After Hitler drafted everyone who could possibly be drafted, he found that he now had a labor shortage. He reached out to his fellow Fascist, Mussolini, asking for additional workers - Italy complied and numerous volunteers went forth. These Italians returned two years later and told how they were consistently abused:
"They were treated by the master race like the millions of Russian, Polish, French, Yugoslav war prisoners who are forced to produce for the Nazi war machine. Far from home, cut off from their families, the Italian workers suffered hardships often as great as the workers from Nazi-occupied countries."
