Introduction by Fritz Sauckel
Millions of workers from nearly every European nation are working in the
German war industry today. Among them are millions from nations that sought to
annihilate the National Socialist Reich of Adolf Hitler, and whose nations even
today are occupied by Germany’s forces or those of its allies. To the credit of
these foreign workers, I can say that they are all striving to imitate German
workers, and are doing good, sometimes very good, work.
This book is an honest report, irrefutable proof that the National
Socialist Greater German Reich, despite our enemy’s attempted hunger blockade,
is still able not only to feed the millions of foreign workers, but also house,
clothe, and provide medical care for them. They even enjoy holidays and
vacations.
The party, the German Labor Front, the state and the economy have worked
together as National Socialists to create labor conditions that have never
before in history been matched in their cleanliness, correctness, care, and
justice. I know this better than anyone, because during the World War I was a
prisoner of war myself.
The correct and exemplary treatment explains the good results even of those
workers from former Soviet territories, who for decades heard only hate-filled
propaganda about National Socialist Germany. The fact that millions of citizens
of enemy states are now working satisfactorily in Germany is the sharpest
criticism of the criminal conduct of the so-called statesman who drove these people
to war against the German people.
These foreign workers now repair some of the damage that their
irresponsible leaders caused for Europe’s peoples.
These foreign workers are proof that their peoples were victims of the lies
of the worst, base, and corrupt criminals of Jewish plutocracy and Bolshevist
hangmen. Now they have seen the true Germany with their own eyes and
experienced social and medical services that no one even dreams of in Soviet
Russia. They have seen how developed Germany is in all areas, and have found a
culture so advanced that they are not only astonished, but also realize how
misled they were by the enormous decades-long Judeo-capitalist or Bolshevist
propaganda
It is thus easy to understand why millions of citizens of foreign states who
labor in Germany’s armaments factories work passionately for Germany’s victory,
for Adolf Hitler’s victory, since for perhaps for the first time in their lives
they have seen the virtues of National Socialist Germany’s justice, order, and
cleanliness, as opposed to the methods of capitalist exploitation or Bolshevist
terror.
And they cannot miss the fact that the German people themselves have
withstood the gravest battle in its history and accepted the hardest
privations.
One must see how respectfully and throughtfully foreign workers look at the
pictures of Adolf Hitler hanging in German factories. What must they think? Do
they recall the cynical grinning lying face of Churchill, the larval plutocrat
face of Roosevelt, or the face of the mass murderer Stalin? They must sense —
even if they do not say so — that two worlds face each other, and that even for
their own future, Adolf Hitler’s world must win.
Each day they go to work in German armaments factories. They know that they
work for the victory of a just cause.
Even the majority of German citizens still do not have a clear idea of how
falsely international Jewry has maligned National Socialist Germany to the
nations of the world. They have used clever and unscrupulous means ranging up
to the most frightful terror, ways which are simply incomprehensible to the
German mind and impossible for the German spirit.
The Jews used these methods over many decades, spreading atrocity stories
about Germany and lies about its alleged backwardness, lack of culture and
worse. Their goal was to misuse other nations to destroy Germany. For decades,
they constantly instilled terrible poisons, defaming Germans of every class and
party, never allowing the truth about Germany, and in particular about the
National Socialist movement, to reach the people. They destroyed economically,
and if need be physically, those who wanted to tell the truth.
Uncertainly, fear and limitless terror were the strongest methods the Jews
and their lackeys used to force a second world war on Germany.
A powerful fate has led millions of seduced and betrayed people to Germany
as workers. They now see the truth. By their work they make a valuable
contribution to the victory of a better world and do themselves and their
peoples great service.
This book is the proof thereof.
Why Do We Need Foreign Workers?
Nothing is more able to bring together disparate elements than working
together on a common cause.
—Otto von
Bismarck
The longer the war against the Jewish world conspiracy, plutocracy, and
Bolshevism that has been forced upon us lasts, the more powerfully we hear
alongside the noise of battle the sounds of labor in Greater Germany, among our
allies, and in the conquered regions. The enormous labor effort protects the
home front as well as the new territory won by the blood of our best in their
unprecedented attacks. It is also giving a new look to Europe. Led by the Axis
partners, Europe is moving toward a great and prosperous future. We are
defending our own fate and that of the continent though ever greater and more
sacrificial efforts and through a fanatic, unbending will for the final victory
of our flag.
That is an unwritten law of the front, which applies with the same iron
necessity for the home front. Broad cooperation between state, party, armed
forces, and the economy is the guarantee that the home front can mobilize more
reserves of labor and resources to support the fighting troops. This applies to
the armaments industry as well as agriculture, and in particular to the use of
foreign workers in war-related factories by the plenipotentiary for labor. A
situation like September 1914, when each firing of a gun had to be individually
approved because of material shortages, must ever reoccur. The front receives
in enormous quantities the quality weapons and munitions it needs.
This achievement, far greater than that of the World War, is the result of
the splendid success of Reich Minister Dr. Speer’s organized leadership of a
politically strong armaments industry. It is constantly reviewed and changed,
adjusting remarkably quickly to the needs of the various phases of the war. The
year 1942 is a good example of its unique capacities. Industrial production was
concentrated and simplification so thoroughly applied that mass production
reached an unprecedented level. Reich Minister Dr. Speer reported at a meeting
of the Reich Chamber of Labor on 29 January 1943 that, within a year,
production in many essential areas had increased ten or twenty fold. It at
least doubled in other important areas. Production reached a level
unprecedented in German armaments history. The organization was simplified and
bureaucracy reduced. The economy could develop more effectively. Progress was
also increased through generous support for research as well as by suggestions from
the factories. The war provides new energy sources for the factories, and
production climbs steadily. The foundations for even greater increases in
armaments production have been laid through the construction of large new
factories, through reconstruction and reorganization, and through the addition
of many modern machines.
In the end, however, production depends on human labor, an area in which
the war has brought enormous structural transformations. Even before the war
begin, German labor shortages required the most efficient use of labor. The
mobilization of millions of the youngest and strongest German workers has taken
more and more skilled workers and specialists from the factories. They must be
replaced if production is not to sink. Men either under the over the age of
military service, or from less essential areas, can be transferred, but this is
not enough. The number of German women employed has risen steadily. As much as
was within their power, they willingly filled the gaps and took the place of
men called to military service. The Führer’s military successes and the
brilliant strategy of encirclement battles brought huge numbers of prisoners of
war to Germany from the defeated nations. They were put to work in industry and
agriculture, but there were not nearly enough of them.
Thus there began a migration of European workers to Germany. Germany’s
military successes gave the Reich the opportunity to conduct the economy on a
continental scale, to use formerly uneconomic regions in a new Central European
system and use use the work forces of the conquered areas where they were most
needed. These reserves are encouragingly large.
The Führer determined (on 8 November 1941) that the area that we control
includes more than 250 million people. The area controlled by our allies brings
that total to over 350 million. In the East alone we have occupied nearly two
million square kilometers of territory with about 70 million people. These 70
million are about 54% of the entire population of North America. A substantial
percentage of them have already proven that they can be of real help in German
factories.
Unemployment in neighboring countries along with Europe’s growing
realization that only a victory of the Axis powers can guarantee the common
good of the continent has lead an army of volunteer foreign workers to Germany.
They were forced to their decision by their fears of Bolshevism and by the war
that Churchill and Roosevelt head for the Jews and Freemasons, which sabotages
any hope for European peace. They decided that, if they were not fighting at
the front, to serve in German factories and thereby to support Europe’s new
organizational unity and its reasonable new structure.
This number of foreign workers has become a mighty river since the Führer
appointed Gauleiter and Reich Governor of Thuringia Fritz Sauckel as
Plenipotentiary for Labor on 21 March 1942. Sauckel, himself a worker from his
youth and a deeply committed, spirited and battle-tested personality, received
the authority to guarantee that industry and agriculture had sufficient labor.
Almost daily, transports from nearly every nation of Europe bring workers to
Germany. Their number grows as the requirements of the army increase and as
more and more German workers exchange their factory garb for a military
uniforms.
There has been nothing like it in this history of the world. It requires an
exact knowledge of the situation, tireless energy and persistence, and when
necessary unwavering action. Under the leadership of Plenipotentiary Fritz
Sauckel. the flow of workers from the occupied Eastern regions has been
particularly great. Millions of foreign workers are now stalwartly doing their
duty in German factories and agriculture, and millions more will come. We want
to emphasize this figure not because we are carried away by numbers or crazed
by their size, but simply to demonstrate persuasively that the use of these
masses of foreign workers proves the unprecedented and vast defensive power of
our nation.
*
Three quarters of the foreign workers in Greater Germany come from former
enemy nations, regions that may even yet be incited by unbelievable propaganda.
That poses a danger that we are aware of, but it also gives us an unprecedented
opportunity to conduct an educational campaign in the middle of the war.
Workers from 25 nations are our guests for months or years. They can see and
experience what otherwise they could only read about or see in pictures or
films, which generally come from sources having a particular slant. The Reich
can show them daily that we are qualified not only to be Europe’s leading
military nation, but also the model of economic, social and human qualities.
Germany has nothing to hide. It provides healthy and clean living quarters
and a more than adequate diet. Of course, war-related factors also affect our
foreign workers. Everyone understands that, for there is a war going on. The
golden flag of the German Workers Front waves from many model factories where
thousands of foreign workers go every day! Foreigners come to understand the
leadership and spirit of community of the economic home front. They see what it
means when a laboring people has abolished the industrial proletariat and in
which every last person lives according to the principle: the common good
before the individual good. Industry and agriculture, managers and workers have
taken on an important responsibility with regards to foreign workers. They do
their duty with German thoroughness, despite the difficulties. The plenipotentiary
for labor gives them the guidance they need.
The foreign workers now in Germany are working for Europe. They have been
brought here to provide the best precision German weapons to our soldiers in
the trenches, the batteries, the motorized troops, the Luftwaffe and the navy.
Let no one forget that! The war demands our full energy. We are defending our
jobs and our livelihoods, the future of our families and Europe’s social
progress. It is clear to all guest workers, be they from nations allied with Germany
like Italy, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania, or foreigners from former enemy
states, that each German in these critical years works sacrificially and
accomplishes astonishing things. We must constantly show that this extreme
level of exertion is the result not of force, but of an inner sense of
obligation, that we are driven by a mission that makes us shining examples,
that we will not rest until the final victory is won and each foreign worker
has joined us not because of mere propaganda, but also by mastering with us a
common task.
That has absolutely nothing to do with long outdated phrases about
brotherhood or demagogic chatter about pan-Europeanism. We have said often
enough that National Socialism is not for export. What must sink deep into the
minds of the foreigners among us, however, is a belief that Germany is the
source of the continent’s eternal youth and a conviction that German socialism
and the German longing for justice can never be surpassed. Thus, the readiness
of foreign workers in the work to defend the united front of the new Europe
will be awakened and developed — regardless of the direction from which it may
be attacked. In the long run no part of the earth, much less Europe, can be
ruled by the bayonette. The future belongs to him who has the support of the
workers of the various nations.
*
The war will become even harder. The destructive rage of our enemies knows
no limits. They must fear that in the course of time National Socialist
Germany’s revolutionary economic and social policies will open the eyes of even
those on the other side of the ocean to the true cause of their mass misery.
The German workers’ state is operating at full steam in its ideal three-fold
division of workers, farmers and soldiers, and leaves no room for illusions. It
is victory or annihilation! The political, intellectual and economic lines are
drawn as never before in world history. Our goal is to build a continental
system in a unified area in which there are no victors and vanquished, but
rather a powerful, creative leadership. If fate rules otherwise, Europe will
have played its role and will sink into the bottomless depths of an exploited
colony.
The Reich, which today is the technical and spiritual training ground for
European workers, will fight bitterly in this war to master both the home and
the battle fronts.
A high percentage of foreign workers will remain in Germany after the war.
They will be trained in the construction work that the war has hindered, and
will realize projects that now are only in the planning stages. Those who
return home will bring with them the valuable skills they learned in Germany
and increase the productive capacity of all of Europe. They are receiving not
only the economic, but also the political skills they will need to defend the
European bulwark. As war economy leaders, supervisors or camp heads, whatever
our position, we must treat foreign workers justly, far-sightedly, generously
as their respected teachers. Future generations will thank us.
Europe is Winning
A bitter struggle is being waged by the Axis powers for the future of our
continent. Just as necessity has brought us together militarily, so too
millions of foreign and German workers stand alongside each other in factories,
on farm machines, or on newly cultivated lands. They battle the common enemy by
using the language of labor. From the practical standpoint, the use of foreign
workers has until recently been a difficult problem. The use of workers from
the occupied areas had been particularly challenging. But the successes so far
have exceed our expectations. Gauleiter Sauckel has succeeded in persuading the
enormous number of foreign workers to become willing workers with us. The
German war economy has thus had no difficulties, but rather has shown steadily rising
production. The incorporation of millions of foreign workers has not led to an
imbalance between the Führer’s goals and the biological possibilities, as enemy
propaganda maintains. Rather, it demonstrates the enormous dynamics, directed
by Germany, that determine the fate of all European nations.
According to Article 10 of the plenipotentiary for labor’s directives, we
have above all used the available labor in the occupied regions to meet
Germany’s war production needs. We have not neglected, however, to use the
labor remaining in the occupied regions efficiently and in an organized way.
The same productivity is demanded of them as is of those in Germany, using
piece rates and bonuses. The freeing up of workers is a further goal.
Total mobilization has reached all of Europe. Each nation carries its part
of the burdens of the war and contributes its labor to ensure that the military
units of the Axis and its allies never lack military material. The more we work
everywhere, the more powerful will be our war machine. And we will never lose a
war because we produced too many weapons.
It is obvious that the plenipotentiary for labor will deal with future
problems of the labor force with the same positive results that are already
evident across all the fronts where we are fighting. At home and at the front,
a granite-hard faith in Germany’s leadership is a certainty for all: Europe is
winning!
