The provision of forced labour, and still more the murderous conditions under which it was used, was the responsibility of the SS and the Nazi state. But a large part of the responsibility for its rapid expansion and exploitation lay with the businesses who demanded it.137 Altogether in the course of the war, some 8,435,000 foreign workers were drafted into industry; only 7,945,000 of them were still alive in mid-1945. Prisoners of war fared even worse: of the 4,585,000 who found themselves engaged in forced labour during the war, only 3,425,000 were still alive when the war ended.138 The
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