Reflections on Writing a History of Europe under German Occupation - ONLINE

Tatjana Tönsmeyer presents the first account of Europe under Nazi occupation to be written from the perspective of those living under German rule. At the height of German expansion, approximately 230 million Europeans experienced occupation. Across the continent, people had to interact with the occupiers, adjust to situations they did not choose, cope with hunger and scarcity, try and protect their families from repression, and forge networks of solidarity. For Jewish communities, this experience was particularly harsh, as they endured both the hardships of occupation and the genocidal persecution of the Holocaust. In addition to presenting key findings from her research, Tatjana Tönsmeyer will reflect on the challenges of writing a pan-European history of everyday life under occupation.

Tatjana Tönsmeyer is Professor for Modern European History at Wuppertal University. Her research focuses on European history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially the history of the Second World War, occupation, and occupied societies. Two of her latest publications are Unter deutscher Besatzung: Europa 1939–1945 (2024), an everyday life history of Europe under wartime occupation, and the two-volume source edition Fighting Hunger, Dealing with Shortage: Everyday Life under Occupation in World War II Europe (2021), co-edited with Peter Haslinger, Włodzimierz Borodziej, Stefan Martens, and Irina Sherbakova.