So I'm looking through my old university essays and I've decided to post some on the internet. Who knows, it might prove I do talk sense sometimes... Enjoy.
Q. In what ways, and with what outcomes, did racism affect the planning and running of economies during World War II?
A country’s wartime economy is an intensely complex entity. Considerations of armaments, provisions, and recruitment have to be factored in alongside the standards of life that civilian population expect. Trade factors and political commitments to allies weigh in on the economy also. German economists in the years 1939-1945 had the tremendously difficult job of keeping the country’s war machine running, and keeping its civilian population content and productive. Undoubtedly this was a tall order, but when we examine the uniqueness of the Third Reich, and account for the racial ideology, which existed at the very heart of National Socialism, it almost becomes impossible to embrace the advancement of both. As Adam Tooze writes,
“The demands of the war economy were paramount but they had to be reconciled with the requirements of ideology.”[1]
It is without any doubt that we can say that Hitler and his ministers main aim was to create a racially pure Greater Germany, based on ideas of the superior Aryan race, this being inclusive of Lebensraum expansion to the east. This is evident from early Nazi doctrines and legislations right up till the final statements in Nuremberg. What we have to answer is how far were the government willing to reserve their stance on treatment of these ‘racial impure’ persons in order to further the long-term goal of a racial pure society? Obviously Germany would need to win the war to realise its goal, but without help to its struggling economy this would never happen. I aim show that deep-seated racial ideology, which the Nazis encouraged from their inception, could not be overturned quickly enough to benefit the German economy when it needed it most.
In his essay, “Rational Means and Irrational Ends: Thoughts on the Technology of Racism in the Third Reich”, Beyerchen talks of the ‘technology of racism’. He defines this as technology, which exhausts all human possibilities by treating them purely as resources and not humans.[2] This definition without doubt applies to the treatment of slave and less than slave labourers in the Third Reich. Racism in practice in Germany, in Beyerchen’s description, is a combination of slavery and bureaucracy. It is where we frame ideas of humans in a biological manner, and create hierarchies and exclusions. This ultimately endorses a move to slave labour as it can be justified in terms of the predetermined hierarchies. When we combine this with the endeavour for efficiency, the result is ultimately corpses.[3]
It is important to remember that Nazi policy began five years before the outbreak of war in Europe. It didn’t require much effort after 1939 to put into place the actions that led to the ‘final solution’ because of this groundwork that had been laid down from April 1933 to September 1939. Key legislations are the banning of Jews from key jobs in Germany, which was expanded gradually to include all but the lowest jobs. The Nuremberg laws effectively branded Jews second-class citizens, and in April 1939, forced ghettoisation began, with curfews to follow. The Jews were discriminated against, de-humanized, isolated, and eliminated from society.[4] This hatred for the Jews was installed into the SS, the Gestapo, the SA and all other Nazi agencies. They were encouraged and often rewarded for displaying these tendencies, so it should come as no great surprise that they were reluctant to give them up, as we shall see later. These pre-war racial policies were largely economically beneficial to Germany. The removal of Jews from the workplace saw the creation of many jobs for unemployed German workers. The forced seizure of Jewish assets gave the Nazi war fund a huge boost. And the forced emigration of vast numbers of Jews meant less of a population for the economy to deal with. Perhaps the only downside, from a National Socialist view, is the loss of several thousand technicians, scientists and other skilled workers.
Nazi ideology tells us that any race other than the Aryan, especially Jews and Slavs, were to be regarded as inferior. So what was to become of these peoples? We know ultimately what did happen, but was this the goal from the start? Effectively, yes. As Michael Thad Allen points out, pre 1942 concentration camps were predominantly to dehumanise prisoners.[5] Meaningless tasks such as digging trenches only for the dug up dirt to be tipped back in back up this claim. Work was an effective form of keeping prisoners busy, and keeping them subdued. The Kommandant, under the command of Eicke, used labour to crush the will of concentration camp inmates, and display to them the might of National Socialism. In fact, actually production took so much of a second place to demoralisation in these early years, that prisoners who worked hard but still kept high spirits were treated worse than those who were unproductive but broken.[6] In the early years of the war 1939-1941, racial policies meant that Jews, Poles, Slavs, Gypsies and other lesser races usually ended up in concentration camps or ghettos. They were not alone in the camps; political prisoners, Prisoners of War and foreign civilians joined them. However concentration camp inmates numbered at only 60,000 peoples in early 1941.[7] If we discount the Poles that resided in Polish ghettos under the supervision of the SS from 1940 onwards, it still appears that concentration camp numbers seem low, given how many peoples of lesser race came under Nazi control. What we can infer is that many never made it to the camps, or never lasted long. Either shot on capture or so badly lacking malnutrition that death came quickly. From their inception, the Kommandant were directly responsible for overseeing concentration camp labour. This was an excuse to put into practice the racial ideology that National Socialism demanded of them. As stated above production was second to dehumanisation and hence levels of actually production were extremely low.[8] If exploitation of racially impure persons for the benefit of the German economy in the early years of the war, then it was very poorly carried out. Given Nazi efficiency in most other aspects of society this seems unlikely. A more plausible scenario is that pre 1942 concentration camps were neither explicitly death camps, as witness in the dying days of the war, nor were they work camps as seen after 1942. They severed a purpose and that purpose was mainly to keep undesirables out of the way, work and death were merely things that happened.
Spoerer and Fleischhacker in their essay, “Forced Labourers in Nazi Germany: Categories, Numbers and Survivors”, examine the phenomenon of foreign labour in the Third Reich. They break down foreign labourers into four distinct categories. Unsurprisingly these categories assume a ranking scale based on the Nazi scale of racial purity. At the top were privileged labourers, who were mostly workers from German allies, i.e. Italians, who could voice opinions and leave when they liked. Secondly were forced labours, who were from Western territories, and could voice opinions but could not leave. Thirdly were slave labours, most notably Slavic peoples, who had no voice and could not leave. And lastly were what Spoerer and Fleischhacker label less than slave labourers who had no rights, no privileges and no way out. This category was almost exclusively reserved for Jews and Soviet POWs.[9] It is estimated that around ten to fifteen million foreign workers contributed to the German economy during World War Two.[10] Spoerer and Fleischhacker state that,
“Only the German economy’s urgent need of man-power retarded their [Jews and Gypsies] immediate and complete destruction.”[11]
However, this by no means illustrates that racism did not affect the lives of foreign workers, particularly slaves and less than slaves. Death rates of forced labours compared with that of German workers show the effect of the deplorable work conditions foreigners faced. Westerners faced a death rate twice that of the German, and Eastern workers had a death rate six to seven times the German rate. And less than slave labourers had a death rate as high as three figures per thousand. [12] These figures stress the racial attitudes present within the German breakdown, and provisions for, labour forces.
By 1942, it was clear that German resources were stretched. Armaments were in short supply and soldiers to use them were also in short supply. It is around this time that Nazi ministers saw the need to utilise the full economic value of concentration camps. Himmler instructed Pohl to convert his concentration camps into labour camps to be used for armaments. This required not only structural change but ideological change. As I have gone to great lengths to show, the prevailing attitude towards inmates was one of contempt and a policy of brutality prevailed. The Kommandant effectively saw this command as an undermining of these.[13] Mortality rates as high as 8-11% per month were no longer acceptable from an economic stance. The ultimate goal of Pohl’s revamped concentration camp was productivity not death. He believed that unnecessary beating, constant interruptions, and severe malnutrition were detrimental to this aim. This does not mean that he lacked any of the traditional Nazi traits, indeed he felt that discipline, force and control were all necessary to keep production high. But initially there was little success, the low production rates and lack of administration had become standard and nothing was seen wrong by those at the bottom.[14] A further overhaul of the system came later in 1942, when Maurer was appointed head of the WVHA and in control of concentration camp inmates. He was fully committed to the effectiveness of concentration camps and raised rates of production. He installed better means of administration and categorised inmates in a more sensible manner. Inmates were now categorised in accordance with their medical condition, and ability to work. Maurer also stressed the importance of camp doctors to keep stock of inmates at a healthy level.[15] However despite these changes racism and eugenics still persisted in everyday life. In categorising inmates, those of lesser races would automatically be branded unfit for work, despite their physical condition. Those who died due to work were given the cause of death as ‘poor human material’. This meant no reviews of conditions ever got carried out, as the deaths of inmates were accepted based on these racial views. The culture of racism existed in camps and prisoners were merely used as tools of production and when their use was done they were disposed of.[16]
An explicit part of Hitler’s ultimate goal for Germany involved a policy of Lebensraum. This ‘living space’ was to be gained to the east, at the expense of the vast majority of the native populations, 80-85% in Poland, 64% in Ukraine and 75% in Soviet Russia. Only those capable of work were of any real use to Germany.[17] However what Himmler, and the SS soon realised was that in order to take full advantage of newly acquired lands, they would need people to build and work the infrastructures needed. This is where the German strategy, Generalplan Ost was intended to operate. Konrad Meyer in July 1941 suggested the use of Polish slave labour to begin construction programmes for the benefit of Germany. This was reinforced by Himmler, who in 1942 stated,
“if we do not fill our camps with [worker] slaves… who will build our cities, our villages,…”[18]
The total slave labourers needed for Generalplan Ost was to be a minimum of 175,000, comprised of Jews, Slavs and Soviet POWs. This would result in an estimated saving of 40% in labour costs.[19] These savings are similar to others right across Germany where slave labour was used. And so began the instrumentalisation of concentration camps as sources of slave labour. Implicit in this plan was the death of hundreds of thousands through ‘natural wastage’. The industrialised system of concentration camps became one of the largest economic enterprises in Germany, claims Beyerchen.[20] Auschwitz was turned into a combination of industrialised slave labour through I G Farben chemical plant and an industrialised death camp. Life expectancy for an inmate at Auschwitz was three to four months.[21] By 1944 demand for labour was so high that the SS could no longer afford to pick and choose workers based on racial status. It was at this stage that the majority of slave labour was directed towards munitions and weapons. Newly arriving concentration camp inmates were sent straight to work in factories, and remained there until the death marches of late 1944, early 1945.[22]
Towards the end of the war there was a desperate struggle for survival in Germany. This is most notably seen in the development and proposals for so-called ‘wonder weapons’, which would help turn the war around. There was a determination of the German military to persist and prevail, at the expense of who ever got in the way. These military projects for development of weapons, echoed National Socialist ideology, in that it was the ‘racial inferior’ slaves who were to construct them.[23] Albrecht reminds us that the National Socialist technology that came out of the period 1941-1945 has to be judged not just by what it was, but also by how it was produced. As he writes,
“The sole distinctly National Socialist feature in the missile programme was the widespread use of concentration camp slave labour.”[24]
One such project that was oversaw by Kammler, was the construction of the V2 rocket, in underground facilities. Here there is some evidence of economic considerations being applied. Skilled slave workers were generally treated better, due to their essential nature to the project. Unskilled workers were generally worked to exhaustion.[25]
Another important aspect that racism affected in relation to the German economy was the supply of food. After being starved to defeat in 1918, the Nazis were determined not to allow this to happen again. German plans for the conquest of the USSR involved the starvation of millions of native Slavs and Jews. The food supplies were to be redirected for use in Germany.[26] Even when prisoners were used as slave labour their food rations were fatally low so as to free more food for the German peoples. Jewish prisoners in the USSR received only 420 calories a day.[27] It is in this aspect that the German economy gained from purely racist actions. Had no racial ideology existed, then slave labourers would have received more food, at a greater cost to the German food supplies.
We have looked at how the Third Reich implemented the Nazi regimes racist ideologies and what the outcomes of these were. We have shown that racial hierarchies provided justification for millions of peoples to be put to work as slaves. We have seen how these same hierarchies justified diverting food to more deserving people. We have shown how technology was advanced by means of disposable slave labour. Certainly the Nazis combined mass production with serial destruction of life.[28] The outcomes of these policies speak for themselves. Concentration camp inmates, working Jews and less than slave labourers had survival rates of approximately 31%, 55% and 41% respectively. When we compare this with the survival rates of POWs, and forced labourers, 70% and 98% respectively, we can see a clear distinction between economic exploitation and ideologically motivated genocide.[29] If we overlook those killed purely on racial grounds, we still find that that 2.5 million Jews, Soviet POWs and other lesser races died as a direct result of ‘death through work’[30] If we were to look at this in a cold and calculated manner, as did top SS officers from 1942 onwards, we have to conclude that the work camps and concentration camps were a catastrophic waste of labour resources. The years 1939 to 1945 are full of contradictions, but none seems so clear that the fact that German industry desperately needed masses of workers but the SS and Wehrmacht were purposely killing millions of fit and healthy workers. The Third Reich could not apparently resolve its economic needs with its racial ideology.[31]
To go back to our original aim, I believe I have shown that Nazi racial ideology could not be overthrown simply because economic needs demanded so. In fact no more is the deep-seated racial hatred evident that in the fact that even after Himmler ordered a stop to the mass killings, they still continued right to the very end.[32] As Tooze observes, too much had been vested in the creation of a racially pure society for it to be abandoned, even temporarily.[33] It seems as though two levels of Nazi thinking towards concentration camps existed. Top levels wanted productivity maxed with annihilation the consequence, whilst low-level SS men wanted annihilation with work as the means.[34] Whatever the aims, the results were the same, corpses. The effects to the German economy, ultimately, irrelevant. [1] Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, pg. 528
[2] Alan Beyerchen, “Rational Means and Irrational Ends: Thoughts on the Technology of Racism in the Third Reich”, Central European History 30, pg. 395
[3] Beyerchen, “Rational Means and Irrational Ends: Thoughts on the Technology of Racism in the Third Reich”, pp. 396-397
[4] Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wipperman, The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945, pg. 96
[5] Michael Thad Allen, “The Banality of Evil Reconsidered: SS Mid-Level Managers of Extermination through Work”, Central European History 30, pg. 261
[6] Allen, “The Banality of Evil Reconsidered: SS Mid-Level Managers of Extermination through Work”, pg. 265
[7] Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, pg. 473
[8] Allen, “The Banality of Evil Reconsidered: SS Mid-Level Managers of Extermination through Work”, pg. 266
[9] Mark Spoerer and Jochen Fleischhacker, “Forced Labourers in Nazi Germany: Categories, Numbers and Survivors”, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 33, pg. 174
[10] Spoerer and Fleischhacker, “Forced Labourers in Nazi Germany: Categories, Numbers and Survivors”, pg. 171
[11] Spoerer and Fleischhacker, “Forced Labourers in Nazi Germany: Categories, Numbers and Survivors”, pg. 171
[12] Spoerer and Fleischhacker, “Forced Labourers in Nazi Germany: Categories, Numbers and Survivors”, pg. 184
[13] Allen, “The Banality of Evil Reconsidered: SS Mid-Level Managers of Extermination through Work”, pg. 261
[14] Allen, “The Banality of Evil Reconsidered: SS Mid-Level Managers of Extermination through Work”, pp. 270-274
[15] Allen, “The Banality of Evil Reconsidered: SS Mid-Level Managers of Extermination through Work”, pp. 275-84
[16] Allen, “The Banality of Evil Reconsidered: SS Mid-Level Managers of Extermination through Work”, pp. 282-284
[17] Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, pg. 467
[18] Henriech Himmler, quoted in Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, pg. 473
[19] Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, pg. 473
[20] Beyerchen, “Rational Means and Irrational Ends: Thoughts on the Technology of Racism in the Third Reich”, pg. 401
[21] Spoerer and Fleischhacker, “Forced Labourers in Nazi Germany: Categories, Numbers and Survivors”, pg. 184
[22] Spoerer and Fleischhacker, “Forced Labourers in Nazi Germany: Categories, Numbers and Survivors”, pg. 195
[23] Ulirch Albrecht, “Military Technology and National Socialist Ideology”, in Walker and Renneberg, eds., Science, Technology and National Socialism, pg. 88
[24] Albrecht, “Military Technology and National Socialist Ideology”, pg. 98
[25] Allen, “The Banality of Evil Reconsidered: SS Mid-Level Managers of Extermination through Work”, pp. 292-293
[26] Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, pp. 477-480
[27] Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, pg. 482
[28] Albrecht, “Military Technology and National Socialist Ideology”, pg. 95
[29] Spoerer and Fleischhacker, “Forced Labourers in Nazi Germany: Categories, Numbers and Survivors”, pg. 203
[30] Spoerer and Fleischhacker, “Forced Labourers in Nazi Germany: Categories, Numbers and Survivors”, pg. 201
[31] Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, pg. 520
[32] Beyerchen, “Rational Means and Irrational Ends: Thoughts on the Technology of Racism in the Third Reich”, pg. 401
[33] Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, pg. 528
[34] Spoerer and Fleischhacker, “Forced Labourers in Nazi Germany: Categories, Numbers and Survivors”, pg. 203
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