When you think of the biggest slave labor
based economy in modern history, you might think that it’s the US Southern States of
the mid 19th century. But it’s not the biggest… by 1942, Nazi
Germany has created the biggest slave labor force in modern history. This is a WW2 in Real Time Special Episode
on the Nazi German Slave Economy - I’m Spartacus Olsson. Slavery has been part of humanity, possibly
since the origin of our species. Before the 19th century it was considered
normal, and well into the 20th century serfdom was in many places still accepted. Russia, Sweden, and other European nations
only abolish serfdom at the cusp of the 20th century. As WW2 is on the horizon, the British, the
French, the Dutch, the Belgians, the US and the Japanese still maintain colonial territories
held in some degree of serfdom. Although slavery has been abolished in the
United States, the country remains racially divided, with most people of color living
in a near indentured state. Across the world, the idea that there are
master races and lesser races that should serve these masters is, arguably, a majority
sentiment. In Mein Kampf Hitler rails against the injustice
that has been imposed on the German Race by denying them a colonial empire. He is firmly convinced that the Aryan Race
- in his confused musings we can only vaguely understand that he means ‘Europeans’ - have
been the origin of all culture, and have a natural right to subjugate the rest of the
world. Or as he puts it himself: “If we divide mankind into three categories--founders
of culture, bearers of culture, and destroyers of culture--the Aryan alone can be considered
as representing the first category. It was he who laid the groundwork and erected
the walls of every great structure in human culture.” He reimagines the history of civilization
as a plant that has grown out of the subjugation by these “Aryans” of other peoples. He even thinks that the “Aryans” have
grown to be the greatest race through the very act of subjugating and enslaving other
peoples. “Aryan tribes, often almost ridiculously
small in number, subjugated foreign peoples and, stimulated by the conditions of life
which their new country offered them […] and profiting also by the abundance of manual
labour furnished them by the inferior race, they developed intellectual and organizing
faculties which had hitherto been dormant in these conquering tribes.” These are central ideas towards the principles
of racial policy of the Nazi ideology, and when they take power in Germany they set about
to make them real. The Jew, synonymous for anything that is imagined
to oppose the German race, is of course the main target. The plan is that stealing, or extorting the
Jewish population will release a massive flood of money into the German economy. However, the idea that the tiny minority of
Jews have any real impact on the German economy is an anti-Semitic myth. Their wealth, and control of business make
up far less than 1% of the nation’s economy. That doesn’t stop the Nazis from pursuing
their fantasy based policies - in the process of which they instead damage the basis for
German economic growth. With the Nuremberg Race Laws, those considered
Jewish are effectively banned from most economic activity starting in 1935. The Nazis then ban women from most forms of
work that is not related to ‘typical female’ activities. As the Nazi reign tightens around German life
more and more intellectuals, scientists, and skilled professional leave the country - either
because they are Jewish, or simply opposed to the Nazis. Finally, Hitler’s plans for war funnels
more and more men into the Wehrmacht. By 1938 the country’s economy has lost some
its biggest brains, and a large portion of the German workforce has been excluded. On paper German unemployment goes down dramatically
during this time - this is a combined effect of actual increases in employment, moving
uninsured employees into the insured column, and excluding people like women from the unemployment
data. But, the long and short of it is that the
available German workforce has been reduced, and if the Nazi policies shall be maintained,
the economy now needs some other source of laborers. To bridge the gap Nazi second in command,
Hermann Göring orders the forced conscription of Jewish able bodied men, and anyone labeled
as Arbeitsscheu ‘work shy’ into compulsory labor columns in 1938. By the summer of 1939, around 200,000 of these
serfs are toiling mainly in public infrastructure projects. Many still live with their families, but some
are transported to remote locations and incarcerated in one of the 30 indentured labor camps, now
erected across the country. Private industry, and regional administrations
are offered the serfs too, but express reluctancy by their employees to work with Jews, and
unwillingness to rebuild their facilities to meet the ideological demand to keep the
Jewish workers strictly separated. When Germany goes to war this method to feed
bodies into the German war economy takes on monstrous proportions. The mobilization and conscription of more,
and more civilian men into the armed forces aggravates the self inflicted labor shortage. Once Poland has been occupied they begin pressing
Polish men and women into indentured labor, shipping them off to Germany. When they receive wages at all, these are
not enough to keep them out of being indentured. This will be symptomatic to the Nazi slave
operations. By contrast the Polish Jews are not included
in these labor shipments for the Reich, although the first forced labor camps soon start springing
up in the vicinity of the Ghettos, where by 1941 nearly all Poles considered Jewish are
imprisoned, So the Poles arriving in the Reich do not have the stigma of Jewry, and the Nazis
now find takers in the private sector as well. The entire German economy now profits from
the slave system. From filmmakers like Leni Riefenstahl using
slaves as extras and crew, to wealthy families holding slaves in their household staff, to
individual farmers replacing their missing farmhands, to mid sized and big manufacturing
companies filling their production lines. On top of being enslaved for labor, many young
Polish women will also be forced into prostitution in the Wehrmacht brothels, and in private
bordellos across the country. In essence the entire German occupied part
of Poland is transformed into a reservoir of human livestock. If the conscription by year of birth and residence
is not enough to fill the quotas, the Reich Labor Service organizes raids into the countryside
to kidnap Poles, who are then sold on slave markets. One victim will recall: “We were so humiliated, frightened and also
ashamed of our nakedness. They were very elegant, in uniform… We were blue, exhausted, skinny, ruined. […] we could not recognize each other anymore
– our hair cut, in strange clothes. We cried terribly when we saw each other.” In March 1940, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler
codifies the oppression into law, stipulating draconian punishments for any disobedience. Poles taken to the Reich are denoted by a
P in their paper and on badges on their clothes - clearly signaling that they are non-citizens,
and unprotected by any German civilian laws. Throughout the war some 1,4 million non-Jewish
Poles will be enslaved in the Nazi German Reich. Another 300,000 Polish Prisoners of War will
also be forced labor for the Nazi war machine. And that is the beginning of the next major
escalation of the Nazi slave system. After the West-European campaign, well over
a million POWs from France, Great Britain and the Benelux countries enter the German
economy. By the spring of 1941, Germany holds 1.2 million
POW’s and 1.3 million civilian workers as slaves - the vast majority of PoWs French,
and the vast majority of civilians Polish. That is 8.4 percent of the German workforce. A year later, one million more civilians,
again mostly Poles, have been enslaved. Tens of thousand more are added after the
Baltic campaign. When Germany invades the USSR in June 1941,
millions and millions of Soviet PoWs are taken, but they are not made slaves. Instead, they are deliberately starved to
death as part of the Hunger Plan, within the Generalplan Ost. Between one and two million die in 1941 and
early 42. But, by then, the Red Army PoWs begin to be
moved into the concentration camp system, where they will be put to work. To administer these masses of slaves, the
Nazis soon need a dedicated organization. In February 42 Albert Speer, Hitler’s favorite
Architect, takes charge of Organization Todt, after its first leader Fritz Todt dies in
a plane crash. The organization was created in the 30s to
carry out public works like the Autobahn System. The workers were recruited from unemployment
programs. Speer is now going to transform Organization
Todt into a slave labor service for the German war industry - and for that he will need many,
many more slaves. The first major project begins already in
March 42; the building of an Atlantic Wall along the northern French and Belgian coast,
to hold off an Allied invasion there. By early 1942, Germany is also facing an increasing
food shortage, again Speer proposes increased slave labor as the solution. To satisfy Speer’s needs, on March 21, 1942,
Hitler appoints Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel to become director of the Arbeitseinsatz, the
office for labor mobilization. He starts to ‘mobilize’ millions of workers
all over Europe. Masses of men and women, and children, twelve
years and older, are taken from the Baltics, Belorussia and Ukraine. Sauckel’s pressgangs are soon also active
in France, the Benelux, Italy, and the Czech Protectorate, delivering an additional 2.8
million slaves until June 1943, bringing the total of foreign laborers in the German Reich
territory to 6.5 million. There is one problem here though, while the
slaves are treated abominably, dying form mistreatment by the thousands, there is still
a degree of resistance by ordinary Germans to ruthlessly work other people to death,
and then just replace them. With euphemisms like Ostarbeiter, Hilfsarbeiter,
and Freiwillige Arbeitskräfte, they convince themselves that what they are doing is not
really slavery, and perfectly acceptable. To expand faster, and cheaper the Nazis need
a source of people that no one cares about. They turn to the hundreds of thousands just
waiting to be put to work in the Concentration Camps. The original concept for the camps was meaningless
physical labor to break the spirit of the victims, like crushing stones into gravel
by hand. It’s the Dachau Model, conceived by the
Dachau camp commandant, Theodor Eicke already in 1933. But as the camps start growing and increasing
in number the cost of building and maintaining the camps increases. The solution is to let inmates build the camps
themselves, like when the first prisoners in Auschwitz are taken from the Buchenwald
Camp and forced to build their own new prison in early 1940. But while this might solve the construction
cost for the camps, it does not resolve the continued labor shortage. Or as Himmler puts it in the Summer of 1942: “If we do not fill our camps with slaves
- in this room I mean to say things very firmly and very clearly - with worker slaves, who
will build our cities, our villages, our farms without regard to any losses, then even after
years of war we will not have enough money to be able to equip the settlements in such
a manner that real Germanic people can live there and take root in the first generation.” The solution has already been engineered at
Auschwitz, where Camp Commandant Rudolf Höss has long realized that he is sitting on a
goldmine. Tens of thousands of potential workers, secluded
from the public eye. Together with German companies like IG Farben,
Siemens, and Krupp, he sets up the first dedicated closed industrial scale, forced labor camp
in mid 1941. In the autumn of 1942, IG Farben even begins
construction on its very own Concentration Camp, Auschwitz III Monowitz to hold 3,500
slaves working at the adjacent IG Farben plant . At Monowitz, death, and exhaustion leading
to being murdered will reduce the workforce by one fifth each month, always replenished
by new inmates from the other Auschwitz camps. While Höss, and the third most powerful man
in the SS, Oswald Pohl, head of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office, and overseer
of the concentration camp system start expanding their business venture, the rest of the SS
and Nazi leadership debate the Final Solution of the Jewish Question. Work them to death, or kill them right away? Until that decision falls, like in Auschwitz,
Ghetto administrators set up production lines inside the Ghettos, and rent out their free
labor to yet more companies. But, in December 1941, Hitler finally sides
with extermination, although a small percentage of Jews will be selected for labor on arrival
at the gas chambers. It is never more than ten percent, but that
will still provide hundreds of thousands of additional bodies for the slave machine. A motor to the German economy, running on
blood, grinding down human beings, mercilessly breaking their bodies and spirits, often until
they die. The Nazis will enslave up to 15 million people,
about 8.4 million civilians, 4.6 million prisoners of war, and about 1.7 million concentration
camp inmates. Of the 5.7 million Soviet POWs, 60% or roughly
3.3 million die in captivity, 1 million of them worked to death. 45,000 French PoWs and 35,000 civilians, 10,000
Belgians, 25,000 Czechoslovaks, 10,000 Dutch, 20,000 Italian and thousands of other nationalities
also succumb. But the largest civilian death tolls by country
are from Eastern Europe with 130,000 Poles and 250,000 Soviet citizens from Belarus,
Ukraine and Russia. One in six of the slaves will not live to
be liberated. Over 2.5 million men, women and children die
when they are forced to live, and work under the most degrading circumstances imaginable. The survivors will carry the scars for the
rest of their lives, but they will have prevailed in the face of absolute evil, or in the words
of Belgian Resistance fighter José Fosty, interned at Buchenwald: "The inmates, beaten until they were half
dead, injured or tortured, were able to keep their dignity. Only the executioner was without honour.” Or as Alex Hacker, survivor of Flossenbürg,
Mittelbau-Dora, and Bergen-Belsen will one day write on the disappearing wall at the
Mittelbau-Dora memorial: “Message to Hitler: I’m still here, you
bastard.” In 2021 Alex Hacker is 95 years old, and lives
in Toronto, Canada. Never Forget.
I do wonder what wehraboo think of this, note that the video debunk the clean wehrmacht too
Sorted comments by new, the whatasboutism is omnipresent.
Ive said it before and ill say it again. The more i learn about Nazi Germany, the less i can understand how so many were on board with it.
They also made a great video specifically targeting the clean wehrmacht myth, I love those guys.
Yo Speer
So they were Socialists all along ! CHECKMATE LIBS!
/s
Funni dentist man
Tno reference???
The Dengist
Bottom Text