Role of Manpower of Prisoners of Nazi Concentration Camps in the Third Reich Economy

Abstract

From 1942, with the failure of the "Blitzkrieg", when the long confrontation of economy and military power between both fighting parts began, the most important problem of the Nazis economy was to fulfil the demand for manpower increasing from year to year. The most important kind of manpower foreseen to substitute the drafted German workers were foreign labourers and prisoners of war. Because earlier measures of labour recruitment were not satisfactory, in March 1942 Sauckel was appointed the Plenipotentiary General for the Utilization of Labour with the task to use reserves of the German manpower and to recruit such number of foreign workers and prisoners of war which was necessary to realize Speer's plans of development of the German economy of war. Although between May 1942 and May 1944 the total number of foreign labour and prisoners of war increased from 4.12 to 7.13 million, Germany did not achieve the prewar level of employment. At the beginning of 1944 there was in Ger- many a manpower lack of 4 million workers.