Maribor is the second-largest city in Slovenia with about 114,487 inhabitants in 2013. Maribor is also the largest city of the traditional region of Lower Styria and the seat of the City Municipality of Maribor. In 2000, Maribor was given the Alpine Town of the Year award. Association football club NK Maribor is based in the city. In addition to its Slovene and German names, the city is also known as Latin: Marburgum.
In 1941 Lower Styria, the predominantly Yugoslav part of Styria, was annexed by Nazi Germany. German troops marched into the town at 9 pm on 8 April 1941. On 26 April Adolf Hitler, who encouraged his followers to "make this land German again" visited Maribor and a grand reception was organised in the city castle by the local Germans. Immediately after the occupation, Nazi Germany began mass expulsions of Slovenes to the Independent State of Croatia, Serbia, and later to the concentration and work camps in Germany. The Nazi goal was to re-Germanize the population of Lower Styria after the war. Many Slovene patriots were taken hostage and some are believed to have been shot later in the prisons of Maribor and Graz. This led to organised partisans resistance. Maribor was the site of a German prisoner-of-war camp from 1941 to 1945 for many British, Australian, and New Zealand troops who had been captured in Crete in 1941.
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