Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union
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Forced labor of German civilians in the Soviet Union was considered by the Soviet Union to be part of German war reparations for the damage inflicted by Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union during World War II.
Poland, France, the United Kingdom and the U.S. also made heavy use of Germans as forced labour.
Information about this was suppressed in the Soviet Bloc until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Before that, however, it was known in the West through statistics and recollections of the internees.
The use of German labor was analyzed by the Soviet government beginning in 1943, and the issue is present in the paperwork of the Yalta Conference, but the Potsdam Conference did not discuss it. In fact, the USSR began forcing labor from Germans in 1944.
The NKVD, the Soviet secret police, took the lead role via its department, Chief Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees' Affairs (Главное управление по делам военнопленных и интернированных, ГУПВИ, transliterated as GUPVI), established in 1939 to handle Polish POWs after the Soviet Invasion of Poland.
Stalin's secret Order 7161 (December 1944) made possible the internment of all adult Germans from Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia.
The later Order 7467 (February 3, 1945) called for the mobilization of able-bodied male Germans aged 17-50 from Upper Silesia and East Prissia, "to prevent terrorist acts and diversions" in the rear of active Soviet fronts. Those who served in the regular army or in Volkssturm were considered POWs and deported into NKVD POW camps. The rest had to form labour battalions to be interned into the Soviet Union for reconstruction works, primarily in the Ukrainian SSR and Byelorussian SSR. Implementation was under the control of the commanders of the corresponding Soviet Army Fronts, with further processing by the NKVD.
The first waves of internees came from Upper Silesia and East Prussia. In total, there were 155,262 internees from Germany. Together with the internees from Eastern Europe, the total number of internees by 1945 was about 267,000. They were assigned different status based on their geographical origin: those from Eastern Europe were classified as "mobilized internees," while those from Germany itself were "arrested internees".
The majority were placed within the European USSR. Over 75% worked within Ukraine (Donbass and its mining and metallurgical neighborhood) and 11% in the Urals.
Forced labor turned out to be inefficient and unprofitable. Repatriation started as early as 1945-1946. Notably, Romania refused to take back its former German citizens.
However, selective internment of skilled workers and engineers continued until 1949, when East German communists asked Stalin to discontinue the practice.
The reported death rate was 19% among "mobilized internees" and 39% among "arrested internees".
The third, most populous category of German forced labor was about 3.4 million German POWs left by the end of the war, see POW labor in the Soviet Union.
The last Germans were repatriated in 1956.
[edit] See also
- Zippe-type centrifuge
- Journey Back to Youth
- The Soviet Union was not alone in using the forced labor of Germans:
[edit] Further reading
- Not by Their Own Will
- Norman M. Naimark. The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949. Harvard University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-674-78405-7
[edit] References
- Павел Полян, Не по своей воле... (Pavel Polyan, Not by Their Own Will... A History and Geography of Forced Migrations in the USSR), ОГИ Мемориал, Moscow, 2001, ISBN 5-94282-007-4
- Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa./ Bearb. von T. Schieder. Bd. 1–5. Wolfenbattel, 1953–1961
- Die Deutschen Vertreibungsverluste. Bevolkerungsbilanzen fuer die deutschen Vertreibungsgebiete 1939/50. Wiesbaden, 1958
- Rhode G. Phasen und Formen der Massenzwangswanderungen in Europa. // Die Vertriebenen in Westdeutschland. Bd. 1. Kiel, 1959.
- Karner, Stefan, Im Archipel GUPVI. Kriegsgefangenschaft und Internierung in der Sowjetunion 1941-1956. Wien-München 1995.
- Sharkov, Anatoli, GUPVI Archipelago: Prisoners of War and Internees on the Territory of Belarus: 1944--1951(in Russian) (2003), Minsk, Belarus, ISBN 985-463-094-3
- Gerhard Reichling. Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen, Bonn 1995, ISBN 3-88557-046-7
- Ivan Chukhin, Interned Youth, a history of the NKVD Camp 517 for interned female Germans, Padozero, Karelia
