"Meanwhile, running counter to all the grandiose plans for German colonization of foreign living space, the insatiable demand for labour of the Third Reich's military-industrial complex and the conscription of a rising share of able-bodied Germans into the armed forces meant that Germany itself began to be 'colonized' by foreign workers. The number in the Reich rose from 301,000 in 1939 (less than 1 per cent of all employees) to around two million in the autumn of 1940, to more than seven million by 1944 - nearly a fifth of the workforce. They came from all over Europe, some voluntarily, others under duress: from Belgium, Denmark, France, Holland and Italy; from Hungary and Yugoslavia too. At first, it was skilled workers from Western Europe who were attracted by the rapidly growing German economy; the men who built the road to the Eagle's Nest were in fact Italian stonemasons, willing beneficiaries of Hitler's boom. As the war wore on, however, it was Poles who came to predominate. Few of them came of their own volition."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006), p. 460
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Migrant_worker
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Migrant worker
9 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Migrant worker →
Related Quotes
"Already in September 1941 there were more than a million Poles working in the Reich, accounting for just under half t…"
"The 40-day lockdown was further extended at a time of sporadic expressions of resistance and anger by migrant workers…"
"The migrant worker distress has also exposed the inherent fractures of the “one nation” narrative that is one of the …"
"Barring examples from Kerala and Telengana, most host states have demonstrated disregard for migrant workers. It beho…"
"India seems to have lost that urge to consistently relate to injustice as an assault on democracy. Be it plight of mi…"
"I wanted to document, somehow, the strength of those people that I had known . . . when the migrant worker was living…"
"…And I was only concerned about the migrant worker, the people I had known best. I had been a migrant worker. So I be…"
"Migrant workers, dismissed by employers, enjoying no protection from their governments, often thrown out of their acc…"
"For years, Beijing’s defenders insisted that testimonies from Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Tibetan survivors were fabr…"
"Money is a new and terrible form of slavery, and like the old form of personal slavery it demoralizes both slave and …"