In what later became known as The Holocaust , the German government persecuted minorities and used a network of concentration and death camps across Europe to conduct a genocide of what they considered to be inferior peoples . In total 17 million were systematically murdered , including 6 million Jews , between 220,000 and 1,500,000 Romani , 275,000 persons with disabilities , thousands of Jehovah 's Witnesses , thousands of homosexuals , and hundreds of thousands of members of the political and religious opposition from Germany , and occupied countries ( Nacht und Nebel ) . Nazi policies in German occupied countries resulted in the deaths of 2.7 million Poles , 1.3 million Ukrainians , 1 million Belarusians and an estimated 3.5 million Soviet war prisoners . In addition , the Nazi regime abducted approximately 12 million people from across the German occupied Europe for use as slave labour in German industry . German military war casualties have been estimated at 5.3 million , and around 900,000 German civilians died ; 400,000 from Allied bombing , and 500,000 in the course of the Soviet invasion from the east . Around 12 million ethnic Germans were expelled from across Eastern Europe . Germany lost roughly one-quarter of its pre-war territory . Strategic bombing and land warfare destroyed many cities and cultural heritage sites
The Holocaust
The Holocaust
Germany