Izvorni znanstveni članak
Nazi Germany and the Manpower of Europe: (A Contribution to the Knowledge of Labour Migration in the 1940–1945 Period)
Branimir Banović
; Institut za migracije i narodnosti, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Sažetak
The fact that Germany could not enter a long-term world war having at its dis¬posal but its own economic potentialities, has already been known. For this reason it also worked out in detail a system of general economic exploitation, which it realized according to the previously fixed plans. Within the framework of this system, besides direct or indirect pillage of material goods, as also besides political, social, cultural and biological devastations among peoples of the occupied Europe, the Nazis, according to their economic policy, deprived these territories first of the qualified and then of the unskilled manpower. By such measures, the Nazi regime gained double profits because the manpower of the occupied territories represented on the one hand a substitute for its own manpower, the number of which decreased owing to the ever growing demands for war mobilisations, and the intensified pressure of the allied forces on all fronts, while on the other hand the Nazi Germany also realized a planned depopulation in predetermined areas, aiming to Germanize the occupied countries by immigration of the German people.
A great need for native population in Germany, determined by the course of the war, was at the same time a regulator of a larger or smaller influx of manpower from Europe to the Reich.
By such method, there were employed in Germany during the war years 8,600,000 people (6,400,000 civilians and 2,200,000 prisoners of war). This estimate represents an approximate maximum for the whole war period, and was obtained on the basis of evaluations by the allies and from German sources, made in January 1944. That means that the number of labour employed in Germany was very high and exceeded the total population of Hungary at that time. In respect to the number of inhabitants of Germany it amounted to 14% of the entire population. Compared to the number of active population, the manpower from abroad, including prisoners of war, makes 35% of all the employed in the Reich.
As for Yugoslavia, and the draining of manpower from it, Germany and their occupational forces, namely, their Quisling regimes, applied more or less the same methods and economic and political measures adapted to specific circumstances in Yugoslavia.
In the course of World War II the Germans brought 545,890 (3.4% of the entire population). Thus the area of the Independent State of Croatia participated in the expor-tation of manpower from Yugoslavia with 44%, Serbia with 50%, and Slovenia with 6%. Taking into account the number of inhabitants of Yugoslav territories, Serbia was the first with 4.4% of the total population, Independent State of Croatia the second with 3.4%, Slovenia the third with 2.8%, and so on. That means that exportation of inhabitants was one of the very important elements by which the occupiers, aided by their Quisling regimes, performed economic exploitation and biological devastation of the Yugoslav peoples.
Ključne riječi
manpower; World War II; the Reich; Europe
Hrčak ID:
128916
URI
Datum izdavanja:
30.9.1985.
Posjeta: 1.969 *