1939–1945: Forced Labour in Agriculture

During the Second World War, the agriculture sector in the “Ostmark” made use of large numbers of foreign nationals whose employment conditions were finalised or maintained under duress. Under the effect of the “Blitzkrieg” against Poland in 1939, the Reich leadership declined from filling the labour shortage brought on by military service through the mobilisation of domestic reserves; instead it opted for – despite objections against “miscegenation” – mass employment of foreign labour power from the occupied and dependent territories, which was handled by employment offices. Up to 300,000 forced agricultural labourers in the territory of present-day Austria included two-thirds civilian men and women, most of whom were forcibly recruited from former Poland and the occupied Soviet Union; about a third were prisoners of war from the opposing states; toward the end of the war, they were joined by some tens of thousands of “Hungarian Jews”. From a legal standpoint, forced laourers were subject to different kinds of discrimination in terms of work and leisure, wages, food, shelter and punishment according to their status in the racial and national hierarchy of the Nazis: at the top ranked members of Western and Southern European states; below that, and following with considerable distance, were people of Slavic ethnicity; at the bottom were Jewish forced labourers. In daily practice, “good” and “bad” working and living conditions diverged wildly from one another: forced labourers who showed above average performance or who made alliances with members of peasant families were hardly disadvantaged compared to domestic labourers. Forced labourers who could not obtain such recognition were usually subject to daily exploitation and violence. Overall, the widespread opinion that forced labour in agriculture meant an “easier fate” than in other industries is not accurate.