''Arbeitseinsatz'' (german: for 'labour deployment') was a forced labour category of internment within

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

(german: Zwangsarbeit) during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. When German men were called up for military service, Nazi German authorities rounded up civilians to fill in the vacancies and to expand manufacturing operations. Some labourers came from Germany but exponentially more from roundups (''łapanka'') in the German-occupied territories. ''Arbeitseinsatz'' was not restricted to the industry sector and to arms producing factories; it also took place, for example, in the farming sector, community services, and even in the churches.

Labour categories

There were many affected populations who could be grouped by various (often overlapping) variables such as geographic,

ethnic An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...

, religious, political, and health categories. They included German

political prisoner A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention. There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although n ...

s of the SA,

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...

, and SS; foreign

civilian Civilians under international humanitarian law are "persons who are not members of the armed forces" and they are not "combatants if they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war". It is slightly different from a non-combatant, b ...

men and women from occupied territories of Eastern Europe ('' Ostarbeiter'');

prisoners of war A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held Captivity, captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold priso ...

; institutionalized people ( mentally or physically disabled people, or medical and psychiatric patients); and various ethnic, religious, or ethnoreligious groupings (for example,

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

Sinti The Sinti (also ''Sinta'' or ''Sinte''; masc. sing. ''Sinto''; fem. sing. ''Sintesa'') are a subgroup of Romani people mostly found in Germany and Central Europe that number around 200,000 people. They were traditionally itinerant, but today o ...

Romani Romani may refer to: Ethnicities * Romani people, an ethnic group of Northern Indian origin, living dispersed in Europe, the Americas and Asia ** Romani genocide, under Nazi rule * Romani language, any of several Indo-Aryan languages of the Roma ...

, Yeniche, and

Jehovah's Witnesses Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The group reports a worldwide membership of approximately 8.7 million adherents involved in ...

). They lived in various kinds of camps, called

labor camp A labor camp (or labour camp, see spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (especi ...

s (''

Arbeitslager ''Arbeitslager'' () is a German language word which means labor camp. Under Nazism, the German government (and its private-sector, Axis, and collaborator partners) used forced labor extensively, starting in the 1930s but most especially during ...

'' in German) and

concentration camp Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...

s (''Konzentrationslager'' Zin German).

Nazi concentration camps From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as concen ...

were often meant not only for forced labor but also extermination. In 1945 about 7.7 million workers in the German industry were of non-German origin. Many of them were very young, and about half of them were women.

Archival photographs

Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1994-027-34, Polen, Juden beim Arbeitseinsatz.jpg, Jews build air-raid trenches under the supervision of

RAD RAD or Rad may refer to: People * Robert Anthony Rad Dougall (born 1951), South African former racing driver * Rad Hourani, Canadian fashion designer and artist * Nickname of Leonardus Rad Kortenhorst (1886–1963), Dutch politician * Radley R ...

Uniejów Uniejów is a spa town in Poddębice County, Łódź Voivodeship in central Poland, with 2,957 inhabitants (2020). It is the seat of the local government of Gmina Uniejów. The town lies in northwestern corner of Poddębice County, near the bo ...

, May 1941 Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1994-090-06A, Lettland, Riga, Frauen auf Weg zum Arbeitseinsatz.jpg, Paramilitary police with workers, Riga, 11 July 1941 (Wehrmacht photo) Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-137-1010-21A, Weißrussland, Minsk, Aufräumungsarbeiten.jpg, Soviet

POW A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold prisoners of war ...

s clear the way for Wehrmacht column, Minsk, July 1941 (Wehrmacht photo) Bundesarchiv Bild 183-J20382, Tunis, Arbeitseinsatz von Juden.jpg, "Jews must work", Tunis, December 1942, (Wehrmacht photo) Bundesarchiv Bild 183-S68015, französischer Mechaniker bei Siemens.jpg, French mechanics at

Siemens Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational conglomerate corporation and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe headquartered in Munich with branch offices abroad. The principal divisions of the corporation are ''Industry'', '' ...

in Berlin, 1943 Bundesarchiv Bild 185-09-25, U-Boot-Bunker "Valentin", Häftlinge bei der Arbeit.jpg, Prisoners in the construction of the

U-boat U-boats were naval submarines operated by Germany, particularly in the First and Second World Wars. Although at times they were efficient fleet weapons against enemy naval warships, they were most effectively used in an economic warfare role ...

Valentin submarine pens The Valentin submarine factory is a protective shelter on the Weser River at the Bremen suburb of , built to protect German U-boats during World War II. The factory was under construction from 1943 to March 1945 using forced labour, but was dama ...

Bremen Bremen (Low German also: ''Breem'' or ''Bräm''), officially the City Municipality of Bremen (german: Stadtgemeinde Bremen, ), is the capital of the German state Free Hanseatic City of Bremen (''Freie Hansestadt Bremen''), a two-city-state consis ...

, 1944 Bundesarchiv Bild 183-H26334, Berlin, 14-jähriger Ukrainer Zwangsarbeiter.jpg, 14-year-old prisoner at the Wehrmacht Automotive Repair Works, Berlin, January 1945 Bundesarchiv Bild 183-2007-0618-500, Ostarbeiterin in Deutschland.jpg, Ostarbeiterin from Kiev performing domestic labor, January 1945 (SS image) Bundesarchiv Bild 192-269, KZ Mauthausen, Häftlinge im Steinbruch.jpg, Stairs of Death in the quarry of the

Mauthausen concentration camp Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen, Upper Austria, Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with List of subcamps of Mauthausen, nearly 100 further ...

Notes

{{Reflist

External links

Forced Laborers in the "Third Reich"
by

Ulrich Herbert Ulrich Herbert (born 24 September 1951) is a German historian and a specialist in the Nazi Germany, Nazi era and History of Germany, German history during World War II. He was a professor at the University of Freiburg (Emeritus since fall 2 ...

Interest Group for Former Forced Labourers under the Nazi Regime

Germany home front during World War II Unfree labor during World War II Nazi terminology Economy of Nazi Germany cs:Totální nasazení de:Zwangsarbeit in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus nl:Arbeitseinsatz