German Forced Labor in the Soviet Union

[EastPrussian]

There's bound to be those here who have some knowledge of German civilians who were taken from the eastern parts of Germany by the Soviets, and served as forced laborers in the Soviet Union.

My mother-in-law was taken (as was her husband) from Preussisch Holland in February 1945, and eventually found herself in the Ural Mountains working as a slave laborer, cutting down trees, working the harvests, making bricks, and so on, for 3 1/2 years. In Wikipedia it reports that something like 500,000 German civilians were taken into the Soviet Union, but approximately 200,000 did not return. My MiL reported that she was stuffed into a rail car with 100-200 others, and at the end of the trip there were only seven survivors in the car. Quite a loss! They didn't feed them much, and there was a lot of disease.

Of course, the Soviets were not doing this against any law: the Yalta agreement provided that the allied nations could take Germans for forced labor to help them repair their infrastructure (I suppose this is was considered a form of just compensation, since the Germans helped destroy so much infrastructure).

[henriquecassis]

Oh god.... not against the law?? Perhaps not against a perverse law..... the jews deportation was not against the law too...... why does everybody refuse thar allieds too comited war crimes? As the germans?

[Michate]

... why does everybody refuse thar allieds too comited war crimes? As the germans?

1. Because war crimes, at least when occuring on a massive or systematic scale, are often linked to the topic of financial reparations.
2. Because in most countries the fight against Nazi Germany served/serves as a historical justification for the type of regime in power (either "communism" or "liberal democracy") and therefore had/has to be presented in simplified "good vs. evil" terms.

[henriquecassis]

I agree....and because they won the war..... the strongest way of justifing!

[EastPrussian]

Oh god.... not against the law?? Perhaps not against a perverse law..... the jews deportation was not against the law too...... why does everybody refuse thar allieds too comited war crimes? As the germans?

Of course the Allies were not innocent little lambs. But all that was done by them was largely excesses of war (Dresden didn't NEED to be firebombed, for example).

As to what is lawful and what is not, you understand that there is a difference between doing something that was sanctioned under some form of law, and not by definition a crime against humanity? The "deportation" and annihilation of Europe's Jews (and others) may have been done under color of law (in the sense that someone in lawful authority ordered it), but it was by definition a crime against humanity, and hence no law at all from any civilized perspective. On the other hand, the "German labor" provision of the Yalta agreement was lawful to the extent that under international law since time immemorial the victors in a lawful war can dictate terms to the defeated. And depending upon the conditions at the end of the contest, those terms can vary significantly in their severity. The Yalta terms were not, on their face at least, crimes against humanity. Although I agree with General Patton's assessment of the "German labor" provision, by which he stated: "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."

At Yalta, Roosevelt and Churchill got a promise from Stalin that the border adjustments, the relocations and the use of German labor would be done in as humanitarian a fashion as possible. Well, maybe they thought that Stalin could be trusted, but that snake knew how to lie, and also knew that nobody would do anything about it. At least half the German civilians (women and old men) taken into the Soviet Union died there or on the way there -- my mother-in-law's experience was surely not unique. The German government's official numbers are that about 500,000 were taken there, but only about 300,000 returned. These numbers are almost certainly understated.

And THAT, not necessarily the requirement to provide labor for rebuilding, was the greatest war crime of the Allies. And it was a mistake of trust. They should have known that Stalin's promises were as empty as a hot-air balloon.

All that being said, however, the fact that the Western Allies did some things they shouldn't have done, outside of the Yalta agreement their war crimes were committed by individuals at the point of the spear, and not in obedience to any state directives, nor as part of any policy. And keep this strictly in mind, that if you want to stack up the Western Allies' acts up against the Soviets and the Nazis, it makes for a pitifully small stack. The Nazis raped, plundered, burned, and destroyed without letup and without regard for any rules of civilized conduct, ESPECIALLY in the Slavic countries, and when the Slavic countries (primarily the Soviets) came back through Germany in their turn, they handed out the same treatment that they had gotten.

It is a cold, hard fact that those whose troops conducted themselves like unprincipled vicious animals are in a very poor position to complain that they got treated harshly in their turn. The Western Allies treated their defeated enemies, both military and civilian, with great compassion compared to how the Nazis treated the Belgians, the Danish, the Dutch, and the French. Not that the German people, by and large, deserved the harsh treatment at the hands of the Soviets! My wife and her sisters suffered undeservedly at the hands of the Soviets, and I do not hold the Soviets blameless in the horrible things they did. But those who set the events in motion, i.e. Hitler and his fellow psychopaths and sociopaths, didn't care.

[Art]

In Wikipedia it reports that something like 500,000 German civilians were taken into the Soviet Union, but approximately 200,000 did not return.

Less, definitely less:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=111374
Interment of civilians in Germany was mostly a preventive security measure, labor employment was a bonus, but not the primary goal.

[David Thompson]

henriquecassis -- (1) If you want to discuss Soviet forced labor as a war crime, do it in the war crimes section of the forum.

(2) When and if you discuss war crimes, bring some sourced factual information with you to support your premises. Our readers aren't interested in polemics.

[henriquecassis]

Ok.

[ChiJohnAok]

My family on both sides comes from Romania (I was born and live in the United Stated).
My family was ethnic German living in the Transylvania region of Romania. They were citizens of Romania and their ancestors had been living in Transylvania for hundreds of years.

After the end of WW 2 my maternal grandmother, my paternal grandfather, and my paternal uncle were forcibly sent by order of the Soviet Union to go to the SU and worked in forced labor camps. They were there for approximately 2 1/2 to 3 years. I have read that approximately 75,000 ethnic Germans from Romania were sent to these labor camps. Approximately 15% of them died there.

My relatives were civilians. They did not serve in the military during the war. They were not members of the Nazi party.
I have read that the directive from the Soviets was that Romania needed to provide X number of ethnic Germans. Women between the ages of 18-35 and men between the ages of 16-40 were drafted into these labor camps.

My grandmother once told me that she was sent to the Stalino area. There she worked on farms, and coal mines among other things. They worked on very meager rations and were constantly hungry.

[Annelie]

They were there for approximately 2 1/2 to 3 years.

They were among the lucky ones. I have read some were slave labourers for 15 years.
There are a lot of books on the market where you can read about these people.

[randwick]

.
The new Soviet power abolished prison , nobody was to be imprisoned except when awaiting trial ,
instead , the convicts would be re-educated through labor , in government camps or Gosudarsk lager ( Gu-lag )
it follows an old czarist tradition of not using jails so much but transporting or exiling troublemakers
even now the new Russia kept the system of labor camps , but is nothing like the Stalinian system ,
the Pussy riot girls got send to a second category ,not within commuting distance of their families , sewing uniforms 8 hours a day ,
the inmates live in barracks and outside working hours and night curfew can circulate around the perimeter

there was five categories of camps , from those close to cities with not so harsh regimes increasing to instant death traps , in the middle of nowhere where survival was measured in days ,
a branch of the NKVD became responsible for running them , supplying Zekk labor for various projects , such as mining ,like the Kolima gold fields or the vorkuta arctic coal mines , forestry , usually in far North Siberia or infrastructure such as the White sea canal which was dug by ten of thousands of detained ......the death rate was unbelievable , mostly through neglect , some camps didn't exist , the zekks would be dumped in the middle of a snow field and those alive the next morning would start building their barracks and watch towers , sometimes there was so little food ,guards themselves would starve ,
it became a very substantial money earner for the penitential administration , due to the cheapness of the labor ,the great demand for manpower in remote location , and the need to use up the flood of condemned coming through the purges .

the Axis POW were integrated into the system ,with due respect to grade , German generals did OK ,lowly Kampfers got the Zekk treatment
as an added twist some of the most dangerous tasks , such as demining , clearing the sunken barges at Stalingrad and digging uranium in Kazakhstan
was given to them , survival was a throw of the dice , some camps were harsh , other were deadly , every prisonner , Russians or Germans was starving
it was not a policy ,the civilians were hungry too , there just wasn't any food for a long time .
quite frequently individual Guards would brutalize their charges ( more than usual ) in some form of personal revenge

As a matter of fact the odds of a German surviving a Soviet camp were not as bad as the odds of a Soviet prisoner surviving a German one

[David Thompson]

randwick -- You wrote:

As a matter of fact the odds of a German surviving a Soviet camp were not as bad as the odds of a Soviet prisoner surviving a German one

Proof, please.

[Knouterer]

I think that's a matter of fairly common knowledge. According to the authors of "Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg" (Vol. 10/2, p. 502-503), the closest thing the Germans have to an official history of the war, over 3 million members of Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS (all nationalities) were taken prisoner by the Soviets. The overall death rate for Germans in Soviet captivity is estimated at 30% for the whole period 1941-1956; for those captured in 1941-42 it was over 90%.
The death rate for Soviet prisoners in German hands was about twice that, and would have been higher still if the Germans hadn't needed them as slave workers.
Of course the Soviet camps were primitive in the extreme and the regime was often harsh, especially in the early years, but there was no deliberate policy to let German prisoners die, although it can be argued that many were worked to death; during the starvation period of 1946-47 for example the prisoners were no worse off for food than the cvilian population around them, according to their own testimony (as noted above). The high death rate was attributable to a number of factors including the general inefficiency of the Soviet system and the near total destruction of the country. It also seems the the death rate was often especially high just after capture: no medical care for the wounded, long forced marches without food or water, etc.

[randwick]

.
It seems that during Barbarossa , summer up to the winter of 41 the death rate of Soviet prisoners was the result of deliberate intent
.....liquidation by starvation .
this was not the Nazis , that was the Wehrmacht responsibility ,
some can be attributed to disorganisation but there was very little effort to remedy it or to take full responsibility for the appalling situation
and every indication it was a formal policy

per numbers it was a greater crime than the liquidation of Jews

a quick primer

http://www.gendercide.org/case_soviet.html
http://www.history.co.uk/study-topics/h ... ers-of-war
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_mis ... ers_of_war

[Knouterer]

Another good summary:
http://www.historynet.com/soviet-prison ... war-ii.htm