"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich (37 page)

The basis of all regulations was the instruction of the plenipotentiary general for labor allocation of October 25, 1942, according to which employers had to set up a piecework and premium system for workers from the occupied territories with a view to increasing output.
¹⁷⁷
Even before this instruction was issued, particular emphasis had been placed on the introduction of such a system in the Annexed Eastern Territories and the Occupied Eastern (i.e., Soviet) Territories in order to increase results at all costs.
¹⁷⁸
Such a system was often associated with premiums or allowances in order to prevent foreign workers from changing jobs. An instruction by the plenipotentiary general for labor allocation of June 11, 1942,
¹⁷⁹
even needed to emphasize that it was forbidden to give foreigners better conditions of payment than those established for equivalent German workers.

An exception was made for Polish workers from the General Government and the Annexed Eastern Territories who, on account of the compulsory work imposed on them since 1940, had either voluntarily or by forced conscription since 1941–42 been brought to the Reich territory.
¹⁸⁰
Technically speaking, these workers were in principle paid “equally” to German workers on the basis of the wage regulations of the given economic sector.
¹⁸¹
This equal treatment of Polish workers was a thorn in the side of the radical “racial fighters” in the administration and the Party: they complained that equal treatment was the basic rule in the Reich territory, so that conditions were generally better than in the East.
¹⁸²
In point of fact, however, wages were anything but equal, on account of the many exceptions made. An instruction issued by the Reich trustee for labor dated October 5, 1941 (also valid in the Annexed Eastern Territories [sec. 17]), on the treatment of Polish workers in labor law
¹⁸³
stated that the following instruments were not applicable to Poles: the Law for the Regulation of National Labor of January 20, 1934; the Law for the Regulation of Labor in Public Administrations and Institutions of March 23, 1934; the Law on Home Work of March 23, 1934, in the version of October 30, 1939; the Law on the Payment of Wages for the National Holiday of the German People (May 1) of April 26, 1934; the Law on Exceptional Holidays of April 17, 1939; and the Instruction on the Implementation of the Four Year Plan on Payment of Holidays of December 3, 1937.
¹⁸⁴
In view of these numerous exceptions, equal pay was accorded only for the actual work done (similar to the situation for Jews [see above]); all payment for holidays, which was an integral part of the wage, was abolished. In addition, other restrictions comparable to those applied to Jews mentioned above were imposed.

These included, first, the 15 percent tax on wages for “social compensation” introduced by the instruction of October 5, 1941, mentioned above, and the abolition of premiums or allowances for holidays, family and children, maternity, and so forth, thus considerably diminishing the effective earnings of Poles. This instruction further entitled employers to pay Polish workers at the lowest level of wages usual in the firm (this was called the “lesser achievement clause”).
¹⁸⁵
Polish agricultural workers were generally paid less than their German counterparts.
¹⁸⁶
But the lack of equal treatment was not confined to wages alone. Up to 1941 Polish workers had only one week’s vacation, much less than the rules granted German workers;
¹⁸⁷
old vacation rights were placed on hold until December 1, 1943, and could not be exercised until the end of the war.
¹⁸⁸
The Reich labor minister took pains to point out that the provisions on maternity protection applied “in principle” to pregnant Polish women, as any other interpretation would violate “the fundamental laws of humanity”; the
scope
of the protection, however, might vary in relation to that accorded German women
¹⁸⁹
(in line with the Nazi rule of law: upholding the principle in theory and opening the way to discriminatory measures in practice).

The discriminatory practices against the various groups of foreign workers applied to other fields of labor law, with considerable ethnic differentiation. For workers from Eastern Europe, conditions were very much harsher than for those from the occupied Western European territories or from neutral or friendly states, who (apart from the wage system) enjoyed equal treatment with Germans in matters of labor law.
¹⁹⁰
The treatment received by the first-mentioned group, the so-called eastern workers, can serve as an example of the discriminations practiced. It was toward these people, workers from the Occupied Soviet Territories, that the program set up by the plenipotentiary general for labor allocation and the following special regulations were primarily oriented, with a view to their forced labor and “maximum exploitation.”
¹⁹¹

Like the Jews, the eastern workers (from the Occupied Soviet Territories) had an “employment relationship of a special kind” (sui generis). German labor law and the protective labor provisions were applicable only when they were explicitly stated in the corresponding clause
¹⁹²
(the Nazi principle of legislation: whatever was not explicitly permitted was forbidden). And like the Jews, the eastern workers were paid only for the actual work done: no social benefits were granted, on the grounds that “many eastern workers did not need to take care of their families”; this seemed to mean that the German authorities had taken over this responsibility, but on a minimum level, through the compulsory “social compensation tax” (see below). Income tax had to be paid at the rate for class 1 (singles, the highest rate), whatever the actual family status. These workers, like Jews and Poles, were subject to a 15 percent tax on their income, a “social compensation tax,” which went to the revenue offices “in order to provide benefits for needy eastern workers and their families.”
¹⁹³
Vacations of one week could be granted—not as a matter of right, of course—to eastern workers in their second year of employment, provided they had “proved themselves” in achievement and behavior.
¹⁹⁴

Other discriminatory rules were issued for all “non-German” workers, based on an instruction from the plenipotentiary general for labor allocation of October 2, 1943; these dealt with vacations, breaches of discipline, living accommodations, and board. To make sure that “alien” workers would return from home leave, a
collective responsibility
system was put into effect: groups of vacationers of the same nationality were formed, and if any members of the first group did not return, at least that number of the second group were held back; if all members of the third group did not return, a three-month ban on vacations was issued for
all
workers of the relevant nationality
¹⁹⁵
(thus creating a system of “perfect” mutual dependence). These rules give a clear idea of what sort of conditions existed in practice.

So-called breaches of discipline by workers were in principle punished on the basis of the general rules,
¹⁹⁶
which were implemented by the employer (warnings and fines) or the courts
¹⁹⁷
(at the request of the labor agencies). In the event of infringements by “non-German” workers, however, the Reich labor trustees had been instructed by the Ministry of Labor not to demand a sentence as usual but “to request the intervention of the Gestapo.”
¹⁹⁸
In minor cases, the offender was put back to work; in all other cases—circumventing the competence of the courts
¹⁹⁹
—they were sentenced to “heavy labor” at the so-called work training camps set up for “loafers” under the surveillance of the Gestapo.
²⁰⁰
In serious cases, they were committed to a concentration camp.
²⁰¹

Discriminatory (special) law was also applied to the treatment of foreign workers in other regards. Although the protective labor law and the rules on working hours of the industrial branches were also valid for foreign workers (with the exception of the eastern workers, for whom the protective labor law was suspended [see above]),
²⁰²
their housing, board, and other matters, which came under the competence of the labor administration with the consent of the highest Reich departments concerned, were regulated very differently.
²⁰³
As the German Labor Front leader Robert Ley put it, the aim of the regulations, which varied locally and from firm to firm, was to “exploit [foreign workers] to the hilt with a minimum of outlay,” because “lesser races” needed “less room, less clothes, less food, and less culture than a superior race.”
²⁰⁴

The instructions of the plenipotentiary general for labor allocation with regard to the recruitment and treatment of workers in the occupied territories were even more discriminatory. There a merciless piecework system was practiced, which applied not only to wages and employment contracts (“only production-oriented contracts”) but to all other fields too. In consequence, housing, food, and other matters were also managed on the “principle of productivity.”
²⁰⁵

Housing was organized in mass quarters segregated by nationality.
²⁰⁶
The administration of these camps was in the hands of the German Labor Front, whose camp commanders passed the instructions of the heads of the enterprises on to the workers.
²⁰⁷
Further disadvantages for “alien” workers compared with Germans were also practiced in the distribution of textiles, working clothes,
²⁰⁸
food, and so on. Regarding food supplies, only the Poles were treated equally to Germans; for the other foreign workers, the normal food rations merely served as a “basis” on which the Reich minister for food and agriculture established the actual allotments.
²⁰⁹

All other regulations concerning the treatment of foreign workers, such as the relationship to the German population, time off, medical care, participation in cultural and church activities, and so forth, were no longer issued by the state labor administration: all these fields of competence had been usurped by the police forces through agreements or with the consent of the administration. This change in competence had long since ceased being a legal matter; it had become one of mere political opportunism, because the people concerned were in any case beyond the pale of German law and were completely at the behest of the needs of the “labor service.” The corresponding regulations are therefore dealt with in the excursus titled “Police Law.”

VI. The Cultural and Social Sector

The ousting of Jews from the liberal professions, public service, and the world of work as a whole was only the first step in the extensive moves “to eliminate Jews completely from the German Lebensraum.”
¹

An important element of this aim was their elimination from the whole cultural sphere, this being one of the first sectors to be subject to
Gleichschaltung
, that is, centralized in the Reich Chamber of Culture and put under state censorship.
²
It is noteworthy, however, that—unlike the procedures set forth in the public service and the above-mentioned discriminatory decrees in the field of trade and industry (with the exception of the Law on Editors)
³
—the exclusion of non-Aryans was not explicitly provided for in the centralization acts or the corresponding implementing orders.
⁴
The basis of the exclusions rather was internal instructions requiring a certificate of Aryan descent
⁵
and demanding from every cultural performer obligatory membership in one of the departments of the Reich Chamber of Culture;
⁶
according to the general clauses of the above-mentioned implementing orders, the “required reliability and aptitude” also had to be certified by every applicant to one of the chambers.
⁷
The principle that Jews should not possess this aptitude was so taken for granted that explicit rules were no longer necessary, just as it was taken for granted that Jews should be portrayed in all films as representing evil and shamefulness, ridiculed, in short, as the incarnation of all the deadly sins (avarice, covetousness, hunger for power, perfidy, etc.).
⁸
On May 9, 1933, Paul Joseph Goebbels had already declared before German stage managers: “The Jew cannot be an interpreter of German
Volkstum
.”
⁹

The exclusion of Jews was achieved in practice through nonrenewal of existing contracts with non-Aryan artistic personnel or even the dissolution of contracts “by mutual agreement” (often under massive pressure by the Party). When no “agreement” could be reached, the contract was examined by the local committees of the specific chamber to decide whether the person involved could be dismissed with a view to enforcing the “principle of equity.”
¹⁰
The judicature recognized a right to serve notice “for important reasons” on the part of the Aryan party (sec. 626 of the Civil Code) or a right to withdraw from the contract for reasons of good faith (given that the non-Aryan party was not capable of fulfilling the agreement) (secs. 346 and 347, in association with secs. 133 and 157, of the Civil Code). The following example illustrates the process clearly.