British Empire in World War II the civil and/or military administration of a number of non-Commonwealth territories, occupied during the war, including Eritrea, Libya, Madagascar, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Italian Somaliland, Syria, Thailand and portions of Germany, Austria and Japan. Most of these military administrations were handed over to old European colonial authorities or to new local authorities soon after the end of the hostilities. Commonwealth forces administered occupation zones in Japan, Germany and Austria until 1955. World War II confirmed that Britain was no longer the great power it had once been, and that it had been surpassed by the United States on the world stage.
War crimes in occupied Poland during World War II at Chełmno according to postwar verdict by West Germany, although up to 340,000 victims were estimated by the Polish Main Commission for Investigation of German Crimes in Poland (GKBZNwP), a predecessor of the Institute of National Remembrance. Following the Wannsee Conference of 1942, as part of highly secretive Operation Reinhard in occupied Poland, the German government built three regular killing centres with stationary gas chambers. It was the most deadly phase of the Final Solution, based on implementing semi-industrial means of killing and incinerating people. The new facilities included Treblinka extermination camp (set up in July 1942), Bełżec (March 1942),