Service du travail obligatoire

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During the German occupation of France in the Second World War, the Service du travail obligatoire (STO - Compulsory Work Service) was the forced enlistment and deportation of hundreds of thousands of French workers to Germany in order to work as forced labour for the German war effort (industry, farming, railways, etc.). Those requisitioned under the STO were accommodated in work camps on German soil.

With the active complicity of the Vichy government (the French forced labourers were the only ones in Europe condemned to this fate by their own country's laws rather than by a German order), Nazi Germany set up the STO to compensate for its loss of manpower as it enlisted more and more soldiers for the Russian front.

[edit] List of former STO workers

André Bergeron
Antoine Blondin
Auguste Boncors
Jean Boudou
Georges Brassens
José Cabanis
François Cavanna
Arthur Conte
Raymond Devos
Michel Galabru
Stéphane Just
Boby Lapointe
Claude Ollier
Alain Robbe-Grillet
André Tissier

[edit] Bibliography

(French) La déportation des travailleurs français dans le IIIe Reich, Jacques Evrard, Fayard, Les grandes études contemporaines, Paris, 1972.

(French) La Main-d'œuvre française exploitée par le IIIe Reich, proceedings of an international colloqium at Caen (November 2001), Centre de Recherche d’Histoire quantitative, Caen, 2001, texts gathered by B. Garnier, J. Quellien and F. Passera