Germany
Well, we all know what happened in Germany. If you don't, go take a history class! Since the war, Germany has had to deal with both internal and external pressures to come to terms with the past. In fact, the Germans, in their wonderful linguisticity (new word!), have invented a word for it: Vergangenheitsbewaltigung. I have written a paper for class on Germany's confrontation with the past as seen through its monuments. Keep in mind that I wrote it for a class I was taking pass/fail, and that I really wasn't in the mood to be writing it :)
Norway
Taken over by the Third Reich early in the war and unfortunately often forgotten in war studies. Nazi forces seized most of the country easily, but a pocket in the North composed of Norwegians and Brits offered Hitler his first military defeat in the war. Unfortunately this Allied victory was shortlived once the Brits left Norway for home. Quisling, whose name is almost synonymous with brown-nosing traitor, became leader of Norway under Hitler. The reason for this promotion was that Quisling had been a popular politician in Norway before the war, and Norwegians (at the time) liked and believed him. Why Quisling was in league with Hitler is anyone's guess.
A Tale of Two Norwegians. A Norwegian family way the heck in northern Norway hosted German soldiers during the war. Reportedly, some of the soldiers were nice, and some were not. Amazingly, with soldiers in the house, the wife was able to sneak food to nearby Russian/Soviet prisoners. The husband helped Norwegians and others escape Norway into neighbouring countries. The couple almost had to escape themselves when they came under suspicion. As the war neared its end, the German soldiers took to having rowdy parties in the house as their impending defeat drew near.
Romania
Romania has almost as many issues as Germany with vergangenheitsbewaltigung (coming to terms with the past), for, unfortunately, Romania fought on the "wrong" side of the war for four years. Romania's Jews were subjected to racial discrimination laws closely approximating those in Germany, and progroms, "death trains," and other hallmarks of Nazi Germany found a home in Romania as well. Many of Romania's Jews were deported to a concentration camp in the Ukraine, never to return. Today only 14,000 Jews remain in a country which once contained 35,000 in a single province.
General Antonescu acted as military dictator as Romania allied itself with Nazi Germany early in the war. In 1944, King Mihai I (usually recognizable by his pouting face) organized a coup d'etat and overthrew General Antonescu. Thus Romania joined the Allies, but it was too little, too late. Romania was treated as a belligerent during the peace settlement and joined the ranks of the Soviet Union's satellite countries.
Although some have argued that the Axis powers were those countries made unhappy by the Versailles Treaty, Romania made out like a bandit after WWI through unification of nearly all the Romanian-speaking regions in Eastern Europe, including a hefty slice of Hungary. A more telling explanation of Romania's alliance is its traditional desire to be independent of Russia. Romania, like many others, viewed the rising Soviet Union with fear and quickly allied with the one power that could have conceivably eliminated the Soviet threat. When it was clear that Nazi Germany could not defeat the Soviet Union, Romania switched sides, hoping that fighting with the Allies would somehow allow them to keep Soviet influence out of the country.
Russia/Soviet Union
The Soviet Union was hit hard by "The Great Patriotic War," the Soviet name for World War II. Approximately 20 million soldiers and civilians died who called the Soviet lands home. Naturally, they might have faired a wee bit better if Stalin a) had not put Nazi Germany at the country's doorstep by invading Poland or b) had not refused to believe that Hitler was indeed going to attack. Soviet POW's were treated horribly in Nazi prison camps, as the Soviet nationalities and their professed government ideology were extremely low on Hitler's list. Soviet prisoners were crammed into small barracks removed from other prisoners. Prison guards often "forgot" to feed the Soviet prisoners, who were left to beg and plead for food and cigarettes from other prisoners and locals. Like many others, some Soviet POW's were simply shot. All citizens of the Soviet Union were very happy when the war ended, as were many of those that they "liberated"-- at least for a time.
After the war, the Soviet Union, under Stalin, performed deeds that would have made Hitler jealous. Factories, dismantled in East Germany (as reparations) but also in other soon-to-be Eastern Bloc countries, appeared in the Soviet Union. The infamous Warsaw Pact ensured the Dictatorship of the Proletariat in all Eastern European countries. Less publicized are the deportations of undesirables in all countries to work camps in Eastern Europe, Siberia, and near the Pacific coast. These included Nazis, but also democrats, thinkers, and anyone else that might challenge Stalin's order. The camps, although not strictly death camps, were on the same level as those of Nazi Germany, and bodies stacked up at a startling rate. Those that survived were largely released in the 50's. Some had nowhere to return; the largest Russian city on the Pacific coast is full of the descendants of prisoners and prison guards.
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