Forced labor of Germans after World War II
Encyclopedia
Forced labour of Germans after World War II refers to the Allied use of German civilians and captured soldiers for forced labor in years following World War II (and in some cases much longer).
The topic of using Germans as forced labour for reparations was first broached at the Tehran conference
in 1943, where Soviet premier Joseph Stalin
demanded 4,000,000 German workers.
Forced labour was also included in the Morgenthau Plan
draft from September 1944, and was included in the final protocol of the Yalta conference
in January 1945, where it was sanctioned by UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill
and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt
.
In March 1947, an estimated 4,000,000 Germans were being used as forced labour.
Estimates of German POW casualties (in both east and west and cumulative for both the war and peace-time period) range from 600,000 to 1,000,000. According to the section of the German Red Cross dealing with tracing the captives, the ultimate fate of 1,300,000 German POW's in Allied custody is still unknown; they are still officially listed as missing.
The capture and transfer of civilian ethnic Germans to the Soviet Union began as soon as countries with a German minority began to be overrun in 1944. Large numbers of civilians were taken from countries such as Romania, Yugoslavia, and from the eastern parts of Germany itself. For example, after Christmas 1944 between 27,000 to 30,000 ethnic Germans (aged 18–40) were sent to the USSR from Yugoslavia. Women made up 90% of the group. Most were sent to labor camps in the Donbass (Donez basin) where 16% of them died.
in labor camps such as that run by Salomon Morel
. Among these camps were Central Labour Camp Jaworzno
, Central Labour Camp Potulice
, Łambinowice, Zgoda labour camp
and others. The law authorising forced labour, Article 20 of the law on the exclusion of the enemy elements from society, also removed rights to Polish citizenship and all property owned.
The many camps were used during the process of the expulsions for the sake of "rehabilitating" Reichs- or Volksdeutsche, to decide if they could stay or go, but in reality this was a program of slave labor. Roughly 200,000 ethnic Germans died in the Polish/Soviet run concentration camps in Poland.
Others were still amongst the rest of the population, but the Polish government had made several declarations that the German population should be exploited as forced labor, instructing a minimum of 60 hours work per week with no rights for breaks. The salaries were insufficient for survival, usually 25 or 50 percent of Polish salaries.
was, in the same case as Poland, expelled after the war. The expulsion was not indiscriminate, however, since as late as 1947, large numbers of skilled German workmen were still being detained. Germans were forced to wear a white armband with the letter "N", for "Nemec" signifying German in Czech to identify them (even "German" Jews had to wear it).
Czech Deputy Premier Petr Mares
has in the past, in vain, tried to arrange compensation for ethnic Germans who were forcibly resettled or used as forced labour after the war.
. Beginning in the summer of 1946 the Soviets began explorations in the Erzgebirge, and sealing off the old radium
hot spring
s by September of the same year. An initial workforce of four to five thousand was established, with another 20,000 called for by the end of the year. The work was dangerous and stressful and the Soviets made no effort to improve them; as a result the mines became filled with forced labor conscripts and has been compared to a death march
and the Gulag
s of Kolyma
. Quotas were repeatedly set and raised, and conscription took place without regard to health or work experience - mines became staffed with office workers, craftsmen and students with no mining experience. By 1948 workers were pulled away from factories and criminals from jails to staff the mines, as were POWs returning to Germany from the Soviet Union. Housing lagged behind the burgeoning workers (with many regions doubling in population between 1946 and 1951), worsening already difficult conditions. The mines were considered worse than a penal colony, but were controlled directly by Moscow and local governments were unable to help. When an extra 60,000 workers were called for in the summer of 1947, a wave of potential workers flooded into West Germany to avoid the mines including many citizens who would otherwise prefer to live in the communist East. Workers who began as volunteers were turned into forced labourers. In an effort to increase the number of labourers, women were increasingly recruited to the non-segregated mines, many of whom brought or were infected with venereal diseases, and were sexually exploited by the Russian guards. Workers who attempted to escape, conscripted or volunteer, were hunted down and returned to the mines. Eventually Germans would become more involved in the running of the mines, forming a joint company with Russia in 1956.
Contrary to Section IV of the Hague Convention of 1907, "The Laws and Customs of War on Land", the SHAEF "counter insurgency manual" included provisions for forced labor and hostage taking.
Article 75 of the Geneva Convention (1929)
states that repatriation of prisoners shall be effected with the least possible delay after the conclusion of peace.
commented in his diary "I’m also opposed to sending POW's to work as slaves in foreign lands (in particular, to France) where many will be starved to death." He also noted "It is amusing to recall that we fought the revolution in defense of the rights of man and the civil war to abolish slavery and have now gone back on both principles". On 12 October 1945 The New York Herald Tribune
reported that the French were starving their POWs, and compared their emaciation to that of those liberated from the Dachau concentration camp.
German prisoners were for example forced to clear minefields in France and the Low Countries
.
According to Simon MacKenzie
, "callous self-interest and a desire for retribution played a role in the fate" of German prisoners, and he exemplifies by pointing out that sick or otherwise unfit prisoners were forcibly used for labour, and in France and the Low countries this also included work such as highly dangerous mine-clearing; "by September 1945 it was estimated by the French authorities that two thousand prisoners were being maimed and killed each month in accidents"
Some of the 740,000 German prisoners transferred in 1945 by the U.S. for forced labour in France came from the Rheinwiesenlager
camps, these forced labourers were already very weak, many weighing barely 50 kilos.
On 13 March 1947 the U.S. made an agreement with the French to the effect that roughly 450,000 German prisoners would be released, at a rate of 20,000 a month. This number included in addition to the prisoners handed over to them by the U.S. also the roughly 200,000 prisoners the French had themselves captured.
In retaliation for acts of resistance French occupation forces expelled more than 25,000 civilians from their homes. Some of these civilians were subsequently forced to clear minefields in Alsace
.
The two main reasons for their internment were political re-education (Wilton Park
), and for non-officers employment as agricultural and other labour. In 1946 a fifth of all agricultural work in the UK was performed by German prisoners.
An emotional and public debate ensued in the UK, where words such as "slaves", "slave labour" and "forced labour" were increasingly used in the media and in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. In 1947 the Ministry of Agriculture argued against rapid repatriation of working German prisoners, since by then they made up 25 percent of the land workforce, and they wanted to use them also in 1948. Faced with political difficulties in using volunteer foreign labour a compromise solution was suggested by the ministry of agriculture, German prisoners were to be allowed to remain in Britain as free men. Following disputes about how many former prisoners of war would be permitted to remain voluntarily in Britain and whether they would first have to return briefly to Germany before being allowed to officially migrate to Britain, by the end of 1947 about 250,000 of the prisoners of war were repatriated, and the last repatriations took place in November 1948. About 24,000 chose to remain voluntarily in Britain.
For prisoners in the U.S. repatriation was also delayed for harvest reasons.
Civilians aged 14 – 65 in the U.S. occupation zone of Germany were also registered for compulsory labor, under threat of prison and withdrawal of ration cards.
Compensation to German prisoners of war used as forced labor after the war is according to the office of public administration (part of Federal Ministry of the Interior
) not possible to claim in Germany, the possibility was removed by the statute of limitations already on September 29, 1978.
, Chief US prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials
in a letter discussing the potential weaknesses of the trial, in October 1945 told US President Harry S. Truman
that the Allies themselves:
Under the Nuremberg Principles
some of the crimes specified were:
The topic of using Germans as forced labour for reparations was first broached at the Tehran conference
Tehran Conference
The Tehran Conference was the meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill between November 28 and December 1, 1943, most of which was held at the Soviet Embassy in Tehran, Iran. It was the first World War II conference amongst the Big Three in which Stalin was present...
in 1943, where Soviet premier Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
demanded 4,000,000 German workers.
Forced labour was also included in the Morgenthau Plan
Morgenthau Plan
The Morgenthau Plan, proposed by United States Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., advocated that the Allied occupation of Germany following World War II include measures to eliminate Germany's ability to wage war.-Overview:...
draft from September 1944, and was included in the final protocol of the Yalta conference
Yalta Conference
The Yalta Conference, sometimes called the Crimea Conference and codenamed the Argonaut Conference, held February 4–11, 1945, was the wartime meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, represented by President Franklin D...
in January 1945, where it was sanctioned by UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
.
In March 1947, an estimated 4,000,000 Germans were being used as forced labour.
Eastern Europe
Soviet Union
The largest group of forced laborers in the Soviet Union consisted of several million German prisoners of war. Several hundred thousand of these POWs had been transferred by the US to the Soviets which used them, alongside Soviet captured POWs and German civilians, as forced laborers. Most German POW survivors of the forced labor camps in the Soviet Union were released in 1953. The last major repatriation of Germans from the Soviet Union occurred in 1956.Estimates of German POW casualties (in both east and west and cumulative for both the war and peace-time period) range from 600,000 to 1,000,000. According to the section of the German Red Cross dealing with tracing the captives, the ultimate fate of 1,300,000 German POW's in Allied custody is still unknown; they are still officially listed as missing.
The capture and transfer of civilian ethnic Germans to the Soviet Union began as soon as countries with a German minority began to be overrun in 1944. Large numbers of civilians were taken from countries such as Romania, Yugoslavia, and from the eastern parts of Germany itself. For example, after Christmas 1944 between 27,000 to 30,000 ethnic Germans (aged 18–40) were sent to the USSR from Yugoslavia. Women made up 90% of the group. Most were sent to labor camps in the Donbass (Donez basin) where 16% of them died.
Poland
Many ethnic Germans living within the Polish pre-war borders were used for years as forced labor prior to their expulsionExpulsion of Germans after World War II
The later stages of World War II, and the period after the end of that war, saw the forced migration of millions of German nationals and ethnic Germans from various European states and territories, mostly into the areas which would become post-war Germany and post-war Austria...
in labor camps such as that run by Salomon Morel
Salomon Morel
Salomon Morel was a Polish Communist official and an accused war criminal. After the end of World War II, he became the commander of the infamous Zgoda labour camp...
. Among these camps were Central Labour Camp Jaworzno
Central Labour Camp Jaworzno
Central Labour Camp Jaworzno was a concentration camp in Jaworzno, Poland. It operated from 1943 until 1956, first run by Nazi Germany and then by the Soviet Union with the People's Republic of Poland...
, Central Labour Camp Potulice
Central Labour Camp Potulice
Central Labour Camp Potulice was a detention centre for Germans and anti-communist Poles established by Polish Communist authorities after the end of World War II in Potulice, in place of the former German Nazi Potulice concentration camp. The camp was in operation since 1945 until 1950.A total of...
, Łambinowice, Zgoda labour camp
Zgoda labour camp
The Zgoda labour camp was a concentration camp for Germans, Silesians and Poles, set up in 1945 by the Soviet NKVD in Świętochłowice, Silesia. It was controlled by the communist secret police until its closure by the Stalinist authorities of Poland in November of the same year.Between 1943 and...
and others. The law authorising forced labour, Article 20 of the law on the exclusion of the enemy elements from society, also removed rights to Polish citizenship and all property owned.
The many camps were used during the process of the expulsions for the sake of "rehabilitating" Reichs- or Volksdeutsche, to decide if they could stay or go, but in reality this was a program of slave labor. Roughly 200,000 ethnic Germans died in the Polish/Soviet run concentration camps in Poland.
Others were still amongst the rest of the population, but the Polish government had made several declarations that the German population should be exploited as forced labor, instructing a minimum of 60 hours work per week with no rights for breaks. The salaries were insufficient for survival, usually 25 or 50 percent of Polish salaries.
Czechoslovakia
The German-speaking population of the SudetenlandSudetenland
Sudetenland is the German name used in English in the first half of the 20th century for the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans, specifically the border areas of Bohemia, Moravia, and those parts of Silesia being within Czechoslovakia.The...
was, in the same case as Poland, expelled after the war. The expulsion was not indiscriminate, however, since as late as 1947, large numbers of skilled German workmen were still being detained. Germans were forced to wear a white armband with the letter "N", for "Nemec" signifying German in Czech to identify them (even "German" Jews had to wear it).
Czech Deputy Premier Petr Mares
Petr Mareš
Petr Mareš is a Czech football defender, who currently plays for Vlašim, on loan from Slavia Prague.-External links:*...
has in the past, in vain, tried to arrange compensation for ethnic Germans who were forcibly resettled or used as forced labour after the war.
Eastern Germany
Many Germans in what would become East Germany were forced by the Communist authorities to work in German uranium mines producing the majority of the raw material of the Soviet atomic bomb projectSoviet atomic bomb project
The Soviet project to develop an atomic bomb , was a clandestine research and development program began during and post-World War II, in the wake of the Soviet Union's discovery of the United States' nuclear project...
. Beginning in the summer of 1946 the Soviets began explorations in the Erzgebirge, and sealing off the old radium
Radium
Radium is a chemical element with atomic number 88, represented by the symbol Ra. Radium is an almost pure-white alkaline earth metal, but it readily oxidizes on exposure to air, becoming black in color. All isotopes of radium are highly radioactive, with the most stable isotope being radium-226,...
hot spring
Hot spring
A hot spring is a spring that is produced by the emergence of geothermally heated groundwater from the Earth's crust. There are geothermal hot springs in many locations all over the crust of the earth.-Definitions:...
s by September of the same year. An initial workforce of four to five thousand was established, with another 20,000 called for by the end of the year. The work was dangerous and stressful and the Soviets made no effort to improve them; as a result the mines became filled with forced labor conscripts and has been compared to a death march
Death march
A death march is a forced march of prisoners of war or other captives or deportees. Those marching must walk over long distances for an extremely long period of time and are not supplied with food or water...
and the Gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
s of Kolyma
Kolyma
The Kolyma region is located in the far north-eastern area of Russia in what is commonly known as Siberia but is actually part of the Russian Far East. It is bounded by the East Siberian Sea and the Arctic Ocean in the north and the Sea of Okhotsk to the south...
. Quotas were repeatedly set and raised, and conscription took place without regard to health or work experience - mines became staffed with office workers, craftsmen and students with no mining experience. By 1948 workers were pulled away from factories and criminals from jails to staff the mines, as were POWs returning to Germany from the Soviet Union. Housing lagged behind the burgeoning workers (with many regions doubling in population between 1946 and 1951), worsening already difficult conditions. The mines were considered worse than a penal colony, but were controlled directly by Moscow and local governments were unable to help. When an extra 60,000 workers were called for in the summer of 1947, a wave of potential workers flooded into West Germany to avoid the mines including many citizens who would otherwise prefer to live in the communist East. Workers who began as volunteers were turned into forced labourers. In an effort to increase the number of labourers, women were increasingly recruited to the non-segregated mines, many of whom brought or were infected with venereal diseases, and were sexually exploited by the Russian guards. Workers who attempted to escape, conscripted or volunteer, were hunted down and returned to the mines. Eventually Germans would become more involved in the running of the mines, forming a joint company with Russia in 1956.
Western Europe
Background
At the Yalta conference in January 1945 the Allies agreed upon the use of German forced labor. The U.S. used over 500,000 German POWs in Germany in Military Labor Service Units. Great Britain used 225,000 Germans as "reparations labor". In addition to the 200,000 Germans held by French forces (and 70,000 held by France in Algeria), France demanded 1,700,000 POWs for use as "enforced labor". In July 1945 they were promised 1,300,000 POWs by the SHAEF. The number of actually delivered prisoners is debated, as is the number of surviving POWs eventually released by the French.Contrary to Section IV of the Hague Convention of 1907, "The Laws and Customs of War on Land", the SHAEF "counter insurgency manual" included provisions for forced labor and hostage taking.
Article 75 of the Geneva Convention (1929)
Geneva Convention (1929)
The Geneva Convention was signed at Geneva, July 27, 1929. Its official name is the Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Geneva July 27, 1929. It entered into force 19 June 1931. It is this version of the Geneva Conventions which covered the treatment of prisoners of war...
states that repatriation of prisoners shall be effected with the least possible delay after the conclusion of peace.
France
General George S. PattonGeorge S. Patton
George Smith Patton, Jr. was a United States Army officer best known for his leadership while commanding corps and armies as a general during World War II. He was also well known for his eccentricity and controversial outspokenness.Patton was commissioned in the U.S. Army after his graduation from...
commented in his diary "I’m also opposed to sending POW's to work as slaves in foreign lands (in particular, to France) where many will be starved to death." He also noted "It is amusing to recall that we fought the revolution in defense of the rights of man and the civil war to abolish slavery and have now gone back on both principles". On 12 October 1945 The New York Herald Tribune
New York Herald Tribune
The New York Herald Tribune was a daily newspaper created in 1924 when the New York Tribune acquired the New York Herald.Other predecessors, which had earlier merged into the New York Tribune, included the original The New Yorker newsweekly , and the Whig Party's Log Cabin.The paper was home to...
reported that the French were starving their POWs, and compared their emaciation to that of those liberated from the Dachau concentration camp.
German prisoners were for example forced to clear minefields in France and the Low Countries
Low Countries
The Low Countries are the historical lands around the low-lying delta of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Meuse rivers, including the modern countries of Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and parts of northern France and western Germany....
.
According to Simon MacKenzie
Simon MacKenzie
Simon MacKenzie is a military historian, author and academic.He was educated at the University of Toronto and received a PhD from the University of Oxford in 1989.He currently teaches at the University of South Carolina...
, "callous self-interest and a desire for retribution played a role in the fate" of German prisoners, and he exemplifies by pointing out that sick or otherwise unfit prisoners were forcibly used for labour, and in France and the Low countries this also included work such as highly dangerous mine-clearing; "by September 1945 it was estimated by the French authorities that two thousand prisoners were being maimed and killed each month in accidents"
Some of the 740,000 German prisoners transferred in 1945 by the U.S. for forced labour in France came from the Rheinwiesenlager
Rheinwiesenlager
The Rheinwiesenlager , official name Prisoner of War Temporary Enclosures , were a group of about 19 transit camps for holding about one million German POWs after World War II from spring until late summer 1945...
camps, these forced labourers were already very weak, many weighing barely 50 kilos.
On 13 March 1947 the U.S. made an agreement with the French to the effect that roughly 450,000 German prisoners would be released, at a rate of 20,000 a month. This number included in addition to the prisoners handed over to them by the U.S. also the roughly 200,000 prisoners the French had themselves captured.
In retaliation for acts of resistance French occupation forces expelled more than 25,000 civilians from their homes. Some of these civilians were subsequently forced to clear minefields in Alsace
Alsace
Alsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...
.
United Kingdom
In 1946 the UK had more than 400,000 prisoners, many had been transferred from POW camps in the U.S. and Canada. Many of these were used as forced labour, as a form of "reparations".The two main reasons for their internment were political re-education (Wilton Park
Wilton Park
Wilton Park is an executive agency of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It is a non-profit-making organisation holding discussions on global security and prosperity....
), and for non-officers employment as agricultural and other labour. In 1946 a fifth of all agricultural work in the UK was performed by German prisoners.
An emotional and public debate ensued in the UK, where words such as "slaves", "slave labour" and "forced labour" were increasingly used in the media and in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. In 1947 the Ministry of Agriculture argued against rapid repatriation of working German prisoners, since by then they made up 25 percent of the land workforce, and they wanted to use them also in 1948. Faced with political difficulties in using volunteer foreign labour a compromise solution was suggested by the ministry of agriculture, German prisoners were to be allowed to remain in Britain as free men. Following disputes about how many former prisoners of war would be permitted to remain voluntarily in Britain and whether they would first have to return briefly to Germany before being allowed to officially migrate to Britain, by the end of 1947 about 250,000 of the prisoners of war were repatriated, and the last repatriations took place in November 1948. About 24,000 chose to remain voluntarily in Britain.
Norway
In Norway the last available casualty record, from August 29, 1945, shows that by that time a total of 275 German soldiers had been killed while clearing mines, while an additional 392 had been maimed. German protests that forcing POWs to clear mines was against international law, article 32 of the Geneva conventions, were rejected with the assertion that the Germans were not POW's; they were disarmed forces who had surrendered unconditionally ("avvæpnede styrker som hadde overgitt seg betingelsesløst"). Mine clearance reports received by the Allied Forces Head Quarter state: June 21, 1945; 199 dead and 163 wounded Germans; 3 Norwegians and 4 British wounded. The last registration, from August 29, 1945 lists 392 wounded and 275 dead Germans. Mine clearance was then for unknown reasons halted for close to a year before recommencing under better conditions during June–September 1946. This time many volunteered thanks to good pay, and death rates were much lower, possibly in part thanks to a deal permitting them medical treatment at Norwegian hospitals.United States
The United States transferred prisoners for forced labor to both the UK and France (which received 740,000 from the US).For prisoners in the U.S. repatriation was also delayed for harvest reasons.
Civilians aged 14 – 65 in the U.S. occupation zone of Germany were also registered for compulsory labor, under threat of prison and withdrawal of ration cards.
Conclusion
Most captives of the Americans and the British were released by the end of 1948, and most of those in French captivity were released by the end of 1949.Compensation to German prisoners of war used as forced labor after the war is according to the office of public administration (part of Federal Ministry of the Interior
Federal Ministry of the Interior (Germany)
The Federal Ministry of the Interior is a ministry of the German federal government. Its main office is in Berlin, with a secondary seat in Bonn. The current minister of the interior is Dr...
) not possible to claim in Germany, the possibility was removed by the statute of limitations already on September 29, 1978.
Nuremberg trials
Judge Robert H. JacksonRobert H. Jackson
Robert Houghwout Jackson was United States Attorney General and an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court . He was also the chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials...
, Chief US prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
in a letter discussing the potential weaknesses of the trial, in October 1945 told US President Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...
that the Allies themselves:
"have done or are doing some of the very things we are prosecuting the Germans for. The French are so violating the Geneva Convention in the treatment of prisoners of war that our command is taking back prisoners sent to them. We are prosecuting plunder and our Allies are practicing it. We say aggressive war is a crime and one of our allies asserts sovereignty over the Baltic States based on no title except conquest."
Under the Nuremberg Principles
Nuremberg Principles
The Nuremberg principles were a set of guidelines for determining what constitutes a war crime. The document was created by the International Law Commission of the United Nations to codify the legal principles underlying the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi party members following World War II.- Principle...
some of the crimes specified were:
- ill-treatment or deportation of slave labor or for any other purpose of the civilian population of or in occupied territory;
- murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population.
See also
- American food policy in occupied GermanyAmerican food policy in occupied GermanyAmerican food policy in occupied Germany refers to the food supply policies enacted by the U.S., and to some extent its dependent Allies, in the western occupation zones of Germany in the first two years of the ten-year occupation of Western Germany following World War II.Food relief shipments to...
- Industrial plans for GermanyIndustrial plans for GermanyThe Industrial plans for Germany were designs the Allies considered imposing on Germany in the aftermath of World War II to reduce and manage Germany's industrial capacity.-Background:...
- Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future"Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future"The Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future" , is a German Federal organisation with the purpose of making financial compensation available "to former forced laborers and to those affected by other injustices from the National Socialist period"...
- Reparations Agreement between Israel and West GermanyReparations Agreement between Israel and West GermanyThe Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany was signed on September 10, 1952, and entered in force on March 27, 1953...
Further reading
- Michael Foley, "Prisoners of the British", 2009 ISBN 978-1904408499
- Sullivan, Matthew Barry, "Thresholds of Peace. Four hundred thousand German prisoners and the people of Britain, 1944-1948", Hamish Hamilton, London 1979
External links
- Ruhs, Florian: Foreign Workers in the Second World War. The Ordeal of Slovenians in Germany., in: aventinus nova Nr. 32 [29.05.2011]
- Victor GollanczVictor GollanczSir Victor Gollancz was a British publisher, socialist, and humanitarian.-Early life:Born in Maida Vale, London, he was the son of a wholesale jeweller and nephew of Rabbi Professor Sir Hermann Gollancz and Professor Sir Israel Gollancz; after being educated at St Paul's School, London and taking...
, "Germany Revisited", London Victor Gollancz LTD, 1947 - France's Deadly Mine-Clearing Missions
- Transcripts of UK War Cabinet discussions Provided by The National Archives. The meetings of May 18, 1945, and June 11, 1945 discuss the provisions made for slave labor in the Yalta protocol, and the value to be extracted from the workers.
- Report on Germany by former US President Herbert HooverHerbert HooverHerbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was originally a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business...
, February 1947 - Excerpt from Norwegian documentary on mine clearing According to narrator and text prisoners were killed by blinds when the British guards forced them to walk over cleared fields.