Foreigners in Germany: POW’s and forced labourers.
Notes taken from ‘Hitler’s Foreign Workers’ by Ulrich Herbert
The German economy needed skilled workers to replace those called to the front. At first volunteers were sought in the newly occupied territories. In spring 1940 it had been declared that this scheme had failed and from then on workers were brought in by force. By 1944 1 in 3 of the German workforce was foreign forced labour.
posted by Benjamin Nakizo at 6:01 AM
1 Comments:
P1: “By the late autumn of 1941, if not before, the entire German war economy had become heavily and irreversibly dependent of foreign labour”. Within Nazi Germany it was a hotly debated subject with the conflict of interest between ideological preference and economic necessity obvious to all.
P3: The worker programs were defended by likening them to previous worker migration patterns and by presenting them as a forwards looking initiative that would have to become something more common after the war in the European New Order. Workers would have to be routinely shuffled around Europe under the auspices of the National Socialist agenda. Yet few German workers linked this policy of the regime with its far more sinister aspects such as the reports of atrocities coming from the concentration camps.
However it would the use of forced foreign labour that would provide the Allies at the Nuremberg trails with a key accusation that linked the elite of the regime with business leaders and the consent of the general public. The fact that the Germans frequently were unable to associate the forced labour project with the crime of the Nazi regime “was one of the key factors behind the deepening separation between private experience and public discussion of the history of the Third Reich, a trend that strengthened in subsequent years” (p4).
The book is broken into four key parts:
1. The pre-history, genesis and planning of the foreign labour deployment.
2. Political decision making
3. The working and living conditions of foreign workers
4. the relations between Germans and foreign workers
p13: A long tradition had existed of Polish and other E. Europeans working seasonally in E. German farms who required the hands since their population was dwindling as urbanisation to the west took off. In World War I the rural population was especially hit hard, being unable to dive into pools of unemployed labour like the cities could when trying to make up for the loss of manpower to the front. Accordingly POW’s were used in large numbers to make up for the loss. Typically POW’s from the east would come to work on the fields while those from the west were used in factories and in industry.
P17/18:
Three problems with POW’s become evident:
1. The difficulties of policing such large numbers in the work place
2. The poor work rate of POW’s reluctant to assist their enemy.
3. Effective and consistent means of punishment and disciplining the workforce proved difficult.
Yet:
“Through the deployment of POW’s as labourers generated certain problems, due to the reasons mentioned above, the cost-benefit ratio was from Germany’s point of view very favourable”.
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For the upcoming seminar I have been set the following questions, which should henceforth form the basis of my study:
1) Why, and from where, were foreigners brought into Germany during the war?
The very first plans for bringing in foreign workers only looked at those in the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Yet very quickly, only a few weeks after the outbreak of war thousands of Polish workers were put to use within Germany.
In August 1944 there were 7,615,970 foreign workers working within the ‘Greater German Reich’. 1.9m were prisoners of war. 5.7m were civilians, including 250,000 Belgians, 1.3m French, 590,000 Italians, 1.7m Poles and 2.8 Soviet citizens.
Farming and mining were the first industries to test the use of large scale foreign labourers.
2) What were the ideological implications of this?
National Socialist doctrine placed great emphasis on the German race proving its character through heavy labour. Many hoped that the jobs of farmer, forester, fishing and mining would be set aside exclusively for German labour. There was a certain fear that to free the German people from heavy labour and allow them to work less hours and enjoy more the leisure pursuits of the city would weaken them as a race.
P133: “The original intentions of the National Socialists had been to utilise foreigners as a stopgap measure – and then only in activities requiring few or no skills. But such intentions had had to yield in almost every detail to the economic constraints of a war that far outstripped the capacities of the German economy.”
3) Were there disadvantages as well as advantages for the Nazi regime in
having foreign labourers in Germany in wartime?
Many of the foreign workers were deemed to be very unproductive. Those from the East typically did not have the skills required to perform the work set. Those form the West that did have the skills, i.e. miners, simply refused to put up with the poor conditions they were offered and either fled or were unmotivated. Indeed absconding from work, or ‘breach of contract’ was endemic throughout the foreign labour programs, especially with the western workers. Herbert calls it a “distinctive structural feature of foreign employment in the German economy throughout World War II”.
Interestingly Herbert believes this indiscipline within the ranks of the foreign workers was less because of ideological conflicts or a dislike of the Nazi regime and more based on the grounds of the workers wanting fair play within the Nazi system itself. “This shows both that the German regime appeared so politically stable that it was hard to imagine what could be done against it, and that a modicum of leeway seemed to be available to foreigners.
4) What differences were there in the treatment of different kinds of foreign
Worker, and why?
Italian and Dutch workers seemed to have been comparatively well treated and paid. Italians for political alliances and the Dutch on racial grounds. They stayed in private accommodation and ate more or less what their German colleagues did. (p101). “The blatant difference between Polish behaviour that was severely punished and Italian excesses that had to be put up with for ‘political’ reasons, clashed with the popular assessment of the two countries. In the popular mind, Poles and Italians were apparently not appraised in such different terms”.
After the fall of France conditions changed for the Poles in Germany. With the large increase in the available Labour market new laws could be introduced to penalise the Poles along racial grounds with little fear of losing any labour productivity of that could not be made up elsewhere. For example sick Polish and Soviet citizens no longer able to work were to be ‘disposed’ in concentration camps.
With the fall of France it also freed the Nazi regime from the fear of outside press coverage. They were now less concerned with public opinion the neutral states because quite simply the Germans were in such total control that it mattered little anymore.
Thousands of foreign women were hired as prostitutes from 1941 onwards. It was designed as a means of keeping foreign blood away from German women. By satisfying their needs on site the foreign workers would be less likely to desire contact with local woman.
It was hoped that the campaign against the Soviets would be quick in victory and from then on allow German firms use of their unlimited supplies of labour and natural resources. Yet as the war began to take longer than expected the rules and regulations concerning the employment of Russian POW’s became more lax.
5) Can we estimate the contribution made by foreign labourers to the German
war effort?
6) What happened to the forced foreign workers at the end of the war?
At a single stroke the forced workers became Displaced Persons (DP’s). Many encountered great difficulty as suddenly they were without work, pay or even food. Those that lived in the west could easily and promptly return home, although for the advancing Allies it made life difficult as millions clogged the streets as they began the long walk home. Those that could not return home caused chaos as they desperately sought shelter and food. Some sought revenge on their former masters, this was especially the case with those from the east and Soviet territories (who were of course the most badly treated) but these incidents, while widespread, were not organised and usually occurred against individuals against whom foreign workers had held personal grievances. In fact the crime rate among the DP’s was lower than that of the general German population, which increased rapidly after the war. Yet this did not prevent the German population blaming the DP’s for all their problems. Indeed some wanted to believe the DP’s were committing crimes as a means of ‘balancing the books’ and justifying the bad treatment they received at German hands as being necessary.
The crime that did persist among the ranks of the DP’s bewildered and frustrated the Allied occupation authorities who saw it as outright ingratitude that having been liberated they should they go on to cause the liberators problems of law and order. Hence the Allies sought to ship as many of them back home as quickly as possible and be done with the problem. Yet many Soviet citizens rightly feared the repercussions of returning to the USSR since many had collaborated with the Nazi’s or by their forced labour afraid they may have be considered as having done so. A huge percentage of the DP’s were quickly transported back to the east but many ended up in labour camps. Some committed suicide before arrival.
It was not until “some weeks after the cessation of combat in central Germany” that “the Allies” were “able to centralise many DP’s in “assembly centres”, guarantee basic food supplies and begin to prepare their repatriation”. (p377)
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