Responses to Occupation

Three very different responses

When the Nazis occupied a country, its people did not all react in the same way. Historians describe three genuinely different responses. ⭐ Collaboration, accommodation and resistance are not the same thing. Most people accommodated; collaboration and resistance were the minorities. ⚠️ Learn to tell the three apart. The strongest answers keep them distinct rather than using them as if they meant the same, and see that most people fell in the middle.

The active few, and the quiet many

It helps to see the two active choices against the response of most people.

Order the responses along a spectrum

Put these responses in order, from most helping the occupier to most opposing it.

• Actively collaborating with the occupier
• Quietly complying to keep out of trouble
• Grumbling privately but doing nothing
• Secretly helping the resistance
• Openly fighting the occupier

Collaboration, or accommodation?

What is the difference between collaboration and accommodation?

• Collaboration means actively helping the occupier, while accommodation means quietly getting by and complying to survive, without actively helping
• They are two words for exactly the same thing
• Accommodation means actively helping, collaboration means just getting by
• Both mean actively opposing the occupier

Words for responses to occupation

Five words that let you explain the responses, and keep them distinct.

Spot the three responses

Three of these were genuine responses to Nazi occupation. Choose the three.

• Collaboration, actively helping the occupier
• Accommodation, quietly getting by
• Resistance, actively opposing the occupier
• Immediately winning full independence
• Voting the occupier out of the country

Why the three are not the same

The sharpest answers keep the three responses genuinely distinct, and see where most people sat. Collaboration and resistance were the two active minorities. A few actively helped the occupier, for belief, gain or safety; a few actively opposed it, at terrible risk, because the occupier struck back with brutal reprisals, often on ordinary civilians. Accommodation was the response of most people: quietly getting by, complying just enough to survive, neither helping nor openly opposing. And choices were shaped by circumstance, for resistance was far harder and deadlier in the brutal east. Keeping the three apart is the grade 9 move.

Match each response to occupation to what it was

Find the sentence that keeps them distinct

A student writes about occupied Europe. Select the ONE sentence that keeps the three responses distinct.

• A few collaborated by actively helping the occupier and a few resisted by actively opposing it, but most people accommodated, quietly getting by to survive.
• Collaboration, accommodation and resistance all mean the same thing.
• Everyone in occupied Europe actively resisted the Nazis.
• No one in occupied Europe responded to Nazi rule in any way.

A worked example: the imposed new management

Imagine a harsh new management forced onto a workplace against the wishes of the staff. A few staff actively help the new bosses, hoping to gain from it. A few secretly work against them, at real risk to their jobs. But most simply keep their heads down, do what they must, and try to get through each day. Hold that idea. Faced with a power they did not choose, people tend to split into a helping few, an opposing few, and a large majority who quietly get by, and it is a mistake to treat those three as the same.

Complete the account of responses

The control of a conquered country by a foreign power is _____. Actively helping the occupier is _____. Quietly getting by to survive is _____. Actively opposing the occupier is _____. The brutal punishment for opposing, often on civilians, was a _____.

Judge the responses

Which is the soundest understanding of how people responded to Nazi occupation?

• Three genuinely different responses, collaboration, accommodation and resistance, with most people accommodating and the other two the minorities
• Almost everyone actively resisted
• Almost everyone actively collaborated
• There was really only one kind of response

Collaboration, and resistance

The two active choices sat at opposite ends, with accommodation, the response of most people, in between.

Judge the responses like an examiner

You are marking three answers about responses to occupation. For each, choose the soundest judgement.

• An answer uses "collaboration" and "resistance" as if they mean the same. Is that safe?
• An answer says everyone in occupied Europe resisted. Is that safe?
• An answer says accommodation was the same as collaboration. Is that safe?

Write: how people responded to occupation

How did people respond to Nazi occupation? Distinguish collaboration, accommodation and resistance, explain which was most common and why, and reach a judgement. This is written in English and is not auto-marked.

• Explain collaboration
• Explain accommodation
• Explain resistance and the risk of reprisals
• Explain which response was most common and why
• Reach a supported judgement that keeps the three distinct