East. European Immigration to Germany After Germany Wins WWI

CaliGuy

Banned
Everybody was racist, but they were not ragingly so. The party actually fought for the rights of national minorities against discriminatory association laws and tried to organise them (the Poles were mostly not interested - if they voted, it was for national bloc or Catholic parties). Comparing the mildly annoyed 'foreigners bringing down wages and importing false consciousness' stuff from the SPD with the bullhorn rants about inferior races polluting German blood and outbreeding the Aryan stock from the Völkische is illustrative.
OK; understood.

Also, though, could a victorious Germany experience a labor shortage (in part due to its massive World War I casualties)?
 

CaliGuy

Banned
Not on hand. The book you want is Herbert, Ulrich: Geschichte der Ausländerbeschäftigung in Deutschland 1880-1980 (ISBN 3-8012-3019-8. Old, but thoroughly sourced.

Snapshot: statistics for 1907 show 882,315 foreign-born workers employed in Germany. Poles from russia and Austria-Hungary dominate agriculture, Austro-Hungarians and Italians manufacturing. Interestingly, only 2.9% of all agricultural workers but 4.48% of industrial workers were foreign-born.

In 1913, 916,004 foreign-born workers (you have to love the false accuracy of those statistics) were listed in Prussia alone. All but 360,000 of them were seasonally employed. 270.000 of them were Poles.

Neither of these figures count most Ruhrpolen, as they were Prussian nationals.
Thanks for all of this information! :)

Also, 916,000 foreign-born workers doesn't sound like that much out of a total population of 65 million people. Indeed, it's only 1.5% of the total German population!
 
Thanks for all of this information! :)

Also, 916,000 foreign-born workers doesn't sound like that much out of a total population of 65 million people. Indeed, it's only 1.5% of the total German population!

It's not a large number by modern standards, but by early 20th century standards it's pretty high for a country that used to be a net exporter of migration. A higher percentage than those refugees everybody's freaking out about now.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
It's not a large number by modern standards, but by early 20th century standards it's pretty high for a country that used to be a net exporter of migration. A higher percentage than those refugees everybody's freaking out about now.
It might be high for a country which has traditionally produced emigrants, but it's absolutely puny to the U.S.'s percentage of foreign-born residents (13-15%, depending on the exact year) during this time!
 
Thanks for all of this information! :)

Also, 916,000 foreign-born workers doesn't sound like that much out of a total population of 65 million people. Indeed, it's only 1.5% of the total German population!

Shouldn't you divide the 916,000 workers by the total number of workers in Germany, rather than by the total population? Not everyone in Germany was an adult worker, obviously.
 
after seeing a map of concentration camps in Germany in WW2, I'm left with thinking that I need convincing the masses weren't racist, not that I need to prove they were. A country doesn't get to that level of depravity without the masses being racist. Not all. Most.

I'm of German descent.

The most shocking thing I saw at Dachau was the map of a camp in every town. not the skin and bones pictures. the sheer fact that it was going on in every town of any size.
This is a country that wholeheartedly embraced a racist regime and resisted til the very end any attempt at ending that regime.

I absolutely detest Hitler being portrayed as the monster. He's just a lunatic. The people he inspired was the monster. all these feeling were there in 1919.



Sorry, rant over.



I don't think the Kaiser Germany was anywhere near as bad as the third reich, but all the racist feelings were there. Had Kaiser Germany gained hegemony, I doubt these feelings would have been suppressed.
 
Germany was already attracting many foreign labourers prior to World War I, as Germany had shifted from being a large source of emigrants to one with little emigration. Germany's emigration had peaked in the 1880s and in 1913, 25,843 people emigrated from the German Reich. The foreign population meanwhile grew from 206,000 in 1871 to 1.26 million in 1910. Of these, half were subjects of the Habsburgs, 150,000 were Italians and around 10% were from the Netherlands.

Eastern Europeans, particularly ethnic Poles from Austria and to lesser extent Congress Poland were arriving in East Prussia as seasonal agricultural labourers, these numbered around 600,000 at the onset of World War I, and around half were female. Meanwhile, ethnic Poles from within the Empire were migrating in ever larger numbers to the industrial Rhineland, particularly to the Ruhr Valley. Additionally, there were Italians, mostly from the Northern Italy whom were overwhelmingly male and came to work in the mines and factories and more often than not made no attempt to settle permanently. This group was part of wider Italian migration to the industrial regions of Northern Europe, namely Belgium, France and Luxembourg.

Foreign Jews were also a growing number as some 76,387 lived in Germany by 1910. Like their counterparts in London, Paris, Vienna, most of these were fleeing political persecution in the Russian Empire or poverty in Galicia and Rumania. Many became successful in the small trades. Unfortunately, the growing number of this group did lead to increasing anti-semitisim.
 
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It's a possible outcome, but I don't know how viable it is. Does a victorious Germany boom in the 1920s, or does it stagnate like England did?
 
I don't think the Kaiser Germany was anywhere near as bad as the third reich, but all the racist feelings were there. Had Kaiser Germany gained hegemony, I doubt these feelings would have been suppressed.
There are different kinds of outcomes this hate can have. You could see the common racist behaviour at this time or violent progroms or genocidal campaigns or nothing. All depending on the way the German Empire takes. Could be a descent into lunacy till it resembles the OTL Japanese Empire or it could look like OTL USA race relationships.
 
It's not a large number by modern standards, but by early 20th century standards it's pretty high for a country that used to be a net exporter of migration. A higher percentage than those refugees everybody's freaking out about now.

There was also the difference that the number was workers, while the 65 million also count non-workers (children, elderly and house wives). I don't know how many workers Germany had, but the comparison would be interesting. Another aspect was how spread the seasonal workers were, in Denmark which also got Polish seasonal workers (usual under Prussian foremen), they mostly ended up in Lolland-Falster and South Zealand (sugar beet area), which had the largest reaction against them and where descendants of them are pretty common today. They used to be the base of the Danish catholic community, but they lose a lot of believers to the Lutherans every generation.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
Germany was already attracting many foreign labourers prior to World War I, as Germany had shifted from being a large source of emigrants to one with little emigration. Germany's emigration had peaked in the 1880s and in 1913, 25,843 people emigrated from the German Reich. The foreign population meanwhile grew from 206,000 in 1871 to 1.26 million in 1910. Of these, half were subjects of the Habsburgs, 150,000 were Italians and around 10% were from the Netherlands.

Eastern Europeans, particularly ethnic Poles from Austria and to lesser extent Congress Poland were arriving in East Prussia as seasonal agricultural labourers, these numbered around 600,000 at the onset of World War I, and around half were female. Meanwhile, ethnic Poles from within the Empire were migrating in ever larger numbers to the industrial Rhineland, particularly to the Ruhr Valley. Additionally, there were Italians, mostly from the Northern Italy whom were overwhelmingly male and came to work in the mines and factories and more often than not made no attempt to settle permanently. This group was part of wider Italian migration to the industrial regions of Northern Europe, namely Belgium, France and Luxembourg.

Foreign Jews were also a growing number as some 76,387 lived in Germany by 1910. Like their counterparts in London, Paris, Vienna, most of these were fleeing political persecution in the Russian Empire or poverty in Galicia and Rumania. Many became successful in the small tradesUnfortunately, the growing number of this group did lead to increasing anti-semitisim.
Great explanation! :)

Also, though, where exactly did you get all of this data from?
 

CaliGuy

Banned
Shouldn't you divide the 916,000 workers by the total number of workers in Germany, rather than by the total population? Not everyone in Germany was an adult worker, obviously.
Possibly; however, I'd like to know how many foreign-born non-worker residents Germany had back then.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
There was also the difference that the number was workers, while the 65 million also count non-workers (children, elderly and house wives). I don't know how many workers Germany had, but the comparison would be interesting. Another aspect was how spread the seasonal workers were, in Denmark which also got Polish seasonal workers (usual under Prussian foremen), they mostly ended up in Lolland-Falster and South Zealand (sugar beet area), which had the largest reaction against them and where descendants of them are pretty common today. They used to be the base of the Danish catholic community, but they lose a lot of believers to the Lutherans every generation.
Frankly, I'd also like to know how many foreign-born non-worker residents Germany had during this time. After all, I know that the U.S.'s immigration data included wives, children, old people, et cetera; thus, I'd like to see a comparison between the U.S. and Germany in regards to total immigrant numbers.
 
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