page_title: Economy of Nazi Germany
section_title: Forced labor
hierarchical_section_title: Economy of Nazi Germany / Wartime policies: 1939–1945 / Forced labor
caption_attribution_description: English: Nazi German badge for Polish forced workers
context_page_description: The German economy, like those of many other western nations, suffered the effects of the Great Depression with unemployment soaring around the Wall Street Crash of 1929. When Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, he introduced policies aimed at improving the economy. The changes included privatization of state industries, autarky, and tariffs on imports. Although weekly earnings increased by 19% in real terms in the period between 1932 and 1938, average working hours had also risen to approximately 60 per week by 1939. Furthermore, reduced foreign trade meant rationing in consumer goods like poultry, fruit, and clothing for many Germans.
  The Nazis believed in war as the primary engine of human progress, and argued that the purpose of a country’s economy should be to enable that country to fight and win wars of expansion. As such, almost immediately after coming to power, they embarked on a vast program of military rearmament, which quickly dwarfed civilian investment. During the 1930s, Nazi Germany increased its military spending faster than any other state in peacetime, and the military eventually came to represent the majority of the German economy in the 1940s.
context_section_description: Even before the war, Nazi Germany maintained a supply of slave labor. "Undesirables" (German: unzuverlässige Elemente), such as the homeless, homosexuals, and alleged criminals as well as political dissidents, communists, Jews, and anyone else that the regime wanted out of the way were imprisoned in labor camps. Prisoners of war and civilians were brought into Germany from occupied territories after the German invasion of Poland. The necessary labor for the German war economy was provided by the new camp system, serving as one of the key instruments of terror. Historians estimate that some 5 million Polish citizens (including Polish Jews) went through them.
  A network of slave-labour camps—457 complexes with dozens of subsidiary camps, scattered over a broad area of German-occupied Poland—exploited to the fullest the labor of their prisoners, in many cases working inmates to their death. At the Gross-Rosen concentration camp (to which Polish nationals were brought in from the annexed part of Poland) the number of subcamps was ninety seven (97). Under Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Auschwitz III (Monowitz) with thousands of prisoners each, the number of satellite camps was forty-eight (48). Stutthof concentration camp had forty (40) subcamps officially and as many as 105 subcamps in operation, some as far as Elbląg, Bydgoszcz and Toruń, 200 kilometres (120 mi) from the main camp. The Deutsche Reichsbahn acquired new infrastructure in Poland worth in excess of 8,278,600,000 złoty, including some of the largest locomotive factories in Europe, the H. Cegielski – Poznań renamed DWM, and Fablok in Chrzanów renamed Oberschlesische Lokomotivwerke Krenau as well as the locomotive parts factory Babcock-Zieleniewski in Sosnowiec renamed Ferrum AG later tasked with making parts to V-1 i V-2 rockets also. Under the new management, formerly Polish companies began producing German engines BR44, BR50 and BR86 as early as 1940 with the use of slave labor.
  Hundreds of thousands of people in occupied territories were used as slave labor by leading German corporations including Thyssen, Krupp, IG Farben, Bosch, Blaupunkt, Daimler-Benz, Demag, Henschel, Junkers, Messerschmitt, Philips, Siemens, Walther, and Volkswagen, on top of Nazi German startups which ballooned during this period, and all German subsidiaries of foreign firms including Fordwerke (Ford Motor Company) and Adam Opel AG (a subsidiary of General Motors). By 1944, slave labor made up one quarter of Germany's entire work force, and the majority of German factories had a contingent of prisoners. In rural areas the shortage of agricultural labor was filled by forced laborers from the occupied territories of Poland and the Soviet Union. The children of these workers were unwanted in Germany, and usually murdered inside special centers known as Ausländerkinder-Pflegestätte.
caption: The badge imposed on Polish forced workers.
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