World War II

===Occupation===
{{Main|German-occupied Europe|Resistance during World War II|Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy|Collaboration with Imperial Japan|Nazi plunder}}
[[File:Palmiry before execution.jpg|thumb|Polish civilians wearing blindfolds photographed just before being massacred by German soldiers in [[Palmiry massacre|Palmiry forest]], 1940]]

In Europe, occupation came under two forms. In Western, Northern, and Central Europe (France, Norway, Denmark, the Low Countries, and the [[Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia|annexed portions of Czechoslovakia]]) Germany established economic policies through which it collected roughly 69.5&nbsp;billion reichsmarks (27.8&nbsp;billion U.S. dollars) by the end of the war; this figure does not include the [[Nazi plunder|plunder]] of industrial products, military equipment, raw materials and other goods.<ref>{{Harvnb|Liberman|1996|p=42}}.</ref> Thus, the income from occupied nations was over 40 percent of the income Germany collected from taxation, a figure which increased to nearly 40 percent of total German income as the war went on.<ref name="Milward 1979 138">{{Harvnb|Milward|1992|p=138}}.</ref>

[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-031-2436-03A, Russland, Hinrichtung von Partisanen retouched.jpg|thumb|left|[[Soviet partisans]] hanged by the German army. The [[Russian Academy of Sciences]] reported in 1995 that [[World War II casualties of the Soviet Union|civilian victims in the Soviet Union]] at German hands totalled 13.7 million dead, twenty percent of the 68 million people in the occupied Soviet Union.]]

In the East, the intended gains of ''[[Lebensraum]]'' were never attained as fluctuating front-lines and Soviet [[scorched earth]] policies denied resources to the German invaders.<ref name="Milward 1992 148">{{Harvnb|Milward|1992|p=148}}.</ref> Unlike in the West, the [[Racial policy of Nazi Germany|Nazi racial policy]] encouraged extreme brutality against what it considered to be the "[[Untermensch|inferior people]]" of Slavic descent; most German advances were thus followed by [[Generalplan Ost|mass atrocities and war crimes]].<ref>{{Harvnb|Barber|Harrison|2006|p=232}}.</ref> The Nazis [[Nazi crimes against the Polish nation|killed an estimated 2.77&nbsp;million ethnic Poles]] during the war in addition to Polish-Jewish victims of the Holocaust.<ref>Institute of National Remembrance, Polska 1939–1945 Straty osobowe i ofiary represji pod dwiema okupacjami. Materski and Szarota. p. 9 ''"Total Polish population losses under German occupation are currently calculated at about 2 770 000"''.</ref>{{better source needed|date=July 2023}} Although [[Resistance during World War II|resistance groups]] formed in most occupied territories, they did not significantly hamper German operations in either the East<ref>{{Harvnb|Hill|2005|p=5}}.</ref> or the West<ref>{{Harvnb|Christofferson|Christofferson|2006|p=156}}</ref> until late 1943.

In Asia, Japan termed nations under its occupation as being part of the [[Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere]], essentially a Japanese [[hegemony]] which it claimed was for purposes of liberating colonised peoples.<ref>{{Harvnb|Radtke|1997|p=107}}.</ref> Although Japanese forces were sometimes welcomed as liberators from European domination, [[Japanese war crimes]] frequently turned local public opinion against them.<ref name="GSWW6_266">{{Harvnb|Rahn|2001|p=266}}.</ref> During Japan's initial conquest, it captured {{convert|4000000|oilbbl}} of oil (~550,000 tonnes) left behind by retreating Allied forces; and by 1943, was able to get production in the Dutch East Indies up to {{convert|50|e6oilbbl}} of oil (~6.8 million tonnes), 76 percent of its 1940 output rate.<ref name="GSWW6_266" />