page_title: Forced labor in Nazi concentration camps
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: Forced labor in Nazi concentration camps / Origins
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Oranienburg, Konzentrationslager Zentralbild 1933 wurden nach der Machtergreifung durch die faschistischen Nationalsozialisten in Deutschland die Konzentrationslager für politische Gegner errichtet. Häftlinge im KZ-Oranienburg bei sogenannten "sportlichen Übungen".
context_page_description: Forced labor was an important and ubiquitous aspect of the Nazi concentration camps which operated in Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe between 1933 and 1945. It was the harshest part of a larger system of forced labor in Nazi Germany.
context_section_description: Traditionally, prisoners have often been deployed at penal labor performing unskilled work. During the first years of Nazi Germany's existence, unemployment was high and forced labor in the concentration camps was presented as re-education through labor and means of punishing offenders. Nazi propaganda idolized work, which stood in contrast to the view of work as punishment. Prisoners in the early camps were forced to perform economically valueless but strenuous tasks, such as farming on moorland (such as at Esterwegen). Other prisoners had to work on constructing and expanding the camps. German state governments complained at being required to pay the upkeep of the camps, which was eventually taken over by the SS with costs reduced by forcing inmates to work. At Dachau, two streams of labor developed, one for punishing but less economically valuable labor, while a parallel system of workshops developed where prisoners performed economically valuable labor in much better conditions. 
  The Four Year Plan of 1936 led to a shortage of labor, as free workers were diverted to projects related to German rearmament. By the end of 1937, full employment was reached outside the camps, and in particular there was a shortage of labor for construction work. A significant increase of the use of prisoner labor for productive tasks resulted in 1937 and 1938.  SS chief Heinrich Himmler also used the labor shortage as a reason to expand the concentration camp system in the prewar period, despite other Nazi leaders such as Hermann Göring disagreeing with the expansion. The businesses were initially overseen by the Personal Staff Reichsführer-SS office. In 1938,  mass roundups of so-called "work-shy" and "anti-social" individuals brought another 10,000 prisoners into the camps. The desire to exclude these people from the German national community was complementary to the goal of exploiting their labor. These roundups coincided with and were fueled by the demand for prisoner labor to obtain building materials for Nazi architecture. Hard labor was a fundamental component of the concentration camp system and an aspect in the daily life of prisoners.
caption: Forced exercises at Oranienburg, 1933
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