Of the approximately 900,000 Italian men and women living in German territory in the last twenty months of the Second World War, only 800,000 had been transferred there after 8 September 1943; the other 100,000 had arrived earlier, as a result of bilateral economic agreements which had involved sending Italian agricultural and industrial labour to the Reich. Altogether, from 1938 to 1943, some 500,000 workers – both men and women – had been employed in various sectors of the German war economy. On 27 July 1943, Heinrich Himmler, in his capacity as chief of the German police, blocked the repatriation…
