Introduction

Summary

The term “total war” evokes images of violent clashes between militaries and of mass mobilization, as well as indiscriminate targeting, of civilian populations over the course of a protracted armed conflict.¹ The Second World War featured these characteristics on an unimaginable scale. But for much of the population of Europe and East and Southeast Asia, the most persistent and significant aspect of wartime experience was that of occupation by one or more of the Axis powers.² This was a function of the relatively quick and massive victories won early on by the principal aggressor states, starting with Japan’s 1937 onslaught on China, and continuing with Germany’s partition of Eastern Europe with the Soviet Union in 1939, the Nazis’ decisive victories in Northern and Western Europe the following year, the German advance into Southeastern Europe (as well as parts of North Africa) and its deep inroads into Soviet territory in 1941, and Japan’s sweep into Southeast Asia in 1941–42. The rest of the war was dominated by the long-drawn-out efforts of the principal Allied powers (Britain, the USSR, and the United States) to reverse these initial outcomes. In the meantime, hundreds of millions of people found themselves under one form or another of Axis control or domination.