International Labor

France's labor shortage attracted workers globally. Besides colonial workers, 200,000 Chinese laborers arrived through British recruitment. Living in segregated camps, speaking no French, they performed dangerous work—clearing battlefields, handling unexploded ordnance, burying bodies. Their contribution, essential but unrecognized, exemplified war's hidden international dimensions.

Portuguese workers, fleeing poverty, found employment in French agriculture and industry. Greek and Italian laborers worked construction and transportation. Polish miners, recruited from German-occupied territories, extracted coal essential for war production. This international workforce, segregated by nationality and supervised by military authorities, created a babel of languages in industrial regions.

Women workers arrived from across Europe. Russian women, stranded by revolution, worked in French factories. Belgian women, refugee seamstresses, maintained textile production. Swiss women crossed borders daily for better-paid French employment. This female international labor force, doubly marginalized by gender and nationality, remains largely undocumented in official histories.