German+Occupation+in+Luxembourg+World+War+II

= German Occupation of Luxembourg WW II =

On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland which left a hard decision for the government of Luxembourg. They decided to keep the country's long-standing neutrality by having defenses on both the German and French borderlines. On May 10 ,1940 the dominant German army broke through the concrete blocks that were used as defense mechanisms. With barely any fight at all, the Germans had successfully invaded Luxembourg. Hitler and his troops also successfully invaded Normandy and Belgium the same day.

The Nazis managed the country of Luxembourg as a German Reich which means a German Empire and treated the people as no more than a regional ethnic group. The original military leader was replaced by Gustav Simon, who wanted to use terror techniques including arrest and torture to push all people into believing they were a part of the German Reich. There were two main goals of the occupation. The first was to completely Germanize the country. Hitler wanted removal of everything that was associated with the French. The second was to get rid of the country and make it an integral part of Germany.

The population of Jews was about 4,000 in 1939. A decent amount of the Jewish population had already fled to Germany. Only about 2,000 Jews were left by May 10,1940. The Nuremberg laws had banned Jews from public places, got them fired from their jobs and had their valuables taken. By August 1941, the Jewish had curfews and by October, the 700 Jews that were left were transported to death camps including Belsen and Auschwitz. By the end of the war, fewer than 50 of the 4,000 Jews still lived. The country was finally liberated by the Allied forces in September 1944. At the end of the war, Luxembourg troops helped France with the occupation of Germany for about 5 years. Unfortunately, Luxembourg lost about two percent of the population. Now, Luxembourg is an economically thriving country.