The Second World War Cost Germany

Birkenau was supposed to be able to hold over 125,000 prisoners, and was also the site where most of the executions took place. Inmates were used for most of the manual labor. Later on in that year the Soviet prisoners arrived as 3,000 were sent to be executed, another 12,000 died from other causes, and only 1,000 remained and were to do forced labor (Laqueur and Tydor 34,35).

After World War II Germany was left devastated and in ruins. There had been massive destruction of the country’s infrastructure (Bessel 2011), it lacked political structure and economic activity had plummeted. There was a scarcity of food, fuel and housing and Germany was in no condition to clothe or feed its population (O’Dochartaigh 2003).

The Auschwitz camp used its prisoners for forced labor. The Nazis treated the Jews poorly and as of they were nothing. Ushmm.org states “Jewish women who had been assigned to forced labor in a nearby armaments factory”. Between the years 1940-45 out of 1.3 million Jews, 1.1 million died. All of those innocent people died only because their race was hated by one very powerful, but very convincing man. After a year of the camp existing, the SS and the police cleared about forty square meters for the camp. They had all of this cleared by forced labor from the Jews. The Nazis were very cruel to the Jews and for a certain amount of time this camp was used as a killing center. Those cold- hearted people killed men, women, and innocent

He marked the passage into the camp with promise “Arbeit Macht Frei”. Soon after the commandant of Auschwitz had been given a big construction budget of two millions of marks to adapt the camp, nevertheless materials for this construction was impossible to find. In the summer of 1940 the newly established construction office in the camp, led by August Schlachter and Walther Urbancyk reported that without materials constructions of the new buildings was impossible. Later, the SS had identified the concentration camp as a central instrument to actualize its programs in Upper Silesia. Originally a camp for prisoners that, “because of its industrial value, could not be deported and a transit camp for those arrested who where then shipped west to perform slave labor.” (Dwork and Jan van Pelt 171) Auschwitz was put on the map of the SS financial empire by Pohl. He ordered Höss to double the capacity of prisoners. Auschwitz was going to be converted into a production site (Dwork and Jan van Pelt 168-71). Auschwitz was converted in an industry of building materials; this new task of Auschwitz created the first sub camp of many. The expansion of Auschwitz I was the first brick to complete the construction of a massive concentration camp. The industry of building materials was a great financial success for the SS; however, conditions in the camp did not improve even though the labor of the inmates became important to

In World War 2, Germany was using the labor of prisoners which is permitted by the third Geneva Convention. The fact that they were making them work in the worst of conditions known to man and furthermore, not keeping them healthy, both in body and in mind was by definition- a war crime.

Upon appointment as Minister after Fritz Todt’s suspicious death, Speer proved immensely successful, in which his organisational skills were proven, increasing the efficiency and production of the German war machine despite the constant British bombings of factories and communications. Between 1942 and 1943, arms production grew by 30%, with labour productivity increasing by 160%. (Wagenführ, R, 1954). Historian Alan Bullock admires Speers improvements to the war effort, claiming that “Without Speer, Hitler would have lacked the power to stage his fight to the finish.” (A.Bullock, 1962). Contradicting Speers success as Armaments Minister however is Dutch historian Dan Van Der Vat, who questions Speers claims, “As if he did not have enough to do, Speer somehow managed … at the end of January 1945 to draw up a Rechenschaftsbericht … this enormous report ran to 10 000 words.” (Dan Van Der Vat, 1997). Van Der Vat therefore raises the important issue of how much one can trust a source written by one on their own success in power, with little to no contradicting evidence. Consideration however must be given to Van Der Vat’s argument, as he did grow up under Nazi occupied Holland, and thus an obvious bias is pited against any leader of the Nazi Party. Nevertheless, there was an actual increase in production under the guidance of Speer, in which his organisational genius was proven and the war was extended by a further two years, thus having a positive effect upon the Nazi Regime in regards to the war

Here the Nazi government hammered out the details of the Final Solution, deciding to transport all the Jews from ghettos to concentration camps, kill the weak, the elderly and the young, seperate the Jews according to gender, and force the Jews to work towards the war effort, and to eventually murder them when the time was right. “At Wannsee, the SS [estimated] that the “Final Solution” will involve 11 million European Jews.” (ushmm.org). The Nazis were cold-hearted to the extreme, their only concern regarding the Final Solution was the most efficient and cheap way to kill. To transport the Jews from Ghettos to labor and death camps required a cost and time efficient method.

Elie Wiesel story of going through the counstashen camps is horrific hes was tattooed A- 7713 they weren't concerned people just slaves and if they weren able to work they were disposed of like garbage.

The jews would work usually very far from their camps.Every jew had it hard,especially if the other prisoners were stealing from you.Some jews would be assigned to take away valuables from other prisoners to help them

Where as in the German camps, the prisoners were more independent. The prisoners were allowed free time and had their own bunks to themselves. They had to do little to no work at the camps, and it was considered just a holding place. The only forms of punishment was if the prisoners were to try to escape or got violent. The prisoners could

During World War II, millions of people were forcefully taken and placed into Nazi concentration camps. In the time between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany established thousands of concentration camps all across Europe. These camps were used for many cruel purposes such as forced-labor camps, transit camps which served as temporary way stations, and extermination camps built primarily or exclusively for mass murder. When the Holocaust finally came to an end, a total of over 11 million people were estimated to have been murdered in concentration camps, leaving only a small fraction of those imprisoned to survive. All in all, Nazi concentration camps left a stain of fear on the hearts of millions of innocent people.

All these car companies that evidently took part in the use of forced labor and inevitably profited from the entire concept actively denied having took part during the Second World War (Dobbs 1) undoubtedly because they did not want any negative advertisements that might affect the reputation of their company name. These inmates were imprisoned in camps and resided in baracks, where they were forced to live in very bad and inhumane conditions. Those from Concentration camps were constantly observed by SS soldiers in order to keep them under strict authority. These ‘ready to use’ prisoners were then sold or loaned to companies for money in return. Thousands of these laborers died caused by this unreasonable concept. The companies involved in

Their jobs depended on their nationality, how fit they were, and how loyal they were to the Nazi soldiers. “Within the camps, the Nazis established a hierarchical identification system. Prisoners with a higher social status within the camps were often rewarded with more desirable work assignments such as administrative positions indoors. Some, such as the kapos (work supervisors) or camp elders held the power of life and death over other prisoners” (Daily Life in Concentration Camps). If prisoners weren’t in that type of classification, they were given harsher and more demanding tasks. For those who were in such demanding assignments, they had a higher mortality rate. The higher the death rate, the happier the SS soldiers were for not having to kill them themselves and just have the other prisoners take care of the dead

You would have to be checked by doctors to see if you were fit for work. Young Children, elderly, pregnant women, and those classified as unfit for work were sent to the showers. The showers were really gas chambers, this is the reason for many people dying. Doctors would also do experiments on the prisoners many would die from this. They would test twins to see if everything about them were actually the same. One of the experiment was to see if the twins could switch eyes and still be able to see. Another way people would die was from being burned in ovens. There was no “going easy” in Auschwitz.

Each difficult time led to him believing that he was standing up for the right thing. While Germany was left in a terrible depression from World War 1, their trade had been severely limited. Germany could not import or export goods. All their resources had been given to the War effort. This left Germany in a terrible way, dropping themselves from the rank of the second greatest economy. Germany began printing money at a large rate, leading to hyperinflation. Money, in turn, was worth little to nothing. Unemployment also reached record high levels. Approximately 6 million people were left unemployed. Hitler began to think like many of the racist organizations at the time, believing that the Jews were the sole reason for World War 1 and Germany’s economic