Hey, I read your comment in the other thread and figured I'd give answering it a try. As a preface to my answer, I'd like to let you know that I don't really have any credentials. That said, I have read about this subject a lot, and have a personal connection to it. I'm Jewish and my family comes from a region of Poland. So I've tried to understand what they experienced.

Your question has a broad, general answer with lots of specifics attached to individual locations: Your well being depended on who you were. I'm going to go through the nations the Nazis occupied and describe the general climate of each country during that period to hopefully provide some insight what people were living through.

For the sake of the homework I should be doing right now, I'm going to be speaking in terms of nation states as opposed to regions (Czechoslovakia vs. The Sudetenland) and summarizing generalities. This is probably not the most rigorous way to present this information, but it should satisfy your question and i'll provide sources.

Also, I love the east, so if it's alright with you, I'm going to list eastern and baltic states as well.

Nazi Territories (A-Z):

// Albania (1943-1944): Albania had been an puppet state of the Italians since 1939, and a semi client state since King Zog I assumed power in 1928.^1 In the months leading up to Italy's withdrawal, several parties struggled for power. You can read about the full details of that struggle here. (~ pg. 250 - 280) What's relevant to us though, is that the Nazis invaded the country. My personal impression of the situation of daily life for your average Albanian is that it was not stellar. When the Nazis entered, the Allies began arming the plethora of resistance groups fighting in the country.^2 The resistance was a heterogeneous bunch who hated each other. Despite this, the Germans set up a government. This state was vicious in its persecution of the Slavs and Jews until its collapse in 1944 after the Nazis were forced to withdraw due to losses in Eastern Europe.^3 This plunged Albania into a full civil war that ended in a Communist victory.

TLDR: Lots of civil war, genocide. Pretty shitty bad if you were Slavic, Jewish or not on the right side at any given point.

// Austria (1938-1945): Austria was incorporated pre-war. As it was ethnically very similar to Germany and Hitler's birth place, Austrians enjoyed pretty much the same privileges as a normal German, so I'll refer to commiespaceinvader's comment as it more informed than what I could contribute.

// Belgium (1940-1945): After Belgium fell to the Germans, the country was placed under military administration. The Belgians never had to endure the horrors of Nazi rule in the Slavic nations. They were used for economic exploitation and paralyzed by the need to import food. Like commiespaceinvader said below, they still had their monarchy in place. However, the Nazis imposed control over the civil service that still ran the country. As an example, on entering the country, the Nazis put an age cap in place for elected officials, and allowed for demobilized Belgian soldiers to hold office. ^pg.126 This allowed them purge the old guard and exercise greater control over new candidacies. The Nazis restricted the freedom of the press^4, and deported the Jews.^5

TLDR: Hungry, forced to work, subdued but pretty okay given the alternatives.

// Croatia (1941-1945): I've never really found any unbiased sources on Croatia, and found that I wasn't alone in this.^6 You end up having to read twice as much about the Balkans to get a realistic picture. From what I can tell, Croatia followed a pretty similar pattern to other satellite territories. The Nazis invaded the country, and set up a client fascist regime to manage things. This particular regime called itself the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). Based on my reading, Croatia was a pretty brutal place to live under the NDH. The four years of its existence were characterized by anarchy, genocide, and total misery. ^7 ^8 ^9

TLDR: Really really shitty bad

// Czechoslovakia (1938-1945): As you probably know, the western half of Czechoslovakia predominantly German and was annexed by Hitler in 1938. This crippled the country economically, making the conquest of Czech proper all but inevitable. Persecution of the Jews and other undesirable began in earnest shortly after (Kristallnacht happened only one month later). In March 1939 the remainder of Czechoslovakia fell to Germany and a client state was established.

Some quick background: The First Czechoslovak Republic was formed by the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye after the Austro-Hungarian Empire's dissolution following World War I. The region's major ethnic groups were funnily enough the Czechs and the Slovaks. The Czech-Slovak national identity was an artificial solution to the desire for a sense of national identify following the rule of the AHE (Not entirely unsuccessful). In addition though, there was a large German presence due to settlement in the northern periphery of Czechoslovakia.

These were the Germans whose discontent Hitler used to justify his move into Czechoslovakia to the England and France. The ethnically German citizens of the nation felt disenfranchised from the Czech dominated government in Prague. When Germany dissolved the Second Czechoslovak Republic (The first became the second after the 1938 annexation) , three entities came to be. The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, which were the western regions bordering Germany, the Slovak Republic, which was to the east, and a region of modern Ukraine which was quickly ceded to the Hungarians. Both of these nations enjoyed some of the more moderate treatment by the Nazis initially and had a complicated relationship with their occupiers. The Czechs in particular were perceived as an obstacle to Germany in the region. The initial deference shown to the Nazis by the non-German population of the divided Czechoslovakian state soon evolved into resentment and fear as Concentration Camps that had been filled with Jews began to to give way to the Czechs and other undesirables. Czecho-Slovakia suffered the same shortages and warfare that the rest of the Third Reich did towards the end of the war before being absorbed into the Eastern Bloc.

TLDR: Not stellar, but hardly the worst treatment received.

// Denmark (1940-1945):

// France (1942-1944):

// Greece (1941-1945):

// Hungary (1944-1945):

// Italy (1943-1945):

// Luxembourg (1940-1945):

// Macedonia (1944):

// Monaco (1943-1945):

// The Netherlands (1940-1945):

// Norway (1940-1945):

// Poland (1939-1945):

// Romania (1944):

// USSR (1943-1945):

Yugoslavia Proper

EDIT: It was really irresponsible to get myself into this, so I need to stop right now. I'll be filling out the rest throughout the day tomorrow. I'll also probably leave France to a lurking history professor.

It varies greatly, mainly in regards to how the Nazis viewed a certain territory and what form of occupation was imposed in certain territories.

With regards to Austria, it was completely similar to what I described in the linked post regarding Germany. Austria was virtually seen as equal.

In Western Europe, there existed stark differences between countries. On the one end is Denmark, where the Nazi introduced a very "light and hands-off" regime. Basically Nazi Germany controlled Danish foreign policy and dissolved its army but the Danes had their own government and in 1943 even held free elections from which the Social Democrats emerged as one of the winning parties. The occupation in Denmark was felt in as much as it concerned the rationing system introduced because of the war and some - light - German presence in the country.

On the other end of that scale are the Netherlands. Despite featuring quite high in the Nazi racial hierarchy, the Dutch felt the heavy hand of the German occupation, partly because their own government had left and only the bureaucracy remained, partly because the Germans didn't very much trust the Dutch. The Netherlands were also one of the few occupied territories in Western Europe who suffered a famine under the occupation. German police presence was very high in the country and the Gestapo and SS operated freely within it.

Belgium and Norway still had its monarchy and France its own nominally neutral government in the unoccupied parts of Vichy France. Generally, it can be said that in all these territories (again, with certain exceptions in Denmark and Norway) experienced policies such as people carried off to Nazi Germany as forced labor, being less well fed than the Germans, having to work for the German occupation, a loss of freedom and liberty and a general down turn in living standards and prosperity.

In Alsace or to be more specific in Lorraine, the Nazi did enact ethnic cleansing by forced expulsion of people with French ancestry resp. of people who opted to be French or were seen as such by the occupier. Similar though less violent policies of Germanization were also enacted in the de-facto annexed Luxembourg.

Sorry, if this remains a bit vague but this is a huge questions. In general, it can be said that with the possible exception of the Netherlands, Nazi occupation was felt more indirectly in a lot of the Western countries, especially Denmark. Life as such under the occupation was certainly harsher than in some of the incorporated territories, especially Austria, if you were a non-Jewish, non-Communist etc. person and mostly by recruiting forced laborers and in rationing policy the differences were felt rather heavily.

Sources:

• Ulrich Herbert: Best. Biographische Studien über Radikalismus, Weltanschauung und Vernunft. 1903–1989.

• Mark Mazower: Hitler's Empire.