Germany’s invasion of Poland (and the start of World War II in Europe) quickly intensified labor shortages as men were drafted, accelerating the regime’s turn toward coercive labor policies and exploitation of occupied territories.
Nazi authorities issued the Polish decrees to regulate and severely restrict Polish civilian workers (Zivilarbeiter) in Germany—codifying lower status, segregation, and harsh discipline as a labor-control system.
The Reich established a dedicated armaments ministry (initially for Armaments and Munitions) to centralize and increase weapons production—an institutional shift that later depended heavily on coerced and forced labor inputs.
Following Fritz Todt’s death, Albert Speer was appointed to lead the armaments portfolio, later expanding its reach across industrial production—deepening reliance on coerced labor (including concentration camp labor) to sustain output.
The SS and police leadership promulgated General Provisions for the Recruitment and Deployment of Workers from the East (“Ostarbeiter decrees”), regulating work and life for Soviet civilian forced laborers in the Reich and enforcing isolation and extreme control.
Hitler’s decree appointed Fritz Sauckel General Plenipotentiary for Labor Allocation/Deployment, giving him sweeping authority to procure and allocate labor—central to the mass deportation of foreign workers into the German war economy.
Sauckel circulated a labor mobilization program calling for tighter control of labor deployment and expanded recruitment/compulsion of foreigners and POWs to meet armaments and war-economy demands, especially from the East.
Göring’s decree established the Central Planning Board (Zentrale Planung) to coordinate raw materials and production priorities; it also requisitioned labor (including forced foreign labor) through Sauckel’s apparatus.
In the Berlin Sportpalast, Goebbels publicly demanded “total war,” reinforcing pressure for broader domestic mobilization and harsher labor measures as military fortunes worsened.
The armaments ministry’s remit broadened (renamed to include War Production), strengthening Speer’s authority over industrial production and embedding forced labor—including concentration camp labor—more deeply into wartime manufacturing.
Speer and partners created the Jägerstab (Fighter Staff) to rapidly increase fighter aircraft production under strategic-bombing pressure; it operated with extraordinary powers and drove expansion of underground production and exploitation of forced labor.
By late summer 1944, German registrations listed over 7.6 million foreign civilian workers and POWs employed in the “Greater German Reich,” representing roughly one-fifth to one-quarter of the labor force—illustrating how central coerced labor had become to the war economy.
The Rüstungsstab (Armament Staff) was established on the basis of the Jägerstab to expand late-war production initiatives; it continued extraordinary interventions in production and labor, including further exploitation of slave labor.
Germany’s unconditional surrender in Europe ended the Nazi state’s wartime economic institutions and its coercive labor deployment regime, including the large-scale forced labor of civilians, POWs, and concentration camp prisoners.
German War Economy and the Use of Forced Labor (1939–1945)
