Slaves for Hitler’s war. Polish forced labourers in Salzburg during World War II

Abstract

Even at the beginning of the Second World War it had to be clear for the German military and economic leaders that it would not be possible to fight or even win a longlasting war without foreign workers. In the Second World War not only POWs but also civilians and prisoners of concentration camps were forced to work as slaves to continue Hitler’s war. In Salzburg, there were no big camps with thousands of slave workers, as existed in other regions of Germany. Mainly the slave workers, who were forced to work for the big power plant projects (“Tauernkraftwerke Kaprun-Glockner”, “Kraftwerk Weißsee”), lived in such circumstances.
The first Polish POWs arrived in the Province of Salzburg in autumn of 1939 only a few weeks after the German invasion of Poland. Most of them were not detained in camps. They lived on farms, and their living conditions were better than those for the inmates of camps. Like in the First World War, prisoners of war had to work on farms to replace those men who served in the German Wehrmacht or other military formations.
As mentioned, no big industrial plants for the arms sector existed in the “Reichsgau Salzburg”. Foreign forced labourers, POWs and civil workers were deployed to relatively little factories or handicraft businesses. In many cases the situation for this group of slave workers was similar to those, who worked on farms. Already in autumn 1941, the works at the construction sites of the “Reichsautobahn” (highway) around the city of Salzburghad to be cancelled. At least from spring 1943 almost all building projects, which had no direct context to the “Totalen Krieg”, had to be stopped. The foreign labourers of all kind were transferred to projects essential to the war efforts. Especially buildings for the air raid protection hat to became priority.
The living and working conditions for the foreign forced workers, POWs and civil labourers, were very inhomogeneous in the national socialist “Third Reich”. So it was in the “Reichsgau Salzburg” during the Second World War. It could have been horrible and deadly, but also almost acceptable according to the regulations of international law. One point has to be emphasized here, that all of these slave workers, deported against their will from their homelands, were forced to work in the enemy’s land to prolong a criminal war.