How did Germany's annexation of Austria and occupation of Czechoslovakia increase the number of Jews under Nazi rule?
Germany’s territorial expansions in 1938 and 1939 significantly increased the number of Jewish people under Nazi control, subjecting them to the regime's antisemitic policies and the subsequent Holocaust.
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Annexation of Austria (Anschluss): In March 1938, Germany occupied and absorbed Austria. This immediately brought a large, established Jewish community—particularly in Vienna—under Nazi rule. The Nazis implemented the "Viennese model" (Wiener Modell), a systematic program of state-sponsored terror, the "Aryanization" (confiscation) of Jewish property, and forced exile. By the start of World War II, roughly half of Austria's Jewish population had been forced to flee, and many of those who remained were eventually murdered in extermination camps.12
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Occupation of Czechoslovakia: Following the Munich Agreement in 1938 and the subsequent occupation of Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939, the Nazis gained control over the Jewish populations in these regions. Additionally, while Slovakia became a nominally independent state, it remained under German influence and collaborated in the deportation of its Jewish citizens; approximately 70,000 of Slovakia's 87,000 Jews were sent to extermination camps between 1942 and 1944.13