World+Wars

World Wars I and II
As explained above, the blatant slave trade all around the world died out at the end of the Industrial Revolution. But that did not mean slavery ended; it merely changed into many different forms during the 20th century. Forms of slavery used during World Wars I and II from 1914 to 1945 were very different from slavery before it and slavery after it. The wars during this period of history had a huge impact on all aspects of society, and so the status of slavery and the motivation for slavery was largely based on the huge wars taking place.

During World War I and the time after it before World War II, outright slave traffic continued to be curbed in the areas of the world still practicing slavery. The slave trade still continued underground between countries in eastern Africa, especially Ethiopia, and the Middle East, especially Arabia. Throughout this period before World War II, there were outrages about revealed underground slave trades with enslaved Africans in Liberia and the Congo, and enslaved Native Americans in northern Peru (“Slavery…”). In the Congo, millions of Africans were enslaved by King Leopold of Belgium, whom the leaders of the Berlin Conference in 1885 appointed to rule over the Congo. King Leopold promised that he would put a stop to the slavery put on the Congo people by the Arabs. Yet, these promises were part of Leopold’s scheme to set up his own system of slavery over the Congo natives to wring the wealth of resources in the Congo for Belgium. The tyrant Leopold ordered his army to enslave whole villages of natives and enslaved them in wresting resources like rubber and ivory and constructing a trade infrastructure. When not enough slaves were rounded up, his henchmen took it out on the slaves, cutting off limbs of the slaves, capturing women and children, and massacring the slaves. Eventually, Leopold’s brutality was exposed, leading to a massive world scandal. An investigative committee revealed that in time of Leopold’s slave system, the Congo’s population had gone from 20 million to 10 million, with people dying from disease, starvation, exhaustion, or being directly slaughtered by Belgian troops. The Belgian government took control of the Congo in 1908 (Sylvester).

 In response to incidents like this, the League of Nations held the International Slavery Convention in 1926, in which even more nations than those in the Brussels Act accepted the motions in it. Despite these resolutions, no real committee was formed to enforce them, so the convention was somewhat useless (“Slavery…”).

There were three other forms of slavery during the period of the World Wars. The first was the forced labor of the Soviets during Stalin’s rule. Second, child slavery continued in China. The third was the forms of slavery during World War II.

Joseph Stalin was the dictator of the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953. During his regime, millions of people were forced to work in labor camps. This was in accordance with the USSR’s Labor Code, which stated that all citizens must labor for the government. Prisoners, enemies of the state, and other convicts were sent to do hard manual labor in Siberia during this time. Citizens were accused of being enemies of the government and sent to work without a trial and without much grounds at all. Like in the Renaissance and Industrial Revolution, Stalin used his massive free labor force to build up the Soviet Union’s economy and to industrialize the nation. Labor projects included building roads and railroads, building houses and power plants, mining, cutting trees, working in fields, etc. The workers were given nothing but food. One third of all the workers died from the poor environment in which they worked and from starvation and the cold. They were brutally treated on unjust bases. Therefore, this “corrective labor,” as it was called, is really slavery at its core.

In China, child slavery, called mui tsai, had been practiced for years. When slavery was outlawed in China in 1908, it continued underground. For quick cash in dire situations, parents commonly sold their children into slavery. These children were either domestic slaves (as in the Renaissance) or laboring slaves (as in the Industrial Revolution). In 1930, it was reported that there were around 4 million children enslaved in China.

World War II was the instigation of several other types of slavery, also, such as POW slavery, Holocaust slavery, and sexual slavery. Nazi Germany captured enemy civilians and soldiers and brutally enslaved them to fill the gaps in the workforce. Much of the weaponry made by the Germans during World War II was made by slaves. One manufacturing company alone – Krupp—held 100,000 slaves by the end of the war. Many of these slaves died from exhaustion, starvation, and lack of basic necessities. They were kept in stables like livestock. Those that didn’t die were forced to work in German factories and farms. In 1944, Germany held 9.5 million slaves—7 million civilians and 2.5 million captured soldiers. Russian women that the Germans captured were held as domestic slaves, and Russian adolescents that the Germans captured were apprenticed to German businessmen.

Not only were the Germans notorious for their brutal system of slavery for prisoners of war, but even worse, they enslaved innocent Jews and other “undesirable” people during the Holocaust. As a method of exterminating them, these people were sent to labor camps where they were treated even worse than the prisoners of war. Children from 6-years-old up were forced to work in these camps. Slaves mined, built weapons, sewed, etc. Slaves there were driven to work too hard in tight spaces with the poorest of living conditions. They had poor and meager food rations and a shortage of shelter and clothing. Loads of people died from diseases such as tuberculosis, from being overworked, from the cold, and from starvation. Their corpses were systematically burned in huge crematoriums.

A final form of slavery during World War II was the sex slavery used primarily by the Japanese. As they plundered lands they seized, they cruelly raped, captured, and injured the civilian women there. Called “comfort women,” many of these travelled around with the army and served as permanent sex slaves. About 200,000 women, mostly captured Koreans, served as involuntary sex slaves for the Japanese during World War II. Ages ranged from 11 to 32 years old. Soldiers each day systematically came in and did what they wanted to these slaves who were confined to small rooms. At the end of World War II, the torment did not stop for these women, who were sometimes too ashamed or physically/ psychologically abused to return to their normal lives. Several years ago, a number of these surviving sex slaves formed a committee to appeal to the government for reparations, but this was refused (Sylvester – everything above).

The fact that there were scandals about slavery and labor camps during the time period of the World Wars indicates a similarity and difference between this time period and the Renaissance/ Industrial Revolution. A similarity is that all three time periods had some forms of slavery to enhance nations’ economies and extract resources. But a difference is that slavery in the World Wars was looked down upon and was underground, whereas it was not in the Renaissance. But there lies a similarity between the World Wars and the Industrial Revolution, in that in both, measures were enacted to end slavery and the slave trade. However, World War II had labor camps for prisoners of war and specific races, which had never been done before. It also had sexual slavery, which though it had been practiced before, never to the extent it was carried out in World War II. Some captured slaves in the World Wars were used as domestic slaves, as they were in the Renaissance. But in the World Wars, there was not the worldwide slave trade there was in the Renaissance and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.