Between 1939 and 1945, the National Socialists created a German People’s List (Deutsche Volkslisten - DVL) in their annexed territories. This list included “ethnic Germans” in the annexed territories like Poland or Alsace. They were granted automatic German citizenship through mass naturalisations. The list only included Christians. In the National Socialist ideology in which being German was considered a race, Jewish people, Jehova’s witnesses, or Sinti and Roma could not be German but were considered to be of a different race.