Forced Labour in the Third Reich: A Society-Wide Crime. A Conversation with Katja Makhotina and Christine Glauning

Übersetzung: Gegensatz Translation Collective

LaG: How much research exists on forced labour during the Third Reich? What is currently being discussed in the field, and where are there still gaps in knowledge?

Christine Glauning: Over the last two decades, there have been a large number of quite varied studies, often dealing with local history. Forced labour is now considered one of the better-researched aspects of Nazi history, yet numerous gaps remain. There has been a lack of comparative studies into overarching issues, such as power relations and the latitude afforded to those within companies who profited from this labour, but also on the ways in which forced labourers resisted and asserted themselves. Forced labour in areas occupied by the Nazis is an important topic, and one where we’re still lacking precise data. There are still more gaps, such as research into the large groups of civilian forced labourers who were transferred to concentration camps in the final phase of the war and who sometimes counted among the largest groups of inmates, or into the “Geschlossener Arbeitseinsatz” of German Jews (segregated labour deployment in the wider society, i.e. not inside concentration camps). As for the post-1945 period, we lack studies into the long-term social, psychological, and economic consequences for survivors and their families. How did the descendants of those who profited from forced labour deal with their family history? Large companies have allowed for research to be conducted into their involvement, but less attention has been given to how the majority of small and mid-sized companies also profited from forced labour. I also think it is important to consider how forced labour is tied up with other crimes, such as the murder of the sick and infirm: forced labourers who were unfit for work were killed as part of “Aktion T4” (a euthanasia programme), for example in Hadamar.

Katja Makhotina: If we take it as a given that there were hardly any companies in Germany that did not benefit from forced labour, then the scope of the crime is clear: everyday Germans either benefitted from it, or actively participated in it. Nevertheless, in both academic research and in the public consciousness there’s no recognition that forced labour was a crime committed by society as a whole, with many complicit. I would also like to mention two aspects regarding Eastern Europe. Firstly, from the 1990s onwards there was a strong shift toward oral history – interviews were conducted with those who had been brought to Germany for forced labour. They discussed being transported and doing hard labour in arms factories or on farms. From a German perspective, this is often trivialised: “Natasha didn’t have it so bad here.” But that is far from the truth. More than 50 percent of those transported were young women or girls. Organisations such as Memorial, as well as Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future, were able to preserve these testimonies. These sources are invaluable, but they have their limits. Those who perished left no testimony, including for example the women who died during forced abortions or the over 55,000 newborns killed while in the ‘care’ of “Ausländerkinder-Pflegestätten” (Nazi birthing centres for foreign workers).

The second aspect is a new approach. People tend to assume that the experience of violence is passed onto subsequent generations. In contemporary Germany, which is a society shaped by immigration, there are those with links to Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, and Russia for whom this experience is still present. But we should also ask: What are the current asymmetrical relations between the German majority population and people with Eastern European backgrounds? Is there still persistent colonial racism – by which I mean anti-Slavism?

Christine Glauning: I would like to explore the issue of forced labour in the Third Reich as a crime committed by society as a whole. Basically, the entire “Volksgemeinschaft” (national community) profited from it: thanks to the massive amounts of forced labour in agriculture, provisions were largely secure throughout the war, meaning that forced labour contributed to stabilising the Nazi dictatorship. Moreover, all imperial ministries, all municipal administrations and special departments were involved in forced labour – in organising, surveilling, and punishing forced labourers. Forced labourers were easy to spot, and were a part of everyday life for the German population. According to estimates from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, there were up to 42,500 camps and ghettos in the areas under Nazi control. The sheer extent of this system is still not very well known.

Katja Makhotina: If we are talking about gaps in research, I would also like to mention the so-called Entbindungsbaracken (birthing barracks). In 1943, Himmler decreed that pregnant forced labourers should no longer be returned to their home countries and would instead be forced to have abortions up until the fifth month of pregnancy. Women died in the birthing barracks due to the inhumane conditions of these abortions. There were dedicated wards in university hospitals where doctors would carry out experimental abortions. For these doctors, women from Eastern Europe were essentially guinea pigs. We are yet to fully understand or come to terms with this ignominious chapter in German medical history.

Christine Glauning: I’m glad you brought this up, because it’s something I have encountered repeatedly in recent years. In a university hospital in Graz, Austria, the head doctor attempted to improve his notoriously meagre specialist skills by no longer working with corpses and instead experimenting on Soviet women who had been sent there for abortions. He severely mutilated them. If we’re talking specifically about the situation for women, there was also the special kind of camp known as the “Bordellbaracken” (brothel barracks), in which civilian forced labourers were forced into sex work. There has already been research into concentration camp brothels, but we still know very little about those for civilian forced labourers.

LaG: Is there a particular structure to our knowledge of forced labour in the Third Reich? Have victims’ perspectives been adequately included? Meanwhile, are we still a little in the dark about the perpetrators, profiteers, and bystanders?

Katja Makhotina: This is linked to the idea that it was a crime committed by society as a whole. Being reminded that one’s forebears participated in the violence of the Nazi regime is painful and uncomfortable. Engaging critically with this historical misdeed should not be something that only takes place in collective memory, but individuals are reluctant to address it themselves. So historians research the sites of violence and the participation of various authorities, but who’s actually reading their books with all those footnotes?

Christine Glauning: While putting together our first permanent exhibition at the Documentation Centre, Forced Labour in the Daily Round 1938–1945, we asked ourselves: how should we handle the perpetrator–victim dichotomy? There were too many groups of different participants, so we decided to talk about the different people involved, who had differing responsibilities and who had differing degrees of latitude in their actions: a camp director, or the human resources manager at Siemens; the neighbour who had interactions with a forced labourer; the foreman at a small company; or the ethnomusicologist who made recordings of forced labourers singing in camps.

LaG: Katja Makhotina, you have spoken of a “politics of forgetting” in Germany. How can we explain the long silence? What brought about the modern reckoning with forced labour in the Third Reich, and what initiatives were needed in order to carry out remembrance work?

Katja Makhotina: The „politics of forgetting“ is a concept that we need to break down. I think there are two reasons for it: first, the Cold War and anti-communist discourse in West Germany – the enemy was still in the East and was not necessarily seen as the victim of “our” violence. Second, the degree of individual participation and responsibility was so extraordinarily high. During the negotiations on German reunification, the West German government dismissed forced labour during the Third Reich as just another cost of war, and did not want to pay compensation for it. It argued that the Soviet Union had renounced any claim to reparations in 1953. Over the course of the negotiations, thousands of people wrote letters to the German diplomatic representatives in their own countries, describing their experiences as forced labourers and their desires for reconciliation, and asking for their suffering to be recognised. Many victims were living in poverty or were old and infirm – they wrote in the hope of receiving support. Memorial gathered these letters together, but the requests fell on deaf ears. There was only a hardship provision that was established in 1992, for which one billion German marks were allocated.

Concentration camp memorial sites such as Sachsenhausen, Neuengamme, and Buchenwald introduced memorial initiatives. Beyond that, there was little desire to address the issue, save for the memorial site movement “Grabe, wo du stehst” (Dig Where You Stand), which arose in the late 1970s and 1980s. Teachers and clergy, on their own initiative, distanced themselves from the official German policy, seeking out survivors and writing them letters. The 1990s saw the first instance of victims being invited to visit Germany.

Christine Glauning: Forced labour was among the charges at the postwar Nuremberg trials, for which there were convictions. Fritz Sauckel, the General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment, was sentenced to death and hanged. But after that, the issue completely disappeared from postwar German history at all levels. It was never prosecuted in the German courts, as forced labour was not a criminal offence. There were very few convictions for crimes committed in the final stages of the war – you could be prosecuted for murder, but not for the use of forced labour in itself. Forced labour was excluded from the 1953 Bundesentschädigungsgesetz (Federal Compensation Act), meaning that individual compensation was too. The issue was forgotten about and pushed to the sidelines. The survivors returned to their home countries or emigrated; only a few remained in Germany. Some attempted to claim damages, but the German authorities rejected them on the grounds that forced labour was not an injustice of the Nazi regime, but rather “a measure taken to overcome labour shortages caused by the war”. It was only with the debate over compensation in the 1990s that there came a broader discussion about forced labour. At the end of the 1980s, the Berliner Geschichtswerkstatt (Berlin History Workshop) began examining forced labour in Berlin and sought to make contact with people in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine who had been forced labourers. They collected photos, documents, and letters, and conducted interviews. Despite less-than-ideal circumstances, as it was done on a voluntary basis, the work was highly professional. Nevertheless, the processes of companies dealing with their history, and the later efforts of the federal government and the Stiftungsinitiative der deutschen Wirtschaft (German Economy Foundation Initiative), only came about as a result of external pressure.

Katja Makhotina: The pioneers of remembrance work into forced labour often complained that they were accused of being traitors to their community, literally fouling their own nests. Obstacles were placed in their way. Municipal legislatures often turned a deaf ear to initiatives for memorial sites. And even today, if perpetrators are personally named on memorial stones, their descendants protest. For example, the grandchild of a former Nazi mayor who had ordered Polish and Ukrainian forced labourers to be hanged comes and says: “Get rid of that. I don’t want my grandfather’s name here.” These initiatives are still encountering resistance, even in 2026.

Christine Glauning: Even today, obstacles are placed in the way of individual researchers: they are denied access to municipal archives, or only part of the collection is made available, with the excuse that everything was destroyed in the war.

LaG: How would you currently describe public awareness of forced labour during the Third Reich?

Christine Glauning: A recurrent observation from everyday life here at the Nazi Forced Labour Documentation Centre is that visitors have quite limited prior knowledge. They continue to be astonished at the qualitative and quantitative dimensions of forced labour, the fact that every company profited from it, and the number of both camps and victims. We have many school classes visit, but there is not enough focus on forced labour in the curriculum. It is up to individual teachers whether or not their pupils visit a concentration camp, as they have for the last twenty years, or whether they visit a forced labour site. Forced labour is often perceived as a marginal issue and its social significance during the Third Reich is not fully understood.

LaG: How is the issue remembered in Eastern Europe?

Katja Makhotina: I would start by saying that, in Eastern Europe today, the war isn’t some historical artefact but is a highly contemporary issue, because of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. How can we preserve what is currently being threatened by missile attacks and destruction? Many initiatives have been created in order to digitise and preserve archival documents about forced labour as well as the events of the war and the German occupation. In Ukraine, as well as in Russia and Belarus, the memory of World War II is exploited daily to build narratives of victims and aggressors. In Russia and Belarus, a new discourse of self-victimisation has started to subsume everything under the term genocide. But it is not meant in the sense of international law, it is used as an emotional battle cry. The remembrance of forced labour is distorted by a simplistic discourse that says “We were exploited as Europe’s slaves. The West is our eternal enemy.” Even back in Soviet times, the gulf between individual memory and a remembrance culture shaped by politics was not as large as it is today.

LaG: When it comes to educating people about forced labour during the Third Reich, what are the challenges?

Christine Glauning: Our visitors increasingly ask questions about contemporary wars and conflicts. They also make connections between forced labour and exploitation today, as well as the continuities regarding forms of racism and antisemitism. The challenge is to find appropriate answers to these questions without relativising or trivialising the crimes of Nazism. You cannot effectively engage with topics like these via guided tours. It takes time, space, and trained staff, especially given the diversity of our visitors.

Katja Makhotina: At the local level, the graves of forced labourers from Eastern Europe are often described as “Russians’ graves”. But the Soviet Union is not Russia, and for people from Ukraine who, since 2022, have fled to Germany due to the war, it is very important to stress that there are also graves of people from Ukraine there. What our German grandparents called the “Russlandfeldzug” (Russian Campaign), was a war of annihilation against the Soviet Union, which was a multinational state comprising many ethnicities. This means that we bear collective responsibility not only toward Russia but also toward all fifteen of the former Soviet republics. One need only think of the 300,000 prisoners of war from Kazakhstan. This kind of nuance can help us to move past the instrumentalisation of history for political purposes, as it presents details about specific, individual lives. This could work very well as a touring exhibition, presenting the issue not just in Berlin, Nuremberg, or Weimar but also further afield.