During World War II, Nazi authorities condemned millions of Belarussians, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, and Yugoslavs to forced labor as part of an aggressive campaign to conquer and establish a colony in Eastern Europe. Nazi forced labor policy in occupied Eastern Europe was a product of Hitler’s colonial ambitions, Nazi racial ideology, and economic necessity resulting from the war with the Soviet Union.
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Nazi racial ideology, which denigrated Slavs and placed them slightly above Jews and Roma in the Nazi racial hierarchy, impacted almost every aspect of the forced labor experience for Eastern Europeans.
This can be seen in the registration process, transport to Germany, working and housing conditions, and food rationing. Although conditions varied significantly throughout labor camps in Germany compared to Western European laborers, Eastern Europeans often faced discrimination, worked and lived in punitive conditions, and experienced mental and emotional trauma.
After Fritz Sauckel, the Nazi Plenipotentiary General for Labor, established quotas for conscripting men and women to work in Germany, Nazi authorities increasingly relied on violence to involuntarily “recruit” millions of men and women from Eastern Europe. Immediately following conscription, a Nazi medical team gave all Eastern European forced laborers a physical examination and, since Nazi racist thinking assumed all Slavic people to be disease-ridden, they were also given a decontamination shower prior to being transferred to a transit camp to await deployment.