Abstract
Nazi slave labour is a subject of some contemporary political importance. With marked regularity, evidence — long known about in historical circles — has appeared in the news media of the complicity of several household names in inhuman system of exploitation during the war years. As this article was written, representatives of the victims and the heirs of some of the perpetrators were working to establish guidelines for financial compensation in a deal brokered and contributed to by the German government. The ‘Foundation Initiative’ of a group of German enterprises, officially entitled ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, will administer the funds contributed by the subscribing firms. (The final sum of money, established after extensive and often acrimonious debate, is in the region of $5.2m.2)
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Notes
Benjamin Ferencz, Less than Slaves: Jewish Forced Labour and the Quest for Compensation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979).
Hermann Langbein, ‘Arbeit in KZ-System’, in Dachauer Hefte 2: Sklavenarbeit im KZ, (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1986), 3–12 on the ‘life-chances’ of workers; also Franciszek Piper, Arbeitseinsatz der Häftlinge aus dem KL Auschwitz, (Oswiecim: Auschwitz, State Museum), p.333.
Cf Richard Overy, War and Economy in the Third Reich (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994) who contends that the war-mobilization of the German economy between 1941 and 1942 has been frequently exaggerated.
Ulrich Herbert, ‘Labor as Spoils of Conquest 1933–1945’, in David Crew (ed.), Nazism and German Society 1933–1945, (London: Routledge, 1994), 219–273, p.219.
Some German Jews were already working inside Germany at that time, forced to work under the ‘factory action’. See Konrad Kwiet, ‘Forced Labour of German Jews in Nazi Germany’, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, XXXVI (1991), 389–07.
Walter Naasner, Neue Machtzentren in der deutschen Kriegswirtschaft 1942–1945 (Bopp.ard/Rhein: Harald Boldt, 1994), p.445. It is only really in the use of slave labour that the WVHA can be considered a genuinely important power centre.
Ulrich Herbert, ‘Arbeit und Vernichtung’ in Dan Diner (ed.), Ist der Nationalsozialismus Geschichte? (Frankfurt/M: Fischer, 1987), 198–237; and his ‘Labour as Spoils of Conquest’, for an expansion of this point. On the ‘racial’ hierarchy.
see also Michael Zimmermann, ‘Arbeit in den Konzentrationslagern. Kommentierende Bemerkungen’, in Ulrich Herbert, Karin Orth and Christoph Dieckmann (eds.), Die nationalsozialistische Konzentrationslager, 1933–1945. Entwicklung und Struktur, 2 vols., (Göttingen: Wallstein, 1998), 730–751, p.747.
Daniel Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners (London: Abacus, 1997), pp.283–323;
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, (London: Allen and Unwin, 1958);
Wolfgang Sofsky, Der Ordnung des Terrors: Das Konzentrationslager (Frankfurt/M: Fischer, 1993).
Detlef Garbe, ‘Absonderung, Strafkommandos und spezifischer Terror’, in Arno Herzig and Ina Lorenz (eds.), Verdrängung und Vernichtung der Juden unter dem Nationalsozialismus (Hamburg: Hans Christians, 1992), 173–204; pp. 195–199 on the profile of the workers brought into the Reich and on their terrible treatment, even in comparison with the other inmates.
Werner Johe, Neuengamme (Hamburg: Landeszentrale für politische Bildung, 1986), p. 18, for an instance of the bestowing of the title ‘Konzentrationslager’ on a camp which until that point was not recognized as such.
Even from 1933 Dachau had an economic side, based around camp workshops manned by the minority of skilled workers. See Enno Georg, Die wirtschaftlichen Unternehmungen der SS (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1963), pp.12–13.
Hermann Kaienburg, ‘Vernichtung durch Arbeit’: der Fall Neuengamme (Bonn: JHW Dietz, 1990), pp.35–37;
Klaus Drobisch, ‘Hinter der Torinschrift’ in Hermann Kaienburg (ed.), Konzentrationslager und deutsche Wirtschaft, (Opladen: Leske and Buderich, 1996), 17–28, p.26; Garbe, ‘Absonderung’, pp.181–183.
Charles Sydnor, Soldiers oft Destruction (London: Guild, 1989), pp.19, 31.
Hans Marsalek, Die Geschichte des Konzentrationslagers Mauthausen. Dokumentation (Vienna: Lagergemeinschaft Mauthausen, 1974), pp.1–3.
Michael Thad Allen, ‘The Banality of Evil Reconsidered: SS Mid-Level Managers of Extermination through work’, Central European History, vol.30, no.2, (1998), 253–294. p.267.
Gudrun Schwarz, Die Nationalsozialistischen Lager (Frankfurt/M: Campus, 1990), pp.61, 73–76, on the absence of research on these places.
See Lucy Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews 1933–45 (London: Penguin, 1987).
Dina Porat, ‘The Holocaust in Lithuania: Some Unique Aspects’, in David Cesarani (ed.), The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation (London: Routledge, 1994), 159–174, pp.161–162.
Hilberg, Destruction, VV21\-1M. See Christoph Dieckmann, ‘Der Krieg und die Ermordung der litauischen Juden’, in Ulrich Herbert (ed.), Nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik: Neue Forschungen und Kontroversen (Frankfurt/M: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1997), 292–329; pp.293, 321; and his ‘Das Ghetto und das Konzentrationslager in Kaunas 1941–1944’, in Die nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager, vol.1, 439–471. Cf Christian Gerlach, ‘Deutsche Wirtschaftsinteressen Besatzungspolitik und der Mord an der Juden in Weissrussland 1941–1943’, in Nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik, 263–291; pp.276–277 on the relative lack of need for Jewish labour during the occupation of White Russia. Margers Vestermanis (‘Die nationalsozialistischen Haftstätten und Todeslager im okkupierten Lettland 1941–1945’, in Die nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager, vol.1, 472–492, pp.482–490) reminds us trenchantly in her study of the Latvian camps and ghettos that despite the preservation of some Jews until near the end of the war, their numbers were perpetually diminished by murders and murderous conditions, and that they were ultimately, and inevitably, slated for death. This was not necessarily the case with criminals, political prisoners and pows who were also put to work.
See for instance in the case of the Baltic states Wolfgang Scheffler, ‘Die Einsatzgruppe A’, in Peter Klein (ed.), Die Einsatzgruppen in die besetzten Sowjetunion 1941/42 (Berlin: Gedenk- und Bildungsstätte Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz, 1997), 29–51, pp.34, 37–38. This is however to be contrasted with the case of White Russia, where Jewish labour was not of much relevance: see Christian Gerlach, ‘Die Einsatzgruppe B’, in ibid., 52–70, p.62.
For the case of Upp.er Silesia, that area of southwestern Poland annexed to the Reich, see Alfred Konieczny, ‘Die Zwangsarbeit der Juden in Schlesien im Rahmen der “Organisation Schmeld”’, in Beiträge zur NS Gesundheits- und Sozialpolitik 5: Sozialpolitik und Judenvernichtung (Berlin: Rotbuch Verlag, 1987), 91–110.
Pohl, ‘Judenpolitik’; Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jems (New York: Harper, 1961), pp. 162p–166. See Rainer Fröbe, ‘KZ-Häftlinge als reserve qualifizierter Arbeitskraft’, in Herbert et al, Die nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager, 636–681, pp.645–647 on the use of Jews from the Rzeszow ghetto by Daimler Benz from the end of 1941.
Much of this section is taken from Christopher Browning, The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp.28–56. For a different analysis of ghetto administration on economic-rational lines, see Götz Aly and Suzanne Heim, ‘Menschenvernichtung und wirtschaftliche Neuordnung’, in Sozialpolitik und Judenvernichtung, 11–90, pp.67–79 on the economics of ghetto management.
The population shifts were allowed for in the so-called ‘Generalplan Ost’, a vast scheme of ‘racial’ reordering of Eastern Europe. The history of the Durchgangstrasse IV is drawn in the main from Thomas Sandkühler, ‘Endlösung’in Galizien (Bonn: JHW Dietz, 1996), pp.146–159.
Sandkühler estimates that Heydrich’s talk of using slave labour for road construction projects as a means of decimating the hardier Jews may well have been influenced by the events in Galicia. See also Hermann Kaienburg, ‘Jüdischer Arbeit an der “Strasse der SS”’, 1999. Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts, vol. 11 (1996), 13–39. See Martin Broszat, ‘Hitler and the Genesis of the Final Solution’, Yad Vashem Studies, vol.13 (1979); and
Hans Mommsen, ‘The Realisation of the Unthinkable: the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” in the Third Reich’, in Gerhard Hirschfeld (ed.), The Policies of Genocide, (London: German Historical Institute, 1986). Both Pohl and Sandkühler argue however (in contrast to the classic ‘functionalists’) that the radicalisation of Jewish policy in Galicia derived from both local initiative and direct murderous impulses from the centre of the Nazi power structure.
Peter Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung: eine Gesamtdarstellung der nationalsozialistischen Judenverfolgung (Munich: Piper, 1998); see also the works of Pohl and Sandkühler.
Helmut Krausnick et al, Anatomie des SS-Staates, 2 vols. (Freiburg im Bresgau: Walker, 1965), vol.2, p.132, describes the WVHA’s incorporation of the IKL as an ‘expression of the change in the role of the camps’. It was only a partial change however, as we shall see.
See Eberhard Jäckel, ‘On the Purpose of the Wannsee Conference’, in James Pacy and Alan Wertheimer (eds.), Perspectives on the Holocaust: Essays in Honor of Raul Hilberg (Oxford: Westview, 1995), 39–9 on Heydrich using the conference to establish his authority. See Browning, Fateful Months both for a statement of his hitherto influential position and for an overview of the historiography of the development of the ‘final solution’.
See the introductory paragraphs of section III above. Also see the introductory essay to Christopher Browning, The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1978), for one of the best available summaries of competing power interests in the development of Jewish policy. More generally on the ‘semi-feudal’ structure of the Reich administration.
see Martin Broszat, The Hitler State (London: Longman, 1981).
Ludolf Herbst, Der Totale Krieg und die Ordnung der Wirtschaft (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1982).
Mark Spoerer, ‘Profitierten Unternehmen von KZ-Arbeit?’, Historische Zeitschrift, vol.268, no.1 (1999), 61–95, pp.72–73, 89;
Neil Gregor, Daimler-Benz in the Third Reich, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), and idem, ‘The Normalisation of Barbarism: Daimler-Benz in the “Third Reich”’, Journal ofHolocaust Education, vol.6, no.3 (1997), 1–20, p.15.
Maurer to Höss, 26 August 1943, Sell to Maurer, 28 August 1943, in Johannes Tuchel, Die Inspektion der Konzentrationslager (Oranienburg: Edition Hentrich, 1994), pp. 124–128.
On statistics of slave labour use in aircraft production, see Lutz Budrass, Flugzeugindustrie und Luftrüstung in Deutschland 1918–1945 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1998).
Dan Van der Vat, The Good Nazi (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997), p.176.
In addition, Jews, assigned the most arduous tasks in the post-construction phase of the complex, were deported for murder either to Auschwitz or Mauthausen if they could not keep up with the debilitating demands made of them. See Yehoshua Büchler and Shmuel Krakowski, ‘Dora-Mittelbau’, in Israel Gutman (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, 4 vols., (New York: Macmillan, 1990), vol.1, 398–400.
See for example Irena Strzelecka and Tadeusz Szymanski, ‘Die Nebenlager Tschechowitz’, Hefte von Auschwitz, vol.18 (1990), 189–224, pp.196–197; see also Zofka, ‘Allach — Sklaven für BMW’, p.72.
Broszat, ‘Nationalsozialistischen Lager’, in Krausnick et al, Anatomie des SS-Staates; Evelyn Le Chene, Mauthausen: the History of a Death Camp (London: Methuen, 1971), pp.64–66.
See Jonathan Wiesen, ‘Overcoming Nazism: Big Business, Public Relations and the Politics of Memory, 1945–1950’, Central European History, vol.29, no.2, (1997), 201–226.
On these circumstances, see Peter Hayes, Industry and Ideology: IG Farben in the Nazi era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p.323.
Robert Jan Van Pelt, Auschwitz 1270 to the Present, (London: Norton, 1996), p.197.
See Overy, War and Economy, pp. 141–142 (in an analysis similar to that of Herbert in ‘Von Auschwitz nach Essen’). Also Herbert, A History of Foreign Labor in Germany, 1880–1980: Seasonal Workers/Forced Labourers/ Guest Workers (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990). Browning, Ordinary Men, pp.2, 159–163.
Reinhard Otto, Wehrmacht, Gestapo und sowjetische Kriegsgefangene im deutschen Reichsgebiet 1941/42 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1998).
See Herbert, Hitler’s Foreign Workers on ‘work education camps’ (‘Arbeitserziehungslager’); Hellmuth Auerbach, ‘Arbeitserziehungslager 1940–4’, in Gutachten des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte, vol.2, (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1966); and on the gassing of some Soviet and Polish forced labourers.
Dorothée Roer and Dieter Henkel (eds.), Psychiatrie im Faschismus: Die Anstalt Hadamar 1933–1945, (Bonn: Psychiatrie Verlag, 1986), 257–275.
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Bloxham, D. (2001). Jewish Slave Labour and its Relationship to the ‘Final Solution’. In: Roth, J.K., Maxwell, E., Levy, M., Whitworth, W. (eds) Remembering for the Future. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-66019-3_11
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