Forced labour under German rule during World War II

• 1. Origins And Expansion Of Forced Labor

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  In the early days of labour camps, Nazi Germany maintained a supply of slave labour for "unreliable elements". This practice started with homosexuals, criminals, political dissidents, communists, Jews, the homeless and anyone the regime wanted out of the way. After the invasion of Poland in 1939, Polish Jews over the age of 12 and Poles over the age of 12 living in the General Government territory were subject to forced labor. Historian Jan Gross estimates that no more than 15 percent of Polish workers volunteered to go to work in Germany. By 1942, all non-Germans living in the General Government were subject to forced labor.

  The largest number of labour camps held civilians forcibly abducted in the occupied countries. These people provided labour in the German war industry, repaired bombed railroads and bridges, or worked on farms. Manual labour was in high demand as much of the work done today would be done with machines was still done by hand in the 1930s and 1940s. As the war progressed, the use of slave labour increased massively. Prisoners of war and civilian undesirables were brought in from occupied territories. Millions of Jews, Slavs and other conquered peoples were used as slave labourers by German corporations including Thyssen, Krupp, IG Farben, Bosch, Daimler-Benz, Demag, Henschel, Junkers, Messerschmitt, Siemens, and Volkswagen.

  Once the war had begun, foreign subsidiaries were seized and nationalized by the Nazi-controlled German state. Work conditions deteriorated as they did throughout German industry. About 12 million forced labourers, most of whom were Eastern Europeans, were employed in the German war economy inside Nazi Germany during the war. The German need for slave labour grew to the point that even children were kidnapped as labor in an operation called the "Kinderlandverschickung".

• 2. Hierarchical Classification Systems

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  A class system was created amongst foreign workers brought to Germany to work for the Reich. The system was based on layers of increasingly less privileged workers. It started with well-paid workers from German allies or neutral countries. These included France, Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Spain, and Switzerland. Only about 1 percent of foreign workers in Germany came from countries that were neutral or allied to Germany.

  Forced labourers from countries not allied with Germany formed another class. This class included prisoners of war who were subject to Geneva Conventions restrictions. Almost all Polish non-officer prisoners of war were forced to work in Nazi Germany. In 1944, almost 2 million prisoners of war worked as forced labourers in Germany. Compared to other foreign workers, prisoners of war were relatively well-off if they came from Western countries like the United States or Great Britain. Their working conditions and well-being were subject to supervision by the International Red Cross.

  Eastern workers wore an OST badge and had to live under guard in camps fenced with barbed wire. They were particularly vulnerable to the whims of the Gestapo and industrial plant guards. Estimates put the number of OST workers between three and 5.5 million. In general, foreign labourers from Western Europe had similar gross earnings and were subject to similar taxation as German workers. Central and Eastern European forced labourers received at most about one-half the gross earnings paid to German workers.

• 3. Economic Exploitation And Industry

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  More than 2,000 German companies profited from slave labour during the Nazi era. Deutsche Bank and Siemens are among those named. The Organisation Todt was a civil and military engineering group responsible for huge range of engineering projects both in pre-World War II Germany and in occupied Europe from France to Russia. Fritz Todt founded this organization. Most so-called volunteer Soviet POW workers were assigned to the Organisation Todt.

  The history of the organisation falls into three main phases. A pre-war period between 1933 and 1938 saw construction of the German autobahn network using conscripted labour from within Germany through the Reich Labour Service. From 1938 to 1942, after Operation Barbarossa, the Organisation Todt proper was founded and used on the Eastern front. Over 1.75 million Germans were conscripted into labour service from 1938 to 1940.

  From 1942 until the end of the war, approximately 1.4 million labourers served the Organisation Todt. Overall, 1 percent were Germans rejected for military service and 1.5 percent were concentration camp prisoners. The rest were prisoners of war and compulsory labourers from occupied countries. All were effectively treated as slaves and existed in complete and arbitrary service of a ruthless totalitarian state.

• 4. Conditions And Mortality Rates

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  Many workers died as a result of their living conditions. Extreme mistreatment, severe malnutrition and abuse were the main causes of death. Many more became civilian casualties from enemy bombing and shelling of their workplaces throughout the war. At the peak of the program, forced labourers constituted 20 percent of the German work force. Counting deaths and turnover, about 15 million men and women were forced labourers at one point during the war.

  Extermination through labour was a Nazi German principle that regulated most of their labour and concentration camps. Inmates were forced to work with only basic tools and minimal food rations until totally exhausted. A notable example is Mittelbau-Dora, a labour camp complex that produced V-2 rockets. To mislead victims, the lie work brings freedom was placed at entrances to a number of camps.

  In January 1945, 930,000 members of the Red Army were still in German camps. A million at most had been released. Another 500,000 had either fled or been liberated. The remaining 3.3 million had perished. This represented 57.5 percent of the total who fell into German hands between June 1941 and the end of the war.

• 5. Sexual Violence And Gendered Persecution

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  The Nazis issued a ban on sexual relations between Germans and foreign workers. Repeated efforts were made to propagate racial consciousness to prevent such relations. Pamphlets instructed all German women to avoid physical contact with any foreign workers brought to Germany as a danger to their blood. Women who disobeyed were imprisoned although executions also took place. Even fraternization with the workers was regarded as dangerous and targeted by pamphlet campaigns from 1940 to 1942.

  Soldiers in the Wehrmacht and SS officers were exempt from any such restrictions. At least 34,140 Eastern European women apprehended in Łapankas were forced to serve them as sex slaves in German military brothels and camp brothels during the Third Reich. In Warsaw alone, five such establishments were set up under military guard in September 1942. Each establishment contained over 20 rooms. Alcohol was not allowed unlike on the Western front. Victims underwent genital checkups once a week.

• 6. Post-War Repatriation And Displacement

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  The defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 freed approximately 11 million foreigners categorized as displaced persons. Most of these were forced labourers and POWs. Returning them home was a high priority for the Allies. However returning citizens of the USSR were often met with suspicion of collaboration or reincarceration in a Gulag prison camp. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, Red Cross, and military operations provided food, clothing, shelter, and assistance in returning home.

  In all, 5.2 million foreign workers and POWs were repatriated to the Soviet Union. 1.6 million went to Poland while 1.5 million went to France. 900,000 returned to Italy along with 300,000 to 400,000 each to Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Belgium. William I. Hitchcock documented this human cost of Allied victory in World War II Europe in his 2008 publication.

• 7. Decades Of Compensation Controversy

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  To benefit the economy after the war, certain categories of victims of Nazism were excluded from compensation by the German government. These groups had the least political influence they could have brought to bear. Many forced labourers from Eastern Europe fall into this category. There has been little effort by businesses or the German government to compensate forced labourers from the war period.

  According to the Potsdam Agreements of 1945, Poles were to receive reparations not from Germany itself but from the Soviet Union's share of those reparations. Under Soviet pressure on the Polish Communist government, few Polish victims received adequate compensation. Most of the Polish share of reparations was given to Poland by Soviet Union under the Comecon framework which benefited Soviet Union much more than Poland. In 1953 the People's Republic of Poland renounced its right to further claims of reparations from successor states of Nazi Germany.

  The total number of forced labourers under Nazi rule who were still alive as of August 1999 was 2.3 million. The German Forced Labour Compensation Programme was established in 2000. A forced labour fund paid out more than €4.37 billion to close to 1.7 million of then-living victims around the world. One-off payments ranged between €2,500 and €7,500.