Forced laborers in Nazi Germany: Categories, numbers, and survivors

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Volumn 33, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 169-204

  Spoerer, Mark ^a   Fleischhacker, Jochen ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF HOHENHEIM   (Germany)

^b MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR DEMOGRAPHIC RESEARCH   (Germany)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33745110560     PISSN: 00221953     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/00221950260208661     Document Type: Article

References (89)

1. George Lewis and John Mewha, History of Prisoner of War Utilization by the United States Army, 1776-1945 (Washington, D.C., 1955), 77, 90;
2. Howard S. Levie, "The Employment of Prisoners of War," American Journal of International Law, LVII (1963), 320-321;
3. Manfred Botzenhart, "French Prisoners of War in Germany, 1870-71," in Stig Förster and Jörg Nägler (eds.), On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861-1871 (Cambridge, 1997), 587-593;
4. Rüdiger Overmans, "'In der Hand des Feindes'. Geschichtsschreibung zur Kriegsgefangenenschaft von der Antike bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg," in idem (ed.), In der Hand des Feindes. Kriegsgefangenschaft von der Antike bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg (Cologne, 1999), 21. Coerced labor still occurred in colonies. See, for example,
5. Martin A. Klein (ed.), Breaking the Chains: Slavery, Bondage, and Emancipation in Modern Africa and Asia (Madison, 1993).
6. Gerald H. Davis, "Prisoners of War in Twentieth-Century War Economies, "Journal of Contemporary History, XII (1977), 623-634;
7. Gérard Canini, "L'Utilisation des prisonniers de guerre comme main-d'oeuvre 1914-1916," in Les Fronts invisibles: nourrir-fournir- soigner (Nancy, 1984), 247-259;
8. Overmans, "In der Hand des Feindes," 12-13;
9. Ulrich Herbert, "Zwangsarbeit als Lernprozeß. Zur Beschäftigung ausländischer Arbeiter in der westdeutschen Industrie im Ersten Weltkrieg," Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, XXIV (1984), 287-294;
10. Ulrich Herbert, idem, Hitler's Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany Under the Third Reich (Cambridge, 1997), 30-32;
11. Ulrich Herbert, idem, Fremdarbeiter. Politik und Praxis des 'Ausländer-Einsatzes' in der Kriegswirtschaft des Dritten Reichs (Bonn, 1999; orig. pub. 1985).
12. David A. Schmidt, Ianfu: The Comfort Women of the Japanese Imperial Army of the Pacific War (Lewiston, 2000), 83, cites an estimate of 4.5 million Koreans mobilized by the Japanese in the country.
13. Van Waterford, Prisoners of the Japanese in World War II (Jefferson, N.C., 1994), 141-146, counts 193,000 allied POWS and at least 600,000 native forced workers in Burma, Siam (Thailand), and Indonesia. There are no estimates of the number of forced laborers in occupied China. Germany annexed formally, or de facto, Austria in 1938, parts of Czechoslovakia in 1938/39; large parts of Poland from 1939 to 1942; Alsace, Lorraine, Luxembourg, and a small part of Belgium during or after 1940; and a small part of Lithuania and parts of northern Yugoslavia in 1942.
14. Herbert, Fremdarbeiter, 314-317. See also
15. Herbert, idem, Geschichte der Ausländerpolitik in Deutschland: Saisonarbeiter, Zwangsarbeiter, Gastarbeiter, Flüchtlinge (Munich, 2001).
16. Jürgen Kuczynski, Die Geschichte der Lage der Arbeiter in Deutschland von 1800 bis in die Gegenwart (Berlin, 1947), II, 244, estimates the number of foreign laborers as 14 million, excluding inmates;
17. Edward L. Homze, Foreign Labor in Nazi Germany (Princeton, 1967), 151-153, 10 to 12 million, excluding inmates;
18. Herbert, Fremdarbeiter, 430, 12 million, including inmates;
19. Thomas Kuczynski, "Entschädigungsansprüche für Zwangsarbeit im Dritten Reich," in Ulrike Winkler (ed.), Stiften gehen. NS-Zwangsarbeit und Entschädigungsdebatte (Cologne, 2000), 171, 14 to 15 million, including inmates.
20. Spoerer and Fleischhacker, "The Compensation of Nazi Germany's Forced Labourers: Demographic Findings and Political Implications," Population Studies, LV (2002), 5-21. This article includes the data appendix.
21. Der Arbeitseinsatz im Großdeutschen Reich (1944), no. 11/12, 2. This official publication, which was published jointly by the Four Year Plan Office and the Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of Labor, is the pivotal statistical source for the employment of civilian laborers and POWS within the borders of Nazi Germany. Not covered in its figures is the number of inmates, which totaled around 0.4 million in September 1944.
22. Benjamin B. Ferencz, Less Than Slaves: Jewish Forced Labor and the Quest for Compensation (Cambridge, Mass., 1979);
23. Albert O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (Cambridge, Mass., 1970).
24. For an overview of foreign labor, see Herbert, Hitler's Foreign Workers;
25. Spoerer, Zwangsarbeit unter dem Hakenkreuz. Ausländische Zivilarbeiter, Kriegsgefangene und Häftlinge im Dritten Reich und im besetzten Europa 1939-1945 (Stuttgart, 2001).
26. On the role of gender, see Gabriella Hauch, "Zwangsarbeiterinnen und ihre Kinder: Zum Geschlecht der Zwangsarbeit," in Oliver Rathkolb (ed.), NS-Zwangsarbeit: Der Standort Linz der "Reichswerke Hermann Göring AG Berlin" 1938-1945 (Vienna, 2001), I, 355-448.
27. On inmate workers, see, for example, Karin Orth, Das System der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager. Eine politische Organisationsgeschichte (Hamburg, 1999);
28. Karin Orth, idem, Die Konzentrationslager-SS. Sozialstrukturelle Analysen und biographische Studien (Göttingen, 2000);
29. Jan E. Schulte, Zwangsarbeit und Vernichtung: Das Wirtschaftsimperium der SS. Oswald Pohl und das SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt 1933-1945 (Paderborn, 2001);
30. Michael T. Allen, The Business of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor, and the Concentration Camps (Chapel Hill, 2002).
31. The two-step method first appeared in Spoerer, Schätzung der Zahl der im Jahr 2000 überlebenden Personen, die auf dem Gebiet der Republik Österreich zwischen 1939 und 1945 als Zwangsarbeiter und Zwangsarbeiterinnen eingesetzt waren. Gutachten für die Historikerkonmission der Republik Österreich (Vienna, forthcoming). A draft version has been accessible since February 2000 at http://www. historikerkommission.gv.at. An English translation is in preparation. In principle, civilian laborers employed outside the Reich are eligible as well if they are able to prove humiliating conditions of life and work. However, in practice few persons are able to meet these criteria. Moreover, historians have compiled practically no evidence on work camps outside Germany, except those for Jewish inmates.
32. On Arbeitseinsatz, Spoerer, "Die NS-Zwangsarbeiter im Deutschen Reich. Eine Statistik vom 30. September 1944 nach Arbeitsamtsbezirken," Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, XXXIX (2001), 665-684.
33. For more details about Polish and Soviet laborers, see Spoerer, Schätzung, 22-36.
34. The recruiting figures do not deal specifically with the sex ratio.
35. Raoul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews: Revised and Definitive Edition (New York, 1985), 1151;
36. Spoerer and Heischhacker, "Compensation," 2.
37. Several ten thousands of German Jews were forced to work in factories, especially in Berlin. In 1941/42, they were deported to ghettos and concentration camps in occupied Poland. Thus, they were either concentration-camp inmates or working Jews. See Wolf Gruner, "Terra Inkognita? The Camps for 'Jewish Labor Conscription' 1938-1943 and the German Population," Yad Vashem Studies, XXIV (1994), 1-41.
38. Alexander Dallin, German Rule in Russia, 1941-1945 (London, 1981; 2d ed.);
39. Hans Umbreit, "Die deutsche Herrschaft in den besetzten Gebieten," in Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg (Stuttgart, 1999), 1-272;
40. Christian Gerlach, "German Economic Interests, Occupation Policy, and the Murder of the Jews in Belorussia, 1941/43," in Herbert (ed.) National Socialist Extermination Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies (New York, 2000), 210-239;
41. Dieter Pohl, "The Murder of Jews in the General Government," in National Socialist Extermination Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies ibid., 83-103;
42. Pavel Polian, Deportiert nach Hause. Sowjetische Kriegsgefangene im "Dritten Reich" und ihre Repatriierung (Munich, 2001), 166.
43. For excessive-stress syndrome, see, for example, Leo Eitinger and Robert Krell, The Psychological and Medical Effects of Concentration Camps and Related Persecutions on Survivors of the Holocaust (Vancouver, 1985).
44. A more detailed discussion of methods and data sources appears in Spoerer and Fleischhacker, "Compensation. "
45. On the methodology of chaining period life tables, see Reiner H. Dinkel, "Kohortensterbetafeln. Ein Überblick über Logik, Konstruktionsverfahren und Anwendungsmöglichkeiten," in idem, Charlotte Höhn, and Rembrandt D. Scholz (eds.), Sterblichkeitsentwicklung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Kohortenansatzes (Munich, 1996), 27-44.
46. On life tables in general, see, for example, Samuel H. Preston, Patrick Heuveline, and Michel Guilot, Demography: Measuring and Modelling Population Processes (Oxford, 2001).
47. For the overall estimate of Soviet casualties, see Spoerer, Schätzung, 33.
48. Based on his extensive research in Russian archives, Polian estimates that c. 50,000 Ostarbeiter (Soviet civilian laborers) perished in Germany until mid-1944 ("Die Deportation der Ostarbeiter im Zweiten Weltkrieg," in Andreas Gestrich, Gerhard Hirschfeld, and Holger Sonnabend [eds.]. Ausweisung und Deportation. Formen der Zwangsmigration in der Geschichte [Stuttgart, 1995], 133). In private communication, he confirms that the total number of victims may add up to 170,000 until the end of the war, when conditions deteriorated.
49. Bernd C. Wagner, IG Auschwitz. Zwangsarbeit und Vernichtung von Häftlingen des Lagers Monowitz 1941-1945 (Munich, 2000), 281.
50. For detailed discussion of the data underlying the calculations, see Spoerer and Fleischhacker, "Compensation," Appendix.
51. For an explanation of how the figures in columns (vii) and (viii) of Table 3 were estimated, see Spoerer and Fleischhacker, "Compensation," ibid.
52. Yves Durand, La captivité. Histoire des prisonniers de guerre francais 1939-1945 (Paris, 1982; 3d ed.), 324, 348;
53. Streit, Keine Kameraden, 246;
54. Polian, Deportiert nach Hause, 44-45.
55. For an explanation of how the figures in columns (iv) and (vi) of Table 5 were estimated, see Spoerer and Fleischhacker, "Compensation," Appendix.
56. Gabriele Lotfi, KZ der Gestapo. Arbeitserziehungslager im Dritten Reich (Stuttgart, 2000), 318, 323.
57. Florian Freund and Bertrand Perz, Die Zahlenentwicklung der ausländischen Zwangsarbeiter und Zwangsarbeiterinnen auf dem Gebiet der Republik Österreich 1939-1945. Gutachten für die Historikerkommission der Republik Österreich (Vienna, forthcoming), 173. A draft version is accessible at http://www.historikerkommission.gv.at. An English translation is in preparation.
58. Randolph L. Braham, The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary (New York, 1981), 1144.
59. See also Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944 (Chicago, 2000), 238-258, 289-290.
60. Leonard Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust (New York, 1982), 14, 18, 42;
61. Henry Friedlander, "Darkness and Dawn in 1945: The Nazis, the Allies, and the Survivors," in 1945: The Year of Liberation (Washington D.C., 1995), 24;
62. Gunnar Heinsohn, "Die 1945 geretteten jüdischen Sklavenarbeiter Hitlerdeutschlands: Wieviele könnten heute noch leben?" working paper (University of Bremen, 2000);
63. Norman G. Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: eflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (London, 2000), 126;
64. Wolfgang Benz (ed.), Dimension des Völkermords: Die Zahl der jüdischen opfer des Nationalsozialismus (Munich, 1991).
65. Joseph Billig, Les camps de concentration dans l'économie du Reich Hitlérien (Paris, 1973), 72, 91;
66. Falk Pingel, "Concentration Camps," in Israel Gutman et al. (eds.), Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (New York, 1990), I, 313. To avoid confusion, Billig's and Pingel's figure does not include the more than 3 million inmates who were immediately killed after their arrival in the extermination camps of Auschwitz II, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka, which did not formally belong to the concentration-camp system.
67. Herbert, Fremdarbeiter, 430.
68. Johannes Tuchel, Die Inspektion der Konzentrationslager 1938-1945. Das System des Terrors (Berlin, 1994), 213
69. ; Shmuel Krakowski, "Death Marches," in Gutman et al. (eds.), Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, I, 353-354;
70. Billig, Les camps de concentration, 95;
71. Friedlander, "Darkness and Dawn," 24;
72. Orth, System, 345-346.
73. An illuminative comparison is that with forced laborers in Japanese captivity. Among the 1 million Koreans deported to Japan, c. 2% died of natural causes. The mortality of the 40,000 Chinese forced laborers in Japan was much higher, 18%. The death rate was even higher outside Japan. Around 31% of 193,000 Allied laborers and 48% of 0.6 million native forced laborers did not survive the Japanese work camps. Schmidt, Ianfu, 83-84;
74. Waterford, Prisoners of the Japanese, 141-146.
75. According to another source, the total number of allied POWS in Japanese captivity totaled 132,000; they faced a mortality rate of 27%. Yuki Tanaka, Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II (Boulder, 1996), 2-3.
76. Mark R. Elliot, "Soviet Military Collaborators During World War II," in Yuri Boshyk (ed.), Ukraine During World War II: History and Its Aftermath (Edmonton, 1986), 103;
77. Wolfgang Jacobmeyer, Vom Zwangsarbeiter zum heimatlosen Ausländer: Die Displaced Persons in Westdeutschland 1945-1951 (Göttingen, 1985), 83, 85, 97, 122;
78. Orest Subtelny, "Ukrainian Political Refugees: An Historical Overview, " in Wsevolod W. Isajiw, Yury Boshik, and Roman Senkus (eds.), The Refagee Experience: Ukrainian Displaced Persons after World War II (Edmonton, 1992), 14;
79. Ihor Stebelsky, "Ukrainian Population Migration After World War II," in The Refagee Experience: Ukrainian Displaced Persons after World War II ibid., 34.
80. The figures in Table 9 deviate slightly from those in Spoerer and Fleischhacker, "Compensation," II; this article uses an extended database.
81. The median ages were calculated from Statistisches Jahrbuch für das Deutsche Reich (1941/ 42), 39. Statistical Handbook of Jewish Palestine (1947), 90, 434.
82. On "annihilation by work," see, for example, Herbert (ed.), National Socialist Extermination Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies (New York, 2000);
83. idem, Fremdarbeiter, 424-431;
84. Schulte, Zwangsarbeit und Vernichtung;
85. Spoerer, Zwangsarbeit, 180-183;
86. Allen, Business of Genocide;
87. Streit, Keine Kameraden.
88. The same point applies to the Japanese forced-labor system in the occupied parts of Asia and Japan. To our knowledge, no published study compares the Japanese and German programs (but see http://info.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/display. cgi? id=148, 23 July 2002).
89. A comparison would be all the more interesting, since both countries treated POWS much better in World War I than in World War II. See Ikuhiko Hata, "From Consideration to Contempt: The Changing Nature of Japanese Military and Popular Perceptions of Prisoners of War through the Ages," in Bob Moore and Kent Fedorovich (eds.), Prisoners of War and Their Captors in World War II (Oxford, 1996), 253-276.