Nazi wartime labour shortages

At the height of the Third Reich's war production there were nearly five million additional German and foreign workers in the war economy. Despite the efforts made by Albert Speer to rationalise the war economy and make it more efficient, there was still too few workers to compete with the combined military production of the allied powers. Workers from Germany, from occupied western countries and from allied countries like Italy and Hungary were recruited though non German workers were paid less and treated badly. The poverty and ill health of Polish workers and Russian POWs meant that heavy labour tasks were impossible, only 5% of the Russian POWs were fit for any kind of work at all. *****STOP PRESS***** I only ever talk about history on this podcast but I also have another life, yes, that of aspirant fantasy author and if that's your thing you can get a copy of my debut novel The Blood of Tharta, right here: Help the podcast to continue bringing you history each week If you enjoy the Explaining History podcast and its many years of content and would like to help the show continue, please consider supporting it in the following ways: If you want to go ad-free, you can take out a membership here Or You can support the podcast via Patreon here Or you can just say some nice things about it here Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/explaininghistory. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.