Ring of Steel : Germany and Austria-hungary at War, 1914-1918 (9780141924199) by Watson Alexander

Author:Watson, Alexander [Watson, Alexander]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141924199
Publisher: Penguin Books Uk Ltd
Published: 2014-07-09T00:00:00+00:00

FORCED LABOUR

The Third OHL failed in 1916 to shift the basis of Germany’s war effort from consent to control, but coercion nonetheless remained an important tool in economic mobilization. German workers might be intimidated into compliance by police, employers or the generals in charge of the country’s home districts. However, the harshest and most blatant compulsion on Reich soil targeted enemy subjects. It is rarely remembered today just how dependent Germany was on foreign labour during the First World War. By 1918, around a seventh of its labour force, 2.5 million people in total, came from abroad. Most were, in some sense, forced labourers. Some 1.5 million military prisoners of war made up the majority and could legally be put to non-war-related tasks. However, there were also very many civilians: hundreds of thousands of Russian-subject Polish seasonal labourers were detained on large agricultural estates; tens of thousands of Belgian civilians were forcibly brought to Germany to labour in its industry; and even among the many foreigners who did sign an employment contract, compulsion had often played some part in their decision. Yet strikingly and perhaps counter-intuitively given the Nazis’ extensive use of slave labour in the Second World War, the primary lesson of the 1914–18 conflict was that forced labour did not work terribly well. The more violent the compulsion, the more miserable and recalcitrant workers became, and the less was achieved.25

Before the war, the booming German economy had attracted much immigrant labour. There had been half a million foreigners working in agriculture and a further 700,000 in industry. When hostilities broke out, 350,000 Russian-subject Polish seasonal workers were caught on the wrong side of the border. At first, the priority was to keep those of military age from joining the Tsar’s army. All others were to be retained only for the root-crop harvest and then expelled. However, by October 1914, it had dawned on the Prussian Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture that these people would be crucial to the Reich’s farming and food supply in a long war, and they were consequently forbidden from returning home or leaving their jobs. Russian-subject Poles working in German industry were soon placed under similar restrictions. The home district generals accepted responsibility for enforcing discipline among these Poles. They were banned from striking or acting insubordinately and travel beyond their assigned locality was forbidden without prior permission from the general. To provide a semblance of legality for detaining people ineligible for military service, intense pressure was placed upon them to sign employment contracts ‘voluntarily’.26 Two points should be noted. First, in detaining these people, the German state demonstrated right from the start of hostilities that it was prepared to act ruthlessly and against the spirit of international law to benefit its war effort. Second, its treatment of what were regarded as uncultured easterners was different from citizens of ‘civilized’ western states. British women, for example, were permitted to return home at the start of the war, while their 4,000 military-aged men were

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