Home > Nazi Occupation of Luxembourg (1940-1945)
The Occupation of Luxembourg was a period in the history of Luxembourg when the country was occupied by Nazi Germany. On 10 May 1940 the German Wehrmacht attacked Luxembourg and quickly defeated its small defence force. Grand Duchess Charlotte, the head of state, managed to flee together with the main government ministers just hours before the invasion and spent the rest of World War II in exile. The country was under military administration until August 1940.1 Heim ins Reich
On 2 August 1940, Gustav Simon became civil administrator of Luxembourg, which was procalimed part of the Gau Moselland. Throughout the occupation, the Nazi authorities under Gauleiter Simon led a propaganda and later terror campaign, known as Heim ins Reich, to convince the population that they were ethnic Germans and a natural part of the Third Reich. The structures of the Luxembourg state were dismanteled at once: political parties and independent labour unions were banned, all civil society organisations and the press were subjected to Nazi control, the ReichsmarkThe Reichsmark (Symbol: RM) was the currency in Germany from 1924 until June 20, 1948. It was replaced by the Deutsche Mark in West Germany and by the East German mark ("Mark der DDR" or "Ostmark") in East Germany. It was introduced in 1924 as a replaceme became the new currency. In September, the Nuremberg laws were introduced. The following month, the Parliament and the Conseil d'Etat were dissolved. Teachers were threatened with losing their job unless they joined Nazi organisations, which led to much increased recruitement from all professions. From 1941 many from Luxembourgs youth were ordered to participate in the Reichsarbeitsdienst .
Public monuments with connotations of national independence were demolished, such as the Gelle Fra, a memorial for voluntary Luxembourg soldiers who had fought in World War IWorld War I (also known as the First World War , the Great War the War of the Nations and the "War to End All Wars") was a world conflict occurring from 1914 to 1918. No previous conflict had mobilized so many soldiers, or involved so many in the field of with the French, and the "trees of liberty" that had been planted at the occasion of the hundred year anniversary of Luxembourg's independence in 1939. The Letzebuergesch language was banned, replaced by the use of German in schools and all public domains. This included extensive "germanisation" of public names (Avenue de la liberte or Liberty Avenue, a main street in the capital, was renamed to Adolf Hitler Strasse) and even first names and surnames.
2 The Resistance
Expecting their propaganda campaign to be successful, the occupation authorities organised a censusA census is the process of obtaining information about every member of a population (not necessarily a human population). It can be contrasted with sampling in which information is only obtained from a subset of a population. As such it is a method used f in 1941 which included seemingly innocuous questions about nationality, mother tongue and ethnicity. Resistance organisations were quick to recognise this as a thinly disguised attempt to incorporate Luxembourg into the Reich and mounted a massive underground awareness-raising campaign, turning the census into a referendumA referendum (plural: referendums or referenda or plebiscite is a direct vote in which an entire electorate is asked to either accept or reject a particular proposal. This may be the adoption of a new constitution, a constitutional amendment, a law, the r. The result was that 97% declared their Luxembourgish identity, often writing Mir welle bleiwen wat mir sin (We wish to remain what we are) on the census forms.
The state was placed under military occupation until August 1942, when it was formally incorporated into the Third Reich: Luxembourgers were declared to be German citizens and 13,000 were called up for military service.
The Nazi repression and propaganda was met with largely peaceful resistance. The drafting into the Wehrmacht provoked a general strike against the occupying authorities which was violently suppressed: 21 strikers were executed and hundreds more deported to concentration camps. There was also campaign of punitive deportationDeportation is the expelling of someone from a country. In general it refers to the expulsion of foreigners (the expulsion of natives is usually called banishment, exile, or transportation). Almost all countries reserve the right of deportation of foreign of Luxembourg citizens to parts of the Reich, as well as attempts to settle ethnic Germans in Luxembourg. Much of the work by the resistance organisations focussed on hiding those drafted into thw Wehrmacht.
