Forced Laborers in Nazi Germany

Home , Arbeitseinsatz, Leo Eitinger, Mark (currency), Ostarbeiter, Reichskommissariat, Stolberg (Harz)

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xxxiii:2 (Autumn, 2002), 169–204.

Mark Spoerer and Jochen Fleischhacker FORCED LABORERS IN NAZI GERMANY Forced Laborers in Nazi Germany: Categories, Numbers, and Survivors One of the main characteristics of twentieth- century“total war” was that a large part of society, even those far behind the frontline, was massivelyinvolved in events, either passivelyas victims of air strikes or activelyas mem - bers of the workforce in armaments production. In the earlymod - ern era and the nineteenth century, conquering troops often forced the population of the defeated countryto supplyfood and other goods and to build fortiªcations. Prisoners of war (pows) would be exchanged shortlyafter their capture. The systematic deployment of enemy pows or even civilians, once common in antiquityand the Middle Ages, was not reintroduced until the late nineteenth century. Less than 10,000 Confederate powsinthe U.S. Civil War were put to work bytheir Northern captors. Dur- ing the Franco-German war of 1870/71, the German military’s plan to put French pows to work materialized onlyfor a small fraction of captured soldiers. On a similar scale, the U.S. Army made use of pow labor in the Spanish–American war of 1898. Not until World War I, however, were pows or civilians forced to work for their captors on a large scale.1

Mark Spoerer is Assistant Professor, Facultyof Economics and Social Science, Universityof Hohenheim. He is the author of Von Scheingewinnen zum Rüstungsboom: Die Eigenkapital- rentabilität der deutschen Industrieaktiengesellschaften 1925–1941 (Stuttgart, 1996); Zwangsarbeit unter dem Hakenkreuz: Ausländische Zivilarbeiter, Kriegsgefangene und Häftlinge im Dritten Reich und im besetzten Europa 1939–1945 (Stuttgart, 2001). Jochen Fleischhacker is Senior Research Scientist, Max Planck Institute for Demo- graphic Research, Rostock (Germany). He is co-editor, with R. Münz of Gesellschaft und Bevölkerung in Mittelund Osteuropa im Umbruch (Berlin, 1998). The authors would like to thank the following for providing historical and demographical data: Eva Blimlinger, Florian Freund, Frank Heins, Monika Herzog, Milena Ilic, Thomas Kucera, Andreas Leuchtenmüller, Bertrand Perz, Oliver Rathkolb, Voijka Sircelj, Valentyna Steshenko, Jacques Vallin, Ch. Vandeschrick, Petra Vojtechhovska, and the Estonian Statistical Ofªce. Theyalso gratefullyacknowledge the assistance of the following archives: the cityof Frankfurt am Main, the cityof Reutlingen, and the Ravensbrück Memo - rial Museum. Finally, they thank four anonymous referees for valuable suggestions.

1 George Lewis and John Mewha, History of Prisoner of War Utilization by the United States Army, 1776–1945 (Washington, D.C., 1955), 77, 90; Howard S. Levie, “The Employment of

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/00221950260208661 by guest on 02 October 2021 170 | MARK SPOERER AND JOCHEN FLEISCHHACKER In World War I, between 7 and 8.5 million persons from all nations were captured. Since the war did not end with a quick victory, as both sides had expected, the common practice was to put pows to work—a strategythat was generallyin line with the Hague Convention of 1907. Germanydeployedat least 1.5 mil - lion pows in its economy; Austria-Hungary put to work more than 1 million Russian pows alone. Conversely, 2.1 million Aus- trian-Hungarian and 0.17 million German pows labored in Russia, and tens of thousands of German pows in France and Britain. Moreover, in clear violation of the Hague Convention, the Ger- man authorities made massive use of civilians from the verybegin - ning of the war. Theydid not allow Eastern European civilian laborers, who were working in Germanywhen hostilities broke out, to return to their home countries (German-occupied Russia and even Austria-Hungary). Two years later, in 1916, the German occupation forces deported 5,000 Polish workers from Lodz, mostlyJews, and 61,000 Belgian workers to Germany.Whereas the international public largelyignored the fate of the Poles, the deportation of neutral Belgians resulted in considerable damage to German foreign policy, and was stopped in early 1917.2 In World War II, most belligerent nations put pows to work, in accordance with the Geneva Convention of 1929. In outright violation of international law, however, Japan and Germany, the two main aggressors, established huge forced labor systems. The Japanese occupants deported 1 million Korean men and women and at least 40,000 Chinese to Japan. Within Korea, China, and

Prisoners of War,” American Journal of International Law, LVII (1963), 320–321; Manfred Botzenhart, “French Prisoners of War in Germany, 1870–71,” in Stig Förster and Jörg Nägler (eds.), On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Uniªcation, 1861–1871 (Cambridge, 1997), 587–593; Rüdiger Overmans, “‘In der Hand des Feindes’. Geschichtsschreibung zur Kriegsgefangenenschaft von der Antike bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg,” in idem (ed.), In der Hand des Feindes. Kriegsgefangenschaft von der Antike bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg (Cologne, 1999), 21. Coerced labor still occurred in colonies. See, for example, Martin A. Klein (ed.), Breaking the Chains: Slavery, Bondage, and Emancipation in Modern Africa and Asia (Madison, 1993). 2 Gerald H. Davis, “Prisoners of War in Twentieth-CenturyWar Economies,” Journal of Contemporary History, XII (1977), 623–634; Gérard Canini, “L’Utilisation des prisonniers de guerre comme main-d’oeuvre 1914–1916,” in Les Fronts invisibles: nourrir-fournir-soigner (Nancy, 1984), 247–259; Overmans, “In der Hand des Feindes,” 12–13; Ulrich Herbert, “Zwangsarbeit als Lernprozeß. Zur Beschäftigung ausländischer Arbeiter in der westdeutschen Industrie im Ersten Weltkrieg,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, XXIV (1984), 287– 294; idem, Hitler’s Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany Under the Third Reich (Cambridge, 1997), 30–32; idem, Fremdarbeiter. Politik und Praxis des ‘Ausländer-Einsatzes’ in der Kriegswirtschaft des Dritten Reichs (Bonn, 1999; orig. pub. 1985).

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/00221950260208661 by guest on 02 October 2021 FORCED LABORERS IN NAZI GERMANY | 171 other occupied parts of Southeast Asia, the Japanese put many more million civilians to work. The German occupants also mobilized an unknown number of civilians in the occupied territories. But to a far larger extent than the Japanese, theylured or deported several million foreign civilians, pows, and concentration-camp inmates into the Reich to support the German war economy. Onlya small fraction of these men and women worked volun - tarily.Theyfaced a highlydifferentiated regulatoryframework that determined their conditions of life—a system that was a hy- brid of racial prejudice and political consideration. At the top of this hierarchywere citizens from Scandinavia, the Netherlands, and Flanders, who were considered Germanic. Most other foreigners were divided into Axis and non-Axis aliens. At the bottom of the scale were Poles, Soviet citizens, Gypsies, and Jews. Among the Polish and Soviet citizens, tens of thousands died of malnutrition, disease, and violence. The Jews and Gypsies were facing annihilation. Onlythe German economy’surgent need of man- power retarded their immediate and complete destruction.3 The historyof forced labor in Nazi Germanyhas been researched extensivelyin the past two decades. Following Herbert’s pioneering study, published in 1985, a great deal of it has been de- voted to qualitative aspects. However, when compensation for forced laborers emerged as a serious issue in 1998, the lack of quantitative data became painfullyobvious. Herbert’s statistics showed that 7.6 million foreign civilian laborers and pows were working in the German economyin mid-August 1944. However, since these ªgures referred to a speciªc reporting date, theydid not account for foreign laborers who had left Germanyor perished bythen, or were taken to Germanythereafter. Moreover, theydid not include concentration-camp and other interned laborers. Esti- mates of all foreign laborers—civilians, pows, and inmates—range from 10 to 15 million. All these estimates are ad hoc. No studyhas

3 David A. Schmidt, Ianfu: The Comfort Women of the Japanese Imperial Army of the Paciªc War (Lewiston, 2000), 83, cites an estimate of 4.5 million Koreans mobilized bythe Japanese in the country. Van Waterford, Prisoners of the Japanese in World War II (Jefferson, N.C., 1994), 141– 146, counts 193,000 allied pows and at least 600,000 native forced workers in Burma, Siam (Thailand), and Indonesia. There are no estimates of the number of forced laborers in occupied China. Germanyannexed formally,or de facto, Austria in 1938, parts of Czechoslovakia in 1938/39; large parts of Poland from 1939 to 1942; Alsace, Lorraine, Luxembourg, and a small part of Belgium during or after 1940; and a small part of Lithuania and parts of northern Yugoslavia in 1942.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/00221950260208661 by guest on 02 October 2021 172 | MARK SPOERER AND JOCHEN FLEISCHHACKER ever compiled and calibrated the statistical evidence scattered in archives and publications.4 This article’s primaryinterest is to estimate the number of foreign laborers in the German war economyand the number of those who survived until mid-1945, thus enabling an estimate of how manysurvived until mid-2000 when the German and Aus - trian governments passed laws to compensate them. Because the process of calculating these ªgures must involve assumptions that lack hard evidence, the exposition is as explicit as possible in order to encourage others to improve the estimates, where feasible. More demographic information and a critical assessment of the compensation scheme are published in a companion paper.5 foreign, forced, slave, and less-than-slave labor: some defi- nitions The Germanyof 1944/45 was a nightmare; the Allies’ air superioritymade it possible for them to raid everymajor Ger- man city. Fighter aircraft were able to intrude into every remote German valleyand attack trains, bridges, and even peasants. But the large cities and industrial centers suffered most. Under these circumstances, nobodywas keen to work in German cities, or in Germanyat all. However, 26 percent of the labor force in Ger- many, which totaled 31 million in September 1944, were foreigners. Some were volunteers; others originallyhad come as volunteers but were coerced to stayin the countryuntil the end of the war. Most, however, had been deported from their native countries byforce. 6

4 Herbert, Fremdarbeiter, 314–317. See also idem, Geschichte der Ausländerpolitik in Deutschland: Saisonarbeiter, Zwangsarbeiter, Gastarbeiter, Flüchtlinge (Munich, 2001). Jürgen Kuczynski, Die Geschichte der Lage der Arbeiter in Deutschland von 1800 bis in die Gegenwart (Berlin, 1947), II, 244, estimates the number of foreign laborers as 14 million, excluding inmates; Edward L. Homze, Foreign Labor in Nazi Germany (Princeton, 1967), 151–153, 10 to 12 million, excluding inmates; Herbert, Fremdarbeiter, 430, 12 million, including inmates; Thomas Kuczynski, “Entschädigungsansprüche für Zwangsarbeit im Dritten Reich,” in Ulrike Winkler (ed.), Stiften gehen. NS-Zwangsarbeit und Entschädigungsdebatte (Cologne, 2000), 171, 14 to 15 million, including inmates. 5 Spoerer and Fleischhacker, “The Compensation of Nazi Germany’s Forced Labourers: Demographic Findings and Political Implications,” Population Studies, LV (2002), 5–21. This article includes the data appendix. 6 Der Arbeitseinsatz im Großdeutschen Reich (1944), no. 11/12, 2. This ofªcial publication, which was published jointlybythe Four Year Plan Ofªce and the PlenipotentiaryGeneral for the Allocation of Labor, is the pivotal statistical source for the employment of civilian laborers and pows within the borders of Nazi Germany. Not covered in its ªgures is the number of inmates, which totaled around 0.4 million in September 1944.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/00221950260208661 by guest on 02 October 2021 FORCED LABORERS IN NAZI GERMANY | 173 It is no simple task to determine who exactlywas a forced laborer; the term still has no generallyaccepted deªnition. German labor law prevented all workers from changing their occupation without explicit permission from the labor ofªce. Thus, if the only criterion for a deªnition of forced labor were simplycoercion to stay in a given employment, close to 100 percent of the workforce, German as well as foreign, would meet it. However, the conditions of life and work in Germanywere byno means homoge - nous. Germans and, to a pronounced lesser extent, roughly6 percent of all foreign civilian laborers were entitled to a certain minimum standard of life; the Nazi movement’s claim to stand for the needs of the common man was not entirelypropaganda. Compared to other European countries, several of its social achievements had progressive traits: the social insurance system, safetyregulations, hygienein the workplace, fringe beneªts, etc. But these achievements were granted onlyto “Aryan”Ger- mans and, with increasing reluctance, to foreign laborers from countries that still had a place of their own in the planned Ger- man-dominated “Greater Economic Area” of Europe, such as the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and It- aly. In contrast, these achievements were denied to most foreign laborers from Slavic countries controlled byGerman civil or mili- taryadministration, especiallyPoland and the Soviet Union. The people of these countries were regarded as serfs to be exploited re- lentlesslyand eventuallyexpelled to remote areas not ªt for Ger- man settlers. Hence, the millions of Polish, Ukrainian, Belarussian, and Russian workers under German supervision had no civil rights at all. A member of the German securityforces who killed one of them would not normallyhave faced anylegal action. Concentra - tion-camp inmates, especiallyJews, were entirelyoutside the law. A sensible deªnition of forced labor and the different degrees thereof, must take into consideration the conditions of life and work. Four criteria are critical: (1) Was the worker able to end the employment relationship in the short term? (2) Was he or she able to enforce legal standards concerning the conditions of life and work? (3) Would he or she have anyvoice in complaining about the conditions of life and work? (4) Was his or her probabilityof surviving similar to that of a normal (native) worker? These four criteria produce ªve groups of workers. Condi- tion (1) applies onlyto some German and privileged foreign labor -

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/00221950260208661 by guest on 02 October 2021 174 | MARK SPOERER AND JOCHEN FLEISCHHACKER ers—for example, Italians until Italy’s surrender in September 1943. In general, condition (2) holds for German workers, consti- tuting the crucial difference from nonprivileged foreigner groups. Hence, forced laborers are deªned as those for whom conditions (1) and (2) do not hold true, and slave laborers as those for whom, in addition, condition (3) does not hold true. Not everyforeign la - borer was a forced laborer, but everyslave laborer was. Following Ferencz, those workers for whom even condition (4) does not ap- plywere less-than-slave laborers. Disregarding the German work - ers, three criteria remain, the ªrst two of which being, in the terminologyof Hirschman, exit and voice and the other the prob - abilityof survival. The four categories of foreign laborers in Ger - manyare privileged, forced (in the narrow sense), slave, and less- than-slave (see Table 1 for an overview).7 Anycategorization like that in Table 1 has to oversimplify. For example, most groups of civilian laborers contained earlyvol- unteers who were able to return home, at least in the ªrst years of the war. Among the three main Soviet groups, the Ukrainians sometimes had minor privileges. The evidence concerning some groups is scarce. For example, the fate of Yugoslav civilian laborers (mainlyCroats and Serbs) and pows (mainlySerbs) in Germany has never been researched in detail; nor has that of some other groups from the Balkans and the Baltic states. The Czechs are a puzzling case. As formallyclassiªed second-class German citizens, their legal position surpassed that of other foreigners, notwith- standing the drastic penalties that theycould incur for having a sexual relationship with a German woman or for being found guiltyof breaching their labor contract. Recent research also stresses the role of gender. On the one hand, women faced the risk of sexual harassment and exploitation in addition to their fate as forced or slave laborers. On the other, female concentration-camp inmates were much likelier to experience sympathetic behavior from their oppressors than their male fellow-sufferers were.8

7 Benjamin B. Ferencz, Less Than Slaves: Jewish Forced Labor and the Quest for Compensation (Cambridge, Mass., 1979); Albert O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (Cambridge, Mass., 1970). 8 For an overview of foreign labor, see Herbert, Hitler’s Foreign Workers; Spoerer, Zwangsarbeit unter dem Hakenkreuz. Ausländische Zivilarbeiter, Kriegsgefangene und Häftlinge im Dritten Reich und im besetzten Europa 1939–1945 (Stuttgart, 2001). On the role of gender, see Gabriella Hauch, “Zwangsarbeiterinnen und ihre Kinder: Zum Geschlecht der Zwangsarbeit,” in Oliver Rathkolb (ed.), NS-Zwangsarbeit: Der Standort Linz der “Reichswerke Hermann Göring AG Berlin” 1938–1945 (Vienna, 2001), I, 355–448.

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Table 1 Main Foreign-Labor Groups In Germanyduring World War II, Ranked byDegree of Discrimination 1 privileged: 2 forced: 3 slave: 2 forced 3 slave 4 less- exit and no exit but no exit, no exit but no exit, than-slave voice voice no voice voice no voice Civilian Laborers POWs Croats X French X Italians Xa Xb Serbs X Slovaks X UK/US citizens X Balts X Italians X Belgians X Poles Xc Xd Czechs X USSR citizens X Dutch X French X Inmates Serbs X CC inmates X Poles X Working Jews X USSR citizens X WEC inmates X aUntil September 1943. bFrom September 1943. cNon-Jews. dJews. notes cc—concentration camp; wec—work education camp. 176 | MARK SPOERER AND JOCHEN FLEISCHHACKER The use of the term slave labor should deªnitelynot be ex - tended to inmate groups or to Soviet and Jewish Polish pows. In the Anglo-Saxon tradition, especiallyin the literature on the Ho - locaust or Shoa, inmate laborers are usuallyclassiªed as slave labor - ers. However, the typical slaveholder has an economic interest in the lives of his slaves. The ss, as the inmates’ slaveholder, leased them to ªrms and other employers. Although higher ss authorities emphasized the economic value of the inmates, especiallyafter 1942, the ss camp guards, most of whom were primitive men and women, often drove the inmates to exhaustion and death. To call the most ill-treated foreign laborers slaves is almost euphemistic; Soviet and Jewish Polish pows were less-than-slave laborers.9 For practical reasons, the term foreign laborers refers to all four groups and forced laborers in a broad sense to what is deªned in Ta- ble1asforced laborers (in the narrow sense), slave laborers, and less- than-slave laborers, if not speciªed otherwise. An intricate methodological problem is that of status change (see Figure 1). Figure 1 distinguishes between Germans and non- Germans. According to the deªnitions herein, Germans are regarded as forced laborers (in the broad sense) onlyif theyexperi- enced internment in a concentration camp or another work internment camp, or were “working Jews.” The foreigners fall into the three formal categories of civilian, pow, and inmate laborers. Onlythe civilian laborers included volunteers. Among them, manywho had come as volunteers were forced to stayin Germany (a) or sent to concentration or work-education camps (b). pows were also sent to concentration camps (c) or given civilian status (d). Whereas ºow (a) does not affect the formal status, ºows (b) to (d) do, thus causing severe methodological problems, since the onlywayto estimate the numbers is byformal status. Technically, ºows (b) to (d) are double-counts. Onlythose who went from pows to civilians are sufªcientlydocumented to be reliably quantiªed. 9 On inmate workers, see, for example, Karin Orth, Das System der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager. Eine politische Organisationsgeschichte (Hamburg, 1999); idem, Die Konzentrationslager-SS. Sozialstrukturelle Analysen und biographische Studien (Göttingen, 2000); Jan E. Schulte, Zwangsarbeit und Vernichtung: Das Wirtschaftsimperium der SS. Oswald Pohl und das SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt 1933–1945 (Paderborn, 2001); Michael T. Al- len, The Business of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor, and the Concentration Camps (Chapel Hill, 2002).

Fig. 1 Forced-Labor Categories in Nazi Germany

notes cc stands for concentration camp; pow, prisoner of war (including “Italian MilitaryInternees”); and wec, work education camp. For ºows (a) to (d), see text. 178 | MARK SPOERER AND JOCHEN FLEISCHHACKER methods and data sources

The First Step In order to estimate the number of total foreign workers employed and the number of those who survived to mid- 1945 and to mid-2000, we employa two-step method developed for the Austrian government. In the ªrst step, we estimate the number of total foreign workers employed and of survivors in mid-1945 from contemporarydata. The total number of survivors has to be differentiated bybirth cohort, sex, countryof origin, worker status, Jewish/non-Jewish, place of work, and countryof residence after the war. Worker status and place of work matter, because Germanygrants compensation onlyto inmate laborers and highlydiscriminated civilian laborers who worked in what the German compensation law deªnes as “industry”—all economic sectors except agriculture, forestry, ªshing, and domestic service, all of which were comparablyprivileged jobs with less difªcult ac- cess to food. In contrast, Austria grants compensation to persons who were employed in these sectors, though less than to those who worked in industry. pows receive compensation from Ger- manyonlyif theywere transformed to another worker status, whereas Austria excludes all former pows. Jewish survivors receive their compensation through the Jewish Claims Conference (jcc) regardless of their current place of residence. Jewish victims are also eligible for compensation if theywere employedoutside the borders of the Reich. The other speciªcations (birth cohort, sex, countryof origin, and countryof residence after the war) are nec - essarysince, in the second step, we calculate the probabilityof sur - viving the following ªfty-ªve years from postwar demographic data.10 At ªrst glance, the sources for the ªrst step seem abundant. The Nazi labor authorities published detailed labor-force census data on the use of foreign civilian laborers and pows, leaving aside

10 The two-step method ªrst appeared in Spoerer, Schätzung der Zahl der im Jahr 2000 überlebenden Personen, die auf dem Gebiet der Republik Österreich zwischen 1939 und 1945 als Zwangsarbeiter und Zwangsarbeiterinnen eingesetzt waren. Gutachten für die Historikerkonmission der Republik Österreich (Vienna, forthcoming). A draft version has been accessible since February 2000 at http://www.historikerkommission.gv.at. An English translation is in preparation. In principle, civilian laborers employed outside the Reich are eligible as well if they are able to prove humiliating conditions of life and work. However, in practice few persons are able to meet these criteria. Moreover, historians have compiled practicallyno evidence on work camps outside Germany, except those for Jewish inmates.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/00221950260208661 by guest on 02 October 2021 FORCED LABORERS IN NAZI GERMANY | 179 onlyinmate laborers. The statistical periodical Arbeitseinsatz im Grossdeutschen Reich, which was published several times annually until late 1944, provides data up to the end of September 1944. Since onlya handful of copies of this conªdential journal survived the war and its aftermath, it has rarelybeen used. Although the ªgures in Arbeitseinsatz were undoubtedlyaccurate, given their purpose to support economic planning, the published data stem from labor-force censuses and pertain just to the reporting dates. Theydo not include workers who left Germanybefore those dates (legallyor otherwise), those who died, or those who were brought to Germanylater. In other words, theydo not help to track temporal ºuctuation across the German borders. However, the German administration in most occupied European territories recorded how manyworkers theysent to Germany.Hence, for most foreign civilian labor groups, the maximum of the labor- force census data serves as a lower bound for the total number to be estimated; the cumulated recruiting number serves as the upper bound. Both limits need slight corrections.11 In general, the total number of a national group of civilian laborers and survivors in mid-1945 can be calculated in two ways (see Table 2). Ideally, the two methods should give identical results. However, reliable data on workers returning home, being sent to concentration camps, and dying are rare. Moreover, the number of double-counts in the recruiting ªgures is anybody’s guess. Because workers from the largest groups, especiallyfrom the Soviet Union and Poland, found it difªcult to return home either legallyor illegally,double-counts are rare. For them and the other groups, the recruiting ªgures and the ªgures from Arbeitsein- satz can represent upper and lower bounds. The problem is esti- mating the true ªgure within this bandwidth. The temporal ºuctuation of groups that enjoyed certain privileges was high; for them, the true ªgure is probablycloser to the lower bound (many double-counts due to seasonal ºuctuation). In contrast, for highly oppressed forced laborers, the recruiting ªgures probablyinclude onlyfew double-counts, and the true ªgure is closer to the upper bound. Fortunately, the gap between upper and lower bound is narrow in the case of the Polish and Soviet workers, the two

11 On Arbeitseinsatz, Spoerer, “Die NS-Zwangsarbeiter im Deutschen Reich. Eine Statistik vom 30. September 1944 nach Arbeitsamtsbezirken,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, XXXIX (2001), 665–684.

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Table 2 Two Methods of Calculating National Groups of Civilian Laborers and Survivors in Mid-1945 i cumulated recruiting ii reported maximum of (voluntary, conscripted, or labor force censuses deported) ϩ workers alreadyin Germany ϩ workers returned home before when hostilities began that date ϩ POWs converted to civilian labor- Ϫ workers sent again to Germanyand ers (which was the case for most reported at maximum (double- Poles in 1940/41, some French in counts) 1943/44, and most Italians in 1944/ ϩ workers sent to Germanyafter that 45) date Ϫ workers who returned home but ϩ POWs converted to civilian labor- were sent to Germanyonce more ers after that date (double-counts) Ϫ workers sent to concentration ϭ civilian laborers I camps after that date Ϫ workers sent to concentration Ϫ casualties after that date until mid- camps 1945 Ϫ casualties ϭ surviving civilian laborers II ϭ surviving civilian laborers I ϩ (total) workers sent to concentration camps + (total) casualties = civilian laborers II

quantitativelymost important groups, allowing for a relatively precise estimate. Moreover, Soviet repatriation statistics provide further valuable information.12 These calculations produce two totals for each ethnic group—cumulated workers from 1939 to 1945 and surviving workers in mid-1945. As for the sex ratios, the reporting date ªgures in Arbeitseinsatz do not give anyclues that theychanged over time within the groups. Hence, taking the ratio of the maximum reporting-date ªgures seems safe.13 Fluctuation of work status is another problem. Most of the Polish and the Italian and some of the French pows became (forced) civilian laborers bydecree. Since forced laborers who re - mained pows until their liberation will not be compensated by Germany, “transformed” pows are counted as civilian laborers. Another change of status occurred when civilian laborers or pows were sent to concentration camps. Since concentration-camp in-

12 For more details about Polish and Soviet laborers, see Spoerer, Schätzung, 22–36. 13 The recruiting ªgures do not deal speciªcallywith the sex ratio.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/00221950260208661 by guest on 02 October 2021 FORCED LABORERS IN NAZI GERMANY | 181 mates are due a higher compensation than civilian laborers, these persons are counted as inmates. In spite of the rich historical literature on forced labor in Ger- many, hardly anything is known about its age structure. Starting with the compensation process, archive lists of foreign laborers were recorded electronically. The information from these sources permits sex-, country-, and status-speciªc subtotals for each group to be split into birth cohorts—pre-1908, 1908–1912, 1913–1917 ...,and1928–1932. Postwar migration presents another problem. It consists of two ºows, both of which are at least rudimentallycovered in the literature. First, several hundred-thousand Balts, Poles, and Ukrai- nians chose not to return to their countryof origin, which was di - rectlyor indirectlycontrolled byJoseph Stalin’s ussr. As displaced persons (dps) theystayedin Germanyand Austria until they moved to host countries in the Western world. Second, most Eastern European Holocaust survivors, even if theywere repatriated in 1945/46, left their home countries in the second half of the 1940s and in the 1950s because of postwar antisemitism. Accord- ing to Hilberg, 57 percent of Holocaust survivors emigrated to Is- rael and 29 percent to the United States. Hence, Jewish-inmate survival probabilities are calculated byuse of demographic data from Israel and the United States, weighted two-to-one. These values seem appropriate for non-Jewish dps as well; survival probabilities in the Western countries and Israel do not differ signiªcantly.14 The last major problem of the ªrst step is to break down the number of inmate workers into Jews (represented bythe jcc) and non-Jewish nationalities (represented byEastern European na - tional foundations or the International Organization for Migra- tion). The Jewish forced laborers consist of two groups: concentration-camp inmates and so-called “working Jews” (Arbeitsjuden), who were employed outside the concentration-camp system. This latter group was not part of the labor force in Germany—except for 55,000 Hungarian Jews who were marched to Austria toward the end of the war—but will be compensated as well. Recent research on the Holocaust permits rough estimates of surviving Jews

14 Raoul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews: Revised and Deªnitive Edition (New York, 1985), 1151; Spoerer and Fleischhacker, “Compensation,” 2.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/00221950260208661 by guest on 02 October 2021 182 | MARK SPOERER AND JOCHEN FLEISCHHACKER who were concentration-camp inmates or working Jews. The number of non-Jewish concentration-camp inmates is estimated bythe use of aggregate ss camp statistics and camp-by-camp survivor statistics.15

The Second Step The second step is to determine survival probabilities. How manyof 100,000 members of a group of foreign la - borers who were alive in mid-1945 were still alive in mid-2002? The available demographic data stem from censuses and are calculated for a country’s population as a whole. The question is whether there are systematic differences between the postwar health status of the whole population and that of the sub-population of citizens who were once foreign laborers in Germany. Al- though no robust evidence on this issue is available, the health status of privileged foreign laborers and forced laborers (in the narrow sense) is not likelyto have been worse than that of their coun- trymen who stayed at home. Admittedly, the death risks were presumablyhigher in Germanybecause of air raids, infectious dis- eases, and arbitrarymassacres committed byGerman security forces toward the end of the war, but theyare irrelevant to the purposes of this study, which is interested only in those who survived the war. There is no evidence that their living conditions in Germanyhad a stronger impact on their postwar health than the conditions at home. This reasoning also seems sensible in the case of civilian laborers from Eastern Europe. Even though theysuf- fered much more from malnutrition than their Western counter- parts—especiallythose employedin construction and manufactur- ing—manyenduring long-lasting health problems ever since, the situation in the occupied Poland and in the occupied and unoccu- pied Soviet Union was no different. Hunger was omnipresent in Eastern Europe. The fate of the repatriated Soviet forced laborers has often been exaggerated. Despite the Stalinist Soviet Union’s general suspicion that its 5.2 million repatriates had collaborated with the Germans, only6.5 percent were actuallysent to gulag

15 Several ten thousands of German Jews were forced to work in factories, especiallyin Berlin. In 1941/42, theywere deported to ghettos and concentration camps in occupied Po - land. Thus, theywere either concentration-camp inmates or working Jews. See Wolf Gruner, “Terra Inkognita? The Camps for ‘Jewish Labor Conscription’ 1938–1943 and the German Population,” Yad Vashem Studies, XXIV (1994), 1–41.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/00221950260208661 by guest on 02 October 2021 FORCED LABORERS IN NAZI GERMANY | 183 camps after their “ªltration.” Hence, no signiªcant differences between the survival probabilities of Eastern workers and their con- temporaries at home are assumed.16 This argument does not hold for concentration-camp inmates and other less-than-slave laborers. As longitudinal medical studies have shown, theyunderwent severe physicaland mental trauma. Victims who suffer from excessive-stress syndrome are much more apt to commit suicide than members of the average population. Demographic data computed for birth cohorts of the average population maywell represent the sub-population of most foreign la - bor groups, including the Eastern European civilian laborers. Theyclearlyoverstate the survival probabilities for inmates, and for Soviet and Jewish Polish pows.17 In order to calculate the survival rates from 1945 to 2000, cohort life tables, which track the observed mortalityof a historical population, are the ideal source. But adequate material exists for onlya few countries, and it never extends anyfurther than the 1980s. The sole recourse is to relyon period life tables, which are constructed for a hypothetical population that faces a given mortalityenvironment. These data do not take into account advances in medical treatment after the war that resulted in much longer life expectancies. Survival probabilities of subsequent period life tables were chained for twenty-three countries, either in toto or after the 1980s.18

16 Alexander Dallin, German Rule in Russia, 1941–1945 (London, 1981; 2d ed.); Hans Umbreit, “Die deutsche Herrschaft in den besetzten Gebieten,” in Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg (Stuttgart, 1999), 1–272; Christian Gerlach, “German Economic Interests, Occupation Policy, and the Murder of the Jews in Belorussia, 1941/43,” in Herbert (ed.) Na- tional Socialist Extermination Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies (New York, 2000), 210–239; Dieter Pohl, “The Murder of Jews in the General Government,” in ibid., 83–103; Pavel Polian, Deportiert nach Hause. Sowjetische Kriegsgefangene im “Dritten Reich” und ihre Repatriierung (Munich, 2001), 166. 17 For excessive-stress syndrome, see, for example, Leo Eitinger and Robert Krell, The Psy- chological and Medical Effects of Concentration Camps and Related Persecutions on Survivors of the Ho- locaust (Vancouver, 1985). 18 A more detailed discussion of methods and data sources appears in Spoerer and Fleischhacker, “Compensation.” On the methodologyof chaining period life tables, see Reiner H. Dinkel, “Kohortensterbetafeln. Ein Überblick über Logik, Konstruktionsverfahren und Anwendungsmöglichkeiten,” in idem, Charlotte Höhn, and Rembrandt D. Scholz (eds.), Sterblichkeitsentwicklung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Kohortenansatzes (Munich, 1996), 27–44. On life tables in general, see, for example, Samuel H. Preston, Patrick Heuveline, and Michel Guilot, Demography: Measuring and Modelling Population Processes (Oxford, 2001).

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/00221950260208661 by guest on 02 October 2021 184 | MARK SPOERER AND JOCHEN FLEISCHHACKER results The difference between total foreign laborers and those who survived World War II are casualties. Although reliable data on casualties among foreign laborers are sparse, theyallow a rough assessment of mortality. In 1938, German men (women) aged twentyto thirty-ninefaced an average annual mortalityrate of 3.6 (2.8) per thousand. Data on casualties while working in Germany are given for civilian laborers from Denmark, Italy(1938–1942), and the Netherlands, and for pows from Belgium, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom. These cumulated ªgures in conjunction with the reporting-date ªgures in Arbeitseinsatz (1939–1944) provide the annual mortalityrates of Table 3, which shows that privi - leged workers like the Italians until 1942 and the Danes had roughlythe same mortalityenvironment as Germans. Forced la - borers (in the narrow sense) like the Dutch and the Western pows faced a mortalityrisk that was at least twice as high as that for Ger- mans in 1938. Using the results for the Italians and Danes as a benchmark for mortalityin the war yearsleads to the conclusion that air raids alone cannot account for the difference; the reason is undoubtedlydiscriminatorytreatment. The Italian pows (called “militaryinternees”) were imprisoned in September 1943 and faced an even higher mortalityrisk. Theywere treated as traitors and employed in the ªlthiest industrial workplaces. The annual mortalityof Soviet civilian laborers was lower, because roughly one-third of them were employed in agriculture. Judging from Spoerer’s overall estimate of 170,000 casualties, the annual mortalityrate was around 30 per thousand. Even if the mortalityrisk for male German workers increased by50 percent due to air raids (that is, to 5.4 per thousand), these ªgures suggest that the mortalityrisk of Eastern workers and Italian pows was six to seven times larger, which dramaticallyunderlines the consequences of discrim - inatorytreatment. Less-than-slave laborers, such as the Soviet pows and inmates, faced even three- or four-digit mortalityrates. In the Auschwitz works of IG Farben, the concentration-camp inmates had a remaining life expectancyof three to four months. 19

19 For the overall estimate of Soviet casualties, see Spoerer, Schätzung, 33. Based on his ex- tensive research in Russian archives, Polian estimates that c. 50,000 Ostarbeiter (Soviet civilian laborers) perished in Germanyuntil mid-1944 (“Die Deportation der Ostarbeiter im Zweiten Weltkrieg,” in Andreas Gestrich, Gerhard Hirschfeld, and Holger Sonnabend [eds.]. Ausweisung und Deportation. Formen der Zwangsmigration in der Geschichte [Stuttgart, 1995], 133). In private communication, he conªrms that the total number of victims mayadd up to

Table 3 Casualties and Annual MortalityRates among German Workers and Foreign-Labor Groups (Males) casualties mortality (per 1,000) casualties mortality (per 1,000) Civilian Laborers pows Germans aged 20 to 39 (1938) — 4 Belgians 1,700 6 Italians, 1938–1942 804 3 French 37,054 8 Danes 443 4 UK citizens 1,851 8 Dutch 8,500 10 Italians 32,000 40 sources Calculated, for Germans, from Statistisches Jahrbuch für das Deutsche Reich (1941/42), 79, and, for foreigners, from casualtyªgures reported byGerhard Schreiber, Die italienischen Militärinternierten im deutschen Machtbereich 1943 bis 1945. Verraten, verachtet, vergessen (Munich, 1990), 579; B. A. Sijes, De Arbeidsinzet. De gedwongen arbeid van Nederlanders in Duitsland, 1940–1945 (The Hague, 1990), 696; Bruno Mantelli, “Von der Wanderarbeit zur Deportation. Die italienischen Arbeiter in Deutschland 1938–1945,” in Ulrich Herbert (ed.), Europa und der “Reichseinsatz.” Ausländische Zivilarbeiter, Kriegsgefangene und KZ-Häftlinge in Deutschland 1938–1945 (Essen, 1991), 71; Therkel Straede, “‘Deutschlandarbeiter.’ Dänen in der deutschen Kriegswirtschaft, 1940–1945,” in ibid., 156; Christian Streit, Keine Kameraden. Die Wehrmacht und die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen 1941–1945 (Bonn, 1997; 4th ed.), 46; Pieter Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation: Pa- triotic Memory and National Recovery in Western Europe (Cambridge, 2000), 83. 186 | MARK SPOERER AND JOCHEN FLEISCHHACKER In combination with the classiªcation in Table 1, the results of Table 3 enable an assessment of mortalityfor groups in the ab - sence of direct evidence. Table 4 summarizes the main results for civilian laborers.20 Column (i) of Table 4 reports the results of the latest (published) labor-force census. Among the foreign civilian laborers, no fewer than one-third were women, mostlydeported from the So - viet Union and Poland, as column (ii) reveals. At this late stage of the war, the percentage of German women in the workforce had increased, because more than 12 million men had been conscripted into the armed forces. Column (iii) shows that nearly two-thirds of foreign civilian laborers worked in what is deªned as “industry” in the compensation settlement. Columns (iv) and (v) show for each group and all groups the maximum number of civilian laborers that was reported in Arbeitseinsatz and the corresponding census date. That this date is not always the latest available reporting date—that is, September 30, 1944—underlines the empirical importance of temporal ºuc- tuation. Whereas the differences between maximum and latest reporting date are small for civilian laborers from occupied countries, theyare large for those from Axis countries like Slovakia, since these workers were not coerced into staying in Germany. The recruiting ªgures, which include double-counts but omit, for example, transformed pows, are given in column (vi), where available. Columns (v) and, with some reservations, (vi) indicate the lower and upper bounds within which the number probablyfalls. The difference between the ªgures in columns (vii) and (viii) is to be found in casualties and transferrals to concentration camps.21 The most interesting result of Table 4 concerns the totals in columns (vii) and (viii). According to the estimates herein, c. 8.4 million foreign civilian laborers were employed in the German economyduring the war, 41 percent more than suggested bythe latest (and highest) reporting date. Nearly0.5 million civilian for -

170,000 until the end of the war, when conditions deteriorated. Bernd C. Wagner, IG Auschwitz. Zwangsarbeit und Vernichtung von Häftlingen des Lagers Monowitz 1941–1945 (Munich, 2000), 281. 20 For detailed discussion of the data underlying the calculations, see Spoerer and Fleischhacker, “Compensation,” Appendix. 21 For an explanation of how the ªgures in columns (vii) and (viii) of Table 3 were estimated, see ibid.

Table 4 Civilian Labor Force in GermanybyCountryof Origin, Sex, and Economic Sector, 1939–1945 total percentage percentage reported workers counted total estimated estimated workers female in industry peak date at peak date recruited total survivors (09/30/44) (09/30/44) (08/15/44) 1939–45 1939–45 mid-1945 (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) (vi) (vii) (viii) Germans 22,938,824 48.6 80.9 06/30/44 23,173,728 — — — Balts 44,799 36.5 64.6 09/30/44 44,799 78,000 75,000 75,000 Belgians 199,437 14.7 96.7 08/15/43 233,081 587,000 375,000 365,000 Croats 60,153 28.4 90.4 08/15/43 73,341 160,000 100,000 100,000 Czechs 276,340 16.1 93.7 09/30/43 286,663 420,000 355,000 330,000 Dutch 254,544 8.2 89.8 06/30/44 276,938 670,000 475,000 465,000 French 646,421 6.6 91.0 12/31/43 666,610 940,000a 1,050,000 1,015,000 Italians 287,347 7.8 88.6 09/30/44 287,347 n/a 960,000 940,000 Poles 1,375,817 34.4 31.0 09/30/44 1,375,817 1,850,000a 1,600,000 1,470,000 Serbs 37,607 22.4 81.3 01/20/42 78,107 n/a 100,000 100,000 Slovaks 37,550 44.5 n/a 09/25/41 80,037 n/a 100,000 100,000 USSR citizens 2,409,836 49.8 63.7 09/30/44 2,409,836 3,125,000 2,775,000 2,525,000 Other 346,822 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a 470,000 460,000 Total foreigners 5,976,673 33.3 62.6 09/30/44 >6,159,398 n/a 8,435,000 7,945,000 a Does not include transformed POWs. notes Germanyin 1942 boundaries; ussr citizens in 1946 boundaries, but excluding Balts. Industry is deªned in the compensation law, published in Bundesgesetzblatt, I (2000), 1267, 2036. sources Cols. (i) to (v) Der Arbeitseinsatz im Großdeutschen Reich (Berlin, 1939–1944); cols. (vi) to (viii), Mark Spoerer and Jochen Fleischhacker, “The Com- pensation of Nazi Germany’s Forced Labourers: Demographic Findings and Political Implications,” Population Studies, LV (2002), 16–20. 188 | MARK SPOERER AND JOCHEN FLEISCHHACKER eign laborers died in Germanyor were sent to concentration camps. The discrepancyvis-à-vis column (i), 2 million, must be ascribed to temporal ºuctuation. The estimation of total pows is simpler, though not of Soviet pows. For countries crushed in a blitzkrieg, the highest reported census ªgure should be roughlycongruent with the total number from 1939 to 1945. Moreover, it is safe to assume that for these groups, the last reported numbers are roughlyidentical with the survivors in mid-1945, with few exceptions. Since pows who usu- allyworked but were ill at the reporting date were not counted in the labor-allocation statistics, both numbers are rounded up by c. 5 percent. Some groups require further adjustments. As already mentioned, most Polish and Italian pows became civilian laborers bydecree. Of the French pows, 91,000 were released in 1942/43 as part of the relève, an exchange operation between the Reich and the Vichygovernment. Moreover, in the course of the transfor- mation, 222,000 French pows volunteered, or were coerced, in 1943/44 to become civilian laborers for the rest of the war. Most Soviet prisoners faced especiallybrutal conditions. Between late 1941 and 1945, the period when Soviet pows were employed in the German economy, c. 1.3 million perished. A certain number died or were murdered before theyentered work units in the Reich; a million or so likelyserved as forced laborers on German soil before theyperished. Manyof them were massacred in the last weeks of the war. The latest reported number of surviving Soviet pows is 972,388, on January1, 1945 (see Table 5). Since pows who remained in that worker status will not be compensated, the sec- toral split was not calculated.22 As in Table 4, columns (i) to (iii) show the latest available labor-force census and the maximum reported number for each group. Columns (iv) and (vi) summarize the estimated total pows employed in the German war economy and the estimated number of survivors in mid-1945. In order to avoid double-counts, columns (v) and (vii) report how many pows were transformed into civilian worker status. Apart from the ªgure for the Soviet pows, the estimates do not appear problematic. A minor uncertaintyis

22 Yves Durand, La captivité. Histoire des prisonniers de guerre francais 1939–1945 (Paris, 1982; 3d ed.), 324, 348; Streit, Keine Kameraden, 246; Polian, Deportiert nach Hause, 44–45.

Table 5 pow Labor Force in GermanybyCountryof Origin, 1939–1945 workers reported workers at total total survivors survivors (01/01/45) peak date peak date 1939–45 transformed mid-1945 transformed (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) (vi) (vii) Belgians 57,392 04/30/41 65,100 65,000 0 65,000 0 French 637,564 04/30/41 1,192,500 1,285,000 220,000 1,250,000 215,000 Italians 32,945 07/01/44 456,013 495,000 460,000 465,000 450,000 Poles 34,691 02/.../40 294,303 300,000 205,000 220,000 185,000 Serbs 100,830 03/31/42 107,976 110,000 0 105,000 0 UK citizens 101,564 01/01/45 101,564 105,000 0 105,000 0 USSR citizens 972,388 01/01/45 972,388 1,950,000 0 950,000 0 Other 253,241 n/a n/a 275,000 0 265,000 0 Total POW 2,190,615 01/01/45 >3,443,085 4,575,000 885,000 3,425,000 850,000 note Germanyin 1942 boundaries. sources Der Arbeitseinsatz im Großdeutschen Reich (Berlin, 1939–1944); Yves Durand, La captivité: Histoire des prisonniers de guerre francais 1939–1945 (Paris, 1982; 3d ed.), 137; Shmuel Krakowski and Yoav Gelber, “Jewish Prisoners of War,” in Israel Gutman et al. (eds.), Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (New York, 1990), III, 1188–1192; Gerhard Schreiber, Die italienischen Militärinternierten im deutschen Machtbereich 1943 bis 1945: Verraten, verachtet, vergessen (Munich, 1990), 310–311; Hans Umbreit, “Die deutsche Herrschaft in den besetzten Gebieten,” in Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg (Stuttgart, 1999), V/2, 212. 190 | MARK SPOERER AND JOCHEN FLEISCHHACKER how manyAllied soldiers were captured and employedin labor units from Januaryto earlyMay1945. 23 The last group to be estimated are the inmates: inmates of concentration camps (ccs), working Jews employed outside the cc system, and inmates of work education camps (wecs). wec inmates were civilian laborers assigned to penal work usuallythree to eight weeks bythe Gestapo (German secret police). Among them were civilian laborers from Western Europe, who are compensated onlyfor this kind of work, and from Eastern Europe, who are compensated if employed in any form of “industry.” If wec inmates survived their spell, theyreturned either to their for - mer workplace for purposes of deterrence, or were transferred to a concentration camp. The recent studyof Lotª permits an estimate that c. 350,000 civilian laborers went through the wecs, an estimated two-thirds of them from Eastern European countries.24 The concept of “working Jews” presents a problem. Even though the working Jews did not work inside Germany(with the exception of 55,000 Hungarian Jews marched into Austria), they will be compensated. This article does not include them in the total of foreign laborers in Germanybut reports them separately. Recent research on the Holocaust clears the wayfor estimates of the number of Jewish cc inmates and working Jews, but not every Holocaust survivor was a former forced laborer. In Poland and the occupied territories of the Soviet Union, the Jews were coerced into working for the Germans, either in ghettos or in special work camps. Since labor was the onlywayto avoid murder and starva - tion, practicallyeveryHolocaust survivor from these countries must have been a forced laborer. The number of Jews in these countries who hid successfullythroughout the whole war is low. In “Greater Hungary,” which included former parts of Ro- mania, manyJews were put into the national labor service. Even those who were not sent across the Hungarian border to Germany or German-occupied Ukraine are eligible for compensation if they started working in a forced-labor unit in or after March 1944, when Hungarycame under direct German militarycontrol. Both Hungaryand Romania deported Jews to German-occupied

23 For an explanation of how the ªgures in columns (iv) and (vi) of Table 5 were estimated, see Spoerer and Fleischhacker, “Compensation,” Appendix. 24 Gabriele Lotª, KZ der Gestapo. Arbeitserziehungslager im Dritten Reich (Stuttgart, 2000), 318, 323.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/00221950260208661 by guest on 02 October 2021 FORCED LABORERS IN NAZI GERMANY | 191 Ukraine, where theywere forced to work for the Germans. The Hungarians—if theysurvived—returned to Hungaryin 1943/44. Theyeither continued to work in the national labor service or were sent to German concentration camps, some of them via a spell in Serbia. The Romanians were employed in Transnistria (Moldova) until theywere liberated bythe Red Army.In all other countries except Tunisia, the Jews either went largelyunharmed or unrecognized or, as was the usual case, theywere deported to the extermination camps in Germanyor Poland without having worked for the Germans. For these countries, we can relyon the data of returned Jewish concentration/ extermination-camp in- ternees. Table 6 shows that nearlya third of a million Jews sur - vived forced labor in Germanyor German occupied territory. Among the deportees from “Greater Hungary” who returned from Germanywere both cc inmates and working Jews who had been employed in Austria in 1944/45 (see Table 6, column ii). Freund and Perz estimate that 29,000 of the latter survived. These survivors are allocated to post-1945 Hungaryand Romania following the data given byBraham, who also splits the surviving Hungarian labor-service workers into 11,000 Hungarians and 9,000 others, mainlyRomanians. 25 The problematic part is the split between Polish and Soviet Jews. The data for the Jewish cc inmates from other European countries seem reliable—101,000, including 10,000 Germans and Austrians. However, Dinnerstein and Friedlander set the number of all surviving Jewish cc inmates (including Polish and Soviet Jews) at no more than 100,000. Revisionist authors like Finkelstein and Heinsohn even put the number at a mere 14 to 18,000, or no more than 40,000, which hardlyseems plausible in view of the evidence compiled byother authors in the inºuential volume edited byBenz. In order not to deviate too much from the estimations of Dinnerstein and Friedlander, this article posits the fraction of cc inmates among the 90,000 surviving Polish and Soviet Jewish forced laborers to be nearlyone-third, or 25,000,

25 Florian Freund and Bertrand Perz, Die Zahlenentwicklung der ausländischen Zwangsarbeiter und Zwangsarbeiterinnen auf dem Gebiet der Republik Österreich 1939–1945. Gutachten für die Historikerkommission der Republik Österreich (Vienna, forthcoming), 173. A draft version is accessible at http://www.historikerkommission.gv.at. An English translation is in preparation. Randolph L. Braham, The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary (New York, 1981), 1144. See also Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime, 1940–1944 (Chicago, 2000), 238–258, 289–290.

Table 6 Surviving Jewish Forced Laborers Employed in Germany or German-Occupied Territories, Mid-1945 cc inmates working jews working jews total (all germany) (germany) (outside germany) survivors (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) Poland 15,000a 0 45,000a 60,000 Soviet Union 10,000a 0 20,000a 30,000 Hungary Deportees Germany45,000 15,000 0 60,000 Hungarian Labor Service 0 0 11,000 11,000 Romania Deportees Transnistria 0 0 62,000 62,000 Deportees Germany21,000 14,000 0 35,000 Hungarian Labor Service 0 0 9,000 9,000 Rest of Europe 35,000 0 0 35,000 Tunisia 0 0 5,000 5,000 Total 126,000 29,000 152,000 307,000 aSplit assumed. notes 1946 borders. sources Hungaryand Romania: Randolph L. Braham, The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary (New York, 1981), 1144; Liviu Rotman, “Romanian Jewry: The First Decade After the Holocaust,” in Braham (ed.), The Tragedy of Romanian Jewry (New York, 1994), 291. Soviet Union: Raoul Hilberg, The De- struction of the European Jews (New York, 1985), 1202; Christian Gerlach, “German Economic Interests, Occupation Policy, and the Murder of the Jews in Belorussia, 1941/43,” in Ulrich Herbert (ed.), National Socialist Extermination Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies (New York, 2000), 227; Dieter Pohl, “Schauplatz Ukraine: Der Massenmord an den Juden im Militärverwaltungsgebiet und im Reichskommissariat 1941–1943,” in Norbert Frei, Sybille Steinbacher, and Bernd C. Wagner (eds.), Ausbeutung, Vernichtung, Öffentlichkeit: Neue Studien zur nationalsozialistischen Lagerpolitik (Munich, 2000), 135, 169–170. Tunisia: Michel Abitbol, Les Juifs d’Afrique du Nord sous Vichy (Paris, 1983), 137. All others: Wolfgang Benz (ed.), Dimension des Völkermords: Die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus (Munich, 1991), 60, 72, 103, 127, 130, 165, 184, 196, 216, 238, 270, 330, 379, 493. See also for Poland, Pohl, “The Mur- der of Jews in the General Government,” in Herbert (ed.), National Socialist Extermination, 90. FORCED LABORERS IN NAZI GERMANY | 193 suggesting a total of 126,000 Jewish cc survivors. In this respect, it is useful to remember that Polish and Soviet Jews were at the bottom of the cc camp hierarchy.26 Billig put the total number of all cc inmates, Jewish as well as non-Jewish, at approximately1.65 million for 1933 to 1945, a magnitude conªrmed byPingel. The highest prewar ªgure for cc inmates reported byBillig is 60,000 (November 1938). Since c. 100,000 were released over the whole period, most of them before the outbreak of World War II, 1.55 million seems a reason- able estimate for the period 1939 to 1945. Practicallyall inmates must have worked either in the camps or in external work units.27 The ªgures of surviving cc inmates are notoriouslyinaccu - rate. The latest available aggregate ss camp statistic is for mid- January1945, when 714,211 inmates were still alive, among them 202,674 women. In the following months, around one-quarter of them were sent on the notorious “death marches,” during which manyperished. Manymore died from exhaustion in the camps. Adding the number of survivors immediatelyafter their liberation, camp bycamp, Billig arrives at a ªgure of c. 450,000. Similarly, Friedlander estimates that, at most, 475,000 inmates survived, and Orth calculates a range of 800 to 955,000 cc victims. Adding the Billig and Friedlander survivors comes close to the total of 1.55 million.28 Table 7 accepts Friedlander’s estimate of total survivors and assumes that the sex ratio of survivors in May1945 was the same as

26 Leonard Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust (New York, 1982), 14, 18, 42; HenryFriedlander, “Darkness and Dawn in 1945: The Nazis, the Allies, and the Survi - vors,” in 1945: The Year of Liberation (Washington D.C., 1995), 24; Gunnar Heinsohn, “Die 1945 geretteten jüdischen Sklavenarbeiter Hitlerdeutschlands: Wieviele könnten heute noch leben?” working paper (Universityof Bremen, 2000); Norman G. Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: eºections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (London, 2000), 126; Wolfgang Benz (ed.), Dimension des Völkermords: Die Zahl der jüdischen opfer des Nationalsozialismus (Munich, 1991). 27 Joseph Billig, Les camps de concentration dans l’économie du Reich Hitlérien (Paris, 1973), 72, 91; Falk Pingel, “Concentration Camps,” in Israel Gutman et al. (eds.), Encyclopedia of the Ho- locaust (New York, 1990), I, 313. To avoid confusion, Billig’s and Pingel’s ªgure does not include the more than 3 million inmates who were immediatelykilled after their arrival in the extermination camps of Auschwitz II, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka, which did not formallybelong to the concentration-camp system.Herbert, Fremdarbeiter, 430. 28 Johannes Tuchel, Die Inspektion der Konzentrationslager 1938–1945. Das System des Terrors (Berlin, 1994), 213; Shmuel Krakowski, “Death Marches,” in Gutman et al. (eds.), Encyclope- dia of the Holocaust, I, 353–354; Billig, Les camps de concentration, 95; Friedlander, “Darkness and Dawn,” 24; Orth, System, 345–346.

Table 7 Concentration-Camp Inmates byCountryof Origin, mid-1945 survivors percentage of survivors percentage of mid-1945 female survivors mid-1945 female survivors (i) (ii) (i) (ii) Jewish 126,000 35 Greeks 2,000 0 Non-Jewish 349,000 13 Italians 12,000 8 Balts 2,000 0 Poles 92,000 39 Belgians 6,000 17 Serbs 4,000 27 Croats 7,000 27 Slovaks 1,000 0 Czechs 11,000 18 Spaniards 8,000 0 Dutch 1,000 0 USSR citizens 97,000 23 French 36,000 19 Other 32,000 22 Germans 38,000 34 Total 475,000 28 note Germanyin 1942 boundaries. sources Table 6 and Erhard Pachalyand Kurt Pelny, Konzentrationslager Mittelbau-Dora: Zum antifaschistischen Widerstandskampf im KZ Dora 1943 bis 1945 (Berlin, 1990), 250; Monika Herzog and Bernhard Strebel, “Das Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück,” in Claus Füllberg-Stolberg et al. (eds.), Frauen in Konzentrationslagern: Bergen-Belsen, Ravensbrück (Bremen, 1994), 18; Hans Maršálek, Die Geschichte des Konzentrationslagers Mauthausen: Dokumentation (Vienna, 1995; 3d ed.), 120–121; HarryStein, “Funktionswandel des Konzentrationslagers Buchenwald im Spiegel der Lagerstatistiken,” in Ulrich Herbert, K arin Orth, and Christoph Dieckmann (eds.), Die nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager: Entwicklung und Struktur (Göttingen, 1998), I, 187. FORCED LABORERS IN NAZI GERMANY | 195 in January. The latest available camp statistics of Buchenwald, Dora-Mittelbau, and Mauthausen discriminate between Jewish and non-Jewish inmates, the latter broken down bynations. Simi - lar ªgures are available for the women’s camp in Ravensbrück. From these data, the national split for the surviving 349,000 non- Jewish cc inmates can be calculated. This national split should be interpreted with caution, however, given the lack of information on the extent to which the national composition in these four large camps, which held 37 percent of all cc inmates, might be representative for all concentration camps. The justiªcation for this calculation is the need for some idea of the regional distribution of non-Jewish cc survivors. The high percentage of Jewish women (Table 7, column ii) is explained bythe fact that most Jewish survivors were Hungarians, Romanians from Northern Transsylvania (counted as Hungarians in the ss camp statistics), and Poles who had been sent to the camps after the spring of 1944, when the German industry’s de- mand for labor was so high that the ss could not afford to kill the newlyarrived inmates immediately.Young men and women, as well as teenage boys and girls, were sent to the factories, where their fate was, on average, less horriªc than in the extermination camps—at least until the death marches began. A much larger fraction of the non-Jewish inmates was male, since manyhad been interned for political reasons rather than on purelyracial grounds. Table 8 summarizes the historical ªndings displayed in tables 4 to 7. Rows (a) to (c) repeat the results of tables 4, 5, and 7. The working Jews in row (d) are those Hungarian Jews who were marched to Austria in 1944/45 (Table 6, column ii). All other working Jews were either transferred to concentration camps, and ªgure among their inmates, or did not enter German territory. The total in row (e) is regrouped into the foreign-labor classiªcat- ions of Table 1 in rows (f ) to (i). Again, changes in status require corrections: subtracting transformed former pows to avoid double-counts (column ii) and subtracting from both civilian laborers and pows the number assumed to have been sent to concentration camps (column iv). Note that columns (i) and (iii) include these double-counts, except row (e), whereas column (v) is net of double-counts. The wec inmates are not shown because most returned to their former status as civilian laborers while the others were sent to concentration camps.

Table 8 Total Foreign-Labor Force in Germany, 1939–45, and Survivors in mid-1945 total transformed casualties casualties among survivors survival 1939–45 pows cc transferrals mid-1945 rate (%) (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) (vi) (a) Civilian laborers 8,435,000 0 490,000 200,000 7,945,000 94 (b) POWs 4,575,000 885,000 1,115,000 50,000 2,575,000 70 (c) CC inmates 1,550,000 0 1,075,000 0 475,000 31 (d) Working jews 55,000 0 25,000 0 30,000 55 (e) Total 13,480,000 2,455,000 11,025,000 82 (f ) Privileged laborers 1,070,000 0 15,000 0 1,055,000 99 (g) Forced laborers 4,820,000 220,000 100,000 50,000 4,500,000 98 (h) Slave laborers 5,170,000 665,000 490,000 160,000 4,015,000 89 (i) Less-than-slaves 3,555,000 0 2,100,000 40,000 1,455,000 41 notes Germanyin 1942 boundaries. Survival rates calculated as 1 Ϫ (iii/(iϪii)). Columns (ii) and (iv) are double-counts, which are included in columns (i) and (iii), except row (e). sources Tables 4 to 7. FORCED LABORERS IN NAZI GERMANY | 197 The main result shown in Table 8 is an estimate of the total number of foreign laborers enlisted during the whole war period. Admittedly, the calculations are based on several, sometimes dar- ing assumptions. The most uncertain factors are the number of So- viet pows who died while working for the German war economy and the number of civilian laborers and pows transferred to concentration camps. Our assumption in the latter case is 250,000. Since these are double-counts, this number has an impact on the total outcome in row (e). However, the overall estimate of 13.5 million foreign laborers from 1939 to 1945, of which 11 million survived the war, has an assumed error margin of not more than Ϯ0.75 million. The distinction between privileged and forced laborers in rows (f ) and (g) is not always clear-cut. Since some of those workers grouped as forced laborers were volunteers (as were the privileged laborers), the total number of volunteers lies some- where between 1.1 and 1.5 million. In anycase, the implication is that at least 12 million foreigners in the German war economy were forced laborers (in the broad sense). A total of 2.5 million of them perished on German soil.29 The (overall, not annualized) survival rate in column (vi) is a crude measure; it mixes worker groups who were ªve years or more in Germany—like the Poles or French pows—with those who were among the manydeportees of 1942/43. However, it gives a clear picture of the gruesome consequences that the Nazi racial hierarchyhad for the lives of slave laborers and, especially, less-than-slave laborers. In order to account for post-1945 migration ºows, the number of Polish, Ukrainian, and Baltic civilian laborers who decided not to return to their home countryhas to be determined. This group consists of 285,000 citizens of the ussr (as of 1938)—mainly Ukrainians—220,000 Balts, and 300,000 Poles (among whom were 50,000 ethnic Ukrainians), including former forced laborers and refugees who had ºed the Red Armywithout ever having

29 An illuminative comparison is that with forced laborers in Japanese captivity. Among the 1 million Koreans deported to Japan, c. 2% died of natural causes. The mortalityof the 40,000 Chinese forced laborers in Japan was much higher, 18%. The death rate was even higher outside Japan. Around 31% of 193,000 Allied laborers and 48% of 0.6 million native forced laborers did not survive the Japanese work camps. Schmidt, Ianfu, 83–84; Waterford, Prisoners of the Japanese, 141–146. According to another source, the total number of allied pows in Japanese captivitytotaled 132,000; theyfaced a mortalityrate of 27%. Yuki Tanaka, Hidden Horrors: Jap- anese War Crimes in World War II (Boulder, 1996), 2–3.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/00221950260208661 by guest on 02 October 2021 198 | MARK SPOERER AND JOCHEN FLEISCHHACKER been forced to work in Germany. The fraction of former forced laborers among the Ukrainians and ethnic Poles is put at two- thirds, but not that of the Balts. The difference between the 45,000 Balts who were working in greater Germanyin September 1944 and the 220,000 who ºed indicates that most Baltic emigrants joined the German forces at the time of their retreat and presum- ablydid not serve as civilian laborers in Germany.This studyas - sumes that 50,000 were former forced laborers. The estimate for all other nationalities totals 440,000 persons. Stebelskyreports that 70 percent of the Ukrainians found a new home in the English- speaking countries of North America and Australasia and that others also emigrated to rich countries. A similar migration pattern is assumed for the other groups as well.30 What remains to be calculated is the age structure. The age distributions are derived from dispersed sources for French pows and cc inmates as well as from electronic sources. The results are congruent and give a coherent picture. Table 9 presents the ªndings for the most important groups.31 In May1939, the median age of male and female German workers was thirty-six and thirty-three, respectively. Among the millions of foreigners who worked in the German war economy, onlyvolunteers from Axis countries, such as Italy,and French pows exhibited a similar age structure. Table 9 clearlyshows that the Germans mainlydeported teenagers and youngadults from Eastern Europe. Half the Polish women in Germanywere twenty- four or younger, and half of the Soviet women twenty-one or younger. The age distribution of cc inmates was similar; the youngest were exempted from immediate annihilation and sent to labor camps instead. In the absence of further evidence, the assumption herein is that this age structure also pertains to the surviving working Jews, since theyfaced similar selection criteria and

30 Mark R. Elliot, “Soviet MilitaryCollaborators During World War II,” in Yuri Boshyk (ed.), Ukraine During World War II: History and Its Aftermath (Edmonton, 1986), 103; Wolfgang Jacobmeyer, Vom Zwangsarbeiter zum heimatlosen Ausländer: Die Displaced Persons in Westdeutschland 1945–1951 (Göttingen, 1985), 83, 85, 97, 122; Orest Subtelny, “Ukrainian Po- litical Refugees: An Historical Overview,” in Wsevolod W. Isajiw, YuryBoshik, and Roman Senkus (eds.), The Refugee Experience: Ukrainian Displaced Persons after World War II (Edmon- ton, 1992), 14; Ihor Stebelsky, “Ukrainian Population Migration After World War II,” in ibid., 34. 31 The ªgures in Table 9 deviate slightlyfrom those in Spoerer and Fleischhacker, “Com - pensation,” 11; this article uses an extended database.

Table 9 Age Structure of Selected Forced-Labor Groups byYear of Birth (in Percent) french czechs italians poles ussr citizens cc male pow male male male female male female male female N 6,782 5,384 2,395 3,560 4,937 1,086 5,143 3,519 117,385 51,490 pre-1908 20.4 34.0 15.9 47.9 26.0 15.7 19.3 9.1 24.2 20.3 1908–12 12.3 31.8 9.0 18.8 18.5 9.9 9.7 5.1 10.9 10.3 1913–17 12.7 26.8 10.5 10.8 17.8 14.1 10.2 8.1 12.9 14.0 1918–22 46.7 7.4 55.2 11.4 20.4 25.4 21.5 23.3 15.8 19.6 1923–27 7.6 0.0 9.3 10.8 16.0 29.9 35.4 49.9 24.1 23.9 1928–32 0.2 0.0 0.1 0.4 1.2 5.0 3.9 4.4 12.1 11.9 Median 1918 1910 1919 1908 1914 1920 1920 1923 1918 1919 note Civilian laborers unless stated otherwise. N—number of persons in database. sources Electronic databases kindlysupplied byAndreas Leuchtenmüller, Oliver Rathkolb, municipal archives of Frankfurt am Main and Reutlingen; Yves Durand, La captivité: Histoire des prisonniers de guerre francais 1939–1945 (Paris, 1982; 3d ed.), 26–27; Uwe Danker, “Statuserhebung: Ausländer im Arbeitseinsatz in Schleswig-Holstein,” in idem (ed.), “Ausländereinsatz in der Nordmark”: Zwangsarbeitende in Schleswig-Holstein 1939–1945 (Bielefeld, 2001), 79–80. Age structure of cc inmates calculated from Monika Herzog and Bernhard Strebel, “Das Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück,” in Claus Füllberg-Stolberg et al. (eds.), Frauen in Konzentrationslagern: Bergen-Belsen, Ravensbrück (Bremen, 1994), 18; Hans Maršálek, Die Geschichte des Konzentrationslagers Mauthausen. Dokumentation (Vienna, 1995; 3d ed.), 112; HarryStein, “Funktionswandel des Konzentrationslagers Buchenwald im Spiegel der Lagerstatistiken,” in Ulrich Herbe rt, Karin Orth, and Christoph Dieckmann (eds.), Die nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager: Entwicklung und Struktur (Göttingen, 1998), I, 185–186. 200 | MARK SPOERER AND JOCHEN FLEISCHHACKER living conditions. Palestinian immigration statistics corroborate the young average age of Holocaust survivors.32 Unlike the preceding tables, the demographic part of the calculation is based on data from countries as theyexist today.So far the Soviet Union has been treated as a whole, except the Baltic states. Henceforth, however, the 1945 data is divided into numbers for the Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, the Baltic states, and other Soviet nationalities, following Soviet repatriation data reported by Polian (see Table 10). Since the forced laborers of other ex-Soviet nationalities (except for Estonians, who are represented byBelarus) are to receive compensation from the Russian foundation, their numbers are consolidated with those of the Russians. From the ethnic split in Table 10 are derived absolute survivor ªgures of 1.21 million civilian laborers for Ukraine, 1 million for Russia and other former So- viet states, and 0.32 million for Belarus and Estonia. For the Ukraine, emigrants have to be subtracted—in keeping with the arguments above, two-thirds of the 0.29 million Soviet citizens and 0.05 million ethnic Ukrainians of Polish nationality, leaving 0.22 million Ukrainians who survived and were not repatriated. Most of them found a new home in the United States, Canada, or the United Kingdom. Theyare reported separatelyin the last row of Table 11. The survival rates of inmate laborers present a difªcult methodological problem. The ªgure of 39.5 percent for cc inmates and working Jews is partlya result of the fact that these survivors tended to be young and female, and that many migrated to West- ern countries with high life expectancies. But it is also a consequence of using life tables for the population as a whole, which do not take into account the often severe damage to their health. In spite of a rich literature on their medical problems, no indicator exists of the extent to which their survival probabilities should be adjusted. This studyopts for reduction factors of one-third for cc inmates, and one-fourth for wec inmates, which still maybe opti - mistic. The fraction of ethnic minorities in Ukraine, especiallyRus - sians, evades quantiªcation. Until the death of Stalin in 1953, mil-

32 The median ages were calculated from Statistisches Jahrbuch für das Deutsche Reich (1941/ 42), 39. Statistical Handbook of Jewish Palestine (1947), 90, 434.

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Table 10 Ethnic Split of Repatriated Soviet Citizens (in Percent) civilians pows total Ukrainians 41.4 29.3 37.2 Russians 31.1 47.2 36.7 Byelorussians 13.4 8.6 11.7 Lithuanians 1.7 0.2 1.1 Latvians 1.1 0.2 0.8 Estonians 0.4 0.2 0.3 All other 10.9 14.4 12.1 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 source Pavel Polian, Deportiert nach Hause: Sowjetische Kriegsgefangene im “Dritten Reich” und ihre Repatriierung (Munich, 2000), 165.

lions of Soviet citizens were forciblymoved around the country, manydeported outright. Despite the estimate of (ethnic) Ukrain- ian survivors as 370,000, the number of claimants in Ukraine must be somewhat higher, whereas that in Russia somewhat lower.

This studydares for the ªrst time to estimate the number of forced laborers in Nazi Germanybetween 1939 and 1945. It ªnds that— within the borders of greater Germany—approximately 13.5 million foreigners worked in the German economy, and that at least 12 million of them were coerced to do so. Soviet prisoners of war and concentration-camp inmates of all countries, especiallyJews, were subjected to extremelyinhumane conditions of life and work, which cost about 2.5 million lives. Taken together, c. 11 million foreign laborers survived the war. Roughlyone-quarter of them, 2.7 million, were still alive in mid-2000, when Germany and Austria passed compensation laws. Some of the ªndings herein for individual forced-laborer groups are contraryto conventional intuition, most of all the seeminglyhigh survival rate of slave laborers (see Table 8). In view of the abundant evidence of inhumane treatment of Poles, Eastern workers, and Italian pows, a lower survival rate might have been expected. However, the sad fate of slave laborers who were employedin the cities is partiallycounterbalanced bymanyaccounts that indicate a far less dire situation in the countryside, where most Poles and manyEastern workers were deployed.Nonetheless, the sheer horror of nearlyhalf a million casualties among ªve million slave laborers and of a mortalityrate for them at least six times

Table 11 Former Foreign Laborers Employed in Nazi Germany Alive in 1945 and 2000 civilian laborers pows inmates alive alive survival alive alive survival alive alive survival mid-1945 mid-2000 probability mid-1945 mid-2000 probability mid-1945 mid-2000 probability (%) (%) (%) (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) (vi) (vii) (viii) (ix) Jews 307,000 73,000 23.8 Baltic states 75,000 6,000a 25.3a 2,000 0 13.4 Belarus 320,000 108,000 33.7 80,000 14,000 17.8 13,000 2,000 14.8 Belgium 365,000 98,000 26.8 65,000 5,000 7.9 6,000 1,000 14.7 Czech Republic 330,000 77,000 23.3 11,000 2,000 16.8 France 1,015,000 267,000 26.3 1,035,000 111,000 10.7 36,000 8,000 22.1 Italy940,000 178,000 18.9 15,000 5,000 33.4 12,000 3,000 21.6 Netherlands 465,000 135,000 29.1 1,000 0 15.9 Poland 1,470,000 368,000a 28.2a 35,000 2,000 6.6 92,000 19,000 20.5 Russia 995,000 310,000 31.2 590,000 92,000 15.6 42,000 6,000 13.5 Serbia 100,000 18,000 18.3 105,000 8,000 7.5 4,000 1,000 18.4 United Kingdom 105,000 9,000 8.4 Ukraine 1,210,000 314,000a 31.9a 280,000 50,000 17.8 42,000 6,000 14.3 Other 660,000 154,000 23.3 265,000 75,000 28.1 50,000 10,000 19.3 Migrants 440,000b 163,000 37.0 Total 7,945,000 2,196,000 27.6 2,575,000 370,000 14.4 618,000c 131,000c 21.0 a Excluding migrants (see last row). b Not included in total to avoid double-counts. c Non-Jewish German inmates not included. notes Germanyin 1942 boundaries. Jews in 1945 include 152,000 working Jews employedoutside Germany.All ªgures rounded. source Mark Spoerer and Jochen Fleischhacker, “The Compensation of Nazi Germany’s Forced Labourers: Demographic Findings and Political Implica- tions,” Population Studies, LV (2002), 16–20. FORCED LABORERS IN NAZI GERMANY | 203 higher than that for the German population of the same age (see discussion of Table 3) speaks for itself. Hence, the survival rate is not in conºict with the prevailing view that forced laborers of these groups were subjected to especiallyinhumane conditions. Much in evidence is the sharp contrast between the conditions of life and work faced bythe groups classiªed as slave laborers and those classiªed as less-than-slaves. The survival rates in Table 8 draw a distinct line between these two groups. This line separates merciless economic exploitation from ideologicallymotivated mass murder. The fact that it was the much-despised East Europeans and Italian “traitors” who fell victim to this exploitation, not the West Europeans, illustrates the Nazis’ ideological impact on labor relations. Most German ªrms were eager to make use of this license to exploit. But at least some minimum of economicallymotivated rationalityentered into the relations between German employers and the slave laborers. Whether this rationalitywas the case for the less-than-slave laborers as well is a much disputed issue that is reºected in the no- tion of “annihilation bywork.” The results herein can contribute little to answering the question whether work was the aim and annihilation the consequence, or annihilation the aim and work its means. But theyadd to the group of concentration-camp inmates, on which the debate is centered, the Soviet and Jewish Polish pows, who were worked to death as well. Not bychance does the Soviet pows’ estimate have the largest error margin. Apart from the pioneering studyof Streit and some recent regional studies, the fate of this group remains curiouslyunderresearched. 33 Research on the millions of foreigners who worked for the purposes of the German occupation forces all over Europe is also scant. Compiling the available data for Germanyis difªcult enough, as this article shows. Yet compiling it for forced laborers outside the borders of the Reich seems totallyhopeless at the cur - rent stage of academic study. There is an urgent need for national studies which, for example, could start with material assembled by

33 On “annihilation bywork,” see, for example, Herbert (ed.), National Socialist Extermina- tion Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies (New York, 2000); idem, Fremdarbeiter, 424–431; Schulte, Zwangsarbeit und Vernichtung; Spoerer, Zwangsarbeit, 180–183; Allen, Business of Genocide; Streit, Keine Kameraden.

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34 The same point applies to the Japanese forced-labor system in the occupied parts of Asia and Japan. To our knowledge, no published studycompares the Japanese and German pro - grams (but see http://info.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/display.cgi? id=148, 23 July 2002). A comparison would be all the more interesting, since both countries treated pows much better in World War I than in World War II. See Ikuhiko Hata, “From Consideration to Contempt: The Changing Nature of Japanese Militaryand Popular Perceptions of Prisoners of War through the Ages,” in Bob Moore and Kent Fedorovich (eds.), Prisoners of War and Their Captors in World War II (Oxford, 1996), 253–276.

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