Midnight in the century: World War II and the resistance

Abstract

Unemployment in the US and Europe was only reversed in 1938-1941, when the militarization of society began. Unemployed became soldiers at the beginning of the war. It was not the Keynesian measures that reversed the crisis of 1929 but the massive proletarianization of large peasant sectors – with forced collectivization in the USSR or the collapse of the small peasants in the US portrayed in The grapes of wrath (STEINBECK, 2016) – and later the destruction of property on an unprecedented scale in the history of humanity - was the apocalypse of World War II, with its 80 million dead. It was the greatest defeat of mankind. In this article we look at the main events of World War II and the Resistance to it, recalling that the Nazi concentration camps were forced labor camps. Between 1939 and 1945, forced labor, in hundreds of camps and sub camps, inserted in the productive chain of some of the biggest companies of the German industry, was at the center of the project of the Nazi State.