As the military situation on the Eastern Front became more difficult, the army, the occupation authorities and the SS all began to abandon any remaining scruples in the recruitment of local inhabitants for labour. Speaking in Posen in October 1943, Heinrich Himmler declared: ‘Whether 10,000 Russian women collapse with exhaustion in the construction of an anti-tank ditch for Germany only interests me insofar as the ditch gets dug for Germany.’81
