The German invasion and early occupation of Poland drained the resources of Jews and their communities even before ghettoization. On the individual and household levels, many Jews were severely impacted by the German seizure of their assets, the inability to work, and the requirement to expend limited resources even before ghettoization in order to provide food for themselves and their families as a result of these financial realities. Violence during the early occupation also could serve to pauperize a family through seizing, killing, or severely injuring a key family member on whom the household relied for support through work. Migration due to the war also sometimes served to sever social networks or access to assets as well as diminish social standing which endangered some individuals and families. The pressures placed on individuals and households left them more vulnerable to hunger and starvation. At the very point at which individuals and households were most in need of support, communities faced multiple challenges. These included an influx of refugees, seizure of community resources, and the flight of communal leadership during the occupation.

Harrison discusses her team’s research on female serial killers (FSKs) who committed their crimes in the US, beginning with FSK background. Topics include demographics, physical appearance, education, socioeconomic status, developmental history, family events, and age of first murder. The occupations of FSKs are discussed. Alarmingly, FSKs are often nurses, nurse’s aides, or other caregivers. The author compares her findings with those from other notable studies, such as from criminologist Eric Hickey. The rarity of empirical research on FSKs is underscored. The author describes her sample of FSKs derived using the mass media method of forensic research, examining information from newspapers, television networks, courts, government records, and historical societies. Harrison underscores the importance of incorporating and citing information from valid source material. Long-term effects of childhood maltreatment and a traumagenic background are underscored. To illustrate chapter concepts, the author presents the cases of FSKs Dorothea Puente and Jane Toppan and revisits the case of FSK Aileen Wuornos.

This chapter examines governance within the framework of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory – the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. It describes how Israeli delegation of authority over service provision, civilian affairs, and the daily running of the territory to the Palestinian Authority created a situation in which 4.5 million Palestinians are controlled by an authority that disavows responsibility for governance and are governed by authorities that lack the control needed to create decent living conditions. While delegation of responsibility to local authorities, in the context of a belligerent military occupation, was perceived by some as part of a transition to national liberation, a central flaw in that process was the willingness to temporarily bend a cardinal principle of international humanitarian law: aligning responsibility with control. The transfer of responsibility from Israel to Palestinian authorities, without ceding the control needed to exercise that responsibility, created a crisis of accountability, in which both the Israeli and Palestinian authorities abdicate responsibility for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. That delegation is also helping to perpetuate the occupation by significantly reducing the cost to Israel of maintaining it.

What are the physical limits of state sovereignty? This chapter reviews international law concerning the territorial sovereignty of states, including on the land, the oceans, and the air and space above.  Specific legal instruments that govern these areas are examined in some depth, including the Chicago Air Convention of 1944 and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).  Six methods of obtaining sovereign territory are discussed along with vivid examples of each.  The struggle to allow fair use by states and companies over the resources in and below the high seas and outer space is highlighted.  The new space race may prevent the original space treaties’ vision of a new frontier that is devoid of commercialization and militarization.

“Occupied France,” analyzes the realities and myths about everyday life in France under German occupation. The French did not actively resist the occupation until 1943–1944. The chapter attempts to explain the unique character of the villagers of Graignes and why they refused to countenance the presence of Germans in their region. The villagers dismissively referred to the Germans as the Boches. The chapter concludes by examining the training and organization of the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division, which appeared in south-central France in 1943.

Regimes of property, whether held by African rulers or European administrators, were not transhistorical or total. The written regime of property in Angola emerged in specific contexts, articulated with imperialism, expansion of capitalism, and consolidation of the liberal notion of individual rights at the expense of collective ones. While Portuguese agents enforced a single model of property rights, local chiefs contested this model. Colonial property regimes altered the social order and allowed women, formerly enslaved people, and immigrants, often marginalized groups, to enjoy rights and subvert the economic and social order. The violence that exiled occupants from their own land also justified kidnapping and enslavement. This violence is almost erased in the colonial archives and scholarship that traces a linear progress from slave trade to legitimate trade and imperialism. Nonetheless, violence and appropriation pervade the histories of slavery, property, rights, consumption, and claims.

Chapter 2 focuses on the fixing and transformation of property rights during the nineteenth century. Possession claims and inheritance practices change over time, and in many ways the available historical evidence hid these changes, reprojecting a nineteenth-century understanding of land regimes. The imposition of land titles and land charts crystallized processes that were fluid until then. Yet the long list of vassalage treaties, inventories, and disputes between African rulers, their neighbors, and the Portuguese analyzed in the chapter provides a clear example of how all actors engaged in a continued negotiation over possession, jurisdiction, rights, and claims. The Portuguese misunderstandings about land use and rights are examined in detail, exploring the consequences for African historiography.

This chapter explores how the Germans judged the effectiveness of the ‘Jewish Councils’ in Western Europe throughout the course of the war. Throughout the occupation, the German (and Vichy) departments involved in Jewish affairs increasingly wanted to consolidate their control over the Jewish bodies, either to gain more power at the cost of their rival institutions or to speed up the process of anti-Jewish legislation and persecution. This is important for our understanding of the ways in which these organisations interacted with their German (or Vichy) overseers – including the SiPo-SD, the Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives (in France), the Military Administration (in Belgium and France) and the Civil Administration (in the Netherlands) – and sheds light on the broader dynamics of occupation in each of the three countries. The chapter demonstrates that whereas the Germans were reasonably satisfied with the organisational effectiveness of the Dutch Jewish Council, they took issue with how its Belgian and French counterparts functioned. It is argued that this difference is primarily caused by (limited) cooperation of individual leaders, the (lack of) leaders’ absolute power and the existence of powerful alternative representations in Belgium and France.

This chapter explores the stories of four cleaners, Alex, Ali, Luisa and Marcel, to illustrate the different paths people take into cleaning. The chapter begins with an overview of the occupation of cleaning, its history and status, followed by a discussion of CleanUp’s human resource management's approach. I develop how the occupation is stigmatized not only because it is low-skilled, low-paid and deals with dirt. The stigma also derives from the groups of people perceived to do it. CleanUp seeks to counter the stigma by emphasizing professionalism. The stories of the four cleaners illustrate how cleaning constitutes a catch basin for a variety of people. People enter cleaning from different walks of life, however, they all share origins in the social underworld. While CleanUp’s professionalization efforts have limited impact on cleaners’ understanding of their work and role, they all want to be recognized for their work, display a strong work ethic and work independently. The association of cleaning with degrading, unskilled, undignified work does not necessarily corrupt the cleaners’ sense of self. They regard cleaning as a portal to dignity, a source of satisfaction and pride.

Chapter 2, “The Killing Years,” explains the two-wave Nazi police genocide against the intelligentsia in 1939–1940, its fallout, and how these initial killing campaigns shaped the Nazi German occupation administration for Poland. German anti-intelligentsia campaigning was bloody but ultimately drove the resistance it attempted to thwart. The first campaign, codenamed Operation Tannenberg, was coordinated with the military campaign in 1939 but delayed in Warsaw because of the siege. Tannenberg went awry and was complicated by the circumstances of the invasion and incoming occupation. After Nazi Germany established a civilian occupation under general governor Hans Frank, Frank revived anti-intelligentsia killing with his new campaign, the Extraordinary Pacification Action (AB-Aktion). This campaign’s violence shocked Poles and provoked the resistance it was intended to achieve. This chapter argues that the two Nazi genocidal campaigns failed but shaped the nature of Nazi occupation administration, and encouraged the first violent Polish resistance in response.

Chapter 8, “Spoiling for A Fight: Armed Opposition,” begins a two-part examination of violent resistance and how, when, and why Poles embraced or rejected it. This discussion is deliberately postponed in the story, as much of the existing literature focuses on military resistance as a shorthand for resistance as a whole, which it was not. Polish military resistance efforts, initially launched by officers and soldiers of the Polish Army in hiding under occupation, remained fractured and hamstrung by vicious Nazi reprisals until 1942. Despite its danger, myriad groups organized around plans for insurrection, spanning the political spectrum from orthodox communists to the fascist far right, and including Polish-Jewish participation. After the destruction of many such initiatives and the merging and reformation of others, one increasingly grew in size and strength: the Home Army (Armia Krajowa) eventually dominated a chaotic resistance landscape through the support of the Western Allies. This chapter argues that violent resistance was initially a disorganized catastrophe, and only late in the occupation did a few surviving underground militaries achieve the ability to influence the Polish population or threaten the German occupiers.

Chapter 9, “Home Army on the Offensive: Violence in 1943-1944,” dissects mature intelligentsia military resistance. As the tide of war turned and the Germans endured their first battlefield defeats against the Soviet Union, the consolidated Home Army grew aggressive. Its most effective move was a 1943 assassination campaign targeting Wehrmacht officers, Nazi police, and German administration personnel called Operation Heads. Heads intimidated the Germans and shifted occupation policy. The Home Army’s perceived success and the advance of the Eastern Front toward Warsaw in 1944 convinced underground military leaders that they were facing their last opportunity to launch a city-wide insurrection. Their rebellion, now known as the Warsaw Uprising, failed. Remaining German personnel in the city were reinforced and crushed the insurrection, slaughtered civilians, and destroyed the city. This chapter argues that military conspiracy, like Catholic resistance, had its successes but was ultimately dependent on the international situation and could not secure the practical support of the Grand Alliance in the face of both German and Soviet opposition.