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Forced labour was an important and ubiquitous aspect of the Nazi concentration camps which operated in Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe between 1933 and 1945. It was the harshest and most inhumane part of a larger system of forced labor in Nazi Germany.
Traditionally, prisoners were often deployed in penal labor performing unskilled work. [1] During the first years of Nazi Germany's existence, unemployment was high and forced labor in the concentration camps was presented as re-education through labor and a means of punishing offenders. Nazi propaganda idolized work, in contrast to the view of work as punishment.[ citation needed ] Prisoners in early camps were forced to perform economically valueless but strenuous tasks, such as farming on moorland (for example at Esterwegen). [2] Other prisoners had to work on constructing and expanding the camps. [3] German state governments complained at being required to pay the upkeep of the camps, which was eventually taken over by the SS with costs reduced by forcing inmates to work. [4] At Dachau, two streams of labor developed, one for punishing but less economically valuable labor, while a parallel system of workshops developed where prisoners performed economically valuable labor in much better conditions. [5]
The Four Year Plan of 1936 led to a shortage of labor, as free workers were diverted to projects related to German rearmament. [1] By the end of 1937, full employment was reached outside the camps, and in particular there was a shortage of labor for construction work. [5] [1] A significant increase of the use of prisoner labor for productive tasks resulted in 1937 and 1938. [3] SS chief Heinrich Himmler also used the labor shortage as a reason to expand the concentration camp system in the prewar period, despite other Nazi leaders such as Hermann Göring disagreeing with the expansion. [1] The businesses were initially overseen by the Personal Staff Reichsführer-SS office. [6] In 1938, mass roundups of so-called "work-shy" and "anti-social" individuals brought another 10,000 prisoners into the camps. The desire to exclude these people from the German national community was complementary to the goal of exploiting their labor. [7] [8] [lower-alpha 1] These roundups coincided with and were fueled by the demand for prisoner labor to obtain building materials for Nazi architecture. [9] Hard labor was a fundamental component of the concentration camp system and an aspect in the daily life of prisoners. [1]
The initiative for the foundation of SS companies dealing in building materials from concentration camps originated in 1937 with regional SS officials in Thuringia, especially the state's Interior Minister Hellmuth Gommlich . [10] [11] German Earth and Stone Works (DEST) was an SS-owned company founded on 29 April 1938 for the exploitation of prisoner labor in the concentration camps for the production of building materials. [3] [12] Soon organized under the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office (SS-WVHA), DEST had four main priorities for developing the economy of concentration camps: stone quarrying, brick production, street construction (soon shelved), and the acquisition of other enterprises for the above purposes. Although technically a private enterprise, its members were also, as SS officers, accountable to the SS hierarchy. [13] Throughout DEST's history, Nazi architect Albert Speer's office for the reconstruction of Berlin (GBI) was the most significant investor and customer of DEST's products, signing various contracts large and small for building materials. Before World War II, DEST's quarries were profitable, while its brickworks operated at a loss. By the beginning of the war, four of the six concentration camps were producing or preparing to produce building materials. [14] The production of building materials continued to expand until 1942, and the SS scaled back on building materials in 1943–1944 in order to focus on arms production. [15]
Bricks were the SS's entrance into the construction industry, justified by the demand for bricks by the GBI for the Führerbauten, as private industry was only able to fill 18 percent of the GBI's demanded 2 billion bricks annually. [16] On 1 July 1938, SS chief Heinrich Himmler and Speer came to an agreement by which the GBI promised to buy 120 million bricks annually for the next ten years, with the SS receiving an advance payment of 9.5 million Reichsmarks. This granted DEST the funding it needed to invest in the concentration camp industries. [17] [18] A ceremony on 6 July marked the ground-breaking on what was planned to be the world's largest brickworks, 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) from Sachsenhausen concentration camp. [18] Construction of a brickworks in Buchenwald also began during mid-1938. [19] Delivery of bricks was supposed to start in October, but that did not occur due to problems with the Sachsenhausen brickworks, and the GBI renegotiated the contract to pay less than the 9 million Reichsmarks promised. [17]
In August 1938, the SS acquired a brickyard in Hamburg, which would be the site of Neuengamme concentration camp, founded in 1940. [20] [21] The bricks from Neuengamme were contracted for by the city of Hamburg for use in Nazi construction projects. [21] Bricks were an important building material due to the Four Year Plan's restrictions on the use of iron. Except for Neuengamme, whose clay deposits were superior, the concentration camp brick production was not of high enough quality for use in façades and were instead used for structure. The SS brick industry was not as successful or economically productive as the quarries. [22]
Flossenbürg and Mauthausen were established in 1938, their sites specifically chosen for their proximity to granite quarries whose stone was to be used for monumental Nazi architecture projects. [20] [23] Of the prewar concentration camps, Flossenbürg was the one that was most significant and consistent in producing income for DEST. For example, it produced 2,898 cubic metres (102,300 cu ft) of stone in 1939, almost three-quarters of the total production that year. [24] The largest buyer of Flossenbürg granite was Albert Speer's office for the reconstruction of Berlin. [25] Within this project the largest and most significant orders were for Wilhelm Kreis' Soldiers' Hall (Soldatenhalle) project, beginning in 1940. Increasing amounts of stone were used for road building; 15% in 1939 but 60% the next year. [26]
Natzweiler and Gross-Rosen main camps were also established near quarries in 1940. [22] The Natzweiler quarry was unprofitable but acquired anyway because Speer hoped to use its red granite to build the Reich Chancellery. [27] In 1941, DEST established Oranienburg II, a stone processing facility near Sachsenhausen where prisoners cut stone for Nazi building projects in Berlin. Stonemason programs were established at Flossenbürg, Gross-Rosen and Natzweiler, for selected inmates to learn stonecraft from civilian experts. Those who passed the course enjoyed better treatment. [28] Stone from the concentration camp quarries was used for construction of the camp, the Reichsautobahn, and various SS military projects, [29] but later on it was destined for the monumental German Stadium project and the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg. [30] In the quarries, prisoners labored in particularly brutal conditions, causing many deaths. [3]
From the late 1930s, workshops were started in the concentration camps where prisoners were forced to produce various products. [31] SS Commercial Operations of Dachau produced clothing, shoes, and carpentry for the nearby SS troop training center. They were under the indirect control of the SS finance apparatus led by Oswald Pohl and August Frank until transferred directly to the training department in late 1935. [27] Miscellaneous ventures in the late 1930s included a bakery in Sachsenhausen which was to produce 100,000 loaves a day for the camp and the Waffen-SS. [32] In May 1939, the SS company German Equipment Works (DAW) was set up to oversee the concentration camp workshops. In 1940–1941, the variety of items produced was reduced, such that the workshops focused on supplying furniture to the SS and to resettled ethnic Germans. At the end of 1941, the company had plants in Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, and Auschwitz. A different company, Gesellschaft für Textil und Lederverwertung, oversaw the concentration camp workshops that supplied the SS with clothing. [33]
From the earliest days of the camp system, prisoners were employed in constructing and expanding camp infrastructure to reduce costs. [1] [3]
The contract between DEST and the city of Hamburg also provided for the use of Neuengamme prisoners to work on levees and canals. [1]
Ideas of using concentration camp prisoners for mobile construction brigades dated to 1941, when the idea was first proposed by the SS-WVHA to develop Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. [34] The bombing of Lübeck on 28/9 March 1942 marked the beginning of area bombing of German cities, which caused significant destruction. [9] Deployment of forced labor to repair the damage was initiated by local bureaucrats; German historian Karola Fings notes that the demand "points to general acceptance of the concentration camps". [35] In September 1942, Himmler recommended using concentration camp prisoners for the fabrication of window and door frames (in various concentration camps) and producing brick tiles in the Neuengamme brickworks. At the same time, he authorized the formation of SS construction brigades (German : SS-Baubrigaden), detachments of concentration camp prisoners who operated in bomb-damaged cities for clearing debris and repairing damaged buildings. [36] Prisoners in these brigades lived and worked in plain sight of the German population. [35]
Nazi plans for the colonization of Eastern Europe, known as Generalplan Ost, were planned to be completed with concentration camp labor. SS planner Konrad Meyer estimated that unfree labor would make the projects 20 percent cheaper after accounting for food and clothing for the prisoners. The desire to use concentration camp prisoners for Generalplan Ost-related construction demanded a significant increase in the prisoner population, and the establishment of Auschwitz II and Majdanek (to hold 50,000 prisoners) was announced for this purpose on 27 September 1941. Initially the new camps were planned to be populated by Soviet prisoners of war. [37]
After the outbreak of war in September 1939, the SS was exempted from the need to convert its concentration camp industries to the war economy; SS planners expected a quick end to the war. [19] In the second half of 1941, military setbacks on the Eastern Front, led to increased prioritization of war production, placed under Speer's authority as the newly appointed head of the Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production. In early 1942, Fritz Sauckel was given the task of recruiting forced labor to expand war production. [38] As late as February 1942, the SS was not focused on the armaments issue, but it soon realized that it might lose control of prisoners to other Nazi agencies, spurring action.
Incorporation of the IKL into the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office (SS-WVHA) in 1942 triggered substantial change in the camp system, as Oswald Pohl ordered that prisoners' labor be reoriented towards production and that time-consuming exercises such as roll calls be abandoned. Pohl also extended working hours to eleven hours a day, so that prisoners had to work 72 hours a week. Rations were reduced at the same time, and mortality rates peaked, with 75,545 prisoners dying between July and November 1942. [39] As late as September 1942, of the 110,000 prisoners in the camp system, only 5 percent were employed in tasks that supported the armaments industry and just over 1 percent worked directly on armaments production. [40] By the end of 1944, concentration camp prisoners supplied around 5 percent of the labor in Germany's armaments factories, at least 500,000 workers. Of these, 140,000 werew building underground factories, 130,000 were employed by Organization Todt, and 230,000 by private enterprise. [41]
The Buna factory at Monowitz (Auschwitz III) was originally built to produce synthetic rubber, in a deal negotiated by IG Farben in February 1940. [42] The SS invested least 610 million Reichsmarks in the site, but it never produced any rubber. By 1942 the SS switched it to methanol production, a high-priority war material used to produce aircraft fuel and explosives. Monowitz and IG Farben's other sites in Upper Silesia —Heydebreck (iso-octane air fuel) and Blechhammer (synthetic fuel) — accounted for a significant percent of fuel production in 1944 following the bombing of IG Farben's Leuna works and, according to the United States Strategic Bombing Survey, rescued the German war effort. At least 30,000 prisoners died at Monowitz. [43]
By early 1941, Heinkel was building an annex to its factory in Oranienburg to employ prisoners of Sachsenhausen to build Heinkel He 177 bombers. The aircraft, however, was a technical failure due to impractical specifications. [44]
Concentration camp prisoners worked under harsher conditions than Ostarbeiters and other foreign forced laborers.[ citation needed ] At its height at the end of the war, concentration camp labor made up 3 percent of the labor force in Germany, remaining a quantitatively marginal element of the economy of Nazi Germany. [45]
Although earlier historians of the concentration camps described forced labor as part of Nazi extermination processes (extermination through labor) this thesis has been questioned by more recent historiography. [46] According to historians Marc Buggeln and Jens-Christian Wagner, the phrase implies a premeditated intent to exterminate prisoners that did not exist. [47] [48] Buggeln writes:
On the whole, one could essentially say that “extermination through labor” was practiced throughout the entire concentration camp system, particularly during the second half of 1942. Yet the particularly high mortality rates of the year 1942 can only be attributed to a limited extent to deliberate plans devised by the SS to murder certain inmates or groups of prisoners. [49]
He also argues that in the concentration camp system was only genocidal for its Jewish and Romani prisoners since the number of prisoners of other nationalities was too small in relation to the total population. [50]
The involvement of private companies in the concentration camps increased with two pilot projects beginning in early 1941: a few hundred prisoners from Auschwitz were leased to IG Farben and 300 Mauthausen prisoners to Steyr-Daimler-Puch. Both companies used prisoner labor to compensate for labor shortages, and initially employed prisoners only in unskilled and construction work. Through this arrangement, the SS retained control of the prisoners while obtaining material benefits: IG Farben provided materials for the construction of Auschwitz, while Steyr-Daimler-Puch offered cheaper weapons to the Waffen-SS. The companies complained that long transport of prisoners to work and arbitrary mistreatment from the SS reduced their productivity. Employment of prisoners by private companies was marginal until the end of 1941. [51]
Until the end of 1942, the SS companies paid 30 pfennig per prisoner per day while private employers paid three and four Reichsmarks. This price included the clothing and food of prisoners as well as SS guard details, but the companies had to pay for accommodation and medical care. Therefore, they had a significant effect on conditions in the camps. Prisoners did not receive any of this money, [52] which was paid into state coffers.[ citation needed ] The per diem cost encouraged employers to push for to extend m the working day as much as possible, which increased the mortality rate. [52] Employees of private firms were in charge of monitoring prisoners' work performance and telling kapos which prisoners to beat. Sometimes physical punishments were meted out onsite, while at other times it was delayed until the prisoners returned to the subcamp. Most employees did not object to this role. [53]
Private companies that used prisoner labor always took the initiative and were not coerced by the SS. Subcamps were established when companies submitted an application to the WVHA; if their purpose was considered high-priority enough, WVHA inspectors would examine the site for accommodation and security. Then a transport of prisoners and guards would arrive from the main camp. As the war progressed, allocation of prisoner labor was increasingly performed by the Ministry of Armaments rather than the WVHA, and from October 1944 applications for prisoner labor were submitted directly to the Ministry of Armaments. [54]
Although both the state and private enterprise reaped profits from concentration camp labor, historians debate who profited most. The employment of concentration camp prisoners for manufacturing was more economically favorable than construction work, which might be profitable if worn-out prisoners were promptly replaced by fresh ones. Employers had an economic incentive to speed up the replacement process. [55] Comprehensive documentation on the profitability and accounting of concentration camp labor is only available for a handful of projects. Universale Hoch und Tiefbau AG, the contractor hired by the German state to work on the Loibl tunnel connecting Austria with Slovenia, employed 800 prisoners of the Mauthausen subcamp Loibl . The company calculated that although prisoners were 40 percent less productive than free German workers, the prisoners cost less, even taking into account the cost of the SS guards and replacing the prisoners who became too weak to work. In order to recoup these profits, the state reduced the contracted price by 3.515 percent. [56]
Three of the subsequent Nuremberg trials (Flick trial, IG Farben trial, and Krupp trial) concerned crimes by companies in Nazi Germany, including the use of forced labor from concentration camp prisoners. In the Flick and IG Farben trials, the judges accepted the defendants' arguments of necessity in the use of forced labor. [57] [58] Business leaders denied responsibility for the using of forced labor and often claimed, incorrectly, that they had been forced to employ concentration camp labor by Nazi fiat, when in fact they sought out these prisoners to increase their profits and survive the war. [59] Companies were reluctant to compensate survivors. [60]
Historians do not agree whether forced labor in concentration camps was a form of slavery, an analogy made by survivors. [61] Concentration camp prisoners were not sold, only rented out, unlike chattel slavery (but similar to some forms of modern slavery). [62] Another important difference is that most slaveholders value the lives of the slaves, while the SS considered its prisoners expendable; systematic murder continued despite the labor shortage. [63] [64] For this reason, Benjamin Ferencz described concentration camp prisoners as "less than slaves". [63]
Buchenwald was a Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or suspected communists were among the first internees.
Flossenbürg was a Nazi concentration camp built in May 1938 by the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office. Unlike other concentration camps, it was located in a remote area, in the Fichtel Mountains of Bavaria, adjacent to the town of Flossenbürg and near the German border with Czechoslovakia. The camp's initial purpose was to exploit the forced labor of prisoners for the production of granite for Nazi architecture. In 1943, the bulk of prisoners switched to producing Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter planes and other armaments for Germany's war effort. Although originally intended for "criminal" and "asocial" prisoners, after Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, the camp's numbers swelled with political prisoners from outside Germany. It also developed an extensive subcamp system that eventually outgrew the main camp.
Theodor Eicke was a senior SS functionary and Waffen SS divisional commander during the Nazi era. He was one of the key figures in the development of Nazi concentration camps. Eicke served as the second commandant of the Dachau concentration camp from June 1933 to July 1934, and together with his adjutant Michael Lippert, was one of the executioners of SA Chief Ernst Röhm during the Night of the Long Knives purge of 1934. He continued to expand and develop the concentration camp system as the first Concentration Camps Inspector.
Oswald Ludwig Pohl was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era. As the head of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office and the head administrator of the Nazi concentration camps, he was a key figure in the Final Solution, the genocide of the European Jews. After the war, Pohl went into hiding; he was apprehended in 1946. Pohl stood trial in 1947, was convicted of crimes against humanity, and sentenced to death. After repeatedly appealing his case, he was executed by hanging in 1951.
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, including subcamps on its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe.
German Earth and Stone Works was an SS-owned company created to procure and manufacture building materials for state construction projects in Nazi Germany. DEST was a subsidiary company of Amtsgruppe W of SS Main Economic and Administrative Office (WVHA). Both Amt. W and the WVHA were headed by Waffen-SS generals Oswald Pohl and Georg Lörner.
Sachsenhausen or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoners throughout World War II. Prominent prisoners included Joseph Stalin's oldest son, Yakov Dzhugashvili; assassin Herschel Grynszpan; Paul Reynaud, the penultimate prime minister of the French Third Republic; Francisco Largo Caballero, prime minister of the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War; the wife and children of the crown prince of Bavaria; Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera; and several enemy soldiers and political dissidents.
SS-Totenkopfverbände was the Schutzstaffel (SS) organization responsible for administering the Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps for Nazi Germany, among similar duties. While the Totenkopf was the universal cap badge of the SS, the SS-TV also wore this insignia on the right collar tab to distinguish itself from other SS formations.
Richard Glücks was a high-ranking German Nazi official in the SS. From November 1939 until the end of World War II, he was Concentration Camps Inspector (CCI), which became Amt D: Konzentrationslagerwesen under the WVHA in Nazi Germany. As a direct subordinate of Heinrich Himmler, he was responsible for the forced labour of the camp inmates and was also the supervisor for the medical practices in the camps, ranging from human experimentation to the implementation of the "Final Solution", in particular the mass murder of inmates with Zyklon B gas. After Germany capitulated, Glücks committed suicide by swallowing a potassium cyanide capsule.
Extermination through labour is a term that was adopted to describe forced labor in Nazi concentration camps whose inmates were held in very bad conditions and suffered a very high mortality rate; in some camps most prisoners died within a few months of incarceration. In the 21st century, research has questioned whether there was a general policy of extermination through labor in the Nazi concentration camp system because of widely varying conditions between camps. German historian Jens-Christian Wagner argues that the camp system involved the exploitation of forced labor of some prisoners and the systematic murder of others, especially Jews, with only limited overlap between these two groups.
The SS Main Economic and Administrative Office was a Nazi organization responsible for managing the finances, supply systems and business projects of the Allgemeine-SS. It also ran the concentration camps and was instrumental in the implementation of the Final Solution through such subsidiary offices as the Concentration Camps Inspectorate and SS camp guards.
Deutsche Wirtschaftsbetriebe, abbreviated DWB, was a project launched by Nazi Germany in World War II. Organised and managed by the Allgemeine SS, its aim was to profit from the use of slave labour extracted from the Nazi concentration camp inmates.
The Concentration Camps Inspectorate (CCI) or in German, IKL was the central SS administrative and managerial authority for the concentration camps of the Third Reich. Created by Theodor Eicke, it was originally known as the "General Inspection of the Enhanced SS-Totenkopfstandarten", after Eicke's position in the SS. It was later integrated into the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office as "Amt D".
Heinrich Bütefisch was a German chemist, manager at IG Farben, and Nazi war criminal. He was an Obersturmbannführer in the SS.
German Equipment Works was a Nazi German defense contractor with headquarters in Berlin during World War II, owned and operated by the Schutzstaffel (SS). It consisted of a network of requisitioned factories and camp workshops across German-occupied Europe exploiting the prisoner slave labour from Nazi concentration camps and the Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland. DAW outfitted the German military with boots, uniforms and materials on the eastern front at a windfall profit, and provided wood and metal supplies, as well as reconstruction work on railway lines and freight trains.
The Jägerstab was a Nazi German governmental task force whose aim was to increase production of fighter aircraft during World War II. Established in March 1944, it was composed of government and SS personnel, as well as representatives of the aircraft manufacturers. The task force played a key role in the Emergency Fighter Program, including the "people's fighter" Heinkel He 162.
Gusen was a subcamp of Mauthausen concentration camp operated by the SS between the villages of Sankt Georgen an der Gusen and Langestein in the Reichsgau Ostmark. Primarily populated by Polish prisoners, there were also large numbers of Spanish Republicans, Soviet citizens, and Italians. Initially, prisoners worked in nearby quarries, producing granite which was sold by the SS company DEST.
The early camps were extrajudicial sites of detention established in Nazi Germany in 1933. Although the system was mostly dismantled by the end of the year, these camps were the precursor of the Nazi concentration camps.
Private sector participation in Nazi crimes was extensive and included widespread use of forced labor in Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe, confiscation of property from Jews and other victims by banks and insurance companies, and the transportation of people to Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps by rail. After the war, companies sought to downplay their participation in crimes and claimed that they were also victims of Nazi totalitarianism. However, the role of the private sector in Nazi Germany has been described as an example of state-corporate crime.
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