The Turin area, like the whole industrial triangle, had enormous importance in the recruitment of manpower for Germany, both before and after 8 September 1943. After the armistice and occupation, Piedmont was the fourth most important region of Italy in terms of numbers of workers sent to the Reich, with over 7,000 from the province of Turin alone. Apart from those who went there “voluntarily”, the methods of coercive conscription that led to the greatest results were the “prison actions”, i.e. the emptying of the prisons in the territories where the Nazis and Italian Social Republic government were based, incurred…
