Forced labor of Germans after World War II


In the years following World War II, large numbers of German civilians and captured soldiers were forced into labour by the Allied forces. The topic of using Germans as forced labour for reparations was first broached at the Tehran conference in 1943, where Soviet premier Joseph Stalin demanded 4,000,000 German workers.
Forced labour was also included in the final protocol of the Yalta conference in January 1945, where it was sanctioned by UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Eastern Europe

Soviet Union

The largest group of forced laborers in the Soviet Union consisted of several million German prisoners of war. Most German POW survivors of the forced labor camps in the Soviet Union were released in 1953.
Estimates of German POW casualties range from 600,000 to 1,000,000. According to the section of the German Red Cross dealing with tracing the captives, the ultimate fate of 1,300,000 German POWs in Allied custody is still unknown; they are still officially listed as missing.
The capture and transfer of civilian ethnic Germans to the Soviet Union began as soon as countries with a German minority began to be overrun in 1944. Large numbers of civilians were taken from countries such as Romania, Yugoslavia, and from the eastern parts of Germany itself. For example, after Christmas 1944 between 27,000 and 30,000 ethnic Germans were sent to the USSR from Yugoslavia. Women made up 90% of the group. Most were sent to labor camps in the Donbass where 16% of them died.

Poland

In its shifted borders, post-war Poland comprised large territories that had a German-speaking majority and had been part of German states for centuries. Many ethnic Germans living in these areas were, prior to their expulsion from their home region, used for years as forced laborers in labor camps such as that run by Salomon Morel.
Among these camps were Central Labour Camp Jaworzno, Central Labour Camp Potulice, Łambinowice, Zgoda labour camp and others. The law authorising forced labour, Article 20 of the law on the exclusion of the enemy elements from society, also removed rights to Polish citizenship and all property owned.
The many camps were used during the process of the expulsions for the sake of "rehabilitating" Reichs- or Volksdeutsche, to decide if they could stay or go, but in reality this was a program of slave labor. Roughly 200,000 ethnic Germans died in the Soviet run concentration camps in Poland.
Others were still amongst the rest of the population, but the Polish government had made several declarations that the German population should be exploited as forced labor, instructing a minimum of 60 hours work per week with no rights for breaks. The salaries were insufficient for survival, usually 25 or 50 percent of Polish salaries.

Czechoslovakia

The German-speaking population of the Sudetenland was, in the same case as Poland, expelled after the war. The expulsion was not indiscriminate, however, since as late as 1947, large numbers of skilled German workmen were still being detained. Germans were forced to wear a white armband with the letter "N", for "Němec" signifying German in Czech to identify them.
Czech Deputy Premier Petr Mareš has in the past, in vain, tried to arrange compensation for ethnic Germans who were forcibly resettled or used as forced labour after the war.

Eastern Germany

Many Germans in what would become East Germany were forced by the Communist authorities to work in German uranium mines producing the majority of the raw material of the Soviet atomic bomb project. Beginning in the summer of 1946 the Soviets began explorations in the Erzgebirge, and sealing off the old radium hot springs by September of the same year. An initial workforce of four to five thousand was established, with another 20,000 called for by the end of the year. The work was dangerous and stressful and the Soviets made no effort to improve it; as a result the mines became filled with forced labor conscripts and has been compared to a death march and the Gulags of Kolyma. Quotas were repeatedly set and raised, and conscription took place without regard to health or work experience - mines became staffed with office workers, craftsmen and students with no mining experience. By 1948 workers were pulled away from factories and criminals from jails to staff the mines, as were POWs returning to Germany from the Soviet Union. Housing lagged behind the burgeoning workers, worsening already difficult conditions. The mines were considered worse than a penal colony, but were controlled directly by Moscow and local governments were unable to help. When an extra 60,000 workers were called for in the summer of 1947, a wave of potential workers flooded into West Germany to avoid the mines including many citizens who would otherwise prefer to live in the communist East. Workers who began as volunteers were turned into forced labourers. In an effort to increase the number of labourers, women were increasingly recruited to the non-segregated mines, many of whom brought or were infected with venereal diseases, and were sexually exploited by the Russian guards. Workers who attempted to escape, whether conscripts or volunteers, were hunted down and returned to the mines. Eventually Germans would become more involved in the running of the mines, forming a joint company with Russia in 1956.

Western Europe

Background

Contrary to Section IV of the Hague Convention of 1907, "The Laws and Customs of War on Land", the SHAEF "counter insurgency manual" included provisions for forced labor and hostage taking.

France and Low Countries

German prisoners were forced to clear minefields in Norway, France and the Low Countries.
According to Simon MacKenzie, "callous self-interest and a desire for retribution played a role in the fate" of German prisoners, and he exemplifies by pointing out that sick or otherwise unfit prisoners were forcibly used for labour, and in France and the Low Countries this also included work such as highly dangerous mine-clearing; "by September 1945 it was estimated by the French authorities that two thousand prisoners were being maimed and killed each month in accidents."
Some of the 740,000 German prisoners transferred in 1945 by the U.S. for forced labour in France came from the Rheinwiesenlager camps; these forced labourers were already very weak, many weighing barely 50 kg.
In retaliation for acts of resistance French occupation forces expelled more than 25,000 civilians from their homes. Some of these civilians were subsequently forced to clear minefields in Alsace.

United Kingdom

In 1946, the UK had more than 400,000 prisoners, many of whom had been transferred from POW camps in the U.S. and Canada. Many of these were used as forced labour, as a form of "reparations".
The two main reasons for their internment were political re-education, and for non-officers employment as agricultural and other labour. In 1946 a fifth of all agricultural work in the UK was performed by German prisoners.
An emotional and public debate ensued in the UK, where words such as "slaves", "slave labour" and "forced labour" were increasingly used in the media and in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. In 1947 the Ministry of Agriculture argued against rapid repatriation of working German prisoners, since by then they made up 25 percent of the land workforce, and they wanted to use them also in 1948. Faced with political difficulties in using foreign labour, the Ministry of Agriculture offered a compromise solution, in which German prisoners who volunteered were to be allowed to remain in Britain as free men. Following disputes about how many former prisoners of war would be permitted to remain voluntarily in Britain and whether they would first have to return briefly to Germany before being allowed to officially migrate to Britain, by the end of 1947 about 250,000 of the prisoners of war were repatriated, and the last repatriations took place in November 1948. About 24,000 chose to remain voluntarily in Britain.

Norway

In Norway, the last available casualty record, from August 29, 1945, shows that by that time a total of 275 German soldiers had been killed while clearing mines, while an additional 392 had been maimed. German protests that forcing POWs to clear mines was against international law were rejected with the assertion that the Germans were not POWs; they were disarmed forces who had surrendered unconditionally. Mine clearance reports received by the Allied Forces Headquarters state: June 21, 1945; 199 dead and 163 wounded Germans; 3 Norwegians and 4 British wounded. The last registration, from August 29, 1945, lists 392 wounded and 275 dead Germans. Mine clearance was then for unknown reasons halted for close to a year before recommencing under better conditions during June–September 1946. This time many volunteered thanks to good pay, and death rates were much lower, possibly thanks in part to a deal permitting them medical treatment at Norwegian hospitals.

United States

The United States transferred prisoners for forced labor to both the UK and France.
For prisoners in the U.S. repatriation was also delayed for harvest reasons.
Civilians aged 14–65 in the U.S. occupation zone of Germany were also registered for compulsory labor, under threat of prison and withdrawal of ration cards.

Conclusion

Most captives of the Americans and the British were released by the end of 1948, and most of those in French captivity were released by the end of 1949.
According to the Office of Public Administration, compensation for Germans used as forced labor after the war cannot be claimed in Germany since September 29, 1978, due to the statute of limitations.