Forced Labor under National Socialism

The first section looks at developments in Germany from the Nazi's assumption of power in 1933 to the beginning of World War II in 1939. The racial and ideological roots of national socialist forced labor are demonstrated. On the one hand, work was considered an "honorary service to the German people," while on the other, it was also used to degrade and exclude people considered inferior by the Nazis. Forced labor was thus a central element of the racist social order during National Socialism and much more than merely a peripheral phenomenon of the war.

Policies propagated between 1933 and 1939 in Germany, codified to some extent as law, and implemented with the help of a broad swath of society formed the starting point for the subsequent radicalization of forced labor in occupied Europe—and its seamless integration into the Nazi extermination policies. Large portions of Europe were subjugated by Nazi Germany during World War II. The occupiers viewed the local work force as the spoils of war.

With the failure of the German Blitzkrieg strategy in the Soviet Union, the lack of workers in the German Reich became an increasingly urgent problem. For this reason Germany deported an increasing number of workers into the Reich from 1942 onward. Towards the end of the war, they made up almost half of the farm workers, a third of the laborers in the defense industry and in construction, and a quarter of the mine workers. Forced laborers were also an everyday part of work in private households and in the trades. Some 2.5 million people, above all Soviet prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates, did not survive forced labor in the German Reich.

World War II ended in Europe on May 8, 1945, with the unconditional surrender of the German Wehrmacht. Millions of forced laborers were thus free. The fourth segment of the exhibition addresses the immediate consequences of liberation and the first attempts at legal redress and recognition. The victims attempted to return to their home countries through different avenues or to emigrate; many had to spend years in camps in Germany as "displaced persons." In the first decades after the war, a willingness to confront the crime of forced labor and its consequences was lacking in both East and West German societies.

An innovative mural conveys the residual history of forced labor under National Socialism and, most of all, the reluctance to address the issue. The demands of former forced laborers that their fates be recognized and compensated largely fell on deaf ears in both West and East Germany. The dismissive attitude of most Germans was gradually countered beginning in the 1960s through historical research and an interest in local histories. Not until 60 years after the war was this injustice recognized by unified Germany and companies. For most of the victims, this acknowledgement came too late. The exhibition ends with video interviews of a number of former forced laborers, who describe their experiences as survivors. They are given the final word.