ABSTRACT
During the Second World War, the map of Europe was drastically and violently redrawn. The “borders” of the occupied countries were redefined according to the plans and the ambitions of the Axis powers and their territories were annexed, partitioned and ruled, directly or indirectly, by the occupation forces. Poland and Yugoslavia were dismembered, Czechoslovakia was split in two, Nazi Germany annexed parts of Belgium, Luxemburg, Alsace and part of Lorraine, Hungary annexed parts of Yugoslavia, Romania and Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria annexed parts of Greece and Yugoslavia, Romania annexed Transnistria, while Italy’s fascist empire included southeastern France, Corsica, Albania, and parts of Yugoslavia, Greece and Northern Africa. These territorial rearrangements and changes went hand in hand with forced population movements. During the war and the Axis occupation, hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes as a result of the policies for altering the ethnic composition of the occupied or annexed territories. The plans for Germanization, Italianization, Bulgarianization, and Magyarization reflected the dual goal of territorial expansion with, and through, population engineering. Poles were obliged to move to the General Government territory, Romanians fled from Transylvania, Czechs were expelled from Slovakia, Serbs were forced to settle in the rump Serbian “state,” etc. The most hideous aspect of the forced population movements was the deportation and extermination of the Jews with the view of creating a “judenrein” Nazi empire.
