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@@420JackG you're comparing prison chain gangs to forced labour and starvation during WWII .. I wish my country had prison chain gangs or work party's reoffending of former prisoners then might not to be so high or quick to commit crimes
This subject should be getting taught in every school in the world . What the Nazis did is breathtakingly evil . When i see clips of innocent people being beaten or murdered it just makes me think how on earth could you do such a thing . The amount of suffering that the Nazis caused is sickening. Thank you Spartacus for bringing this subject up and educating as many people as possible
Slavery in the US was NEVER even the largest slaving nation in the world by far. During the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade only 3-4% of people taken from African went to what became the modern day borders of the US. In comparison 80% of the people leaving from Africa to the America's went to Brazil (which nobody ever talks about). The rest of the slaves in-between those numbers went to the other Caribbean nations. And that is just talking about the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade. Muslims Kingdoms took hundreds of thousands of black people from Africa to work for them as well, well before the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade started and well after it ended as well. Within India still today even it can be argued that millions of people are living as slaves (just without that name). Something many people ignore is when the UK became the first nation to outlaw slavery it excluded that rule for India. And then of course there is still modern day slavery in many if not most African nations as well as many middle-eastern nations and China and North Korea depending on what you want to classify as slavery. Yes all this time and evidence the US is the nation that is brought up the most when it comes to slavery. It's not like we didn't have the majority of the US population arguing against slavery since before the nation was unified. It's not like we had to fight are most deadly war ever (both sides included) to end slavery. And even the the US was on of the first 20 nations in world history to outlaw slavery. (Looks as Brazil, India, the Middle East and China).
My Master's professor got to host a marine science conference in a German castle a few years ago. It was paid for by a German carmaker that supported the Nazi war-machine, and were still compelled to support the reconciliation efforts into the 21st century. Didn't get to go, though...
Back in the 90's a company I used to work for sent a group of about 30 employees on a training course at I.G. Farben (who made the incinerators for the death camps, among other things). The trouble began with pointed quips such as "Is it me, or is it hot in here ?", Or "Can you smell gas ?" and rapidly got worse, intentionally embarrassing I.G.'s employees as they were clearly aware of the company's history and it's part in The Holocaust. Never forget.
@@michaelthomas5433 the Dulles brother that became Secretary of State was a huge advocate for his law firm to continue business with the Nazis. Took a lot of less enthralled staff to steer the firm away from the fascists.
One of my summer jobs in high school was working for a man named Jan Jozwiak. He was born in Poland, and was a slave laborer for at least 4 years in a Messerschmitt plant. He risked his life every day there deliberately not bucking properly every 5th rivet, hoping it would weaken the aircraft just enough so it wouldn’t come back from a fight.
The German's in 1945 considered the Messerschmitts to be hopelessly outclassed to Allied fighters in large part due to the terrible quality of the airframes they were getting from the slavelabour filled factories. The surfaces were so rough with bad rivets and finishing the aircraft lost a lot of speed, to the point the Engine designers said there was no point in them boosting engine power when the drag from the airframe was eliminating the gains. So you're friend, along with other slave laborers in German factories, were definently having an impact.
I've read that sabotage by slave workers, combined with low outputs and the constant need to retrain new slave workers was a significant factor in reducing German war production as well as the effectiveness of, for example, the V2 rockets, many of which failed to reach their target.
My grandfather was "conscripted" into the Arbeitseinsatz near the end of the war. Having already survived the bombing of Rotterdam in 1940 he was not about to let himself be bombed by the Allies in a German factory. Sadly I don't know any details, but I know he managed to escape together with a Soviet POW. After the end of the war, having experienced some quite terrible things, he was drafted to fight in the Dutch East Indies, where his Armoured Car hit a mine. Twice. Living through all that still amazes me. Life was terrible in those days.
@@jamestang1227 Sadly yes. I don't know how he felt about that. He died when I was four years old, so I never spoke with him about his experiences. For a short time I contemplated putting a lot of time and effort in research about his service, but I don't want to risk finding things I don't want to know about. The past years I have become very much aware of the things that happened in the former Dutch East Indies, and I wouldn't know what I would do if I would discover that he was involved in any of these things.
@@jorritpolder3409 all the more reason to do the research. Truth-telling the bad stuff in our past is so important if we want a peaceful future. By letting fear stop you, you are letting the stories of the past be forgotten. Never forget.
My granduncle was an italian POW. Germans put him and his Friends in a coal mine and they would work insanely to earn theyr MEAL: 2 boiled potato skins each day. He was 93 kg when he was inprisoned and less than 50 when he came back, he was a really tall man, almost 2 meters, and nobody was able to recognize him, only his mother. Indeed a lucky man.
@@piggy201 Italy surrended in 1943, the country was splitted in Alf and the germans took control of the North. The italian soldiers there were asked to fight for the Reich or become POWs, the was majority refused to fight for the nazis.
My grandpa is 95 and was taken to Germany from Smolensk, Russia when he was 16. He still remembers the work in the camp very vividly and has harrowing stories of how it went. Soviet prisoners would be treated worse than Western Europeans as they were not under protection of the Red Cross and would not receive extra food. He still has judgements about nations based on how friendly people were to one another - he recalls French and Greeks would be nice and friendly, while Poles were not (understandable, given the history). Western Europeans were not allowed to share food with Soviets, so the way they went around it was leaving a half-full bowl of food and asking the Soviet laborer to 'wash' it. He also recalls some nice Germans in the camp store who would give full loaves of bread despite the coupons being for just a few hundred grams. When the camp was liberated, they had to go on foot and by bikes back home, no transport was provided by the Red Army. He ended up settling in Ukraine where he was assigned to be a miner by local authorities.
Thanks for sharing that story. He was lucky that after he was liberated, the Soviets didn’t through him into G.U.L.A.G, as they did to many returning POWs, whom Stalin considered traitors for surrendering.
I do not think the forced labor aspect is stressed in school enough when talking about Nazi Germany. The absolute scale is mind-blowing to me, especially since I am only finding out about this.
@@marcussixer1300 How would German and World History change if Charlemagne's Francia had gotten WW2 German technology? Would Slavery, Serfdom, Knights and Feudalism not exist?
My babysitter when I was a kid, was kind old women who told stories about being brave in the face of evil. She had a number tattoo on her arm. As adult I realised she was talking about her time as forced labour. She used to show us how she could pick up sand in her shoe with no one seeing it, then by magic ( I was kid) it was in her hand. I found out as an adult she was forced to work making ammunition and used to change gunpowder for sand. A small bit of resistant but it must have had some inpackt.
unbelievable to think that Speer got only 20 years for his crimes, people sat behind bars a lot longer for a lot less and yet he walked away with less than a murder charge.
For a Nazi Speer was rather sophisticated and urbane. He played along at the Nuremberg trials to an extent rather than outright deny his sins and managed to skate thru without wholly incriminating himself. In hindsight we now realize he was pretty much as guilty as the worst of them.
Watching these videos often makes me feel down. But at the end when Spartacus quoted Alex Hacker ‘I’m still here you bastard’ that lifted my spirits. Never forget!
an often overlooked part of the war against humanity - the concentration camps take the spotlight, so the slave system is overshadowed. Thank you for also telling this story. And I love the quote at the end: "I am still here you bastard" - a quote that each and every survivor of this killing machinery can tell Hitler, although unfortunately so many of the lower ranking Nazis and many of the industry bosses who profited from this went with little or no conviction.
I remember watching a documentary about one old lady, a Slovak Jewish Shoah survivor. Her whole family got murdered, she survived. At the end of the film, she shows the photo of her family in 2000s and says "I have 5 Jewish children and 14 Jewish grandchildren. You can't wipe us out. Hitler, keep turning in your grave you bastard."
@@harveywabbit9541 totally out of order as a comparison. Equating What the Nazis did to the Jewish survival in Israel is classic antisemitism. And it is defined as such. Get an education you antisemite. 🇮🇱
The prison system in the Third Reich and occupied territory also gets overlooked, compared to concentration camps. Prisoners in regular prisons occasionally had access to lawyers and had more possibilities for writing and receiving letters and parcels, but otherwise conditions were as bad as in camps. In Pankrac prison in Prague, for example, the staple food was dried vegetables (Dörrgemüse), also common in camps. It had some nutritional value but tasted awful. On two days a week, some goulash was added and this seems to have been the only palatable food in Pankrac.
Western World: Can you explain the gap in your resume? German Corporation active between 1933-1945: *Dabs brow, loosens collar, clears throat* Well, you see
It is good that this is covered, often many were deported or forced to work in German war factories and camps in which a lot would never return back to their homeland due to the harsh environments and poor working conditions.
I read a book about a dutchman that was forced to work on a farm in east germany. It was the best time of his life, he was really lucky the conditions were good and his boss was friendly. When the russians came, it went bad. The girls on the farm got raped and murdered. When he went back to holland, everyone hated him because he didnt flee the forced labour.
@@AR-so6ch so what, the nazis still sucked, the nazis still raped and killed millions. This dutch only got well treated out of lucky and for being an "aryan", and as we all know there were some good germans too, only an idiot boss would treat his worker bad when he worked on his own house. All of those girls killed wouldnt have died if your idol hadnt attacked the URSS, unfortunately innocents pay for their leaders.
As interesting as I find Indy's weekly accounts of the military developments of the second world war, Spartacus is covering the even more important events of WW2: what mind boggeling evil people were willing to do to their fellow human beings. It remains incredible to hear these stories. Never forget and never ever censor UA-cam!
They did not see what they were doing as evil. They saw it as purifying the human race. You have to understand that not one single person on planet Earth ever sees themselves as evil. We are after all the heroes of our own story. The mental hoops needed to self justify acts society deems as evil are in a way amazing and terrifying at the same time.
The people responsible are long dead and unfortunately so are most of their victims, but watching the War Against Humanity series provokes anger as if they're reporting on current events.
@@lycaonpictus9662 What you say is true. Remember though the lesson. Humanity has not fundamentally changed in its entire history. We are corrupt, venal, greedy. We love violence so much we had to ritualize it in order to keep some semblance of peace. I wouldn't be surprised if the entire universe sees us as nothing more than violence mongering savages. As long as lust and envy are part of the human condition, we will always have atrocities like this.
I remember talking to a man who lived and worked during the war in Denmark for a school project. He emphasized how he had avoided going to Germany to work. In Denmark many public works was started to avoid sending workers to Germany. Now I partly understand why.
Spartacus: "Indy, I just finished the latest batch of scripts. You'll never guess what happens this week!" Indy: "Is it war crimes?" Spartacus: "...maybe"
@@spartacus-olsson Learning from Indy: I can’t wait to see how the war progresses! What events will be unfolding on coming weeks? Learning from Sparty: *PAIN* *I still think you are doing a great job Spartacus telling us those events so we don’t repeat them. Never forget.
8:03 - The "P" badge for Poles seems to have been assigned the colours yellow and purple because the Germans wanted to avoid white and red, the Polish national colours. Indeed yellow might have been included to associate Poles with Jews in German eyes.
I find it similar to how German propoganda films after 1942 always highlighted central asian and mongol soldiers in the red army, to portray the invasion of the USSR as a war of "white europe vs evil asiatic USSR"
@@MarcosElMalo2 "hurr, you iz white supremacist, durr" What you fail to realize ,is that the soviet regime during and before Stalin's reign did actively discriminate against many of its ethnic minorities. So it is understandable that conscripts from those ethnicities were not particularly thrilled to risk their lives for the ussr.
I have been waiting for this channel to cover this topic of the war since I started watching, and I have to say that this has been one of my favorite episodes yet. The editing was fantastic, the use of graphs and statistics really set the gravity and magnitude of this whole horrid system better than I could have expected, and of course Sparty's narration never dissapoints. And that ending was superb. Please keep doing what you're doing, you're seriously making a massive contribution to public education of history. You are awesome.
I'm from Poland. My father (born 1923) was forced to go to work in the Reich (today's Austria, Grub). From there he was sent to Auschwitz for disobedience. He survived luckily. It is very difficult to watch this and not to cry as I recall the horrible and dramatic stories from those years....
Albert Speer used to get a pass from people because in a clique that people judge to be mostly insanely cruel people with deep disturbances and very harsh military men, Speer stood alone as a person that came from a relatively well off family, with no disturbances in his youth and a seemingly loving family. This, normality, for lack of a better word of his life that portrayed him as a just as an architect with no real interest of knowledge of the happenings around him stood for a long while beucase of peoples unwillingless to accept that such a normal person, that could pretty much be any of us, with a normal job, a normal family and a completely normal life, could have brought forth a slave economy that would rival anything history had to offer. He wasn't strictly fanatical or ideological, he didnt seem to have any mental disturbances, his dedication to his job and his family relationships werent disturbed or irregular. He could have very well just lead a life as an above average architect if he wasn't in the clique of Hitler. But thankfully with the decades following his death and closer inspection of his memoirs and life, this cleanliness of his name is being reconsidered.
@Fabian Kirchgessner He phrased it in a way that made it seem like he did not know but could have found out. But he did know and was actively using forced labor and knew what the SS was doing.
@Fabian Kirchgessner Speer maintained at the Nuremberg trials and in his memoirs that he had no direct knowledge of the Holocaust. He admitted only to being uncomfortable around Jews in the published version of the Spandau Diaries.[49] More broadly, Speer accepted responsibility for the Nazi regime's actions. Historian Martin Kitchen states that Speer was actually "fully aware of what had happened to the Jews" and was "intimately involved in the 'Final Solution'".[167] Brechtken said Speer only admitted to a generalized responsibility for the Holocaust to hide his direct and actual responsibility.[153] Speer was photographed with slave laborers at Mauthausen concentration camp during a visit on March 31, 1943; he also visited Gusen concentration camp. Although survivor Francisco Boix testified at the Nuremberg trials about Speer's visit,[168] Taylor writes that, had the photo been available, he would have been hanged.[169] In 2005, The Daily Telegraph reported that documents had surfaced indicating that Speer had approved the allocation of materials for the expansion of Auschwitz concentration camp after two of his assistants inspected the facility on a day when almost a thousand Jews were massacred.[170] Heinrich Breloer, discussing the construction of Auschwitz, said Speer was not just a cog in the work-he was the "terror itself".[170] Speer did not deny being present at the Posen speeches to Nazi leaders at a conference in Posen (Poznań) on October 6, 1943, but claimed to have left the auditorium before Himmler said during his speech: "The grave decision had to be taken to cause this people to vanish from the earth",[171] and later, "The Jews must be exterminated".[172] Speer is mentioned several times in the speech, and Himmler addresses him directly.[172] In 2007, The Guardian reported that a letter from Speer dated December 23, 1971, had been found in a collection of his correspondence with Hélène Jeanty, the widow of a Belgian resistance fighter. In the letter, Speer says, "There is no doubt-I was present as Himmler announced on October 6, 1943, that all Jews would be killed."[116]
@Fabian Kirchgessner "Mr. Officer I didn't kill that man at 4:52 am using this knife after tricking him. Had I known this was going to happen, I would have warned him I was about to trick him! I'm innocent, duh!" -Speer, probably.
For those who are in awe of how germany kept the war going for so long here's your answer, not the unbelievable will of the German people but by slavery.
And meth! Dont forget that Beyer and the Sackler family (yes, those Sacklers involved in the American opioid crisis) were flooding the Reich with stimulant drugs to keep workers, soliders , and housewives energized
Probably a fair bit of fear as well. After all if you invade neighbor after neighbor, treating the people you conquer abominably, there would have to be fear that your own nation was in for some "eye for an eye" treatment should it fall to enemy occupation.
The forced laborers in the armaments factories, of course, sabotaged the weapons wherever they could. Elmer Bendiner, a B-17 navigator, told the story of how his plane got shot up during a mission, including several hits to the gas tank, but nothing happened. Counting it as a miracle, after landing they took the shells out of the fuselage and examined them, only to find no explosive charge inside, just a note inside one of them that said in Czech: "this is all we can do for you now."
@Fabian Kirchgessner The propaganda about it being a civilising mission was kept up for a surprisingly long time, as far as I understand. So even if most people didn't know, they were also fed a particular story.
@@ErwinPommel That happened back when the Congo Free State was a thing, it became a Belgian colony in 1908. In total, 648 Belgians served in the Force Publique during the CFS's existence, many of them did not take part in the atrocities, many were also already middle-aged when they enlisted in the Force Publique. So, those WW2 POW were not "hand-cutters".
🇩🇪 I work as a gardener in Berlin and realised that the concrete pole in my place of work, was a search light pole to guard the slave labourers who were sleeping in their barracks. The foundation of the barracks are still there. In the forest in ( West ) Berlin in the Grunewald. The people who live there have talked about a an outhouse with its floor concreted over. They assume there are bodies under the cement. Apparently, there are so many former slave labour quarters across Berlin, that there are not enough resources to deal with them. Thereare public data banks where you can map search etc it is overwhelming.
@@WorldWarTwo It is so very important that you make these videos. A new generation must learn this. Thank You ‼️ As slavery crops up again and again, from ISIS, Barabary Wars, to the debate inside the USA . My grandfather was a bomber and transport ( JU 52 ) pilot and a gung ho Nazi. But he soon realised , around 1942 I think, that the war was lost. He had experienced a sabotaged mission he was leading as a pilot officer in the Mediterranean. He also flew wounded out of Stalingrad to Vienna. That too ended in desaster, when on the return flight the Allies had bombed the airfield in Vienna and he had to crash land in a field with a plane full of wounded soldiers. They all burnt to death as the doors no longer opened due to the impact of the landing. He watched as they burnt to death, standing in a field outside Vienna. Indeed he was no fan of war. He knew what would happen to him in Russia. So he walked towards the American lines as they approached. My first sleeping bag was his sleeping bag the US Army gave him as a POW.
When I was a young boy I was taught to fish by Peter who had been a Scots soldier caught at Dunkirk. Then he was enslaved until '45. Fishing and as my grandmothers pub cellar man we knew we had to be quiet and kind as his 'nerves' had been shattered for for ever by the things done to him and the men around him. Teaching me to fly fish kept him calm and contributing to others. Just one of the many victims.
My zaidy was one of the prisoners selected at Auschwitz for slave labor, this video really taught me a lot about his circumstances and just how amazing it is that he survived. He never talked about it, but I know he carried the weight of those years his whole life. Spartacus, what you are doing with this series is really important, can't thank you enough for making sure this history is properly memorialized.
While I knew about the Nazi's using slaves for their war industry, I'm actually suprised that the slaves were also used as servants in households. I never heard about this aspect of the slave economy, so if anyone here has a good source on this specific topic I'd like to hear it.
That was not widespread. It was only for the financial and political elite. It’s often overlooked because of the “Hilfsarbeiter” and “Ostarbeiter” euphemisms. I mention it because we have to understand that the system permeated all aspects of society.
@@spartacus-olsson I agree, it's important to also mention to lesser known and less widespread crimes against humanity, and that's why I love this channel because you guys do that.
@@yorick6035 my grandad had Italian POWs working on his farm and from what I can gather, whilst they would surely rather be at home, they very much enjoyed it. Would you describe them as slaves?
@Andrew Pease if they are being forced to work on that farm against their will(even if it is more enjoyable than hard labour in a factory) I would consider them as slaves, yes. (not making any judgement towards your grandfather, because I do not know him nor the situation)
@@spartacus-olsson No Spartacus, thank you and everyone involved for all of the amazing content you produce at such a high frequency. Long may it last!
"... a Shakespearian character of boundless ambition but not a coward, barbarian or serf..." - Primo Levi A peculiar verdict on Speer, with whom Levi refused to have any contact.
My Baba was a German War Slave as a teenager. German soldiers arrived at her family farm in Lviv Ukraine (one of the largest in the town) and told her father to deliver 1 daughter to the war effort, or face harsh punishments and lose a daughter they selected anyways. He chose her because she was the best (oldest daughter was apparently a bit of a layabout dreamer, and the youngest daughter was very pretty). But he said later that when the car drove away the family mourned her as already dead. She was taken to Germany to work as a cooks assistant in a fine dining restaurant during the day and a private maid for an officer during the evening, before having to go back to a girls dormitory at night where she could eat for the first time that day. She said the officer ignored her and the wife berated and beat her for the littlest things and just because she was frustrated. She said the hotel cook let the assistants lick flour from their hands after breading and whatever snails they could catch from the cellar walls. If any German soldier wanted he could "commandeer" a girl for "vital labour", none of those girls ever returned from their "recruitment" to a back alley or a private room. There were no protections for the girls alone on the streets, police and soldiers would ignore their distress as they were just slaves. A group of 5 might leave for home after work, only 3 might come back the next day. She said during Allied bombing raids of Dresden she would lay in her dorm with sirens going off (not allowed to go to shelters and unwilling to hide in the basement with the men) hoping a bomb would land on her and end the suffering. Truly a horrible life experience no one should have had to survive. For obvious reasons she spoke little of the experience, and likely omitted or changed some details to cover up the horror. When rescued by the allies she was briefly examined, told to eat and finish an Onion (fast, easy nutrients that are mostly water), then put in a line with the other walking survivors to be processed by the red cross as a Displaced Person (A DP a horrible stigma that persisted for a generation). She was told as a Ukrainian outside of Ukraine that Stalin had apparently ordered any returning Ukrainian civilian be arrested and put into forced work camps (likely to death) or shot as traitors and collaborators, so she could not go back home. She was sponsored as a live in maid from a family in Saskatchewan Canada (she knew only what English the soldiers had shown her), but they apparently backed out halfway there so she arrived with no sponsor, no job, no family, no home, no money, and not knowing the language. Fortunately a Jewish synagogue group from Poland took her in to act as a caretaker/maid/babysitter/caterer for the groups members and got her an apartment to live in. We are to this day thankful to the kind Albertan Jews who took in a non-Jewish displaced person when their own community was taxed to its limit helping its own (as the government reneged on its commitments and limited sponsorship's for Jews).
You could/should have dropped the names of more german companies and families that profited from slave labor. Like the Quandt family, which had over 50 000 slaves in their factories during the war. That family got insanely rich from working slaves to death, then escaped prosecution after the war and became the main shareholder of BMW to this day. No apology or reparations were issued to this day. Herbert Quandt is in fact still being honored at BMW, where there is a foundation in his name.
We’d need a very very long video to do that list justice. We’re literally talking about the entire German economy. When the fund to final payment of reparations was opened in 2005 - 6,500 companies that still exist paid into the fund. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. It’s like I said in the video: Slave labor permeated all of society from local bakers to big industry.
My grandfather was a Polish soldier in 1939. He was a POW and served as a farm hand deep in the Reich. When he returned home in 1945 he weighed only 30 kilograms. He was so traumatized that he refused to talk about anything concerning his imprisonment. Fortunately he survived and was a father of 8 children, including my mom.
My paternal grandparents were liberated by the United States Army from a forced labor camp in Velbert, Germany in April of 1945. They were Ukranian Poles who fled west after being first invaded by Stalin in 1939, then by Hitler in 1941. Their survival was a miracle. My father was with them and was 11 years old when they were finally liberated. They became displaced persons who emigrated to first Canada in 1947, then the U.S. in 1951. I am eternally grateful to everyone who helped them on their journey.
Thank for making this series and making sure people never forget. Being a Canadian I am glad that Alex Hacker ended up here. The words of defiance in his statement inspire me and make me even more proud of my great grandfather and great uncles who all served in the war, my great grandfather survived and lived to 101 deceased in 2013, however my great uncles both paid the ultimate price I am glad there are people like Mr Hacker still alive to make sure the world never forgets the horrors of the Holocaust or the heroes who fought to free the world from a maniac like Hitler.
My dad ended up as a labourer in Swinemünde (Poland), working at a shipyard. There were people from all the occupied territories, even a large group of Chinese. The Russians had it really bad, compared to the other inmates, and that's all my dad ever told about it; the only thing my mother knew was that when the Russians were approaching, everybody headed East. After months of silence, he showed up in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
The further we move from these events, the more important remembering; not just from reading but actually having another human being tell you what humanity has accomplished in the name of greed and power. Never Forget
My grandfather was "drafted" in Belgium to go and work in Germany. He was one of the few lucky one's who were not sent to the factories but was sent to a small bakery somewhere in the more rural areas of Germany. He worked at two bakeries. The first was a gentle person who gave my grandfather food and other supplies. The second one was a ruthless nazi and my grandfather was lucky to be liberated before he was worked to death ...
In my hometown in Lower Saxony a polish worker was shot (I forgot for what „crime“). His fate was discovered in an archive last year, so his sister finally learned of her brother’s fate. He has now a step stone in the street leading to his execution spot.
Did a case study on Speer in my last year of high school. What I found fascinating was how he created the "Penitent Nazi" myth about himself. One interesting component regarding the historiography of his life was comparing the sources that wrote on him. Gitta Sereny, who had extensive personal interviews with Speer, bolstered his ability to tell his story as a regretful meritocrat. By contrast, Daniel Van Der Vat (who grew up in Nazi occupied Netherlands) tore into him for his role in slave labour camps like Dora. Taught me that it's essential to consider the context of the historian's origins, and the biases they can carry or induce even when they appear otherwise aloof.
What an important video for all of us to see and remember. Thank you for making this content so high quality and free for those of us that are unable to finance you. The world is better thanks to you.
Not much mention of Albert Speer in this special WW2 edition. When Hitler wrote about the "bearers of civilization" in Mein Kampf, he meant the Japanese.
@@WorldWarTwo @Fabian Kirschgessner Thank you. Both of them survived, one is still alive :). The one who died a few years back did talk a lot about the war but in both cases, I don't think they were too traumatized by these events if I can make such assumptions. One of them worked for the German military industry and the other at a private farm. The latter was treated very decently, it is important to state that there were many notable examples of Germans who treated their workers very well, even as family members (again, some people might disagree on saying positive things about people who used slave labor). To be fair, one of them survived the Volhynia massacre in 1943 (which I am sure will be mentioned next year on this channel) and this was the thing that massively overshadowed the rest of her war experience. The other one (the one who worked at a farm) did not have a too great experience with the Red Army during their invasion of Germany (attempted rape). So for both of them, slave laboring was child play in comparison. I think that Heuaktion would be an interesting topic to cover, or in general, the kidnapping of Polish children with Aryan features and "adopting" them by German families. Many of them never had the chance to know their real parents after the war. However, I am perfectly aware that World War II is such a massive subject that even a separate series managed by Sparty and all the special episodes are not enough to cover everything. You guys are working very hard already and are doing a great job. Edit: I should also mention that both of them received compensation from the Western German government, although the sums were laughable
Primo Levi explains in an interview that many fellow Italian concentration camp prisoners died from lack of understanding. Meaning that when an order was shouted at them, most of them who spoke neither German, Polish, nor Yiddish (in case fellow prisoners tried to help them) would just be punished for not understanding, and often died.
Sephardic Jews like Levi had language problems, although Levi himself had learned some German. Ashkenazi Jews who were for the most part Yiddish-speaking could understand and be understood by Germans, as German and Yiddish are quite close. Sephardic Jews spoke neither German nor Yiddish (if they spoke a Jewish language, it was Spanish-derived Ladino) and this told against them in concentration camps.
Thank you for going through this segment of history. It is very clear from the old generation that went through the war that this happened. 2 points of mine come to mind: -A recent incident occurred where the young 20 year old heiress of a confectionary firm stated on German media, relaying what she heard from her grandparents, that they also had been given a large number of Polish workers to work their factories during the war, and that they had "been happy and well treated". Subsequently a media storm ensued here in Germany. -Personal experience from when I lived in Luxembourg, was that many people's grandparents (it should be noted that Luxembourgers were considered Germanic Aryans by Nazi racial law) were sent off, forced off to work in Germany under these programmes during the war. Men to the Wehrmacht, others to forced labour. in factories or in the fields.
I would like to see an episode on how albert Speer managed to avoid the death penalty at Nuremberg for using slave labour. As the research after the trial showed how guilty he actually was
He gave the Americans his knowledge of German weaponry and war industry, and they made a deal with him. He, von Braun, and many other Germans figured out very quickly that their technical expertise would give them a free ticket out of the noose. Of course, showing remorse and renouncing the regime at Nuremberg didn't hurt.
@Jonas Åström thanks but evidence later emerged after the trials of his full involvement , I think he said that he wasn’t aware of the full extent of the Holocaust , however he was at a meeting where Heinrich himmler made a speech about the persecution of the Jews.
@@keiranallcott1515 He was involved in the Holocaust even as Hitler's architect and head of construction. He had concentration camps built next to quarries of marble and granite so slave labor could be used to supply his building projects with stone, and his office was involved in evicting Jewish residents of Berlin for his Welthauptstadt Germania project. After the war he had friends alter the records.
I've always wondered why some Jews were compensated for their enslavement after the war, while others were not. I've also heard that Poles that worked right beside the Jews were never compensated either. This injustice needs to be addressed also.
@Fabian Kirchgessner Some Jews don like Poles, some Poles dont like Jews. Living 1000 years next to each other is not easy ehen both hace separate goals but usualy Poland was the safest place for Jews in Europe. There are many reazoons why Poles coud not like Jews(before the war in 1920 after Poland just get independency some Jews demant authonomy, it was like knife in back for poles, 80% of Jews in Poland said that more important for them are their lows than Polish laws, its hard to modernize country witch 3000000 minority who is against Polish Law. Jews didnt like so mauch polish that their welcomed Garman and Soviets with flowers in 1939, unfortunately both regimes brought them worst things than Poles). Many Jews joined NKVD and was hunted by Home Army. Anyway Jews culture becomed part of Polish culture (what can be seen even today on streets) and usualy Poles have worm attitude towards Jews. Truth is that Poland didnt get any reparations but was most destroyed country during IIWW.
I have not heard of Catholic Polish slaves working alongside Jews。Nor have I heard of Jews being compensated for lost wages while they were slaves。Most Jews did not survive at all。
@@user-jq2iz9zn4p All of this certainly did happen. Volkswagon was one company that did, finally, weakly, compensate Jews that had worked in their factory during the holocaust. In Poland, many Polish men and women worked right along side the Jews, and never received and compensation while the Jewish slave laborers did receive some compensation. These are fact, I knew some of those people that suffered greatly for 6 long years.
After Hitler's death, when Dönitz fled to set up a government in Flensberg, economists working for the US Strategic Bombing Survey practically beat a path to Albert Speer's door so they could ask for his input on war industry, weapons production, and how it could be halted by bombing attacks. Speer cooperated fully, telling the Americans how and where each of the Air Force's attacks succeeded and failed, his insights into Hitler's regime, how he organized the armaments ministry to be more efficient, and many other details and secrets of German weaponry besides. After he was arrested and taken to Nuremberg to stand trial, he wrote a letter to the American prosecutor reminding him of this. That's the real reason why he was treated so leniently. Not because of his charm or remorse or whatever else, though those certainly didn't hurt. Remember we were happy to take in von Braun and others who used slave labor and human experimentation to produce weapons, so we could use their expertise against the Russians.
My grandfather, Jan Kost- then 20 years old- was deported to Germany as a slave labourer in april 1940, roughly 2 weeks before his father was murdered by the soviets in Katyń Forest Massacre. He worked at a coal mine near Mücheln/Geiseltal and was liberated 5 years later.
There are 27 million people in slavery in Asia, Africa and the middle East today. What are we doing to stop it? If "Never forget" holds any meaning, it means taking steps to prevent reoccurence of these abuses in our own time. We tolerate repression of minorities, forced labour camps in China today but buy their cheap products. We allow debt slavery in India and are happy to use their IT companies. We overlook slavery and abuse in the middle East but buy their oil.
My greatgrandfather was was a French POW slave in Germany. He was captured during the Battle of France and survived to be liberated. I wish I knew more about his experience tbh.
@@WorldWarTwo UPDATE (on my great grandfather): So I double checked with my father and I was wrong about his dislike of Germans after the war. In fact after he retired he once traveled back to the farm in Germany where he was enslaved to reunite with the German farmers who he was forced to work with. I think I just misremembered something my father told me (he clearly hated the Nazis though so that's where I might have gotten confused). Also I learned from my grandfather that the history of his unit was written down after the war by one of his officers. From that we learned he was in charge of a horse drawn cannon during the Battle of France (there was also a horse drawn munitions cart) and his unit surrendered at Pont-Sainte-Maxence (north of Paris) on June 9th 1940 after being ambushed and both horses had been killed by German machine gun fire. After he was captured he was sent to a camp in the Black Forest where he would be sent out to work on a farm in a small village in the area (I'm not sure the exact name of the village). His name was Maurice Mourant and he was from a farming village in Haute-Saône, France.
Speer in (hoi4)TNO be like "So we're fine, as long no one frees any slaves" "Question?" "What's your question Brandt" "I freed all the slaves" *Slave revolt sounds*
A very precise presentation of what the Germans did. Not just the nazis but the German people as a whole let this happen. I see within the USA a beginning of a group of nazis like nationalist groups and it causes me great fear. My own father could not speak English as a very young child and was beaten by a group of Drunken KKK while he played near his home.
I fear for the future of the US also. Personally, I've seen people think that cant happen here, that its just not possible, and its this very mentality that will put us there; complacency.
Thank you so very much for dedicating a whole episode to this topic. It’s continually astonishing to me how many “history buffs” continue to push the idea that Speer was The Good One™️ despite the stacks of research and evidence that thoroughly debunks this idea.
Thank you for the feedback. Be sure to check out all our specials & weekly episodes ad we debunk myths, explore the war, and learn history all together.
The economist Adam Tooze has written a great book on this topic that I recommend both viewers and the presenter of this channel to read: It's called "The Wages of Destruction", Nazi attempts at autarchy under a international finance sanctions environment led the Nazis to increasingly rely on expropriations of the natural resources of the country's they invaded as well as the 'forced labour indentureship' of 'non-Aryan' ethnic groups led to the Nazi dependency on slave labour as the war progressed. The use of 'slave labour' and obsession with 'eugenics' would play a contributory role in the emergence of the obscene 'Final Solution'.
A strange note about Swedish serfdom in the beginning! Slavery was banned in Sweden in 1335 and even though the freedoms of the peasants were eroded during the rise of the state in the 1500s, outright serfdom never really existed in mainland Sweden. Areas which Sweden had conquered and already had an existing system of serfdom, such as Swedish Pommern (where serfdom was banned in 1806), were allowed to continue the practice but I still feel it's not fair to say that serfdom was a practiced in Sweden and only banned at the cusp of the 20th century.
@@michaelkovacic2608 because he collaborated with allies in breaking the pot and revealing what they really did in Nuremburg court and dooming any hope for reduced sentences for other Nazi war criminals
@Fabian Kirchgessner of course, but courts can also make mistakes as they are also just human. 20 years is a common sentence for murdering 1 person in modern-day Austria (and I assume Europe in general), so it seems a bit off to me.
@Dearest Mr. Sparty Did you ever think it would be this difficult to execute the noble task you have set out upon? Because I sure as hell could not some two years ago. I salute your efforts good sir. That ending had me in tears.
Thank you. I set out on this with trepidation, but well aware of what lay ahead. I’ve been studying WW2 since I was eight years old, and I began reading about the war against humanity at ten. But even with four decades of learning about this, I’d lie if I didn’t say that I hesitated. Indy and I both had some reluctance to cover WW2 at first, albeit for different reasons. Astrid and our community convinced us that it needed to be done, and I’m glad and I know Indy’s glad that we’re doing it.
@@spartacus-olsson I am truly happy to hear that Sparty. At the end of this, I assume you'll have enough good karma to levitate 😂 Thank you again for your and Indy's, and Astrids and the whole team's marvelously well executed efforts. I feel a great pleasure in supporting your projects monetarily, most certainly deserve it.
My great grandfather was deported from Yugoslavia. I know he worked on a farm, since he owned a land here and was a farmer. Also, I know that he wasn't tortured, that he wasn't imprisoned, but was working for a civilian who took good care of him. This goes along what you said Spartacus, that ordinary people probably had some form of resistance toward enslaving others. Thank you for this episode. Never forget.
@@user-jq2iz9zn4p I don't have all the details, but I don't think he was imprisoned in a true meaning of that word, but rather "forcibly recruited". My guess is that some German officer gave him a choice to go and work, or to be shot. He already had a family before the war, so that's why he came back.
I wish stuff like this was covered better in schools so people stop associating Nazis with cool uniforms and weapons and instead understand how vile they were and still are. This exact topic was the main focus of a book I recently finished called The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze, and it was shocking how extensive this system was.
It should be also mentioned that about 200000 polish chldren were abducted from their homes and forcibly transported to Germany for purposes of forced labour, medical experiment, or Germanization. "Funny" think is that most of the doctors who made this experiments live long after war as specialists protected by German law. One of my professors, great theoretical physicist Bernard Jancewicz (he just died a month ago, unfortunately Covid) was one of this children, he last saw his parent as 4 years old child... in 1947 he back to Poland as orphan to a special camp for Polish children repatriated from Germany. It could be another intersting topic, about children (few months - 5 year old) taken by garmans. Never Forget.
Very sobering. As I watched this I thought about my little life I've built and my little family that I have. To think about it being taken away in such a way, to be tortured, starved, forced into labor, and to ultimately die. Heartbreaking. There are still many people alive who experienced it, can remember such awful experiences. What an awful war and an awful crime. My grandma recently past away at the age of 99. She had 5 brothers who were all at Guadalcanal. She would become very serious whenever she heard that place mentioned. Just because she saw the impact that experience had on them when they got back.
Hello team, and thank you for another incredible episode. Are there any plans in the future to go deeper into the specifics of still existing companies activities at the time? The IG farben camp was something I knew absolutely nothing about and as I'm reading about it, I'm running into even greater holes in my knowledge.
Chilling episode with numbers that are unimaginable and I struggle to get my head around it. Greed and racism underpinning decisions and actions. Now where have I heard that before?
My mates grandpa was taken to work in some factory in Dresden. He survived the 1945 bombing there and still lives in Czech Republic. I also remember one of my substitute high-school teacher saying, he was manufacturing engines for Messerschmitt fighters. People often not realize, that when Germany was bombed, lots of the casualities were these foreign slave workers. They either have special(worse) air-raid shelters, or nine at all. They also worked in undetonated bomb disposal. But some people got lucky and were put to work in the village farms. There was a higher chance of a good treatment there.
For about a year, even as an Indian I was in absolute disbelief and ignored people who said that the Nazis were just monsters in a human body. But by the time I was in 10th grade Isoowly started to realize the scale of horror inflicted upon the people of eastern europe,Balkans and western europe (under german control) I had a brief conversation with a Ukrainian person I met in a mock Russian federation discord server. I later on got to know what happened to his great grandparents and their brothers and sisters. I was again in disbelief but I was strong enough to listen to it all. The way his grandparents saw their own parents get snatched from them and they themselves having to abandon everything dear to them and escaping towards the Donbass and then migrating to northern Luhansk. Its unbelievable because what he said next was something that finally proved that humanity is capable of utterly disgracing their own kind Their village wasn't far from Sevastopol. WhEn they returned They found Out that their village was simply wiped out of existence. And that is an understatement They actually thought they were dreaming because they couldn't believe what they were seeing. He also told me that his great grandparents and their family were actually murdered in a concentration camp but theirs no where to look for them since their were so many. His grand parents volunteered to move to Belarus since they were part Russian and had friends in Minsk.when they went through the byelorussian countryside they found nothing but burnt out villages and people aging from 8 to 80 weeping and crying while laying on the floor because they had lost their family. It was actually heartbreaking because his grandparents had taken a photo of a child desperately clinging to his dead parents and sister trying to find any sign of life. And he was just 12 years old. No wonder the red army did what it did in germany.
The amount of pain and suffering all those people went through can indeed make you loose all hope in humanity. It is very important to share those personal accounts of what happened, in order for us to move forward and actually grow as humankind. If you are able to share any archival materials or photographs you or your relatives may have, please do get in touch! Contributions like that do help us tell a fuller story - even if its a tragic one.
Every time I see a new episode hosted by Spartacus I need to brace myself before watching. Thank you for pushing through and showing us the brutal reality of WW2 even though I'm sure it's hard for you. Never forget!
I had several Polish family members spend time as forced labourers, one being a POW from the '39 campaign, the rest being civilians conscripted over time as the war went on. Some worked in camps (both in concentration and solder camps), some worked on farms. The work wasn't always easy but especially on German farms, polish labourers were treated mostly fairly and even sometimes like family. Many Polish men stayed after the war to marry German women they had met in the community. The war was a tough time, and there was definetly a difference in treatment for soviet and Jewish prisoners, but many ordinary germans treated their labour humanely, sometimes even intervening on behalf of family members to save their lives in difficult situations
May I recommend William Manchester’s biography of the Krupp dynasty. After 300 years of history, he discusses his visit to the factory. Polish laborers had tipped him of to what was under some of the gardens. Children of Enslaved Polish women.
When you realize how leniently America treated von Braun and many other Germans who used slave labor and human experimentation to produce weapons, and when you realize Speer, as Minister of Armaments, was their boss and knew everything there was to know about German weaponry and war industry, it ceases to amaze very quickly.
This episode has a personal connection to me as my grandma's aunt's husband was one of the many Polish civilians who was forcibly sent to Germany to work. Sadly, I do not know any details as to the nature of his forced labor. All I know is that he later said he was fortunate enough to be under the command of good people and was treated relatively well. My heart breaks for the many who weren't so lucky. Thank you TimeGhost for sharing these stories
Answering your first question Spartacus, Not only US southern states came to my mind, the Modern China (Uyghurs) and Belgian Congo came to my mind too.
Pretty sure Uyghurs is slave labour constituted jack of the economy. PRC tried to eradicate their culture, turning them into a han man. Not their bodies and culture. They hadnt seen to Russia to quell the kind of separatists they have in Xinjiang
I read a book about a dutchman that was forced to work on a farm in east germany. It was the best time of his life, he was really lucky the conditions were good and his boss was friendly. When the russians came, it went bad. The girls on the farm got raped and murdered. When he went back to holland, everyone hated him because he didnt flee the forced labour. He went back to germany when he was about 60 and got married there.
My grandfather was taken from Serbia and was basically a slave for some people on a farm I think in France. I remember my grandmother telling me the story how he used to pretend at first that he didn't know how to use a broom, and would sweep the air above the ground to piss them off... When I was a bit older I heard from my father that my grandfather had a kid while there, idk if that's true, would be sad if it was. He came back and lived till 90 yo.
I would be interested to see an actual ranking of slave based economies. The US is often thought of as the example of slavery but the slave based economy of the south was at its peak during the era of “King Cotton.” from shortly after the invention of the cotton gin in 1793 to the end of the Civil War in 1865. For much of its early development southern US agriculture was more diversified and less reliant on slave labour. I wonder how the US compared to say the Caribbean sugar plantations of the British or the gold and silver extraction from South America by the Spanish and Portuguese using indigenous and imported slaves.
We believe it's crucial for us to cover severe topics like slave labor during World War Two on our channel as well as all the other perspectives of the war. We highly value the opportunity to do so, just like we highly value the opportunity for our community to engage with us and each other in the comment sections. To keep it civil and academically responsible, we have written up a couple of guidelines which we urge you to read before commenting: community.timeghost.tv/t/rules-of-conduct/4518
@peter michalski California and Southern prison systems: Not so fast Ivan, we got us a chain gang
@@420JackG china has a fascist government please don’t defend them
@@420JackG you're comparing prison chain gangs to forced labour and starvation during WWII .. I wish my country had prison chain gangs or work party's reoffending of former prisoners then might not to be so high or quick to commit crimes
This subject should be getting taught in every school in the world . What the Nazis did is breathtakingly evil . When i see clips of innocent people being beaten or murdered it just makes me think how on earth could you do such a thing . The amount of suffering that the Nazis caused is sickening.
Thank you Spartacus for bringing this subject up and educating as many people as possible
Slavery in the US was NEVER even the largest slaving nation in the world by far. During the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade only 3-4% of people taken from African went to what became the modern day borders of the US. In comparison 80% of the people leaving from Africa to the America's went to Brazil (which nobody ever talks about). The rest of the slaves in-between those numbers went to the other Caribbean nations.
And that is just talking about the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade. Muslims Kingdoms took hundreds of thousands of black people from Africa to work for them as well, well before the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade started and well after it ended as well. Within India still today even it can be argued that millions of people are living as slaves (just without that name). Something many people ignore is when the UK became the first nation to outlaw slavery it excluded that rule for India.
And then of course there is still modern day slavery in many if not most African nations as well as many middle-eastern nations and China and North Korea depending on what you want to classify as slavery. Yes all this time and evidence the US is the nation that is brought up the most when it comes to slavery. It's not like we didn't have the majority of the US population arguing against slavery since before the nation was unified. It's not like we had to fight are most deadly war ever (both sides included) to end slavery. And even the the US was on of the first 20 nations in world history to outlaw slavery. (Looks as Brazil, India, the Middle East and China).
So you're telling me Albert "I was just the architect" Speer wasn't wholesome 100?
Never would've guessed
Tno moment
wtf speer not wholesome 100 dengist chungus?????
All Speers are wholesome. I have it on good source
@@invenire-verum005 God damn it. I knew a reply was gonna by about TNO but I wasn't expecting it to be the first
@@chasespeer251 Speers? The best being De. Stiny
Never ask a women what's her age, a man what's his salary, or a German company what they were doing between 1933 and 1945
My Master's professor got to host a marine science conference in a German castle a few years ago. It was paid for by a German carmaker that supported the Nazi war-machine, and were still compelled to support the reconciliation efforts into the 21st century.
Didn't get to go, though...
Or what foreign anglo companies were doing business with them between 1933 and 1945. It's simply impolite.
Back in the 90's a company I used to work for sent a group of about 30 employees on a training course at I.G. Farben (who made the incinerators for the death camps, among other things). The trouble began with pointed quips such as "Is it me, or is it hot in here ?", Or "Can you smell gas ?" and rapidly got worse, intentionally embarrassing I.G.'s employees as they were clearly aware of the company's history and it's part in The Holocaust. Never forget.
@@michaelthomas5433 the Dulles brother that became Secretary of State was a huge advocate for his law firm to continue business with the Nazis.
Took a lot of less enthralled staff to steer the firm away from the fascists.
Mercedes Benz for example.
One of my summer jobs in high school was working for a man named Jan Jozwiak. He was born in Poland, and was a slave laborer for at least 4 years in a Messerschmitt plant. He risked his life every day there deliberately not bucking properly every 5th rivet, hoping it would weaken the aircraft just enough so it wouldn’t come back from a fight.
What a legend. Not all heroes wear capes indeed.
The German's in 1945 considered the Messerschmitts to be hopelessly outclassed to Allied fighters in large part due to the terrible quality of the airframes they were getting from the slavelabour filled factories. The surfaces were so rough with bad rivets and finishing the aircraft lost a lot of speed, to the point the Engine designers said there was no point in them boosting engine power when the drag from the airframe was eliminating the gains. So you're friend, along with other slave laborers in German factories, were definently having an impact.
Amazing...small leaks really do sink ships.
I've read that sabotage by slave workers, combined with low outputs and the constant need to retrain new slave workers was a significant factor in reducing German war production as well as the effectiveness of, for example, the V2 rockets, many of which failed to reach their target.
That is amazing. Kelly's comment as well. I am stunned.
My grandfather was "conscripted" into the Arbeitseinsatz near the end of the war. Having already survived the bombing of Rotterdam in 1940 he was not about to let himself be bombed by the Allies in a German factory. Sadly I don't know any details, but I know he managed to escape together with a Soviet POW. After the end of the war, having experienced some quite terrible things, he was drafted to fight in the Dutch East Indies, where his Armoured Car hit a mine. Twice. Living through all that still amazes me. Life was terrible in those days.
@@saltypatriot4181 Yeah I love that too man! And these stories are immensely important in my opinion, as they remind us about the human aspect of war.
I guess you can say, after going to Indonesia, he had seen both sides of an oppressive colonial system for himself.
@@jamestang1227 Sadly yes. I don't know how he felt about that. He died when I was four years old, so I never spoke with him about his experiences. For a short time I contemplated putting a lot of time and effort in research about his service, but I don't want to risk finding things I don't want to know about. The past years I have become very much aware of the things that happened in the former Dutch East Indies, and I wouldn't know what I would do if I would discover that he was involved in any of these things.
@@jorritpolder3409 all the more reason to do the research. Truth-telling the bad stuff in our past is so important if we want a peaceful future. By letting fear stop you, you are letting the stories of the past be forgotten. Never forget.
Thank you for sharing his story! We're happy to hear that he survived so kany hardships.
My granduncle was an italian POW. Germans put him and his Friends in a coal mine and they would work insanely to earn theyr MEAL: 2 boiled potato skins each day. He was 93 kg when he was inprisoned and less than 50 when he came back, he was a really tall man, almost 2 meters, and nobody was able to recognize him, only his mother. Indeed a lucky man.
Wait, an Italian pow held by Germany? You mean in WW1?
@@piggy201 no, WW 2.
@@matteoorlandi856 How was he a german pow then?
@@piggy201 Italy changed sides during the later part of the war (13 October 1943) and joined the allies.
@@piggy201 Italy surrended in 1943, the country was splitted in Alf and the germans took control of the North. The italian soldiers there were asked to fight for the Reich or become POWs, the was majority refused to fight for the nazis.
My grandpa is 95 and was taken to Germany from Smolensk, Russia when he was 16. He still remembers the work in the camp very vividly and has harrowing stories of how it went. Soviet prisoners would be treated worse than Western Europeans as they were not under protection of the Red Cross and would not receive extra food. He still has judgements about nations based on how friendly people were to one another - he recalls French and Greeks would be nice and friendly, while Poles were not (understandable, given the history). Western Europeans were not allowed to share food with Soviets, so the way they went around it was leaving a half-full bowl of food and asking the Soviet laborer to 'wash' it. He also recalls some nice Germans in the camp store who would give full loaves of bread despite the coupons being for just a few hundred grams. When the camp was liberated, they had to go on foot and by bikes back home, no transport was provided by the Red Army. He ended up settling in Ukraine where he was assigned to be a miner by local authorities.
thanks for sharing!
Thank you for sharing his incredible experience. We're very glad he survived the war.
This shows that things aren't just black and white. Bless those westerners and the nice Germans who did help Soviet pows.
Thanks for sharing that story. He was lucky that after he was liberated, the Soviets didn’t through him into G.U.L.A.G, as they did to many returning POWs, whom Stalin considered traitors for surrendering.
amazing
I do not think the forced labor aspect is stressed in school enough when talking about Nazi Germany. The absolute scale is mind-blowing to me, especially since I am only finding out about this.
I wonder if Charlemagne's Francia had gotten this advanced technology? Would he be able to ban slavery and prevent Feudalism?
How are you just now finding out about the Holocaust?
@@superadventure6297
The Holocaust is very well known.
But what isn't known is that many companies used slaves.
Even as a german i didnt know that
Correction: we do know just not the scale
@@marcussixer1300
How would German and World History change if Charlemagne's Francia had gotten WW2 German technology?
Would Slavery, Serfdom, Knights and Feudalism not exist?
My babysitter when I was a kid, was kind old women who told stories about being brave in the face of evil. She had a number tattoo on her arm. As adult I realised she was talking about her time as forced labour. She used to show us how she could pick up sand in her shoe with no one seeing it, then by magic ( I was kid) it was in her hand. I found out as an adult she was forced to work making ammunition and used to change gunpowder for sand. A small bit of resistant but it must have had some inpackt.
Many people were shot for that. She was either very clever or very lucky. Or both.
@@Conn30Mtenor Well she was alive, so so lucky and she was really good too with that sandtrick.
Thank you for sharing that incredible story Hanna. Never forget.
unbelievable to think that Speer got only 20 years for his crimes,
people sat behind bars a lot longer for a lot less and yet he walked away
with less than a murder charge.
SAUCKEL paid his price with his neck!
Did he cooperate with the authorities and rat out nazi higher-ups?
@@billd.iniowa2263 He was the "highest"
For a Nazi Speer was rather sophisticated and urbane. He played along at the Nuremberg trials to an extent rather than outright deny his sins and managed to skate thru without wholly incriminating himself. In hindsight we now realize he was pretty much as guilty as the worst of them.
@@aldosigmann419 The only NSDAP political leader who officially apologised, one must ask how his adjunctant got Death as he's given a 20?
Watching these videos often makes me feel down.
But at the end when Spartacus quoted Alex Hacker ‘I’m still here you bastard’ that lifted my spirits.
Never forget!
And hacker's still alive to boot!
We will never forget. Amen
Go team! ;-)
That one made me smile, very few of Spartacuses stories do.
Those people are way stronger than we are.
an often overlooked part of the war against humanity - the concentration camps take the spotlight, so the slave system is overshadowed. Thank you for also telling this story.
And I love the quote at the end: "I am still here you bastard" - a quote that each and every survivor of this killing machinery can tell Hitler, although unfortunately so many of the lower ranking Nazis and many of the industry bosses who profited from this went with little or no conviction.
I remember watching a documentary about one old lady, a Slovak Jewish Shoah survivor. Her whole family got murdered, she survived. At the end of the film, she shows the photo of her family in 2000s and says "I have 5 Jewish children and 14 Jewish grandchildren. You can't wipe us out. Hitler, keep turning in your grave you bastard."
@@harveywabbit9541 No, and it's really f-upped to compare the two.
@@harveywabbit9541 Somebody should tell your mother that you're using the internet unsupervised again.
@@harveywabbit9541 totally out of order as a comparison.
Equating What the Nazis did to the Jewish survival in Israel is classic antisemitism.
And it is defined as such.
Get an education you antisemite.
🇮🇱
The prison system in the Third Reich and occupied territory also gets overlooked, compared to concentration camps. Prisoners in regular prisons occasionally had access to lawyers and had more possibilities for writing and receiving letters and parcels, but otherwise conditions were as bad as in camps. In Pankrac prison in Prague, for example, the staple food was dried vegetables (Dörrgemüse), also common in camps. It had some nutritional value but tasted awful. On two days a week, some goulash was added and this seems to have been the only palatable food in Pankrac.
Western World: Can you explain the gap in your resume?
German Corporation active between 1933-1945: *Dabs brow, loosens collar, clears throat* Well, you see
It was "just good buissnes" ;)
"Well, you see, we had to resort to what capitalism does in extreme crisis."
"What's that?"
"Fascism."
@@stevekaczynski3793 "waaaaaah capitalism is fascism in decay waaaaaaaaaah" stfu and go touch grass
@@bycreay3647 well maybe you'll learn some history
@@maeschder I mean you are literally wrong but ok commie
It is good that this is covered, often many were deported or forced to work in German war factories and camps in which a lot would never return back to their homeland due to the harsh environments and poor working conditions.
Sure it's not like we haven't heard anything about this aspect of the second world war previously is it?
@@FortniteBlaster2 This is the dumbest statement ever made.
This is all very well known tho, this video isn't that eye opening.
I read a book about a dutchman that was forced to work on a farm in east germany. It was the best time of his life, he was really lucky the conditions were good and his boss was friendly. When the russians came, it went bad. The girls on the farm got raped and murdered. When he went back to holland, everyone hated him because he didnt flee the forced labour.
@@AR-so6ch so what, the nazis still sucked, the nazis still raped and killed millions.
This dutch only got well treated out of lucky and for being an "aryan", and as we all know there were some good germans too, only an idiot boss would treat his worker bad when he worked on his own house.
All of those girls killed wouldnt have died if your idol hadnt attacked the URSS, unfortunately innocents pay for their leaders.
As interesting as I find Indy's weekly accounts of the military developments of the second world war, Spartacus is covering the even more important events of WW2: what mind boggeling evil people were willing to do to their fellow human beings. It remains incredible to hear these stories. Never forget and never ever censor UA-cam!
They did not see what they were doing as evil. They saw it as purifying the human race. You have to understand that not one single person on planet Earth ever sees themselves as evil. We are after all the heroes of our own story. The mental hoops needed to self justify acts society deems as evil are in a way amazing and terrifying at the same time.
The people responsible are long dead and unfortunately so are most of their victims, but watching the War Against Humanity series provokes anger as if they're reporting on current events.
@@lycaonpictus9662 What you say is true. Remember though the lesson. Humanity has not fundamentally changed in its entire history. We are corrupt, venal, greedy. We love violence so much we had to ritualize it in order to keep some semblance of peace. I wouldn't be surprised if the entire universe sees us as nothing more than violence mongering savages. As long as lust and envy are part of the human condition, we will always have atrocities like this.
Here here
allowed
I remember talking to a man who lived and worked during the war in Denmark for a school project. He emphasized how he had avoided going to Germany to work. In Denmark many public works was started to avoid sending workers to Germany. Now I partly understand why.
I didnt realize that. Thankyou.
@@billd.iniowa2263 guidant pacemaker trial 2005
Spartacus: "Indy, I just finished the latest batch of scripts. You'll never guess what happens this week!"
Indy: "Is it war crimes?"
Spartacus: "...maybe"
Comment of the day!
Indys series: Kaiserreich
Spartys series: TNO
@@spartacus-olsson Learning from Indy:
I can’t wait to see how the war progresses! What events will be unfolding on coming weeks?
Learning from Sparty:
*PAIN*
*I still think you are doing a great job Spartacus telling us those events so we don’t repeat them. Never forget.
@@keybchet9986 hoi4 is truly everywhere
"Message to Hitler: I'm still here you bastard!" Beautifully said Mr. Hacker.
Speer pulled off quite the performance at his trial. It saved his life. It was an Oscar-worthy performance.
"I'm still here, you bastard!" might just be the most uplifting quote you've had in this series.
The "struggles" we think we endure are certainly put into perspective by the stories of the horrors others have endured.
8:03 - The "P" badge for Poles seems to have been assigned the colours yellow and purple because the Germans wanted to avoid white and red, the Polish national colours. Indeed yellow might have been included to associate Poles with Jews in German eyes.
I find it similar to how German propoganda films after 1942 always highlighted central asian and mongol soldiers in the red army, to portray the invasion of the USSR as a war of "white europe vs evil asiatic USSR"
@@MrKakibuy Their propaganda cameras liked to home in either on them or on soldiers who looked Jewish.
@Fabian Kirchgessner white supremacist can’t stop white supremecisting.
@@MarcosElMalo2
"hurr, you iz white supremacist, durr"
What you fail to realize ,is that the soviet regime during and before Stalin's reign did actively discriminate against many of its ethnic minorities. So it is understandable that conscripts from those ethnicities were not particularly thrilled to risk their lives for the ussr.
I have been waiting for this channel to cover this topic of the war since I started watching, and I have to say that this has been one of my favorite episodes yet.
The editing was fantastic, the use of graphs and statistics really set the gravity and magnitude of this whole horrid system better than I could have expected, and of course Sparty's narration never dissapoints. And that ending was superb.
Please keep doing what you're doing, you're seriously making a massive contribution to public education of history. You are awesome.
Thank you so much for your support. Glad you enjoy our content.
"I'm still here, you bastard!" What a quote! Never forget! 🧡💛🧡
I'm from Poland. My father (born 1923) was forced to go to work in the Reich (today's Austria, Grub). From there he was sent to Auschwitz for disobedience. He survived luckily. It is very difficult to watch this and not to cry as I recall the horrible and dramatic stories from those years....
Thank you for sharing that with us. We're glad that your grandfather managed to survive in those horrible conditions.
Albert Speer used to get a pass from people because in a clique that people judge to be mostly insanely cruel people with deep disturbances and very harsh military men, Speer stood alone as a person that came from a relatively well off family, with no disturbances in his youth and a seemingly loving family. This, normality, for lack of a better word of his life that portrayed him as a just as an architect with no real interest of knowledge of the happenings around him stood for a long while beucase of peoples unwillingless to accept that such a normal person, that could pretty much be any of us, with a normal job, a normal family and a completely normal life, could have brought forth a slave economy that would rival anything history had to offer. He wasn't strictly fanatical or ideological, he didnt seem to have any mental disturbances, his dedication to his job and his family relationships werent disturbed or irregular. He could have very well just lead a life as an above average architect if he wasn't in the clique of Hitler.
But thankfully with the decades following his death and closer inspection of his memoirs and life, this cleanliness of his name is being reconsidered.
Very well-written post.
Speer is the poster child for the banality of evil.
@Fabian Kirchgessner He phrased it in a way that made it seem like he did not know but could have found out. But he did know and was actively using forced labor and knew what the SS was doing.
@Fabian Kirchgessner Speer maintained at the Nuremberg trials and in his memoirs that he had no direct knowledge of the Holocaust. He admitted only to being uncomfortable around Jews in the published version of the Spandau Diaries.[49] More broadly, Speer accepted responsibility for the Nazi regime's actions. Historian Martin Kitchen states that Speer was actually "fully aware of what had happened to the Jews" and was "intimately involved in the 'Final Solution'".[167] Brechtken said Speer only admitted to a generalized responsibility for the Holocaust to hide his direct and actual responsibility.[153] Speer was photographed with slave laborers at Mauthausen concentration camp during a visit on March 31, 1943; he also visited Gusen concentration camp. Although survivor Francisco Boix testified at the Nuremberg trials about Speer's visit,[168] Taylor writes that, had the photo been available, he would have been hanged.[169] In 2005, The Daily Telegraph reported that documents had surfaced indicating that Speer had approved the allocation of materials for the expansion of Auschwitz concentration camp after two of his assistants inspected the facility on a day when almost a thousand Jews were massacred.[170] Heinrich Breloer, discussing the construction of Auschwitz, said Speer was not just a cog in the work-he was the "terror itself".[170]
Speer did not deny being present at the Posen speeches to Nazi leaders at a conference in Posen (Poznań) on October 6, 1943, but claimed to have left the auditorium before Himmler said during his speech: "The grave decision had to be taken to cause this people to vanish from the earth",[171] and later, "The Jews must be exterminated".[172] Speer is mentioned several times in the speech, and Himmler addresses him directly.[172] In 2007, The Guardian reported that a letter from Speer dated December 23, 1971, had been found in a collection of his correspondence with Hélène Jeanty, the widow of a Belgian resistance fighter. In the letter, Speer says, "There is no doubt-I was present as Himmler announced on October 6, 1943, that all Jews would be killed."[116]
@Fabian Kirchgessner "Mr. Officer I didn't kill that man at 4:52 am using this knife after tricking him. Had I known this was going to happen, I would have warned him I was about to trick him! I'm innocent, duh!" -Speer, probably.
For those who are in awe of how germany kept the war going for so long here's your answer, not the unbelievable will of the German people but by slavery.
And meth!
Dont forget that Beyer and the Sackler family (yes, those Sacklers involved in the American opioid crisis) were flooding the Reich with stimulant drugs to keep workers, soliders , and housewives energized
@@justcallmeSheriff Nothing motivates you better than a square of Fliegermarzipan or Panzerschokolade.
Probably a fair bit of fear as well.
After all if you invade neighbor after neighbor, treating the people you conquer abominably, there would have to be fear that your own nation was in for some "eye for an eye" treatment should it fall to enemy occupation.
Once the US entered WW2 the war in Europe lasted 3。5 years。
@@justcallmeSheriff When was this？Not after Pearl Harbor。
The forced laborers in the armaments factories, of course, sabotaged the weapons wherever they could.
Elmer Bendiner, a B-17 navigator, told the story of how his plane got shot up during a mission, including several hits to the gas tank, but nothing happened. Counting it as a miracle, after landing they took the shells out of the fuselage and examined them, only to find no explosive charge inside, just a note inside one of them that said in Czech: "this is all we can do for you now."
"fall of fortresses" is the book he wrote.
The belgians POWs doing slave labour be like: "Is this how it feels to get civilized by us in the Congo?...I kind of dont like it very much anymore"
Nah. They still had their hands.
Took them longer to learn than you'd think...
@Fabian Kirchgessner The propaganda about it being a civilising mission was kept up for a surprisingly long time, as far as I understand. So even if most people didn't know, they were also fed a particular story.
@@ErwinPommel
That happened back when the Congo Free State was a thing, it became a Belgian colony in 1908. In total, 648 Belgians served in the Force Publique during the CFS's existence, many of them did not take part in the atrocities, many were also already middle-aged when they enlisted in the Force Publique.
So, those WW2 POW were not "hand-cutters".
@@obrnenydrevokocur9344 Oh, well that of course makes it all perfectly alright.
🇩🇪 I work as a gardener in Berlin and realised that the concrete pole in my place of work, was a search light pole to guard the slave labourers who were sleeping in their barracks. The foundation of the barracks are still there. In the forest in ( West ) Berlin in the Grunewald.
The people who live there have talked about a an outhouse with its floor concreted over. They assume there are bodies under the cement.
Apparently, there are so many former slave labour quarters across Berlin, that there are not enough resources to deal with them. Thereare public data banks where you can map search etc it is overwhelming.
Haunting. Thank you for sharing this with us.
@@WorldWarTwo It is so very important that you make these videos.
A new generation must learn this.
Thank You ‼️
As slavery crops up again and again, from ISIS, Barabary Wars, to the debate inside the USA .
My grandfather was a bomber and transport ( JU 52 ) pilot and a gung ho Nazi. But he soon realised , around 1942 I think, that the war was lost.
He had experienced a sabotaged mission he was leading as a pilot officer in the Mediterranean.
He also flew wounded out of Stalingrad to Vienna. That too ended in desaster, when on the return flight the Allies had bombed the airfield in Vienna and he had to crash land in a field with a plane full of wounded soldiers. They all burnt to death as the doors no longer opened due to the impact of the landing. He watched as they burnt to death, standing in a field outside Vienna.
Indeed he was no fan of war.
He knew what would happen to him in Russia. So he walked towards the American lines as they approached.
My first sleeping bag was his sleeping bag the US Army gave him as a POW.
Never ask a man about his salary.
Never ask a woman about her weight.
Never ask a German corporation what it did from 1933 to 1945.
It is "Never ask a woman about her age".
If they tell about you can be sure they are lying.
When I was a young boy I was taught to fish by Peter who had been a Scots soldier caught at Dunkirk. Then he was enslaved until '45. Fishing and as my grandmothers pub cellar man we knew we had to be quiet and kind as his 'nerves' had been shattered for for ever by the things done to him and the men around him. Teaching me to fly fish kept him calm and contributing to others. Just one of the many victims.
Thanks for sharing this story with us!
Another British P/W has recounted being at Auschwitz in a book about his war experience.
The lack of humanity on a scale like this is something that is difficult to understand on any level. Never forget.
It's hard to have any faith in humanity after learning more about such tragedy
There may be an historical precendent, the Spartan's exploitation of the Helots was brutal. The exploitation was systemized if not yet industrialized.
We should not never forget that this IS Humanity. We have the capacity for great evil, every one of us
@@KaiserFranzJosefI exactly, great words!
My zaidy was one of the prisoners selected at Auschwitz for slave labor, this video really taught me a lot about his circumstances and just how amazing it is that he survived. He never talked about it, but I know he carried the weight of those years his whole life.
Spartacus, what you are doing with this series is really important, can't thank you enough for making sure this history is properly memorialized.
nazis=commies=Union haters
While I knew about the Nazi's using slaves for their war industry, I'm actually suprised that the slaves were also used as servants in households. I never heard about this aspect of the slave economy, so if anyone here has a good source on this specific topic I'd like to hear it.
That was not widespread. It was only for the financial and political elite. It’s often overlooked because of the “Hilfsarbeiter” and “Ostarbeiter” euphemisms. I mention it because we have to understand that the system permeated all aspects of society.
@@spartacus-olsson I agree, it's important to also mention to lesser known and less widespread crimes against humanity, and that's why I love this channel because you guys do that.
@@yorick6035 my grandad had Italian POWs working on his farm and from what I can gather, whilst they would surely rather be at home, they very much enjoyed it. Would you describe them as slaves?
@Andrew Pease if they are being forced to work on that farm against their will(even if it is more enjoyable than hard labour in a factory) I would consider them as slaves, yes. (not making any judgement towards your grandfather, because I do not know him nor the situation)
Adam Tooze ‘wages of destruction’ is a must read book for original and thorough economic analysis of the time. #bookstolove
Classic tie design, and one I think we've seen before. Works really well with this jacket. 3.5/5
Thank you!
@@spartacus-olsson No Spartacus, thank you and everyone involved for all of the amazing content you produce at such a high frequency. Long may it last!
"... a Shakespearian character of boundless ambition but not a coward, barbarian or serf..."
- Primo Levi
A peculiar verdict on Speer, with whom Levi refused to have any contact.
My Baba was a German War Slave as a teenager. German soldiers arrived at her family farm in Lviv Ukraine (one of the largest in the town) and told her father to deliver 1 daughter to the war effort, or face harsh punishments and lose a daughter they selected anyways. He chose her because she was the best (oldest daughter was apparently a bit of a layabout dreamer, and the youngest daughter was very pretty). But he said later that when the car drove away the family mourned her as already dead.
She was taken to Germany to work as a cooks assistant in a fine dining restaurant during the day and a private maid for an officer during the evening, before having to go back to a girls dormitory at night where she could eat for the first time that day. She said the officer ignored her and the wife berated and beat her for the littlest things and just because she was frustrated. She said the hotel cook let the assistants lick flour from their hands after breading and whatever snails they could catch from the cellar walls. If any German soldier wanted he could "commandeer" a girl for "vital labour", none of those girls ever returned from their "recruitment" to a back alley or a private room. There were no protections for the girls alone on the streets, police and soldiers would ignore their distress as they were just slaves. A group of 5 might leave for home after work, only 3 might come back the next day.
She said during Allied bombing raids of Dresden she would lay in her dorm with sirens going off (not allowed to go to shelters and unwilling to hide in the basement with the men) hoping a bomb would land on her and end the suffering. Truly a horrible life experience no one should have had to survive.
For obvious reasons she spoke little of the experience, and likely omitted or changed some details to cover up the horror.
When rescued by the allies she was briefly examined, told to eat and finish an Onion (fast, easy nutrients that are mostly water), then put in a line with the other walking survivors to be processed by the red cross as a Displaced Person (A DP a horrible stigma that persisted for a generation). She was told as a Ukrainian outside of Ukraine that Stalin had apparently ordered any returning Ukrainian civilian be arrested and put into forced work camps (likely to death) or shot as traitors and collaborators, so she could not go back home.
She was sponsored as a live in maid from a family in Saskatchewan Canada (she knew only what English the soldiers had shown her), but they apparently backed out halfway there so she arrived with no sponsor, no job, no family, no home, no money, and not knowing the language.
Fortunately a Jewish synagogue group from Poland took her in to act as a caretaker/maid/babysitter/caterer for the groups members and got her an apartment to live in. We are to this day thankful to the kind Albertan Jews who took in a non-Jewish displaced person when their own community was taxed to its limit helping its own (as the government reneged on its commitments and limited sponsorship's for Jews).
Ive heard ofcompany stores but....
You could/should have dropped the names of more german companies and families that profited from slave labor. Like the Quandt family, which had over 50 000 slaves in their factories during the war. That family got insanely rich from working slaves to death, then escaped prosecution after the war and became the main shareholder of BMW to this day. No apology or reparations were issued to this day. Herbert Quandt is in fact still being honored at BMW, where there is a foundation in his name.
We’d need a very very long video to do that list justice. We’re literally talking about the entire German economy. When the fund to final payment of reparations was opened in 2005 - 6,500 companies that still exist paid into the fund. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. It’s like I said in the video: Slave labor permeated all of society from local bakers to big industry.
And to be clear, while the big industries had the most slaves working per company, the majority were held in small to medium enterprises.
My grandfather was a Polish soldier in 1939. He was a POW and served as a farm hand deep in the Reich. When he returned home in 1945 he weighed only 30 kilograms. He was so traumatized that he refused to talk about anything concerning his imprisonment. Fortunately he survived and was a father of 8 children, including my mom.
Thank you for sharing that with us. What a horrible experience he must have had... We're glad he survived.
My paternal grandparents were liberated by the United States Army from a forced labor camp in Velbert, Germany in April of 1945. They were Ukranian Poles who fled west after being first invaded by Stalin in 1939, then by Hitler in 1941. Their survival was a miracle. My father was with them and was 11 years old when they were finally liberated. They became displaced persons who emigrated to first Canada in 1947, then the U.S. in 1951. I am eternally grateful to everyone who helped them on their journey.
Thank you for sharing your story! We deeply appreciate it.
Thank for making this series and making sure people never forget. Being a Canadian I am glad that Alex Hacker ended up here. The words of defiance in his statement inspire me and make me even more proud of my great grandfather and great uncles who all served in the war, my great grandfather survived and lived to 101 deceased in 2013, however my great uncles both paid the ultimate price I am glad there are people like Mr Hacker still alive to make sure the world never forgets the horrors of the Holocaust or the heroes who fought to free the world from a maniac like Hitler.
Respect to your families service and sacrifice!
My dad ended up as a labourer in Swinemünde (Poland), working at a shipyard. There were people from all the occupied territories, even a large group of Chinese. The Russians had it really bad, compared to the other inmates, and that's all my dad ever told about it; the only thing my mother knew was that when the Russians were approaching, everybody headed East. After months of silence, he showed up in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Thanks for sharing and respect to your father - you might want to correct your compass though, I believe you meant west.
If he ended up in Rotterdam then he headed west，not east。
The further we move from these events, the more important remembering; not just from reading but actually having another human being tell you what humanity has accomplished in the name of greed and power. Never Forget
My grandfather was "drafted" in Belgium to go and work in Germany. He was one of the few lucky one's who were not sent to the factories but was sent to a small bakery somewhere in the more rural areas of Germany. He worked at two bakeries. The first was a gentle person who gave my grandfather food and other supplies. The second one was a ruthless nazi and my grandfather was lucky to be liberated before he was worked to death ...
Thank you for sharing his story. We're glad he survived
In my hometown in Lower Saxony a polish worker was shot (I forgot for what „crime“). His fate was discovered in an archive last year, so his sister finally learned of her brother’s fate. He has now a step stone in the street leading to his execution spot.
Did a case study on Speer in my last year of high school. What I found fascinating was how he created the "Penitent Nazi" myth about himself.
One interesting component regarding the historiography of his life was comparing the sources that wrote on him. Gitta Sereny, who had extensive personal interviews with Speer, bolstered his ability to tell his story as a regretful meritocrat. By contrast, Daniel Van Der Vat (who grew up in Nazi occupied Netherlands) tore into him for his role in slave labour camps like Dora.
Taught me that it's essential to consider the context of the historian's origins, and the biases they can carry or induce even when they appear otherwise aloof.
DW Griffin.1915
What an important video for all of us to see and remember. Thank you for making this content so high quality and free for those of us that are unable to finance you. The world is better thanks to you.
That is kind of you to say.
Not much mention of Albert Speer in this special WW2 edition. When Hitler wrote about the "bearers of civilization" in Mein Kampf, he meant the Japanese.
Both of my Polish grandmothers were used as slave laborers in Germany, thank you for this episode.
Thank you for sharing that with us. We hope they both survived.
@@WorldWarTwo @Fabian Kirschgessner
Thank you. Both of them survived, one is still alive :). The one who died a few years back did talk a lot about the war but in both cases, I don't think they were too traumatized by these events if I can make such assumptions.
One of them worked for the German military industry and the other at a private farm. The latter was treated very decently, it is important to state that there were many notable examples of Germans who treated their workers very well, even as family members (again, some people might disagree on saying positive things about people who used slave labor).
To be fair, one of them survived the Volhynia massacre in 1943 (which I am sure will be mentioned next year on this channel) and this was the thing that massively overshadowed the rest of her war experience. The other one (the one who worked at a farm) did not have a too great experience with the Red Army during their invasion of Germany (attempted rape). So for both of them, slave laboring was child play in comparison.
I think that Heuaktion would be an interesting topic to cover, or in general, the kidnapping of Polish children with Aryan features and "adopting" them by German families. Many of them never had the chance to know their real parents after the war. However, I am perfectly aware that World War II is such a massive subject that even a separate series managed by Sparty and all the special episodes are not enough to cover everything. You guys are working very hard already and are doing a great job.
Edit: I should also mention that both of them received compensation from the Western German government, although the sums were laughable
Primo Levi explains in an interview that many fellow Italian concentration camp prisoners died from lack of understanding.
Meaning that when an order was shouted at them, most of them who spoke neither German, Polish, nor Yiddish (in case fellow prisoners tried to help them) would just be punished for not understanding, and often died.
Sephardic Jews like Levi had language problems, although Levi himself had learned some German. Ashkenazi Jews who were for the most part Yiddish-speaking could understand and be understood by Germans, as German and Yiddish are quite close. Sephardic Jews spoke neither German nor Yiddish (if they spoke a Jewish language, it was Spanish-derived Ladino) and this told against them in concentration camps.
Thank you for going through this segment of history. It is very clear from the old generation that went through the war that this happened. 2 points of mine come to mind:
-A recent incident occurred where the young 20 year old heiress of a confectionary firm stated on German media, relaying what she heard from her grandparents, that they also had been given a large number of Polish workers to work their factories during the war, and that they had "been happy and well treated". Subsequently a media storm ensued here in Germany.
-Personal experience from when I lived in Luxembourg, was that many people's grandparents (it should be noted that Luxembourgers were considered Germanic Aryans by Nazi racial law) were sent off, forced off to work in Germany under these programmes during the war. Men to the Wehrmacht, others to forced labour. in factories or in the fields.
Thank you for the interesting info!
I would like to see an episode on how albert Speer managed to avoid the death penalty at Nuremberg for using slave labour. As the research after the trial showed how guilty he actually was
He gave the Americans his knowledge of German weaponry and war industry, and they made a deal with him. He, von Braun, and many other Germans figured out very quickly that their technical expertise would give them a free ticket out of the noose.
Of course, showing remorse and renouncing the regime at Nuremberg didn't hurt.
@@TheTrickster923 that and also him saying that nearly at the end of the war , he was planning to kill Adolf hitler
@Jonas Åström thanks but evidence later emerged after the trials of his full involvement , I think he said that he wasn’t aware of the full extent of the Holocaust , however he was at a meeting where Heinrich himmler made a speech about the persecution of the Jews.
@@keiranallcott1515 He was involved in the Holocaust even as Hitler's architect and head of construction. He had concentration camps built next to quarries of marble and granite so slave labor could be used to supply his building projects with stone, and his office was involved in evicting Jewish residents of Berlin for his Welthauptstadt Germania project. After the war he had friends alter the records.
the allies werent hypocrits
This has to be the best content of any Chanel or platform anywhere ever
Thank you very much!
@@WorldWarTwo you have more than earned it from the excellent world war one series to this superlative narrative
Great video, as always. What you do with this subseries is important and I can't thank you enough.
Thank you! We appreciate it
This is the most cogent explanation of the nazi slave economy that I've ever seen.
My dad a ww2 vet joined the onion in 1950
Benelux: Belgium, Netherlands (aka Holland) and Luxembourg, for those wondering.
I've always wondered why some Jews were compensated for their enslavement after the war, while others were not. I've also heard that Poles that worked right beside the Jews were never compensated either. This injustice needs to be addressed also.
@Fabian Kirchgessner Many Jews received compensation from corporations after much litigation. But, Poles received none. Injustice again.
@Fabian Kirchgessner Some Jews don like Poles, some Poles dont like Jews. Living 1000 years next to each other is not easy ehen both hace separate goals but usualy Poland was the safest place for Jews in Europe. There are many reazoons why Poles coud not like Jews(before the war in 1920 after Poland just get independency some Jews demant authonomy, it was like knife in back for poles, 80% of Jews in Poland said that more important for them are their lows than Polish laws, its hard to modernize country witch 3000000 minority who is against Polish Law. Jews didnt like so mauch polish that their welcomed Garman and Soviets with flowers in 1939, unfortunately both regimes brought them worst things than Poles). Many Jews joined NKVD and was hunted by Home Army. Anyway Jews culture becomed part of Polish culture (what can be seen even today on streets) and usualy Poles have worm attitude towards Jews.
Truth is that Poland didnt get any reparations but was most destroyed country during IIWW.
I have not heard of Catholic Polish slaves working alongside Jews。Nor have I heard of Jews being compensated for lost wages while they were slaves。Most Jews did not survive at all。
@@user-jq2iz9zn4p All of this certainly did happen. Volkswagon was one company that did, finally, weakly, compensate Jews that had worked in their factory during the holocaust. In Poland, many Polish men and women worked right along side the Jews, and never received and compensation while the Jewish slave laborers did receive some compensation. These are fact, I knew some of those people that suffered greatly for 6 long years.
After Hitler's death, when Dönitz fled to set up a government in Flensberg, economists working for the US Strategic Bombing Survey practically beat a path to Albert Speer's door so they could ask for his input on war industry, weapons production, and how it could be halted by bombing attacks. Speer cooperated fully, telling the Americans how and where each of the Air Force's attacks succeeded and failed, his insights into Hitler's regime, how he organized the armaments ministry to be more efficient, and many other details and secrets of German weaponry besides. After he was arrested and taken to Nuremberg to stand trial, he wrote a letter to the American prosecutor reminding him of this.
That's the real reason why he was treated so leniently. Not because of his charm or remorse or whatever else, though those certainly didn't hurt. Remember we were happy to take in von Braun and others who used slave labor and human experimentation to produce weapons, so we could use their expertise against the Russians.
yoi mean..US was FaustUSworshipped on the mountain US turned stones to bread? say it ant so !
My grandfather, Jan Kost- then 20 years old- was deported to Germany as a slave labourer in april 1940, roughly 2 weeks before his father was murdered by the soviets in Katyń Forest Massacre. He worked at a coal mine near Mücheln/Geiseltal and was liberated 5 years later.
Thank you for sharing your grandfather's story, Dominik.
There are 27 million people in slavery in Asia, Africa and the middle East today. What are we doing to stop it? If "Never forget" holds any meaning, it means taking steps to prevent reoccurence of these abuses in our own time. We tolerate repression of minorities, forced labour camps in China today but buy their cheap products. We allow debt slavery in India and are happy to use their IT companies. We overlook slavery and abuse in the middle East but buy their oil.
Best comment.🙄
My greatgrandfather was was a French POW slave in Germany. He was captured during the Battle of France and survived to be liberated. I wish I knew more about his experience tbh.
Thank you for sharing your story, Henri.
@@WorldWarTwo
UPDATE (on my great grandfather): So I double checked with my father and I was wrong about his dislike of Germans after the war. In fact after he retired he once traveled back to the farm in Germany where he was enslaved to reunite with the German farmers who he was forced to work with. I think I just misremembered something my father told me (he clearly hated the Nazis though so that's where I might have gotten confused). Also I learned from my grandfather that the history of his unit was written down after the war by one of his officers. From that we learned he was in charge of a horse drawn cannon during the Battle of France (there was also a horse drawn munitions cart) and his unit surrendered at Pont-Sainte-Maxence (north of Paris) on June 9th 1940 after being ambushed and both horses had been killed by German machine gun fire. After he was captured he was sent to a camp in the Black Forest where he would be sent out to work on a farm in a small village in the area (I'm not sure the exact name of the village). His name was Maurice Mourant and he was from a farming village in Haute-Saône, France.
Just when you think you have seen the worst of WW2 , and simultaneously this video pops out of nowhere
Speer in (hoi4)TNO be like
"So we're fine, as long no one frees any slaves"
"Question?"
"What's your question Brandt"
"I freed all the slaves"
*Slave revolt sounds*
A very precise presentation of what the Germans did. Not just the nazis but the German people as a whole let this happen. I see within the USA a beginning of a group of nazis like nationalist groups and it causes me great fear.
My own father could not speak English as a very young child and was beaten by a group of Drunken KKK while he played near his home.
I fear for the future of the US also. Personally, I've seen people think that cant happen here, that its just not possible, and its this very mentality that will put us there; complacency.
Thank you so very much for dedicating a whole episode to this topic. It’s continually astonishing to me how many “history buffs” continue to push the idea that Speer was The Good One™️ despite the stacks of research and evidence that thoroughly debunks this idea.
Thank you for the feedback. Be sure to check out all our specials & weekly episodes ad we debunk myths, explore the war, and learn history all together.
Albert Speers, Jr., became an architect like his father. His final work was the World Cup stadium complex being built in Qatar… using slave labor
Δεν φεύγει ποτέ η ρετσινιά αυτή
Wow, like father, like son
like the commercial where A dada says wered you learn to use drugs son: You! i learned it from you
The economist Adam Tooze has written a great book on this topic that I recommend both viewers and the presenter of this channel to read: It's called "The Wages of Destruction", Nazi attempts at autarchy under a international finance sanctions environment led the Nazis to increasingly rely on expropriations of the natural resources of the country's they invaded as well as the 'forced labour indentureship' of 'non-Aryan' ethnic groups led to the Nazi dependency on slave labour as the war progressed. The use of 'slave labour' and obsession with 'eugenics' would play a contributory role in the emergence of the obscene 'Final Solution'.
A strange note about Swedish serfdom in the beginning! Slavery was banned in Sweden in 1335 and even though the freedoms of the peasants were eroded during the rise of the state in the 1500s, outright serfdom never really existed in mainland Sweden. Areas which Sweden had conquered and already had an existing system of serfdom, such as Swedish Pommern (where serfdom was banned in 1806), were allowed to continue the practice but I still feel it's not fair to say that serfdom was a practiced in Sweden and only banned at the cusp of the 20th century.
One of the great injustices of the post WW2 era was that Speer was not executed.
Yes indeed. In my opinion, the Nuremberg tribunal failed completely in his case.
@@michaelkovacic2608 because he collaborated with allies in breaking the pot and revealing what they really did in Nuremburg court and dooming any hope for reduced sentences for other Nazi war criminals
@Fabian Kirchgessner of course, but courts can also make mistakes as they are also just human. 20 years is a common sentence for murdering 1 person in modern-day Austria (and I assume Europe in general), so it seems a bit off to me.
neither was forest
@Dearest Mr. Sparty
Did you ever think it would be this difficult to execute the noble task you have set out upon?
Because I sure as hell could not some two years ago. I salute your efforts good sir.
That ending had me in tears.
Thank you. I set out on this with trepidation, but well aware of what lay ahead. I’ve been studying WW2 since I was eight years old, and I began reading about the war against humanity at ten. But even with four decades of learning about this, I’d lie if I didn’t say that I hesitated. Indy and I both had some reluctance to cover WW2 at first, albeit for different reasons. Astrid and our community convinced us that it needed to be done, and I’m glad and I know Indy’s glad that we’re doing it.
@@spartacus-olsson I am truly happy to hear that Sparty.
At the end of this, I assume you'll have enough good karma to levitate 😂 Thank you again for your and Indy's, and Astrids and the whole team's marvelously well executed efforts. I feel a great pleasure in supporting your projects monetarily, most certainly deserve it.
My great grandfather was deported from Yugoslavia. I know he worked on a farm, since he owned a land here and was a farmer. Also, I know that he wasn't tortured, that he wasn't imprisoned, but was working for a civilian who took good care of him. This goes along what you said Spartacus, that ordinary people probably had some form of resistance toward enslaving others.
Thank you for this episode.
Never forget.
Thank you for sharing your great-grandfather's story. We truly appreciate it.
He wasn＇t imprisoned？In that case did he stay after the war？Was he free to leave？
@@user-jq2iz9zn4p I don't have all the details, but I don't think he was imprisoned in a true meaning of that word, but rather "forcibly recruited". My guess is that some German officer gave him a choice to go and work, or to be shot.
He already had a family before the war, so that's why he came back.
Thank God for men like Patton, Bradley, Eisenhower, and Kilroy
I wish stuff like this was covered better in schools so people stop associating Nazis with cool uniforms and weapons and instead understand how vile they were and still are. This exact topic was the main focus of a book I recently finished called The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze, and it was shocking how extensive this system was.
Thank you for the recommendation
It should be also mentioned that about 200000 polish chldren were abducted from their homes and forcibly transported to Germany for purposes of forced labour, medical experiment, or Germanization. "Funny" think is that most of the doctors who made this experiments live long after war as specialists protected by German law.
One of my professors, great theoretical physicist Bernard Jancewicz (he just died a month ago, unfortunately Covid) was one of this children, he last saw his parent as 4 years old child... in 1947 he back to Poland as orphan to a special camp for Polish children repatriated from Germany.
It could be another intersting topic, about children (few months - 5 year old) taken by garmans. Never Forget.
Wonderfully impactful delivery. Subscribed.
Thank you
"I'm still here you bastard!"
A message that all perpetrators of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and persecution deserve to hear!
Very sobering. As I watched this I thought about my little life I've built and my little family that I have. To think about it being taken away in such a way, to be tortured, starved, forced into labor, and to ultimately die. Heartbreaking.
There are still many people alive who experienced it, can remember such awful experiences. What an awful war and an awful crime.
My grandma recently past away at the age of 99. She had 5 brothers who were all at Guadalcanal. She would become very serious whenever she heard that place mentioned. Just because she saw the impact that experience had on them when they got back.
I find these videos are so interesting and always wonder what people who give it a thumbs down where expecting to see
Maybe it’s thumbs down to Hittler, Hommler, Spåår and the rest of the b*stards.
Hello team, and thank you for another incredible episode. Are there any plans in the future to go deeper into the specifics of still existing companies activities at the time? The IG farben camp was something I knew absolutely nothing about and as I'm reading about it, I'm running into even greater holes in my knowledge.
Chilling episode with numbers that are unimaginable and I struggle to get my head around it. Greed and racism underpinning decisions and actions. Now where have I heard that before?
My mates grandpa was taken to work in some factory in Dresden. He survived the 1945 bombing there and still lives in Czech Republic. I also remember one of my substitute high-school teacher saying, he was manufacturing engines for Messerschmitt fighters. People often not realize, that when Germany was bombed, lots of the casualities were these foreign slave workers. They either have special(worse) air-raid shelters, or nine at all. They also worked in undetonated bomb disposal. But some people got lucky and were put to work in the village farms. There was a higher chance of a good treatment there.
For about a year, even as an Indian I was in absolute disbelief and ignored people who said that the Nazis were just monsters in a human body.
But by the time I was in 10th grade Isoowly started to realize the scale of horror inflicted upon the people of eastern europe,Balkans and western europe (under german control)
I had a brief conversation with a Ukrainian person I met in a mock Russian federation discord server.
I later on got to know what happened to his great grandparents and their brothers and sisters.
I was again in disbelief but I was strong enough to listen to it all.
The way his grandparents saw their own parents get snatched from them and they themselves having to abandon everything dear to them and escaping towards the Donbass and then migrating to northern Luhansk.
Its unbelievable because what he said next was something that finally proved that humanity is capable of utterly disgracing their own kind
Their village wasn't far from Sevastopol.
WhEn they returned
They found Out that their village was simply wiped out of existence.
And that is an understatement
They actually thought they were dreaming because they couldn't believe what they were seeing.
He also told me that his great grandparents and their family were actually murdered in a concentration camp but theirs no where to look for them since their were so many.
His grand parents volunteered to move to Belarus since they were part Russian and had friends in Minsk.when they went through the byelorussian countryside they found nothing but burnt out villages and people aging from 8 to 80 weeping and crying while laying on the floor because they had lost their family.
It was actually heartbreaking because his grandparents had taken a photo of a child desperately clinging to his dead parents and sister trying to find any sign of life.
And he was just 12 years old.
No wonder the red army did what it did in germany.
The amount of pain and suffering all those people went through can indeed make you loose all hope in humanity. It is very important to share those personal accounts of what happened, in order for us to move forward and actually grow as humankind.
If you are able to share any archival materials or photographs you or your relatives may have, please do get in touch! Contributions like that do help us tell a fuller story - even if its a tragic one.
Thats a chilling way to put it. 'Human Livestock' Thats what it was though.
Every time I see a new episode hosted by Spartacus I need to brace myself before watching. Thank you for pushing through and showing us the brutal reality of WW2 even though I'm sure it's hard for you. Never forget!
I skip most of them for that reason, they make me cringe.
But this one is different.
I had several Polish family members spend time as forced labourers, one being a POW from the '39 campaign, the rest being civilians conscripted over time as the war went on. Some worked in camps (both in concentration and solder camps), some worked on farms. The work wasn't always easy but especially on German farms, polish labourers were treated mostly fairly and even sometimes like family. Many Polish men stayed after the war to marry German women they had met in the community. The war was a tough time, and there was definetly a difference in treatment for soviet and Jewish prisoners, but many ordinary germans treated their labour humanely, sometimes even intervening on behalf of family members to save their lives in difficult situations
This kind of content is why I joined the Time Ghost army. Never forget.
Your support means a lot to us. Thank you for helping us make content like this. Never Forget.
Thanks to all the team for their crucial work. Respect!
Thank you
May I recommend William Manchester’s biography of the Krupp dynasty. After 300 years of history, he discusses his visit to the factory. Polish laborers had tipped him of to what was under some of the gardens. Children of Enslaved Polish women.
It never ceases to amaze me that Speer slipped the noose.
When you realize how leniently America treated von Braun and many other Germans who used slave labor and human experimentation to produce weapons, and when you realize Speer, as Minister of Armaments, was their boss and knew everything there was to know about German weaponry and war industry, it ceases to amaze very quickly.
Never Forget. Never let it be forgotten.
We don't intend to.
This episode has a personal connection to me as my grandma's aunt's husband was one of the many Polish civilians who was forcibly sent to Germany to work. Sadly, I do not know any details as to the nature of his forced labor. All I know is that he later said he was fortunate enough to be under the command of good people and was treated relatively well. My heart breaks for the many who weren't so lucky. Thank you TimeGhost for sharing these stories
Thank you for sharing your story!
Answering your first question Spartacus, Not only US southern states came to my mind, the Modern China (Uyghurs) and Belgian Congo came to my mind too.
Don't forget Brazil
I mean Saudi Arabia and most of the gulf countries such as the United Arab emirate and Qatar come to mind
Pretty sure Uyghurs is slave labour constituted jack of the economy. PRC tried to eradicate their culture, turning them into a han man. Not their bodies and culture. They hadnt seen to Russia to quell the kind of separatists they have in Xinjiang
@@edwinhylton2499 explain pls
Soviet Union. People should read Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago"
Why would someone give this 👎?
I read a book about a dutchman that was forced to work on a farm in east germany. It was the best time of his life, he was really lucky the conditions were good and his boss was friendly. When the russians came, it went bad. The girls on the farm got raped and murdered. When he went back to holland, everyone hated him because he didnt flee the forced labour. He went back to germany when he was about 60 and got married there.
Superb - Fascinating subject and brilliant presentation. Great to see the references. Better than most lectures I went to at uni. Keep the faith.
Thank you
Excellent video. Never forget!
Thank you.
My grandfather was taken from Serbia and was basically a slave for some people on a farm I think in France. I remember my grandmother telling me the story how he used to pretend at first that he didn't know how to use a broom, and would sweep the air above the ground to piss them off... When I was a bit older I heard from my father that my grandfather had a kid while there, idk if that's true, would be sad if it was. He came back and lived till 90 yo.
Thank you for sharing your grandfather's story Keen.
I would be interested to see an actual ranking of slave based economies. The US is often thought of as the example of slavery but the slave based economy of the south was at its peak during the era of “King Cotton.” from shortly after the invention of the cotton gin in 1793 to the end of the Civil War in 1865. For much of its early development southern US agriculture was more diversified and less reliant on slave labour. I wonder how the US compared to say the Caribbean sugar plantations of the British or the gold and silver extraction from South America by the Spanish and Portuguese using indigenous and imported slaves.
Alex Hacker just became my new favorite person of the day.