Forced Labor and 'Foreign Workers' in the Third Reich

摘要

The introduction of a foreign labor force was a central strategic economic and military factor in Hitler's Nazi regime. By late autumn of 1941, if not before, the entire German war economy had become heavily and irreversibly dependent on foreign labor. There is no evidence of a master plan for a comprehensive foreign labor program in Germany before World War II. The employment of foreign workers was rather an emergency solution to the manpower shortage during the war. This solution evolved from voluntary foreign labor to forced labor. Although the Nazi regime relaxed some regulations towards the end of the war, it never abandoned its ideological racism. The treatment of forced laborers by various Nazi agencies, as well as by employers, was based on the regime's racist ideology and was passively accepted by the civilian population. The German population's attitude was characterized by their indifference towards the fate of forced laborers and their tacit acceptance of the inequality prevailing in the country. Consequently, the German population became a reticent enabler of the Third Reich's racist ideology. The public's passive acceptance of the regime's racism is one big factor in the success of its program of forced labor.