A German soldier clearing a mine near Stavanger, Norway, in August 1945, as part of his compulsory post-war labor. Wikimedia Commons.
9. The Allied powers used German POWs and repatriated civilians for slave labor after the end of the war.
As mentioned previously, millions of Germans, either as civilians or prisoners of war, were relocated in the aftermath of the Second World War, with many of those repatriated to Germany housed in former concentration and internment camps. With most countries suffering a shortage within their labor forces due to the losses sustained during wartime fighting, within these facilities, operated under the supervision of Allied soldiers, inmates were deprived of their freedoms and committed to compulsory forced labor for the benefit of the victorious nations.
Aware of the patent unlawfulness of using captured enemy soldiers and civilians for forced labor, a blatant violation of the Geneva Convention, the United States and Great Britain both devised a system under which prisoners were paid a virtually non-existent wage so as to avoid being categorized as slave labor; in England, the amount paid to laborers under this program was just a single shilling a day, less than one-seventh the typical wage for the working poor at the time. Inadequately fed, poorly clothed, housed in squalor, and required to work long hours, the triumphant and supposedly morally righteous Allies rebuilt large portions of their economies on the back of slaves in all but name.