Esclavos del Tercer Reich

This is the story of the losers, of all the losers of wars, civil or world, and especially of those who were enslaved by the Third Reich until exhaustion and death. Most of them died far from their birthplace, alone, being just a number, victims of a logic and a context of hatred that had begun to be generated some time ago. The German occupation of France and the establishment of the Vichy collaborationist government were decisive for this, but even before that, the Spanish republicans who crossed the border found themselves in a legal limbo that ended up precipitating their massive deportation to the interior of Europe. After compiling and studying An important volume of documentation kept in more than nine national and international archives and institutions, most of which have been little treated or unpublished until now, the authors of this book recount events that are largely unknown to Spanish society. It is a journey through Europe dominated by the Third Reich and the insertion of the Spaniards in the macabre network of terror that would end with their deportation within the walls of those enclosures destined for slave labor in the heart of the Austrian Danube. This slave labor was the central element of punishment and discipline of the "KL" or Nazi concentration system. A brutal world in constant evolution marked by the economic and military needs of the war, until its definitive acceleration between 1944 and 1945. This documentation on the camps has allowed the elaboration of a complex study that fully introduces the Spanish case within Holocaust studies and specialized international historiography.