3NAZI GERMANY - SLAVE & FORCED LABOUR

NAZI GERMANY - SLAVE AND FORCED LABOUR

There are nine posts in this series on Nazi Germany. Each post touches briefly on the subject given that there are already numerous research papers, articles and books, covering each topic in depth. Many links are included in each post. For the reasoning behind writing these posts, read the Introduction HERE.

0 INTRODUCTION - Why this Series of Posts?

1 UN CHARTER & UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS - Why WWII Drove The Creation Of The UDHR.

2 EUGENICS, RACIAL PURITY AND PERSECUTION - The US Influenced Nazi Germany's Eugenics Program. A Snapshot of the Diverse Groups Persecuted and Imprisoned in Concentration Camps. The Nuremberg Trial, Which Dealt With Racial Purity - RuSHA (USA vs. Ulrich Greifelt et al).
3 FORCED AND SLAVE LABOUR - Without Forced and Slave Labour the Nazi War Machine would have Collapsed and Brought the War to an Abrupt End. A Brief History of Forced and Slave Labour Before, During and After World War II. Details of The Nuremberg Trials for German Industrialists - Flick, Krupp and IG Farben.
4 FORCED PROSTITUTION, SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND RAPE - Sexual Crimes Were Not Tried at Nuremberg even though There Were Established Laws Condemning These Crimes. Information About Nazi Military Brothels and Concentration Camp Brothels. Evidence and Testimonies from Witnesses. Both Axis and Allied Forces were Guilty of Sexual Violence and Rape.

5 NAZI DOCTORS EXPERIMENTS AND TRIALS - The Nazi Doctors' Nuremberg Trial and Details of Their Experiments. Names of Nazi Doctors who Escaped Prosecution. Information about Post War Unethical Experiments Without Informed Consent, in the USA, Russia, South Africa and Israel.

6 STERILIZATION AND EUTHANASIA PROGRAMS - Life “Unworthy of Life” A Brief History of the Sterilization and the Euthanasia Programs and German Public Opposition. Using Cost Benefits Analysis in Nazi Medicine to Educate Children.
7 WORLD WAR II BY DESIGN – THE ECONOMY AND FOREIGN INVESTORS - An Important Component of Nazi Germany's War Infrastructure. Brief History of the German Economy and Hermann Goering's Four Year Plan. Role of Jewish Public Protests and their Boycott of German Goods in 1933 and Germany's Retaliatory Actions. The Real Role of Neutral Countries During the War. Post War Looting of German Patents, Cover Up of German Research on Tobacco and Cancer and the Removal/Kidnap of Nazi Experts to Allied Countries. The Role of Foreign Subsidiaries/Investors before and during World War II in Germany.
8 UNWCC (UNITED NATIONS WAR CRIMES COMMISSION) LAW REPORTS - The UNWCC prepared and published a 15 volume set of law reports covering 89 War Crimes Trials From World War II. This post contains links to all of these law reports and a list of the cases in each volume. Some information on CROWCASS (Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects).

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NAZI GERMANY - SLAVE AND FORCED LABOUR

The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights Clearly States
Article 4 - No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
Article 9 - No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF SLAVE AND FORCED LABOUR

The Pool of Slave and Forced Labour was central To The Nazi War Economy/Machine. The use of forced workers in the German war economy was thus no regime-induced side effect, but formed one of the essential preconditions for the war that Germany continued for almost 6 years. A good article written by Ulrich Herbert can be found at "The Army of Millions of the Modern Slave State: Deported, used, forgotten: Who were the forced workers of the Third Reich, and what fate awaited them?

Some information sources define Slave Laborers as concentration camp prisoners requisitioned by German companies from the SS while Forced Laborers are recognized as those who were brought from Nazi-occupied territories to work in German industry.

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The term Concentration Camp originates from the British concentration camps of the Second Anglo-Boer War. At the time (1900-1902) the term simply meant a concentration of people. In Nazi Germany the term Concentration Camp took on a new meaning, the mistreatment of prisoners: starvation, forced labour and murder.

The Soviet system of forced labor camps was first established in 1919 under the Cheka, but it was not until the early 1930s that the camp population reached significant numbers. By 1934 the Gulag, or Main Directorate for Corrective Labor Camps, had several million inmates. Prisoners included murderers, thieves, and other common criminals--along with political and religious dissenters. The Gulag, whose camps were located mainly in remote regions of Siberia and the Far North, made significant contributions to the Soviet economy in the period of Joseph Stalin.

Gulag prisoners constructed the White Sea-Baltic Canal, the Moscow-Volga Canal, the Baikal-Amur main railroad line, numerous hydroelectric stations, and strategic roads and industrial enterprises in remote regions. GULAG manpower was also used for much of the country's lumbering and for the mining of coal, copper, and gold.

US Library of Congress – Revelations From the Russian Archives

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In Nazi Germany, the first concentration camps were established soon after Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933. In the weeks after the Nazis came to power, The SA (commonly known as Storm Troopers), the SS (Protection Squadrons -- the elite guard of the Nazi party), the police, and local civilian authorities organized numerous detention camps all over Germany, to incarcerate real and perceived “enemies of the state”. Most prisoners in the early concentration camps were political opponents of the regime, including German Communists, Socialists, trade unionists, and others from left and liberal political circles.

In the spring of 1933, the SS established Dachau concentration camp, which later came to serve as a model for an expanding and centralized concentration camp system under SS management. From as early as 1934, concentration camp commandants deployed prisoners as forced laborers for the benefit of SS construction projects, including the construction or expansion of the camps themselves.

As early as 1937, the Reich economy began to experience labor shortages in key sectors. For this reason, many of the concentration camps established in the mid-1930s were located near quarries or factories: for example, Sachsenhausen (1936) was constructed next to a brickworks; Mauthausen (1938) and Gross-Rosen (1940) next to stone quarries.

By the end of 1937, most Jewish males residing in Germany were required to perform forced labor for various government agencies.

To mobilize and finance SS-commissioned construction projects, Himmler revamped and expanded the administrative offices of the SS and created a new SS office for business operations. Both agencies were led by SS Major General Oswald Pohl, who would take over the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps in 1942.

After Germany's annexation of Austria in March 1938, the Nazis arrested German and Austrian Jews and imprisoned them in the Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen concentration camps, all located in Germany. Most of them had been deprived of independent employment opportunities by antisemitic legislation. By the end of 1938, German municipal authorities deployed German and Austrian Jews, as forced labor in a variety of municipal projects.

After the violent Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass") pogroms in November 1938, the Nazis conducted mass arrests of adult male Jews and incarcerated them in camps for brief periods.

In 1938, the German Criminal Police conducted two major roundups of so-called asocials and so-called criminals to increase the number of forced laborers available in the camps.

After Nazi Germany unleashed World War II in September 1939, vast new territorial conquests and larger groups of potential prisoners inspired the rapid expansion of the concentration camp system to the east. When Germany conquered Poland in the autumn of 1939, the German occupation authorities required all Jewish and Polish males to perform unpaid forced labor. The German authorities required Polish Jews to live in ghettos and deployed them at forced labor, much of it manual. For example, in the Lodz ghetto, German state and private entrepreneurs established 96 plants and factories that produced goods for the German war effort.

By 1939, six large concentration camps had been established: Dachau (1933), Sachsenhausen (1936), Buchenwald (1937), Flossenbürg (1938), Mauthausen (1939), and Ravensbrück (1939).

Beginning in 1940, the German authorities rounded up Polish civilians, male and female, and DEPORTED them to the Reich for forced labor in German factories and on German farms. After deliberately permitting more than two million captured Soviet soldiers to die through neglect (insufficient food, clothing, shelter, or medical care) in prisoner-of-war camps in the autumn and winter of 1941-1942, the German authorities decided to deploy Soviet POWs as forced laborers in various war-related industries in Germany and occupied Poland, often housing them in special compounds of concentration camps.

At the end of 1940, German agriculture would have been at a dead end if approximately 2 million foreign workers had not been employed.

In 1941, the SS authorities deployed tens of thousands of Jewish prisoners as forced labor in the I.G. Farben “Buna” rubber plant at Monowitz, less than two miles from the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland.

By 1942 the pool of forced laborers in concentration camps were being used for the production of armaments, weapons, and related goods for the German war effort.

From 1942-1944, the Germans DEPORTED nearly three million Soviet citizens to Germany, Austria, and Bohemia-Moravia as forced laborers.

The Germans also DEPORTED civilians from other occupied European countries for labor in the Reich. As the tide of war turned against Germany in 1942-1943, the need for labor increased and the ability of the Germans to extract laborers from the occupied Soviet Union decreased, due to military defeat. The concentration camp administration sought to induce camp commandants to take measures to prolong the lives of their forced laborers, who in 1944 were becoming a more precious commodity.

In August 1944, more than 7.6 million non-German workers and prisoners of war were registered as working in the Reich; the overwhelming majority having been brought there by force for employment. They represented around a quarter of all registered workers in the economy of the German Reich at that time.

The Germans abducted about 12 million people from almost twenty European countries; about two thirds of whom came from Eastern Europe.

The following German companies used slave labour from concentration camps during World War II.

ADLER SA, AEG, AFA - WERKE, ASTRA, AUTO-UNION, BAYER, BMW, DEUTSCHES BERGWERKS UND HÜTTENBAU Gmbh, DEUTSCHES ERD-UND STEINWERKE Gmbh, EISENWERKE OBERDONAU Gmbh, RHEINMETALL BORSIG AG, DAIMLER BENZ, DORNIER, ERLA, FLUGMOTORENWERKE "OSTMARK" Gmbh, FORD, FORST UND GUSTVERWALTUNG DES STIFTES St. LAMBRECHT, GOLDSCHMITT, GUSTLOF WERKE - Otto Eberhard patronenfabrik, HEINKEL, HOFHEER UND SCHRENZ, I.G. FARBEN INDUSTRIES, JUNKER, KRUPP, MESSERSCMITT, METALL UNION, OBERILZMUEHLE ELEKTRIZITÄTSWERK, OPTA RADIO, OPTIQUE IENA, ÖSTERRAICHISCHE SAUERWERKS AG, PHOTO AGFA , PUCH, RAX-WERKE Gmbh, SHELL, SCHNEIDER, SIEMENS, SOLVAY, STAHLBAU-GESELSCHAFT Mbh, STEINVEREDELUNGSWERKE AG, STEYR, STEYER-DAIMLER PUCH AG., TELEFUNKEN, UNIVERSALE HOSCH UND TIEFBAU AG, VALENTIN, VISTRA, VOLKSWAGEN, ZEISS-IKON, ZEITZ & ZEPPELIN.

THE NUREMBERG TRIALS - FORCED AND SLAVE LABOUR
In the Nuremberg Trials, crimes associated with the employment of forced and slave labor in the Third Reich were central to charges against leading German politicians and industrialists. Two key defendants were Ernst Sauckel and Albert Speer.

Ernst Friedrich Christoph "Fritz" Sauckel organized the enslavement of millions of people from lands occupied by Nazi Germany. He was responsible for Labour Deployment including the drafting of forced laborers from 1942 until the end of the war. He was found guilty of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity at the Trial of Major War Criminals and was hanged on 16 October 1946.

Albert Speer (born Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer) was appointed Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich in February 1942. He was ultimately responsible for the use of slave labourers from the occupied territories in armaments production. He expressed repentance at the trial for his actions. He was found guilty of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity at the Trial of Major War Criminals and was only sentenced to 20 years imprisonment.

Key representatives of companies employing Slave laborers were also tried and convicted on similar grounds at the Nuremberg Trials of Flick, IG Farben and Krupp

The Flick Trial (19 April - 22 December 1947)
The IG Farben Trial (27 August 1947 - 30 July 1948)
The Krupp Trial (8 December 1947 - 31 July 1948)

FRIEDRICH FLICK - NUREMBERG TRIAL
In 1947, the United States Military Tribunal tried six officials (including Friedrich Flick, the principal shareholder, and Otto Steinbrinck, his closest associate until 1939) of the German industrial conglomerate Flick Kommanditgesellschaft (Flick KG), on a number of charges: using forced labor, plundering occupied countries, expropriating Jewish property, supporting SS organizations and membership in the SS (Steinbrinck).

Flick explained his relationship with the Third Reich this way: "After the [Nazi] seizure of power, every industrialist in the long run had to get into some sort of relationship with the new holders of power." The profit motive and maintaining a competitive edge dictated Flick's behavior. He could not afford to cling to moral standards by refusing to support the regime or by declining to take advantage of opportunities it created.

Flick KG controlled all stages of steel production from raw materials to manufactured products: coal, pig iron, rolling mills for girders, pipes, rails, cannon works, ammunition, and wheel frames, as well as the production and assembly of railway cars, armored cars, and airplanes.

During the Second World War, it was one of the largest steel and coal producers in Germany, with operations located primarily in central Germany and the Ruhr, but also in France and the Soviet Union.

Before 1941, Flick's Harpener Bergbau AG (Harpen) was only interested in hiring foreign workers as a stopgap measure; it hoped for a brief war and that the German manpower shortage would be temporary. The forced laborers that were deployed prior to 1941 came from Poland and there were relatively few of them. They were obtained by the regime's labor offices, with the assistance of police and military-occupation authorities. It was only in late 1941 that Ruhr industrialists reluctantly acknowledged their need for more forced labor -- and that meant Soviet labor.

Early the next year, several hundred Soviet civilians and prisoners of war were dispatched to Harpen. The numbers increased dramatically in January 1943 and by 1944, East European forced workers comprised between one-fourth to one-half of Harpen's total labor force.

Several of Flick's Mitteldeutsche Stahlwerke GmbH (Mittelstahl) plants, located in the vicinity of Berlin, exhibited a similar pattern, with the exception that beginning in October 1944 they also exploited slave labor (approximately 2,000 individuals, who were sent from SS concentration camps).

Link to Frederick Flick's Opportunism and Expediency By L. M. Stallbaumer, Anti-Defamation League's Braun Holocaust Institute

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The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights Clearly States
Article 23 - Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

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POST WORLD WAR II FORCED AND SLAVE LABOUR

Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union was considered by the Soviet Union to be part of German war reparations for the damage inflicted by Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union during World War II. Secret Order 7161 (December 1944) issued by USSR State Defense Committee made possible the internment of all adult Germans from Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia.

After Christmas 1944 between 27,000 to 30,000 ethnic Germans (aged 18-40) were sent to the USSR from Yugoslavia. Women made up 90% of the group. Most were sent to labor camps in the Donbass (Donez basin) where 16% of them died.

In January 1945 100,000 ethnic Germans, women aged 18-30, men aged 17-45 were sent to the Soviet Union from Romania. 10% died in the camps or in the train transports.

Forced labor turned out to be inefficient and unprofitable. Repatriation started as early as 1945-1946. Romania refused to take back its former German citizens.

Poland, France, the United Kingdom and the U.S. also made heavy use of Germans as forced labour in order to rebuild several regions from enormous destruction made by Nazi Germany.


LINKS TO FORCED AND SLAVE LABOUR DURING WORLD WAR II
For a detailed list of concentration camps under Nazi Germany Command, both before and during World War II, refer to this official German Government Source (In German)

US National Archives - Labour Camps Bibliography

Project Tells Story of Nazi Forced Labor – Washington Post – 22 January 2009
Helena Bohle-Szacki was seized by the Nazis in 1944 and thrown into the Ravensbrueck concentration camp as a forced laborer..........

List of the Major Companies Involved in the Concentration Camps - JewishGen Site (Jewish Genealogy)

Information About Different CONCENTRATION CAMPS - Covering Imprisonment & Forced Labour From the Jewish Virtual Library

Auschwitz - Birkenau / Buchenwald / Dachau / Natzweiler / Sachsenhausen

Ravensbrück / Women of Ravensbrück - Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota

Full List of Nazi Concentration Camps

German Churches Used Slave Labour During Nazi Era – Article from Concordat Watch
Both German state churches (Catholic & Protestant) are now known to have used slave labour during World War II, but only the Catholic Church refused to join the national compensation fund. Documents imply that the churches' slave labourers were sent to death camps when they were no longer useful (Part I) and that they also knew about the death camps for the babies of the East European workers, yet said nothing (Part II).

Book: Hitler's Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany under the Third Reich By Ulrich Herbert

New Web Site "Forced Labor 1939-1945" commemorates more than twelve million people who were forced to work for Nazi Germany. Nearly 600 former forced laborers from 26 countries tell their life stories in comprehensive audio and video interviews. The interviews were digitized and made accessible to educators and scholars on a German-language online archive. Only basic information in English is currently available on this site.


PREVIOUS POSTS TO JUSTICE WILL BE SERVED RELATING TO THIS TOPIC

Burma/Myanmar International Joint Ventures - UN Security Council Members and the Junta - CAPITALIZING ON GRIEF, DEATH AND HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS.

Slavery, Servitude, Forced or Compulsory Labour - UDHR, ECHR & UKHRA

UAE - Slavery in the Conrad Hotel, Brussels - Monarchies/Royalty are Not Above the Law!

Forced Human Trafficking/Sexual Exploitation - The End Users/The Clients of Forced Prostitution and Trafficking are equally responsible and as guilty as the Traffickers.

Go To This Post For Numerous UDHR Translations:
UDHR (Universal Declaration Of Human Rights) in Arabic, Czech, Chinese (Mandarin), English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian & Spanish - Also Includes links to 359 translations of the UDHR.