recruitment poster: "'Let's do farm work in Germany!' See your at once."
Hitler's policy of ('room for living') strongly emphasized conquest of lands in the East, known as , and the exploitation of these lands to provide cheap goods and labour for Germany. Even before the war,
Nazi Germany maintained a supply of
slave labour. This practice started in the early days of
labour camps for "unreliable elements" (), such as
homosexuals, criminals, political
dissidents,
communists,
Jews, the homeless and anyone the regime wanted out of the way. During
World War II the
Nazis operated several categories of (labour camps) for different categories of inmates. Prisoners in Nazi labour camps were worked to death on short rations in lethal conditions, or killed if they became unable to work. Many died as a direct result of forced labour under the Nazis. After the
invasion of Poland,
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. In 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 (see
Łapanka) to provide labour in the German war industry, repair bombed railroads and bridges, or work on farms.
Manual labour was in high demand, as much of the work that today would be
done with machines was still done by hand in the 1930s and 1940s, such as digging,
material handling, or
machining. 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, not to mention the German subsidiaries of foreign firms, such as (a subsidiary of
Ford Motor Company) and
Adam Opel AG (a subsidiary of
General Motors) among others. Once the war had begun, the foreign subsidiaries were seized and
nationalized by the Nazi-controlled German state, and work conditions deteriorated, as they did throughout German industry. About 12million 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 . More than 2,000 German companies profited from slave labour during the Nazi era, including
Deutsche Bank and
Siemens.
Classifications 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, starting with well-paid workers from German allies or neutral countries to forced labourers from conquered ('sub-humans') populations. • '''''' ('
guest workers')Workers from Germanic and Scandinavian countries, France, Italy, Compared to other foreign workers, prisoners of war were relatively well-off, especially if they came from Western countries that were still at war, such as the United States or Great Britain, as the minimum standards of their treatment were mandated by the
Geneva Conventions. Their working conditions and well-being were subject to supervision by the International Red Cross and, in cases of mistreatment, retaliation against German prisoners held in the US, Britain and Canada (who performed similar forced labor) was almost certain. However, the treatment of these workers varied greatly depending on their country of origin, the period, and the specific workplace. In particular, Soviet prisoners of war were treated with utter brutality, as Nazis did not consider them protected under the Geneva Conventions, which had not been ratified or implemented by the Soviet Union. • ('civilian workers')ethnic Poles from the
General Government territory. In 1944, there were about 7.6million foreign so-called 'civilian workers' employed in Germany in total, including POWs from and the expanded USSR, In general, foreign labourers from Western Europe had similar gross earnings and were subject to similar taxation as German workers. In contrast, Central and Eastern European forced labourers received at most about one-half the gross earnings paid to German workers and had far fewer social benefits. Prisoners of labour or concentration camps received little if any wages or benefits. The deficiency in net earnings of Central and Eastern European forced labourers (versus forced labourers from Western countries) is illustrated by the wage savings forced labourers were able to transfer to their families at home or abroad (see table).
Sexual slavery 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, for instance, 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 Even fraternization with the workers was regarded as dangerous, and targeted by pamphlet campaigns in 1940–1942. In
Warsaw alone, five such establishments were set up under military guard in September 1942, with over 20 rooms each. Alcohol was not allowed, unlike on the Western front, and the victims underwent genital checkups once a week.
French shipyards French workers at naval bases provided the with an essential workforce, thereby supporting Nazi Germany in the
Battle of the Atlantic. By 1939, the 's planning had presumed that they had time to build up resources before the war started. When France fell and the ports of
Brest,
Lorient and
Saint-Nazaire became available, there were insufficient Germans to man these repair and maintenance facilities, so huge reliance was made on the French workforce. At the end of 1940, the requested 2,700 skilled workers from
Wilhelmshaven to work in bases on the Atlantic coast, but this was out of a total available workforce of only 3,300. This same request included 870 men skilled in machinery and engine building, but there were only 725 people with these skills in Wilhelmshaven. This massive deficit was made up of French naval dockyard workers. In February 1941, the naval dockyard at Brest had only 470 German workers, compared with 6,349 French workers. In April 1941, French workers replaced defective
superheater tubes on the , carrying out the work slowly but, in the opinion of Scharnhorst's captain, to a better standard than could be obtained in the yards in Germany. An assessment commissioned by Vizeadmiral Walter Matthiae in October 1942 of the potential effect of withdrawal of French dockyard workers (considered possible after 32 French fatalities in an air raid at
Lorient Submarine Base) stated that all repairs on the surface fleet would cease and U-boat repairs would be cut by 30 per cent. Admiral
François Darlan stated on 30 September 1940 that it was useless to decline German requests for collaboration. In September 1942, Rear Admiral Germain Paul Jardel, commander of the French navy in the occupied zone, stated "We have a special interest in that the workers at our arsenals work, and that they work in the arsenals and not in Germany." From a practical point of view, French workers needed employment and could have been conscripted to work in Germany (as happened to 1million of them).
Numbers In the late summer of 1944, German records listed 7.6million foreign civilian workers and
prisoners of war in the German territory, most of whom had been brought there by coercion, The Nazis also had plans for the internment and transportation to Europe of "the able-bodied male population between the ages of seventeen and forty-five" in the event of a successful
invasion of the United Kingdom.
Industry type Foreign workers comprised 3% of the war industry workforce in 1940 but had risen to 29% in 1944. In agriculture, it had risen from 6% in 1940 to 22% in 1944. ==Organisation Todt==