By late 1941, Germany was facing an acute labor shortage, and the Nazis launched a campaign to recruit—or more often, to forcibly deport—millions of people from occupied territories. The first trains carrying Ostarbeiter (eastern workers) began departing in January 1942.

Recruitment methods varied by region. In the West, forced labor was more often formalized through compulsory labor laws and employment offices—people were summoned from lists and faced penalties for evasion. In the occupied territories of the USSR, however, the Nazis quickly abandoned propaganda and promises of a good life in favor of mass roundups. In both cases, people did not go willingly: the difference was that in the West, the Nazis more often used a “legal cover,” while in the East, they resorted to outright violence.

In total, during the war years, about 13.5 million foreign workers and prisoners of war from 26 European countries were employed in the German economy, accounting for roughly 20% of the Reich’s total labor force.

Among those deported were many young women and men under 25—older men of conscription age had already been mobilized or had joined the partisans, and many young people simply hadn’t been drafted before the occupiers arrived.

The treatment of foreign workers in the Reich depended directly on their nationality and origin. Workers from Western Europe faced less discrimination: they were not required to wear identifying badges, were allowed to live outside camps, and could keep part of their earnings.

Civilian Polish workers, as residents of the first occupied country, found themselves in an intermediate position. The special “Polish decrees” of 1940, which had already established mechanisms of discrimination, required them to wear the letter “P” and imposed harsh restrictions, but they were less frequently confined to guarded camps.

The largest and most oppressed group were the “eastern workers”—the Ostarbeiter, citizens of the USSR. They were held in guarded camps, forced to wear an “OST” patch, and subjected to the hardest labor, working 12 to 14 hours a day, six days a week. Tuberculosis and typhus ran rampant due to unsanitary conditions. For disobedience or attempted escape, they were beaten and sent to concentration camps; women were subjected to violence, and their children were taken away and placed in orphanages, where most died from hunger and disease.

Of the approximately 3.5 million civilians and prisoners of war deported from 25 countries (excluding the USSR), an estimated 400,000 to 500,000 perished.

Of the roughly 10 million Soviet civilians and prisoners of war stolen into the Reich, about 5.3 million died.

Only one man—Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel—was sentenced to death at Nuremberg for organizing this system of forced labor. The others involved in the mass deportations and exploitation escaped punishment.

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