With the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and the onset of World War II, whose initial phase was marked by a series of victories by the German Wehrmacht, the majority of refugees on the European continent increasingly found itself back in the sphere of National Socialist influence. Thus, about 17,000 Austrians became victims of the deportations from France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Denmark, Norway, the »Bohemia-Moravia Protectorate,« Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, the Bal-tic states, and the Balkan states.