ABSTRACT
From the very beginning of the war foreign workers were employed in large numbers to make up for Germans who had been drafted into the armed forces or who were employed in the armaments industries. The numbers were so great that Dr Walter Strothfang, a senior official in the Ministry of Labour, warned that foreigners were soon likely to monopolise certain jobs, creating what he felt to be a highly dangerous situation. As early as the end of 1940 half the agricultural workers in Germany were foreigners. A year later Germany’s armaments industry was dependent on foreign workers and prisoners of war. By the autumn of 1944 there were almost 8 million foreign workers in Germany. Of these about 2 million were prisoners of war. 2.8 million came from the Soviet Union, 1.7 million from Poland, 1.3 million from France and 600,000 from Italy. In addition to these 7.7 million foreign workers there were 650,000 concentration camp inmates, mainly Jews, who worked in the armaments industry. About half of the Polish and Soviet workers were women and their average age was 20. By this time about one quarter of the industrial workers in Germany were foreigners.
