section_path: History/Europe/World War II
section_name: World War II
paragraph_text: World War II
  
  During the Second World War, Nazi Germany effectively enslaved about 12 million people, both those considered undesirable and citizens of conquered countries, with the avowed intention of treating these Untermenschen (sub-humans) as a permanent slave-class of inferior beings who could be worked until they died, and who possessed neither the rights nor the legal status of members of the Aryan race.
  
  Besides Jews, the harshest deportation and forced labour policies were applied to the populations of Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia. By the end of the war, half of Belarus' population had been killed or deported.