What would have been the maximum area that could have been occupied by the Germans?

[Von Bock]

Quite a simple question (and I opened another topic about this already) but it seems to me that the Germans basically achieved the maximum what they could have achieved when I look at the enormous amount of occupation troops that every conquest took them. In Norway and the Netherlands only, more than half a million soldiers were permanently stationed and therefore out of combat. In countries in the east it took them a lot of casualties to fight partizans and it was very hard to control these countries.

We are often talking about Egypt, Moscow, maybe Morocco, Iraq, Iran etcetera but it seems to me that these areas were simply too big and too densely populated to be occupied.

Any thoughts on this?

[Von Bock]

No one?

[T. A. Gardner]

It depends. That is, we know what they could get historically, so what differences in strategy are you willing to accept that might change that?

[OpanaPointer]

Need more quislings for more territory.

[Von Bock]

Need more quislings for more territory.

Well yes, but Quisling was Norwegian and was seen as Aryan by the Germans. The Germanic countries (Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Flanders) were indeed quite 'controllable' and it is not an incident that there were not many partizans or resistance fighters in these countries.

The problem was, that in almost every other occupied country there was a lot more repression which resulted in bloody partizan wars behind the frontlines. So it seems to me that any extension of occupied countries (Caucasus, Iran, Moscow, Egypt, whatever) would have caused more partizan activity and more problems.

[OpanaPointer]

I used lower case "quisling" for that reason.

[Loïc]

Not really, first as said in the other thread your 'Norway-Netherlands' indicator is biased, there were half-million of soldiers only because both represented key-strategical coastal areas facing the Atlantic, that's all,
it doesn't mean at all that newly-occupied pair of countries needs 500 000 soldiers more each time, partisan activities or not, be sure that a totalitarian regime like Nazi Germany was able to suffer and tolerate perfectly quite "light" losses - in comparison with the Frontline - among the ranks caused by the local opponents as well as it can inflict a more high disproportionate degree of violence and reprisals agaisnt the populations and even let them larges unoccupied areas with partisans until they didn't disturb a lot the War-Pax Germanica, it was not a problem at all and this has nothing to see with any ratio German soldier/km², I know several rural under-occupied departments still keeping in memory the short passage of some Divisions as the Das Reich and 325 Sicherungs-Division despite they didn't suffer a 75 000 german soldiers by department average ratio as in Normandy

second, countries such as Egypt despite today politically correct tends to occult this concerning the Arab public opinion of that time, it doesn't mean they would receive the Nazi German Army as occupiers if not as liberators, for them the occupiers were the British and these last ones have always occupied Egypt with a reduced number of soldiers, ~5000 to 10 000, the Egyptian public opinion of the streets hoped that Rommel came to Cairo to expell the British, by the way Egypt the only interesting area to occupy is the Canal, the Dutch occupied Indonesia with only 40 000 men Europeans Africans and indigenous, and the French in Indochina were only 30 000 military and civilians for 25 millions of inhabitants, the same can be observed for almost all colonial powers

[T. A. Gardner]

For example, alternate histories might have Egypt and Iraq successfully overthrow British rule with German assistance becoming German allies. That makes a difference.

Or, the British and French don't get involved in Norway so the Germans never invade to secure their iron supplies.

This really needs some definition as to what possibilities and outcomes are being chosen.

[AnchorSteam]

They themselves set the Ural Mountains as the stop-line, so I would assume that going any farther was for a later date. Or rather, a later era.

If they had regained their African Colonies (likely to be why there was no peace deal with Churchhill in 1940) that would have required the commitment of tens of thousands of soldiers and skilled workers/administrators.
Best case; they were looking at the permanent re-location of over a million Gemrans to outside of Central Europe.... how much more than that would the German populace have put up with?

[Peter89]

A huge chunk of the world were colonies during WW2. Like T. A. Gardner said, Iraq, Egypt, plus Iran, etc. could yield the Germans the most area probably. Also it is interesting how we count the Vichy French territories. Although Vichy's grip on its empire wasn't really strong, there were still fires shot on Allied troops up until late 1942. Thus the Vichy Empire was actually larger than anything the Germans ever controlled. But did the Germans control the Vichy?

[Loïc]

Germany controlled the French metropolitan territory but certainly not the colonies and the French military and civilian personnel kept jealously more margins and sovereignty as far as possible in such territories where they can't even suffer any armistice commission viewed as german italian hostile anti-french propaganda spy battalion and they can't suffer to see any german nor italians nor spaniards nor japanese and their so-called "help" or "support" in the heavily coveted Levant in order to expell France where these last ones "support" her something like the rope supports the hanged man nor as it is usually forgotten so-called allies attacking her Empire and who opened first the fire against the French navy and army when the germans were invading or occupying France, rewriting the History to give themselves good conscience and good role each time in these kind of affairs to reverse roles, the French colonial Empire was nor occupied nor controlled by Germany nor at war with none after the armistice nor allies nor axis, except AEF and others joining Free France, it was rather the others, former allies as axis or pro-axis powers coming to attack it firstly,

so the question of the thread as I understand concerns Germany and the German Army as occupiers, not to consider they can "occupy" something while that is an other power on the territory with its own administration and army, if Madagascar should be conquered to deport the jews, so that is the matter of Germany, of the German Army and Navy to count how many soldiers and sailors and aviators they have to sent or we are in other thread à la Ottomane when Turkey controlled Balkans Hungary Transylvania Rumania Tunisia independant Egypt etc...with a great variety and protean plasticity of status and vassalage without necessarily occupying such territories with their own sipahis and janissaries ortas or even Spanish Habsbourg Empire with 0+0 spanish military and administrator in neutral and so-called falsely "Spanish" Franche-Comté bordering the Kingdom until its conquest by Louis XIV expelling the first and last two spaniards in command throughout its History