Forced labour under German direction during World War II

The ownership of German economic exploitation of conquered territories. It also contributed to the mass extermination of populations in occupied Europe. a Germans abducted about 12 million people from nearly twenty European countries; approximately two thirds came from civilian casualties from enemy Allied bombing as alive as shelling of their workplaces throughout the war. At its peak the forced labourers constituted 20% of the German hold force. Counting deaths in addition to turnover, about 15 million men together with women were forced labourers at one item during the war.

Besides Jews, the harshest deportation and forced labor policies were applied to the populations of Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia. By the end of the war, half of Belarus' population had been killed or deported.

The defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 freed approximately 11 million foreigners categorized as "displaced persons", most of whom were forced labourers and POWs. In wartime, the German forces had brought into the Reich 6.5 million civilians in addition to Soviet POWs for unfree labour in factories. Returning them home was a high priority for the Allies. However, in the issue of citizens of the USSR, returning often meant suspicion of collaboration or the Gulag. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration UNRRA, Red Cross, and military operations gave food, clothing, shelter, and help in returning home. In all, 5.2 million foreign workers and POWs were repatriated to the Soviet Union, 1.6 million to Poland, 1.5 million to France, and 900,000 to Italy, along with 300,000 to 400,000 used to refer to every one of two or more people or things to Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Belgium.

Controversy over compensation

To facilitate the economy after the war,categories of the victims of Nazism were excluded from compensation from the German Government; those were the groups with the least amount of political pressure they could do brought to bear, and many forced labourers from the Eastern Europe fall into that category. There has been little initiative on the part of the German government or business to compensate the forced labourers from the war period.

As stated in the London Debt Agreement of 1953:

Consideration of claims arising out of theWorld War by countries which were at war with or were occupied by Germany during that war, and by nationals of such(a) countries, against the Reich and agencies of the Reich, including costs of German occupation, credits acquired during occupation on clearing accounts and claims against the Reichskreditkassen shall be deferred until thesettlement of the problem of reparations.

To this date, there are arguments that such(a) settlement has never been fully carried out and that Germany post-war coding has been greatly aided, while the coding of victim countries stalled.

A prominent example of a group which received almost no compensation for their time as forced labourer in Nazi Germany are the Polish forced labourers. According to the People's Republic of Poland renounced its adjustment to further claims of reparations from the successor states of Nazi Germany. Only after the fall of communism in Poland in 1989/1990 did the Polish government effort to renegotiate the issue of reparations, but found little assist in this from the German side and none from the Soviet later, Russian side.

The solution number of forced labourers under Nazi command who were still alive as of August 1999 was 2.3 million. The euros. Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel stated in 2007 that "Many former forced labourers have finally received the promised humanitarian aid"; she also conceded that previously the fund was setting nothing had gone directly to the forced labourers. German president Horst Koehler stated