Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union was considered by the Soviet Union to be part of German war reparations for the damage inflicted by Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union during World War II. German civilians in Eastern Europe were deported to the USSR after World War II as forced laborers. Ethnic Germans living in the USSR were deported during World War II and conscripted for forced labor. German prisoners of war were also used as a source of forced labor during and after the war by the Soviet Union and the Western Allies.
The use of German labor as reparations was proposed by the Soviet government starting in 1943, and the issue was raised at the Yalta Conference by the Soviets. The USSR began deporting ethnic Germans from the Balkans in late 1944, most the surviving internees had returned by 1950. The NKVD took the lead role in it via its department, Chief Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees' Affairs (Главное управление по делам военнопленных и интернированных, ГУПВИ, transliterated as GUPVI).
Information about this was suppressed in the Eastern Bloc until the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Before that, however, it was known in the West through accounts released in West Germany and recollections of the internees. These German accounts are cited by historians that cover the employment of German labor by the USSR.
Read more about Forced Labor Of Germans In The Soviet Union: Reparations Forced Labor Disclosures From The Russian Archives, Deportation and Forced Labor of Soviet Germans, Schieder Commission, German Red Cross Estimates, 1974 German Federal Archive Report, Study By Gerhard Reichling, Technical Experts, Prisoners of War
Famous quotes containing the words soviet union, forced, labor, germans, soviet and/or union:
“In the Soviet Union everything happens slowly. Always remember that.”
—A.N. (Arkady N.)
“It does seem strange that the only place in the government which I would have liked to fill myself I am forced to give to another.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“... we, like so many others who think more of working than of dying, care only to push on steadily, wishing less for cessation of toil than for strength to keep at it; and for wisdom to make it worthy of the ideal of labor and of life which we believe to be the most precious gift of Heaven to any soul.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)
“New York is a meeting place for every race in the world, but the Chinese, Armenians, Russians, and Germans remain foreigners. So does everyone except the blacks. There is no doubt but that the blacks exercise great influence in North America, and, no matter what anyone says, they are the most delicate, spiritual element in that world.”
—Federico García Lorca (1898–1936)
“The tremendous outflow of intellectuals that formed such a prominent part of the general exodus from Soviet Russia in the first years of the Bolshevist Revolution seems today like the wanderings of some mythical tribe whose bird-signs and moon-signs I now retrieve from the desert dust.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“The rage for road building is beneficent for America, where vast distance is so main a consideration in our domestic politics and trade, inasmuch as the great political promise of the invention is to hold the Union staunch, whose days already seem numbered by the mere inconvenience of transporting representatives, judges and officers across such tedious distances of land and water.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)