How much of a victorious Reich's economy would be based on slave labor?

Wendigo

Banned
If the Reich "won" WW2 and had control of Europe (English Channel to Ural Mountains) how much of their post war economy would be based off slave labor and working "untermensch" to death?

At its peak in 1944 OTL there were around 8 million slave laborers (mostly Poles and Slavs) which made up around 20% of the total German workforce. In the aftermath of a continental victory with tens of millions of Slavs under their control marked for death, would we see the slave labor program expanded, taking up even more of the total workforce?

What effect would a reliance on slave labor for dirty/dangerous/unworthy tasks have on the quality of life for Germans?

What industries would be almost exclusively handled out by slave laborers?

Who would guard these slave laborers? SS, Heer or civilians?

How would the mortality rate compare to OTL?
 
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I question if Nazi slaves were economically viable for farms that far north? There is also the expense of feeding slaves during long, Northern European winters.


OTL When United Empire Loyalists fled to Canada (aftermath of the American Revolutionary War) some of them brought black slaves. UEL son tired of feeding idle slaves during Nova Scotia winters and granted slaves their freedom. Ever since then, blacks have dominated the lower rungs of the Nova Scotia economy.

If Nazi slaves primarily worked in industry, productivity and quality would suffer. Look at the crappy ammunition produced by Czechs towards the end of WW2.
 

Deleted member 1487

They were planning on having something like 30 million slaves in the east consistently, which would mean they would also be kept in the East, while the Czechs and Poles would be absorbed (some of them that is) and parts sent east. In Europe overall slavery would be mostly done in the occupied lands to the East, not within the core Reich itself. Forced labor from the rest of Europe probably would end at the end of the war as German men could return to the factories and the next generation of Germans brought into the workforce. Slavery would probably be a bigger part of the overall German economy immediately after the war until they could set up the long term economic plan and then it would take a backseat to regular employment of Germans and Europeans. From what I can tell the idea that the German economy would convert to a pre-Civil War US Southern slavery economy was never in the plans; the slaves would be in the east extracting resources in former Soviet territory, while Germans would do the work within Germany.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost
The forced labor during WW2 was not really planned as a long term scheme, just something to make up for the fact that German manpower was not available for work. There might be some slave labor on German farms within Central Europe, but near as I can tell the plan was to keep the Poles, Czechs, and forced long term labor in the conquered parts of the former USSR and make Central Europe a racially/culturally homogenous zone for German settlement and a few million temporary slaves (temporary in the sense that they wouldn't be allowed to breed and would eventually die off) left to work in Central Europe for farming and resource extraction. Guards would likely be a combination of the police, Gestapo, SS, and civilians employing them. In the long run it would be likely that slavery in Central Europe would be replaced by German labor or other European guest workers brought in for seasonal work on farms or contract work in mines and the like. In the East it would likely persist for a long time, perhaps permanently and they would become effectively old style Russian serfs bound to the land or mines they were employed in, shifted if necessary to other areas.

I guess the overall plan was to eventually have the Wehrbauer dominate the East in a mix between the Roman soldier retirement plan and Kibbutzim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrbauer
Slave labor would eventually be supplanted by them in agriculture and probably restrict them to mining.
 
With the end of the war the need for the Nazis to use slave laborers in factories or other semi-industrial use would gradually cease. I can see slaves other than in the east for such things as garbage collection, some heavy unskilled manual labor in Großdeutschland, as well as personal servants and of course slaves in brothels. In the east, once the population had been reduced by working slaves to death either tearing things down or doing heavy labor building an infrastructure, you'll have them as farm laborers, heavy manual unskilled labor, in mines, perhaps in some industries doing the most hazardous work. From 1939-1945 the Germans were able to use slave labor that was mostly literate, and many had valuable skills learned prior to the war. In a victorious Reich, those Untermenschen worthy of life would be illiterate and such skills as they might need would probably be learned via the sort of apprentice system that existed the the antebellum south, where a young slave would be apprenticed to a slave blacksmith to learn (as an example). Given the proclivities of the Nazis, you might see selected breeding centers for slaves to be used for medical testing (why test drugs on animals when you can test on people, why try new surgical techniques on pigs.....etc), other "specialized" needs.
 

Wendigo

Banned
Given the proclivities of the Nazis, you might see selected breeding centers for slaves to be used for medical testing (why test drugs on animals when you can test on people, why try new surgical techniques on pigs.....etc), other "specialized" needs.
"Specialized" needs?

Sounds like nightmare fuel.

Is it more efficient to establish breeding centers and raise and feed Slavs from birth for the sole purpose of being medical test subjects or just grabbing the required amount on an ad-hoc basis from mines or factories and other projects?

Considering there were over 100 million Slavs scheduled for extermination over several decades it isn't like they're going to have a shortage of test subjects. To me it just seems wasteful for Reich authorities to spend all that time and money raising, feeding and taking care of "untermensch" in breeding centers and then using them once to test out new surgical procedures, new weaponry etc. The benefit doesn't seem to outweigh the cost.
 
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Well, once you get done with the extermination phase... It's for the same reason you have research facilities that breed animals with know characteristics/genetics/mutations, makes testing for drugs, etc much easier and more accurate. Also when you do testing you want healthy animals so issues of malnutrition, pre-existing disease does not bollix up results. Also be able to have age/sex range, also test on pregnant females. Basically using Untermenschen in the same way we use lab animals OTL. And yes definite nightmare territory.

Other specialized needs...trying to breed for attractive for brothels, like with dogs breed for size (like smaller for miners), lots of possibilities if you are sick enough, and they were.
 

Wendigo

Banned
Well, once you get done with the extermination phase... It's for the same reason you have research facilities that breed animals with know characteristics/genetics/mutations, makes testing for drugs, etc much easier and more accurate. Also when you do testing you want healthy animals so issues of malnutrition, pre-existing disease does not bollix up results. Also be able to have age/sex range, also test on pregnant females. Basically using Untermenschen in the same way we use lab animals OTL. And yes definite nightmare territory.

Other specialized needs...trying to breed for attractive for brothels, like with dogs breed for size (like smaller for miners), lots of possibilities if you are sick enough, and they were.
This reminds me of the ASB story "The Ultimate Solution"(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Solution) where the Reich in the 1970s had farms where blacks and Slavs were raised from birth with their vocal cords severed and were transported regularly for use in gladiator matches (in Madison Square Garden nonetheless), as pets, in torture parlors, and as sex slaves in brothels.

They never explained why they sever their vocal cords at birth though.
 
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They were planning on having something like 30 million slaves in the east consistently, which would mean they would also be kept in the East, while the Czechs and Poles would be absorbed (some of them that is) and parts sent east. In Europe overall slavery would be mostly done in the occupied lands to the East, not within the core Reich itself. Forced labor from the rest of Europe probably would end at the end of the war as German men could return to the factories and the next generation of Germans brought into the workforce. Slavery would probably be a bigger part of the overall German economy immediately after the war until they could set up the long term economic plan and then it would take a backseat to regular employment of Germans and Europeans. From what I can tell the idea that the German economy would convert to a pre-Civil War US Southern slavery economy was never in the plans; the slaves would be in the east extracting resources in former Soviet territory, while Germans would do the work within Germany.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost
The forced labor during WW2 was not really planned as a long term scheme, just something to make up for the fact that German manpower was not available for work. There might be some slave labor on German farms within Central Europe, but near as I can tell the plan was to keep the Poles, Czechs, and forced long term labor in the conquered parts of the former USSR and make Central Europe a racially/culturally homogenous zone for German settlement and a few million temporary slaves (temporary in the sense that they wouldn't be allowed to breed and would eventually die off) left to work in Central Europe for farming and resource extraction. Guards would likely be a combination of the police, Gestapo, SS, and civilians employing them. In the long run it would be likely that slavery in Central Europe would be replaced by German labor or other European guest workers brought in for seasonal work on farms or contract work in mines and the like. In the East it would likely persist for a long time, perhaps permanently and they would become effectively old style Russian serfs bound to the land or mines they were employed in, shifted if necessary to other areas.

I guess the overall plan was to eventually have the Wehrbauer dominate the East in a mix between the Roman soldier retirement plan and Kibbutzim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrbauer
Slave labor would eventually be supplanted by them in agriculture and probably restrict them to mining.

I image construction work as well namely for the rial and highways mean to link Eastern Europe to 'Germany proper'.
 
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