History of Europe Since 1918
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Historical SummaryWhile the war was still in progress, a noted Polish scholar and attorney, Dr. Raphael Lemkin, made a collection and study of the laws and decrees issued by the Axis Powers and their satellites for use in the areas occupied by their military forces in Europe. The following are some of the conclusions reached as a result of the study.
World History 258.
The Nazi Technique of Occupation8
The picture of coordinated German techniques of occupation must lead to the conclusion that the German occupant has embarked upon a gigantic scheme to change, in favor of Germany, the balance of biological forces between it and the captive nations for many years to come. The objective of this scheme is to destroy or to cripple the subjugated peoples in their development so that, even in the case of Germany’s military defeat, it will be in a position to deal with other European nations from the vantage point of numerical, physical and economic superiority. Despite the bombings of Germany, this German superiority will be fully evident after hostilities have ceased and for many years to follow, when, due to the present disastrous state of nourishment and health in the occupied countries, we shall see in such countries a stunted post-war generation, survivors of the ill-fed children of these war years.
The practice of extermination of nations and ethnic groups as carried out by the invaders is called by the author "genocide," a term deriving from the Greek word genos (tribe, race) and the Latin cide (by way of analogy, see homocide [sic], fratricide). . . . Genocide is effected through a synchronized attack on different aspects of life of the captive peoples: in the political field (by destroying institutions of self-government and imposing a German pattern of administration, and through colonization by Germans); in the social field (by disrupting the social cohesion of the nation involved and killing or removing elements such as the intelligentsia, which provide spiritual leadership—according to Hitler’s statement in Mein Kampf, "the greatest of spirits can be liquidated if its bearer is beaten to death with a rubber truncheon"); in the cultural field (by prohibiting or destroying cultural institutions and cultural activities; by substituting vocational education for education in the liberal arts, in order to prevent humanistic thinking, which the occupant considers dangerous because it promotes national thinking); in the economic field (by shifting the wealth to Germans and by prohibiting the exercise of trades and occupations by people who do not promote Germanism "without reservations"); in the biological field (by a policy of depopulation and by promoting procreation by the Germans in the occupied countries); in the field of physical existence (by introducing a starvation rationing system for non-Germans and by mass killings, mainly of Jews, Poles, Slovenes, and Russians); in the religious field (by interfering with the activities of the Church, which in many countries provides not only spiritual but also national leadership); in the field of morality (by attempts to create an atmosphere of moral debasement through promoting pornographic publications and motion pictures, and the excessive consumption of alcohol).
8 Lemkin, R. Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. Laws of Occupation. Analysis of Government. Proposals for Redress, Washington, 1944, pp. xi–xii. By permission of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Division of International Law.
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Chicago: "The Nazi Technique of Occupation," Documents and Readings in the History of Europe Since 1918 in Documents and Readings in the History of Europe Since 1918, ed. Walter Consuelo Langsam and James Michael Egan (Chicage: Lippincott, 1951), 871–873. Original Sources, accessed November 21, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=UERXPCWAZKUFR1N.
MLA: . "The Nazi Technique of Occupation." Documents and Readings in the History of Europe Since 1918, in Documents and Readings in the History of Europe Since 1918, edited by Walter Consuelo Langsam and James Michael Egan, Chicage, Lippincott, 1951, pp. 871–873. Original Sources. 21 Nov. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=UERXPCWAZKUFR1N.
Harvard: , 'The Nazi Technique of Occupation' in Documents and Readings in the History of Europe Since 1918. cited in 1951, Documents and Readings in the History of Europe Since 1918, ed. , Lippincott, Chicage, pp.871–873. Original Sources, retrieved 21 November 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=UERXPCWAZKUFR1N.
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