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The use of slave and forced labour in Nazi Germany (German: Zwangsarbeit) and throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II took place on an unprecedented scale. [2] It was a vital part of the German economic exploitation of conquered territories. It also contributed to the mass extermination of populations in occupied Europe.
After World War II ended, the main four Allied powers – Great Britain, The United States, France, and the Soviet Union – jointly occupied Germany, with the Allied occupation officially ending in the 1950s. During this time, Germany was held accountable for the Allied occupation's expenses, amounting to over several billion dollars. [21]
In the years following World War II, large numbers of German civilians and captured soldiers were forced into labor by the Allied forces. The topic of using Germans as forced labor for reparations was first broached at the Tehran conference in 1943, where Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin demanded 4,000,000 German workers. [1] [better source needed]
Ukrainians from Cherkashchyna depart to Nazi Germany to serve as labor force, 1942. During the German occupation of Central and Eastern Europe in World War II (1941–44) over three million people were taken to Germany as Ostarbeiter. Some estimates put the number as high as 5.5 million. [6]
Among the approximately one million foreign volunteers and conscripts who served in the Wehrmacht during World War II were ethnic Belgians, Czechs, Dutch, Finns, Danes, French, Hungarians, Norwegians, Poles, [1] Portuguese, Swedes, [2] Swiss along with people from Great Britain, Ireland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the Balkans. [3]
Operation Barbarossa [g] was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. It was the largest and costliest land offensive in human history, with around 10 million combatants taking part, [26] and over 8 million casualties by the end of the operation. [27] [28]
While both Stalin and Hitler had long spoken of an over-riding necessity to prepare for war, Hitler's outlook was for an offensive war, comporting with Nazi ideology, by a new community of Germans carving an empire across Europe, slaying the "Jewish Bolshevik" dragon and addressing punitive Treaty of Versailles provisions.
Forced exercises at Oranienburg, 1933. Traditionally, prisoners were often deployed in penal labor performing unskilled work. [1] During the first years of Nazi Germany's existence, unemployment was high and forced labor in the concentration camps was presented as re-education through labor and a means of punishing offenders.