For the use of this term in the software development industry, see death march (software development).

For the death marches of Jews from Nazi concentration camps, see Death marches (Holocaust).

A death march is a long-distance march in extremely harsh conditions with disregard for the life and health of the victims, usually prisoners or refugees. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Dachau concentration-camp inmates on a death march through a German village in April 1945. ...

Initially the term was used in the context of the World War II history by victims and then by historians to refer to the forcible movement in the winter of 1944-5 by Nazi Germany of thousands of prisoners, mostly Jews, from Nazi concentration camps near the advancing war front to camps inside Germany. Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the firm control of the totalitarian and fascist ideology of the Nazi Party, with the Führer Adolf Hitler as dictator. ... See also the related List of German concentration camps Concentration camp in Nazi Germany. ...

Later the term has been applied to similar events in other places. The idea behind the marches was to force prisoners to walk, at gunpoint, without food, water, shelter, or amenities; those who couldn't keep up were often shot. In Asia, the Japanese forces also conducted death marches, including the infamous Bataan Death March and Sandakan Death Marches. World map showing the location of Asia. ... The Bataan Death March (aka The Death March of Bataan) was a war crime involving the forcible transfer of prisoners of war, with wide-ranging abuse and high fatalities, by Japanese forces in the Philippines, in 1942, after the three-month Battle of Bataan, which was part of the Battle... The Sandakan Death Marches are the most infamous incident in series of events which resulted in the deaths of more than 6,000 Javanese civilian slave labourers and Allied prisoners of war, held by the Empire of Japan during the Pacific campaign of World War II, at prison camps in...

The term could be applied to the death marches that took place during the 1915 Armenian Genocide where thousands of men, women and children were forced into death marches through the desert of Deir ez-Zor where most of them perished, leaving few survivors. Today there is a memorial in Deir ez-Zor for the marchers. Armenian Genocide photo. ... Dayr az Zawr, or Deir ez Zor, town (1994 est. ...

Earlier in American history (1838), the Cherokee nation had to march westward towards Oklahoma, which became known as the Trail of Tears where an estimated 4,000 men, women, and children died during relocation. This monument at the New Echota Historic Site honors Cherokees who died on the Trail of Tears. ...

See also

• The March (1945)
• March of the Living
• The Long Walk - a Stephen King story (written under the pen name Richard Bachman) in which a death march as an athletic competition forms the plot.