Historical story

The plunder of Europe. How did the occupied countries finance Hitler's war?

When World War II began, the Germans did not have the money to carry it out for more than a dozen or so months. However, it lasted five years. How was it possible? Hitler's imperial conquests in 1938–1944 were financed by ... the countries he occupied.

The economic policy of Hitler and his generals was simple. Conquests of neighboring countries were to enable the war to be waged for the following years. In the occupied territories, not only raw materials and materials unavailable in Germany were obtained, but also "living cash", taking over bank deposits, art collections and gold - for example, from Jews murdered in the camps.

The plunder of Europe by the Nazi Third Reich was systemic. The occupiers imposed on the conquered states a division of labor based on pre-war "specializations". The Czechs produced tanks and guns, the French - vehicles and planes, the Netherlands - radio equipment and ships, Poland and the occupied territories of the USSR provided food, coal and free labor in millionth quota. During the war, more than half of the unskilled workers in Germany were Poles and Russians!

Slaves of the Third Reich

The Germans conscripted nearly 18 million of their citizens into the army. Of course, not all of them fought at the front - many served in the rear, in the security and order services, e.g. guarding prisoners in concentration camps or working on warm jobs in the administration. That is why there were few men able to work in the Reich, so - to ensure the continuity of arms production - conscription to the army was limited.

Without foreign workers, it was impossible to continue the war. The place of German farmers and workers was therefore taken by people from the conquered European countries , in the first years of the war, mainly Poles, and later also Russians. Foreigners accounted for 42 percent. of the German workforce, with women and prisoners of war 25% each.

German propaganda poster from the recruitment point at Nowy Świat Street in Warsaw.

In total, by the end of 1944, almost 7.4 million workers from occupied European countries were brought to work in the Reich. Women from Poland and the territories of the USSR were employed in agriculture, men were sent to the most difficult and dangerous work in mines, steel mills, chemical plants, removing rubble or demining from cities.

500,000 concentration camp prisoners were sent to slave labor in enterprises at the services of the Third Reich. There could have been more slave laborers, but this was not allowed by the Nazi ideology. According to its assumptions, "subhumans", that is, Jews, were not worthy to produce weapons or ammunition for the great "Aryan warriors" of the Wehrmacht and the SS. The Germans preferred to kill them than to use them for work.

"Ballets" and awards

In addition to using the slave labor of the population of the conquered countries, the Third Reich robbed them economically. The Germans imposed drastic exchange rates and high occupation costs. The idea was simple - the occupied countries kept the entire German administration in a given area. This means that, for example, Poles placed the Gestapo and the SS on them, which then murdered them in street executions or sent them to camps.

Part of the money earned in this way was spent by the occupiers on the spot, e.g. Wehrmacht soldiers and U-boat sailors led a wonderful, lavish life in Italy or France, having fun at parties and balls, drinking liters of champagne, calvados and cognac . However, "ballets" and cognac were a trifle. A much larger pool of obtained funds flowed to the Reich and kept the economy on an ongoing basis, as well as topped up bank vaults and private accounts of the Führer's governors.

Hence, among others funds for huge financial and material rewards awarded by Hitler to himself and his best generals for brilliant victories in the first years of the war. Some of the money thus obtained was transferred to secret accounts in Swiss banks, where they may remain to this day. Jean Lopez in the well-documented book "World War II. Infographics ", which recently appeared in Poland, lists:

Exchange rates and unlimited access to money allow the Reich to import any amount of food, raw materials and semi-finished products:12% of steel, 20% of coal, as well as leather, sulfuric acid, grain, one third of iron and meat, half of aluminum . Food imports cause chronic malnutrition in Europe:daily calories are cut in half in France, 60% in Poland, 75% in the USSR and all this to ensure the Germans had food rations at a fixed level, as ordered by Hitler.

All the time (and on a large scale), the Germans also robbed works of art, personal items, patents, technologies and raw materials. The Reich special services forced the owners of enterprises to assign shares or simply sent them to concentration camps. In exceptional cases, they could even buy out of them, but - because the Nazi extermination industry operated quickly and efficiently - they failed.

Rationality lost to ideology

The plunder hit France the most, primarily because it had the most modern and extensive economy, as well as the largest money reserves. It can be assumed that it was of great importance that the Germans wanted to "get back" on the French for the repairs imposed on them after the defeat of World War I (by the way - they never paid them back).

Therefore, the occupiers carried out a systemic dismantling of enterprises, confiscation of machines and raw materials, and took over inventions and valuable technical devices. As a result of these measures, France's GDP was cut in half, and the society was starving, trading on the black market, or - out of poverty - engaging in prostitution. The defeat of France in 1940 allowed the Germans to wage war for the next three years, and then there were further conquests:incl. Yugoslavia and Greece and the USSR.

Documents of a forced laborer from the USSR

The military operations were largely financed thanks to the plunder of European Jewish property throughout the war. It is worth noting, however, that - even after losing everything - Jews could still serve the Reich by working for free in armament factories and manufacturing enterprises . Especially that in the final phase of the war, the Germans desperately lacked workers to work in production plants that produced newer and newer types of weapons and ammunition, e.g. V2 rockets, Messerschmitt Me 262 jet planes, Sturmgewehr 44 rifles or the latest PzKpfw VI B "Tiger II" tanks , known as the King Tigers.

However, even in the most difficult situation, the Third Reich did not reach for the Jews, because in the name of Nazi ideology they were included in the plan of complete elimination. Jean Lopez writes about it like this:

Harnessing them to work would benefit the Germans more than killing them, as would the 3 million Soviet POWs who died of starvation, who could increase Germany's workforce by 8%. All this proves that economic rationality in the Third Reich is more than often giving way to ideology.

As a result of Hitler's decision Jews died in the tens of thousands until the last days of the war in the concentration camps to which Himmler sent them and during the death marches preceding the liberation of the camps by the Allies.

In 1945, garbage marches left 100,000 dead bodies abandoned by roads and on trains, rushing Jews from camps in the East and West to the heart of the Reich, where Himmler intended to use them in hypothetical negotiations with the Allies.

Lost opportunities

Many historians speculate that if the Germans had used the slave labor of Jews on a massive scale, the war could have raged on for much longer, at least for a few more years, and then its outcome would not be so obvious - e.g. due to new types of rapidly designed and implemented by Nazi scientists.

The same is the case of about 5.5 million prisoners of war - soldiers of the Red Army, captured in the occupied territories of the USSR. As the Soviet Union did not sign the Geneva Convention of 1929 with the provisions "On the Treatment of Prisoners of War", the Germans did not comply with the provisions on humane treatment in the case of the Soviets.

The text was created, among others based on the book "World War II. Infographics ". By Jean Lopez, Vincent Bernard, Nicolas Aubin, and Nicolas Guillerat. It was published by the Rebis Publishing House

Therefore, they did not have the rights that guaranteed - relatively safe - waiting for the end of the war in a stalag or an oflag. Unlike in the case of prisoners of war from other countries, e.g. Poles, Dutch, French or British, captured Soviet officers were shot on the spot, and rank-and-file soldiers were used for slave labor with starvation food rations.

It was not taken into account that many of them were hostile to communism and could be "turned over" and used against the Red Army. The Germans reached for this solution only in the last months of the war, creating Russian combat units under the command of General Andrei Vlasov.

The Germans had "in their hands" over 10 million "free" Jewish and Soviet workers. They murdered or starved about 9 million of them because the Nazi ideology of "race superiority" prevented them from using them to work in factories, mines or steel mills.