World War II

===Genocide, concentration camps, and slave labour===
{{Main|The Holocaust|Nazi concentration camps|Extermination camp|Forced labour under German rule during World War II|Kidnapping of children by Nazi Germany|Nazi human experimentation|Soviet war crimes#World War II|Japanese war crimes}}
[[File:The Liberation of Bergen-belsen Concentration Camp, April 1945 BU4031.jpg|thumb|[[Schutzstaffel]] (SS) female camp guards removing prisoners' bodies from lorries and carrying them to a mass grave, inside the German [[Bergen-Belsen concentration camp]], 1945]]

[[Nazi Germany]], under the [[dictatorship]] of Adolf Hitler, was responsible for murdering about 6{{nbsp}}million Jews in what is now known as [[the Holocaust]]. They also murdered an additional 4{{nbsp}}million others who were deemed "[[life unworthy of life|unworthy of life]]" (including the [[Disability|disabled]] and [[Mental disorder|mentally ill]], [[German atrocities committed against Soviet prisoners of war|Soviet prisoners of war]], [[Romani people|Romani]], [[homosexuals]], [[Freemasons]], and [[Jehovah's Witnesses]]) as part of a program of deliberate extermination, in effect becoming a "[[Genocide|genocidal]] state".<ref>''The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as Told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum'' (2nd ed.), 2006. Washington, DC: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. {{ISBN|978-0-8018-8358-3}}.</ref> [[German atrocities committed against Soviet prisoners of war|Soviet POWs]] were kept in especially unbearable conditions, and 3.6&nbsp;million Soviet POWs out of 5.7&nbsp;million died in Nazi camps during the war.<ref>{{Harvnb|Herbert|1994|p=[{{GBurl|id=M7Y9AAAAIAAJ|p=222}} 222]}}</ref><ref name="Overy 2004 568_569">{{Harvnb|Overy|2004|pp=568–569}}.</ref> In addition to [[Nazi concentration camps|concentration camps]], [[Extermination camp|death camps]] were created in Nazi Germany to exterminate people on an industrial scale. Nazi Germany extensively used [[Forced labour under German rule during World War II|forced labourers]]; about 12&nbsp;million [[Ostarbeiter|Europeans]] from German-occupied countries were abducted and used as a slave work force in German industry, agriculture and war economy.<ref name="compensation">{{cite web|url=https://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1757323,00.html|title=Final Compensation Pending for Former Nazi Forced Laborers|date=27 October 2005|access-date=19 January 2010|first=Michael|last=Marek|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060502123049/https://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1757323,00.html|archive-date=2 May 2006|work=dw-world.de|publisher=Deutsche Welle|url-status=dead}}</ref>

[[File:Czeslawa Kwoka - Brasse.jpg|thumb|left|[[Czesława Kwoka|Prisoner identity photograph of a Polish girl]] taken by the German [[SS]] in [[Auschwitz]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.dw.com/en/colorized-photo-of-girl-at-auschwitz-strikes-chord-on-social-media/a-43033478 |title=Color photo of girl at Auschwitz strikes chord |first=Alexander |last=Pearson |date=March 19, 2018 |access-date=July 12, 2023 |work=[[Deutsche Welle]] |quote=Kwoka was murdered with a phenol injection to the heart a few weeks later. |archive-date=19 March 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180319065203/https://www.dw.com/en/colorized-photo-of-girl-at-auschwitz-strikes-chord-on-social-media/a-43033478 |url-status=live }}</ref> Approximately 230,000 children were held prisoner and used in forced labour and [[Nazi human experimentation|Nazi medical experiments]].]]
The Soviet [[Gulag]] became a ''de facto'' system of deadly camps during 1942–43, when wartime privation and hunger caused numerous deaths of inmates,<ref>J. Arch Getty, Gábor T. Rittersporn and Viktor N. Zemskov. Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basisof Archival Evidence. ''The American Historical Review'', Vol. 98, No. 4 (Oct. 1993), pp. 1017–49</ref> including foreign citizens of Poland and [[Occupation of the Baltic states|other countries]] occupied in 1939–40 by the Soviet Union, as well as Axis [[German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union|POWs]].<ref>{{Harvnb|Applebaum|2003|pp=389–396}}.</ref> By the end of the war, most Soviet POWs liberated from Nazi camps and many repatriated civilians were detained in special filtration camps where they were subjected to [[NKVD]] evaluation, and 226,127 were sent to the Gulag as real or perceived Nazi collaborators.<ref>Zemskov V.N. ''On repatriation of Soviet citizens''. Istoriya SSSR., 1990, No. 4, (in Russian). See also [https://scepsis.ru/library/id_1234.html] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111014134645/https://scepsis.ru/library/id_1234.html|date=14 October 2011}} (online version), and {{Harvnb|Bacon|1992}}; {{Harvnb|Ellman|2002}}.</ref>

Japanese [[prisoner-of-war camp]]s, many of which were used as labour camps, also had high death rates. The [[International Military Tribunal for the Far East]] found the death rate of Western prisoners was 27 percent (for American POWs, 37 percent),<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bataan/peopleevents/e_atrocities.html|title=Japanese Atrocities in the Philippines|access-date=18 January 2010|archive-date=27 July 2003|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030727223501/https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bataan/peopleevents/e_atrocities.html|work=American Experience: the Bataan Rescue|publisher=PBS Online|url-status=dead}}</ref> seven times that of POWs under the Germans and Italians.<ref>{{Harvnb|Tanaka|1996|pp=2–3}}.</ref> While 37,583 prisoners from the UK, 28,500 from the Netherlands, and 14,473 from the United States were released after the [[surrender of Japan]], the number of Chinese released was only 56.<ref>{{Harvnb|Bix|2000|p=360}}.</ref>

At least five million Chinese civilians from northern China and Manchukuo were enslaved between 1935 and 1941 by the [[East Asia Development Board]], or ''Kōain'', for work in mines and war industries. After 1942, the number reached 10&nbsp;million.<ref name="zhifen2002">{{cite web|last=Ju|url=https://www.fas.harvard.edu/~asiactr/sino-japanese/session6.htm|first=Zhifen|title=Japan's Atrocities of Conscripting and Abusing North China Draftees after the Outbreak of the Pacific War|work=Joint Study of the Sino-Japanese War: Minutes of the June 2002 Conference|publisher=Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences|date=June 2002|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120521093637/https://www.fas.harvard.edu/~asiactr/sino-japanese/session6.htm|archive-date=21 May 2012|access-date=28 December 2013}}</ref> In [[Java]], between 4{{nbsp}}and 10&nbsp;million ''[[rōmusha]]'' (Japanese: "manual labourers"), were forced to work by the Japanese military. About 270,000 of these Javanese labourers were sent to other Japanese-held areas in Southeast Asia, and only 52,000 were repatriated to Java.<ref name="indonesiaww2">{{cite web|url=https://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+id0029)|title=Indonesia: World War II and the Struggle For Independence, 1942–50; The Japanese Occupation, 1942–45|access-date=9 February 2007|publisher=Library of Congress|year=1992|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041030225658/https://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd%2Fcstdy%3A%40field%28DOCID+id0029%29|archive-date=30 October 2004|url-status=live}}</ref>