Deportation of Soviet citizens for forced labour to Germany
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Deportation of Soviet citizens for forced labour to Germany was the forcible export of citizens of the USSR (mainly from the territory of Ukraine and Belarus) to forced labor in Germany, as well as to Austria, France (Alsace-Lorraine) and the Czech Republic (Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia). It was carried out by the German occupation authorities in the period from 1942 to 1944. In November 1941, after the German top leadership realized the failure of the blitzkrieg, they were instructed to use "Russian labor force" in Germany. In January 1942, the German leaders gave orders to take 15 million workers from occupied areas in the USSR to Germany for forced labor.[1]
At first, the Germans were not going to attract large numbers of labor from the occupied Soviet territories, fearing that the presence of Soviet citizens in the Third Reich would have a corrupting ideological effect on its inhabitants. The mass sending of people to Germany began in the spring of 1942, when, after the failure of the 1941 blitzkrieg, there was a noticeable shortage of workers. The Germans themselves called the hijacking of the Soviet population recruitment, and until April 1942, mostly volunteers were actually sent to work in Germany.
The occupation authorities launched a broad propaganda campaign, promising people a happy life in the Third Reich, decent pay and decent working conditions. Some believed these messages and came to the recruitment points themselves, fleeing from devastation, hunger and unemployment. But there were few of them, and they quickly realized that they had been deceived. The vast majority of ostarbeiters were forcibly sent to Germany. Using the army and local police, the Germans organized raids and hijacked hundreds of thousands of Soviet people to Germany.
According to German information, in February 1942, 8-10 thousand "civilian Russians" were sent to Germany weekly. In general, about 5 million people were taken out of the occupied territories of the USSR for forced labor, 2.4 million of them from the territory of the Ukrainian SSR, 400 thousand people from the territory of the BSSR. The Germans called them "ostarbeiters" (Eastern workers). In accordance with the state instructions of the German authorities, it was stipulated that "all workers should receive such food and such housing and be treated in such a way that would make it possible to exploit them to the greatest extent at the lowest cost." The death rate among the Soviet people who were abducted to Germany was very high. The overwhelming majority of the total number of those taken out for forced labor were teenagers.[2]