Nazi forced labor in the Hamburg area

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Memorial for a Polish slave laborer in Hamburg-Poppenbüttel

For the Nazi forced labor in the Hamburg area were during the Second World War, 400,000 to 500,000 foreigners in total employed. At the turn of the year 1943/1944, 95,000 foreign civilian workers , prisoners of war and concentration camp prisoners were the highest number of forced laborers . The foreign workers were generally housed from 1941 in fenced camps, of which about 1,500 are detectable.

In the first two years of the war mainly civilian foreigners were recruited. Then Western European prisoners of war were used. Later on, Eastern European and Soviet prisoners of war and forced recruits were used. Finally, prisoners from the concentration camps were also used under guard in factories.

Working conditions, food, accommodation and air protection in the event of bombing raids were heavily graded between the individual nations of the forced laborers and in relation to the Germans. Eastern European and Soviet forced laborers were not allowed to have eye or speech contact with Germans, they were poorly fed, paid and accommodated. Their working and living conditions at the lowest level went hand in hand with an ideological devaluation of the "foreign people". It was only when the war situation hampered a “supply” of forced labor and the demand continued to grow that the policy of labor input changed. With wage incentives and social policy measures one promoted the increase in performance of the Eastern workers and ordered that discriminatory restrictions be removed or moderated. In fact, however, little has changed in terms of the inadequate living conditions.

Development 1939–1941

According to the “Ordinance for Tasks of Special State Political Importance” of February 13, 1939, Germans capable of working could be obliged to work in companies that were important for the war economy. At the same time in Hamburg there was a plan to have disabled, unemployed and welfare-supported Jews in camps for compulsory labor. At the beginning of 1941, more than two thirds of the Jews classified as fit for work were engaged in “ closed work assignments ” separately from “ German-blooded ” employees. It was not until the beginning of the second year of the war that it was no longer possible to meet the needs of the Hamburg armaments industry with the methods of recording and directing the workforce; Delivery delays lasting several weeks were the result. The Defense Economics and Armaments Office of the OKW considered the deployment of foreign workers to be inevitable. The largest Hamburg armaments companies boycotted this initially with arguments relating to security policy and demanded German skilled workers. The Hamburg Chamber of Commerce and Industry represented the interests of defense suppliers and was concerned about the preservation of as many small and medium-sized enterprises as possible.

When recruiting, an employment contract was initially agreed for a period of three to six months. In March 1941, 8,819 foreign workers were employed in Hamburg, mainly in the construction industry and iron and metal processing, of which approx. 50% Danes, 20% Belgians and Dutch, 13% French and 10% Poles. By August 1941, the total number of foreign workers soared to 24,544 men and 3,882 women.

At the beginning of 1941 Gauleiter Karl Kaufmann campaigned in Berlin to concentrate foreign workers in community camps and to assign them to only a few selected large companies. Willy Henke from the “Main Labor Deployment” of the German Labor Front (DAF) was responsible for transport, accommodation, warehouse management, catering and language training . However, the DAF was overwhelmed by the construction of community camps; Larger companies therefore rented premises in vacant farms or leased land for their own barracks. Almost all of the foreign workers, who until then had mostly been living in private quarters, were housed in around 70 community camps at the end of May 1941. 13 camps were managed by the DAF, which provided the warehouse manager and was responsible for equipment, nutrition and health care. There was a DAF warehouse manager in 28 camps, but private or public companies were responsible for setting up, equipping and supplying them. For 29 company warehouses, the management and monitoring was the responsibility of the companies. Around 8,800 prisoners of war were housed in closed Wehrmacht camps.

Labor deployment 1942

The year 1942 brought a clear turning point with the foreseeable long-term war against the Soviet Union. Around 160,000 hamburgers were convened. Despite ideological reservations, the Hamburg economy now primarily relied on Soviet forced laborers. In August 1942 there were 228 camps for foreigners with 25,000 foreign workers; In addition, there were another 15,000 workers in 44 camps for civilian Russian workers and 117 camps for prisoners of war of different nationalities. At the end of 1942 around 11,000 prisoners of war, 41,000 foreigners and 11,000 female foreigners were working in Hamburg; These figures do not include the prisoners used for forced labor in the Neuengamme concentration camp .

1942: Leaflet for Eastern workers from the Soviet Union

The abducted "foreign ethnic Eastern workers " should only be deployed in closed columns and live in fenced and guarded camps that were not allowed to be left during leisure time. Further restrictions were laid down in the "Eastern Workers Decree" . Instead of wage taxes, a "Russian tax" was withheld, which was several times higher. Soviet prisoners of war were guarded by members of the Wehrmacht or auxiliary guards. With the exception of pocket money of 20 Reichspfennig, the companies' wage contributions went to the Reich. Hamburg-based companies complained about malnutrition among Russian civilian workers and prisoners of war, which caused the workforce to drop by 50%.

The leadership's insight that effective use of labor could only be ensured in the long term through adequate nutrition and treatment led to partial improvements in living conditions for the Soviet forced laborers from mid-1942. Fritz Sauckel ordered life in the camp to be made more bearable, barbed wire fences to be dismantled and permission to go out for groups to be given. Ukrainians were offered the prospect of being exempted from the discriminatory OST designation. The "Russian tax" was replaced by a cheaper Eastern worker tax. The promised improvement in the living and working conditions of Eastern workers and an adjustment of their wage and food rates to those of other foreign workers only took place gradually and dragged on for years. For example, it was not until 1944 that the Ostarbeiter mark was replaced by a police ordinance with a “national badge”.

Labor deployment 1943

Failures and losses of the German army in the winter of 1942/1943 led to extensive drafts. By 1943 at the latest, after Sauckel's admission, there was no longer any question of volunteering to work in Germany; rather, "the waste of our humanity drudgery" had to be discarded during the kidnapping. In order to maintain and improve the indispensable work performance of forced laborers, wage increases, piecework surcharges and easier transfer of funds to the home countries as well as meal allowances for heavy workers, improved medical care and vacation leave should be introduced. In fact, the improvements contained in decrees and implementing regulations were only implemented slowly and not everywhere. They hardly changed anything in the miserable living conditions of the forced laborers: the meal allowances were redistributed at the expense of the weaker. In Hamburg no example of an Eastern worker vacation could be proven.

On the other hand, pressure and punishment were used to enforce the required work discipline and to fight sabotage. The Langer Morgen labor education camp in Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg had existed since April 1943 ; Forced laborers were sent there by the Gestapo for "non-compliance with work norms, indolence at work, continued delays or company strolling" and "transformed" for weeks through hard work. In August 1943, twenty suspects and 150 forced laborers from the labor education camp were shot and killed for sabotage and looting .

Soviet forced laborers were only allowed to seek protection separately from Germans, also from all other foreigners and mostly only in anti-fragmentation trenches. When Operation Gomorrah least 130 foreigners camps were destroyed in the city. Presumably 3,500 of the roughly 80,000 foreign forced laborers perished. Tens of thousands were sent back to their home countries or relocated to other cities. Around 27,000 initially stayed in Hamburg. Many lived in emergency shelters and had to recover corpses, clear rubble and rebuild businesses. In November 1943, however, 560 camps had already been restored, accommodating 63,000 forced laborers. This total does not yet include 8,000 prisoners of war, mainly from the Soviet Union and France, nor are the 11,930 Italian prisoners of war arriving at the end of August 1943.

In order to be able to act quickly and in a targeted manner on site in the future, the administration was decentralized and the resumption of arms production was entrusted to the economy. Eighteen “industrial blocks” were installed, each of which was organized and managed by a leading industrialist. The acting regional economic advisor Otto Wolff was responsible for the entire arms industry as well as for the food and utility companies. The use of forced labor was regulated by the industrial blocks.

Work deployment 1944/1945

More than two thirds of the 90,000 male and 13,500 female prisoners had only come to Neuengamme or one of its satellite camps from May 1944. In addition to the outsourcing of the partial production of slide bearings, the installation of vehicle generators, machine tool repairs and tool manufacture to the concentration camp, plans were made in July 1944 to deploy up to 5,000 prisoners to work under SS surveillance in nine armaments factories, a shipyard and on large construction sites. Among other things, Jewish women had to do heavy labor building makeshift housing.

As “special service conscripts”, more than 1000 “ Jewish first-degree mixed race ” and “ Jewish relatives ” had to clear rubble in Hamburg; they were not - as elsewhere - subordinate to the Todt Organization , but to the Hamburg building administration. As “ Sonderkommando J ”, they were barracked in barracks in the Ohldorf cemetery in autumn 1944, as other planned camps were destroyed or needed for other purposes.

In 1944, more than 4,000 convicts or prisoners on remand were imprisoned in Hamburg penal institutions, 1,270 of whom were processing orders from armaments suppliers.

As early as September 1944, the 63,478 foreign civilian workers recorded in Hamburg (12,822 of whom were women) could no longer be fully employed, as many companies were only able to produce to a limited extent due to destruction, power cuts and a lack of supplies. Concentration camp prisoners who were no longer needed were to be brought back to the main camp. Other underemployed slave laborers should work on construction sites. Since April 1945, forced laborers from the construction and metalworking sectors have been withdrawn from Hamburg and primarily those who worked in the food supply and energy industry have been retained in the city. Management feared revenge actions by forced laborers at the foreseeable end of the war, but argued with cost reasons and a lack of supervisory staff to deport foreign workers. On April 13, 1945, Gauleiter Kaufmann ordered the evacuation of all foreigners in a fundamental decision. At the time of the surrender, however, there were still 17,000 civil workers remaining in Hamburg.

post war period

Information center / forced laborer barracks at Wilhelm-Raabe-Weg 23

The British military government called on the forced laborers after the war, initially to remain in their homes in Hamburg. The organization apparatus of the DAF continued to administer the DP camps; thus often the same persons who had been responsible for the forced labor were responsible for the treatment of the displaced persons . After the judgment of those affected, the Hamburg authorities were marked by “open hostility” and the Senate tried in vain to enforce internment in the closed camp. In the months following the end of the war, the displaced persons were, if possible, transported back to their home countries. Some stayed in Hamburg.

At the initiative of the Belgian authorities, the British occupation initiated a questionnaire on the camps in Greater Hamburg in 1945. The statements made by the police officers questioned about voluntary work, abuse or freedom of movement were in some cases in stark contradiction to the reports of those affected. The legal processing of the crimes committed against concentration camp prisoners began with the Neuengamme main trial on March 18, 1946 in the Hamburg Curiohaus .

The Federal Compensation Act excluded payments to forced laborers; these are to be regarded as reparations and, according to the London Debt Agreement of 1953, to be postponed until a formal peace treaty is concluded. Apart from individual cases without any prejudice, individual compensation payments were only made possible on a larger scale through the foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” . At the end of 2000, the Hamburg Senate decided to introduce visiting programs for former forced laborers, and at the same time recognized that the forced laborers had been “seriously wronged”.

A barrack for forced laborers preserved in Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel houses the Hamburg Information Center on Nazi Forced Labor , which is run by the Willi-Bredel-Gesellschaft .

historiography

The term “forced laborers” for civilian foreign workers who were deployed in Germany between 1939 and 1945 is not without its problems. Many foreign workers were conscripted, forced to work in Germany through the withdrawal of food stamps or the arrest of family members, or had to take up the assigned work as prisoners of war or later civilian workers. Others “volunteered”. But in view of mass unemployment, economic hardship and misleading advertising, “voluntariness” does not do justice to historical facts.

A first regional historical study on forced labor in Hamburg was presented by Frederike Littmann with her dissertation in 2003. Numerous files were destroyed by the bombing raids or destroyed by order of the Gauleiter Karl Kaufmann in April. None of the 1500 or so warehouse registers have survived: These contained the names of the foreign forced laborers and those of the employing companies, as well as catering lists and information on sick leave or penalties.

The peculiarity of the clearly structured city-state with the unique concentration of power of Karl Kaufmann as Gauleiter, Reich Governor , Reich Defense Commissioner and Reich Commissioner for Maritime Shipping , however, makes the responsibilities as well as the enforcement of local interests in labor clear. The Hamburg economy began independently by recruiting foreign skilled workers in the occupied Netherlands, Belgium, France and Denmark. At the height of the mass deportation of workers with the most brutal recruiting methods and the most miserable living conditions in the forced labor camps, the "Gauwirtschaftskammer Hamburg" - the name of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce at the time - took over state functions such as the registration and distribution of forced laborers in agreement with the Gauleiter. Littmann states the "factual assumption of economic and labor policy functions of the state" by the economy, whose subsequent protective claim that their actions were forced by the National Socialist leadership can thus be refuted.

literature

  • Frederike Littmann: Forced laborers in the Hamburg war economy 1939-1945. Hamburg 2006, ISBN 3-937904-26-3 (dissertation 2003)
  • Frederike Littmann: Forced Laborers in the War Economy. In: Research Center for Contemporary History in Hamburg (ed.): Hamburg in the 'Third Reich' , Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-89244-903-1 , pp. 225–248
  • Frederike Littmann: Foreign Forced Laborers in the Hamburg War Economy 1939-1945 e-paper
  • Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial (publisher): A city and its concentration camp - inmates of Neuengamme concentration camp in everyday life in Hamburg from 1943-1945. Catalog for the exhibition, Hamburg 2019
  • Stefan Romey: A concentration camp in Wandsbek. Forced labor in the Hamburg Drägerwerk. Extended new edition Hamburg 2016 (not viewed)

Web links

Commons : Nazi Forced Labor  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Frederike Littmann: Forced Laborers in the War Economy. In: Research Center for Contemporary History in Hamburg (ed.): Hamburg in the 'Third Reich' , Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-89244-903-1 , p. 244.
  2. ^ Frederike Littmann: Forced laborers in the Hamburg war economy 1939-1945. Hamburg 2006, ISBN 3-937904-26-3 , p. 417.
  3. ↑ Frederike Littmann: Forced Laborers ... , p. 25.
  4. ^ Friederike Littmann: Foreign forced laborers in Hamburg during the Second World War. In: Arno Herzig, Dieter Langewiesche and Arnold Sywottek (eds.): Arbeiter in Hamburg. Verlag Erbildung und Wissenschaft, Hamburg 1983, ISBN 3-8103-0807-2 , pp. 569-583.
  5. ^ Museum for Bergedorf and the Vierlande (ed.): Forced labor in Bergedorf. Stations of a lost youth. Lock booklet No. 7. Bergedorf 2001.
  6. ^ "Ordinance for tasks of particular state-political importance" of February 13, 1939 (RGBl. I, p. 206)
  7. ↑ Wolf Gruner: The closed labor deployment of German Jews - On forced labor as an element of persecution 1938-1943. Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-926893-32-X , pp. 76 and 176.
  8. ↑ Frederike Littmann: Forced Laborers ... , p. 115.
  9. ↑ Figures from Frederike Littmann: Forced Laborers ... pp. 130–133.
  10. ↑ Frederike Littmann: Forced Laborers ..., pp. 134–135.
  11. ↑ Frederike Littmann: Forced Laborers in the War Economy. In: Research Center for Contemporary History in Hamburg (ed.): Hamburg in the 'Third Reich' , Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-89244-903-1 , p. 231.
  12. ↑ Frederike Littmann: Forced Laborers ..., pp. 233 and 237.
  13. ↑ Frederike Littmann: Forced Laborers ... , p. 316.
  14. ↑ Frederike Littmann: Forced Laborers ... , pp. 360–363.
  15. ↑ Police Ordinance on the Identification of Eastern Workers in the Reich of June 14, 1944 (RGBl. I, 147)
  16. ↑ Sauckel's speech of January 6, 1943 - Sauckel Document 82. In: IMT: The Nuremberg Trial against the Major War Criminals ... , fotomech. Reprint Munich 1989, vol. 41, ISBN 3-7735-2529-X , quotation p. 226.
  17. ↑ Frederike Littmann: Forced Laborers ..., pp. 369–377.
  18. ↑ Lurup History Workshop, p. 2 (accessed on February 5, 2015)
  19. ↑ Frederike Littmann: forced laborers ..., p. 394 / number of dead p. 400.
  20. ↑ Frederike Littmann: Forced Laborers ..., p. 594f.
  21. ↑ Wolf Gruner: The Nazi leadership and forced labor for so-called Jewish mixed race - An insight into the planning and practice of anti-Jewish politics in the years 1942 to 1944. In: Kurt Pätzold et al. (Ed.): Racism, fascism, anti-fascism - research and considerations dedicated to Kurt Pätzold on the occasion of his 70th birthday. Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-89438-199-X , p. 71.
  22. ↑ Beate Meyer: The 'Sonderkommando J'. Forced labor of the "Jewish Versippten" and the "Mischlinge first degree" in Hamburg. In: Herbert Diercks (Ed.): Forced Labor and Society . Bremen 2004, ISBN 3-86108-379-5 , pp. 104-105. (Contributions to the history of Nazi persecution in Northern Germany, no.8)
  23. ↑ Frederike Littmann: Forced Laborers ..., p. 609.
  24. ↑ Frederike Littmann: Forced Laborers ..., p. 615.
  25. ↑ Frederike Littmann: Forced Laborers ..., p. 620.
  26. ↑ Anke Schulz: Hamburg forced labor camp in Lederstrasse 1939 - 1945. Aachen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8322-9555-4 , p. 48.
  27. ↑ Visiting program for former forced laborers ( memento of the original dated February 3, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Accessed February 3, 2015) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hamburg.de
  28. ↑ Ulrich Herbert: Foreign workers - politics and practice of the 'deployment of foreigners' in the war economy of the Third Reich. New edition Bonn 1999, ISBN 3-8012-5028-8 , p. 417 f.
  29. ^ Frederike Littmann: Forced laborers in the Hamburg war economy 1939-1945. Hamburg 2006, ISBN 3-937904-26-3 , p. 182.
  30. ↑ Published as a printed work in 2006: Frederike Littmann: Forced Laborers in the Hamburg War Economy 1939-1945. Hamburg 2006, ISBN 3-937904-26-3
  31. ↑ Frederike Littmann: Forced Laborers ... pp. 24–26, quotation point p. 25.