<P> Japanese prisoner - of - war camps, many of which were used as labour camps, also had high death rates . The International Military Tribunal for the Far East found the death rate of Western prisoners was 27.1 per cent (for American POWs, 37 per cent), seven times that of POWs under the Germans and Italians . While 37,583 prisoners from the UK, 28,500 from the Netherlands, and 14,473 from the United States were released after the surrender of Japan, the number of Chinese released was only 56 . </P> <P> At least five million Chinese civilians from northern China and Manchukuo were enslaved between 1935 and 1941 by the East Asia Development Board, or Kōain, for work in mines and war industries . After 1942, the number reached 10 million . In Java, between 4 and 10 million rōmusha (Japanese: "manual labourers"), were forced to work by the Japanese military . About 270,000 of these Javanese labourers were sent to other Japanese - held areas in South East Asia, and only 52,000 were repatriated to Java . </P> <P> In Europe, occupation came under two forms . In Western, Northern, and Central Europe (France, Norway, Denmark, the Low Countries, and the annexed portions of Czechoslovakia) Germany established economic policies through which it collected roughly 69.5 billion reichmarks (27.8 billion US dollars) by the end of the war, this figure does not include the sizeable plunder of industrial products, military equipment, raw materials and other goods . Thus, the income from occupied nations was over 40 per cent of the income Germany collected from taxation, a figure which increased to nearly 40 per cent of total German income as the war went on . </P> <P> In the East, the intended gains of Lebensraum were never attained as fluctuating front - lines and Soviet scorched earth policies denied resources to the German invaders . Unlike in the West, the Nazi racial policy encouraged extreme brutality against what it considered to be the "inferior people" of Slavic descent; most German advances were thus followed by mass executions . Although resistance groups formed in most occupied territories, they did not significantly hamper German operations in either the East or the West until late 1943 . </P>

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