So many arms for the Reich. If the Nazis as soon as they came to power created concentration camps to repress opponents, with the arrival of the Second World War, they took on another form for the Third Reich. German citizens are called to arms to invade Europe. The labour force then begins to shortage and in Germany someone will have to replace them. Thus, more types of camps are created where many European citizens will end up. And how many were the Europeans who would run the Nazi machine and how many were the forced labourers, the people forced to work for the Reich? And what weight did fascism have in sending thousands of Italians to the camps? We talked about this with Roberta Mira, lecturer at the University of Bologna and author of numerous researches on the subject.  

How did the concentration camp system change with the arrival of the Second World War?

MIRA RESPONSE: World War II gave the opportunity to expand this system. To extend it to the countries conquered by Hitler’s Germany, and the phenomenon of concentration camps with the war is associated with the phenomenon of deportation. During the war, in fact, the network of camps within the borders of the Reich and in the occupied countries grew, extermination camps were opened on the territory of occupied Poland for the mass murder of Jews, Sinti and Roma, the population imprisoned in the camps increased exponentially and with this increase, of course, the conditions inside the camps worsened and the death rate rose sharply. The war also marks another transition. To the political and racial motivations for deportation, new forms of deportation and detention were added. And the concentration camps of the SS system were joined by other camps. Those for soldiers of enemy armies captured and detained as prisoners of war and also those for civilian workers who are incorporated into the German war economy. This point is important. During the conflict, Germany’s military effort had to be supported by increased production. Especially the military industry that manufactures weapons ammunition means such as aircraft and tanks and this industry needs a larger workforce. Germany, however, has to send men to the front and therefore has to replace them in the workplace with other workers. In this situation, the European continent, conquered or placed by countries even allied with Germany during the war, becomes a large labour reserve for the Nazis. And although initially foreign civilians to be employed in Germany as labour force were to be recruited on a voluntary basis, soon the Germans, faced with the fact that they were not getting the numbers they hoped for, introduced coercion measures and created a mechanism for the forced recruitment and transfer of labour into Germany. And foreign workers are employed in various sectors of the economy in agriculture and especially in the war industry and special camps are set up for them, the so-called workers’ camps. At the same time, the Nazis also decided to exploit military prisoners of war as labour force, and in this they contravened the rules of international law, which do not provide for prisoners of war to be exploited in labour by the holding power, and they also decided to exploit prisoners in SS concentration camps for political and racial prisoners. The employment of foreign labour in the war economy of the Third Reich became a cornerstone of Nazi power over Europe. Studies assume that foreign workers in the Reich between military prisoners of war, SS concentration camp internees and civilian workers numbered between nine and thirteen million. In the structure of the socialist nation-state, which is a complex polycratic system with several power centres that conflict and sometimes converge on the same goals, not only the detention structures multiply, but also the structures responsible for the different networks of camps and internees. Thus, in addition to the SS, the armed forces, the ministries of war production and labour, the General Plenipotentiary of Manpower, which is created in 42 precisely to centralise the withdrawal of manpower in the various European territories, come into play. And also their ramifications in the allied and German-occupied countries. Within this complex framework, deportation and concentration camps in their various forms fulfil several functions. On the one hand they have an end of repression, they serve the Nazi racialisation that wants to create a racially pure society loyal to the fuhrer and the reich, and on the other they have a practical purpose of exploitation of the deportees and inmates in the camps in order to support Germany’s war economy. And we must not forget that war itself is a central element of Nazi ideology.

QUESTION BERTOLUCCI: What about the Italian case? 

MIRA RESPONSE: The Italian case is a complex one. During the Nazi occupation of Italy between September ‘43 and the end of the Second World War, an intricate situation is played out on Italian territory because we have Italy passing from the condition of main ally of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy passing from this condition of main ally of Hitler’s Germany to the condition that has been defined by scholars, of occupied ally. Germany kept the alliance with Fascist Italy and the RSI alive through the structure and the men of the Italian Social Republic, Mussolini in primis, but it was Germany that dictated the rules, laid the cards of the game and entirely controlled the Italian situation to its own advantage. Including the repression of opposition phenomena, including the deportation of Jews and as part of the so-called final solution to the Jewish problem in Europe, which at this point also included Jews on Italian territory, and also with regard to the exploitation of resources. And then we also have in the days following the armistice, the capture of a large part of the Italian men at arms in the Italian army, who are also sent to the prison camps of the Third Reich. So we have a situation in which we have all kinds of, let’s say, deportation from Italy and in this period, from September ‘43 to the end of the Second World War, about 800,000 Italians are transferred to Germany in these different forms of prison camps and deportations. And of course among these are, as I said, Jews and political deportees, the former as the target of the Shoah and as the designated victims of Nazi ideology, the latter being political opponents, partisans, anti-fascists as enemies to be repressed in the context of police occupation measures, territorial control and precisely anti-partisan action and the German occupying force in Italy. However, it should not be forgotten that the RSI had a role in these deportations, an important role, especially with regard to Jews and politicians, in which the forces of the structures, the men of the fascist Social Republic actively participated. So this role as an occupied ally is not a role exclusively of submission to Germany, but in the case of the deportations and especially of the Jews, of the politicians, we see an active role of the fascists. From Italy they are arrested for deportation, I come to the individual groups. So as far as Jews from Italy are concerned, more than 9,000 citizens considered to be of the Jewish race were arrested for deportation, I put this in inverted commas because we know that races do not exist, and these were Italians and foreigners who were on Italian territory and on the Dodecanese islands which were controlled by Italy at the time. So it is not only a question of Italian Jews, but also of foreign Jews who are on our territory for different reasons: either because they had come to Italy to try to save themselves from the persecution of central Europe, Germany and Austria in the 1930s still, or because they are people who were interned as foreign citizens, they were interned by fascism or sent to places of confinement and to prison camps. And so they are on Italian territory. The others are the Italian Jews. And as envisaged in the plans to exterminate these more than 9,000 people, we have adult women and men, but we also have many elderly people and many children, even extremely small children, even babies. Because the idea was to exterminate the Jewish people entirely. More than 8,600 people are actually transported to the SS camps, mainly to Auschwitz Birkenau, then to the Auschwitz Birkenau extermination camp. And very few of them survive. And then we have a few hundred who die in Italy before deportation and another 400 who are arrested but not deported. And as for the politicians, there are 20-30 thousand people, mostly men and they are anti-fascists and partisans. They are arrested as part of the repression operations of the Resistance and of opposition to the RSI and the German occupiers, including, for example, the strikes of March ‘44. The destinations, for the most part, are the camps of Dachau, Mauthausen, Buchenwald, Flossenburg and for women Ravensbruck. Then the camps of the SS system, in the camps for political opponents. And even in their case the survival rate is relatively low. Higher than that of the Jews who are deported to be killed but the living conditions inside the camps, especially camps like Mauthausen, and its sub-camps, Gusen and Ebensee, are extreme the forced labour is very hard and even here we have very high mortality rates. In Italy, before deportation, those arrested are temporarily concentrated while waiting for the Nazi machine to prepare transports to the lagers. And in this phase the Italian prisons play a very important role. In particular, those in Rome, Florence, Milan, Turin and Genoa, but also smaller prisons in the case of Jews, for example, who tried to escape from deportation across the Swiss border, many were instead captured at the border and temporarily detained in prisons, for example in Bergamo. So these places, the Italian prisons, especially the sections controlled directly by the Germans, the so-called German arm, are the places that represent the first mass detention centres of the future deportees and also places of interrogation and torture. And from here, the transfer to the concentration and extermination camps starts from the prisons. In some cases the deportees leave the prison to be sent directly to Germany from the railway stations, the case of track 21 in Milan is well known, but Turin also has this function, but a large number of them experience a further stage of deportation on the peninsula in the so-called transit camps. And among the largest of this kind in Italy, we must remember Fossoli, Bolzano and La risiera di San Sabba in Trieste.

QUESTION BERTOLUCCI: What about forced labourers?

MIRA RESPONSE: The forced labourers are perhaps the least known of these groups of deportees. And they too are part of this complex situation of Nazi Germany’s control of Italian territory and exploitation. A fundamental element of this exploitation is in fact the withdrawal of manpower from Italy and this is part of the general plans of the General Plenipotentiary for Manpower, which in German is the acronym GdA, a role held by Fritz Sauckel, the gaulautier of Thuringia, who from 42, when he took office, planned a series of manpower recruitment actions throughout Europe, which were to gather a total of more than 8 million workers. And 4 million of these 8 are to arrive in Germany in 1944 alone. And from Italy Sauckel expects to get one million workers out of these 4 million in 1944. Recruitment is initially based on the voluntary submission of workers and the Germans try to use channels they have used before. These are the institutional channels, involving the Labour Offices, the fascist trade unions and the Italian prefectures and municipalities. And they had already used these channels previously between 1938 and 1943 under agreements between Rome and Berlin. During this period about 500,000 Italians went voluntarily to work in Germany. And to some extent the Germans tried to reactivate these channels after 8 September ‘43 in order to ask again for arms and workers from Italy to replace Germans who had to be sent to the front. And the calls to work in the Reich with the promise of good conditions, of salaries equal to those of German workers, in the new situation, after 8 September ‘43, did not, however, obtain the desired results. Neither did recourse to precepting the unemployed, those working for companies that had slowed down or stopped production because of the wartime conditions, or older men who were not called up to arms in the army of the RSI, serve, are sufficient to improve the numbers of those recruited. Only a few thousand workers turn up and leave. Some had already been in Germany in the previous period, so they were aware of the relatively positive experience, but at that time Italy was the Reich’s main ally, so Italians were treated better than workers of other nationalities. After 8 September, on the other hand, there was also a punitive attitude towards Italians in this system, which also involved deportations and the exploitation of Italy’s labour force. And so the conditions are very different. So only a few thousand workers came forward voluntarily and the Germans, faced with unsatisfactory results, increased the measures of coercion. They also directly contacted Italian companies and offices, they made direct agreements fixing quotas of workers to be sent to the Reich, and to these measures they also accompanied raids and transfers. And among these, let’s say forced or violent, measures to find labour, two took on a certain importance in the summer and autumn of 1944. One is Operation Prison, which involves the transfer to the Reich of prisoners in Italian prisons as labour. So they return again, in short, our prisons as a place of concentration transit to the camps, the Reich’s lagers. Effectively, this action led to the transfer to Germany of several thousand prisoners, after a skimming on the basis of dangerousness. Because obviously those who were detained for political reasons ended up in the SS concentration camps. Those who were detained for serious common crimes were probably left in Italy, they tried to leave them in Italy, so as not to put them in, in short, even delicate sectors of war production. And those who are selected, they are the borsaneristas, they are petty common criminals but in any case we are talking about a few thousand people entering this circuit, this form of deportation. And the other relevant measure in the summer of ‘44 and coercive, is the indiscriminate round-ups. Which are aimed at the capture of men, mainly men also some women are included in this circuit of forced labourers but they are mainly men, between 15 and 60 years of age. So very young or very and also very old. All those who are not recalled to the army and who, however, potentially or who may also be renegades or people who have gone into the bush, so that potentially they may also be active partisans, so there is also a form of control of the territory of police operation, operation of limitation of the partisan phenomenon, of the possible phenomena of opposition, in this capture all those who fall into these age brackets who are potentially also Resistance fighters, and who are at the same time able to work, are certainly rounded up and sent northwards in order to be then inserted in the labour circuits for Nazi Germany. From the end of July 1944, these round-ups directly involved the operating troops of the German army who were withdrawing from central Italy, and the indiscriminate round-ups became the prevalent means of recruiting labour and remained so until November 1944. In November 1944, agreements were signed between Italians and Germans stipulating that the recruitment of labour should only come on a voluntary basis. Because one of the effects of the coercive measures, both of the precept cards sent previously and of these forms of forced rounding up, is the increase in the number of people who actually evade the voluntary request, the voluntary submission, and also the increase in people who evade this hypothetical transfer to Germany by joining the Resistance. So when faced with a phenomenon that on the one hand yields no results and on the other risks increasing the opposition and armed formations actively fighting against the Nazis and fascists, it is decided to return to voluntary submission of workers. The rounding up actions are very often conducted during anti-partisan operations. In the context of the measures to evacuate the civilian population from the front and rear, while the Germans are preparing defensive structures to stem the Anglo-American advance, they are also connected to the large-scale massacres of civilians. For example, in the case of Sant’Anna di Stazzema on 12 August ‘44 and in the case of Monte Sole, late September early October ’44, near Bologna the latter and in Tuscany the former, we also have a pick-up of able-bodied men at work with the rounding up of men from Val di Castello in the first case Sant’Anna di Stazzema and with the rounding up of the Salvaro area in the Monte Sole area behind Bologna. So we also have within these large indiscriminate massacres of civilians in which mainly defenceless civilians, women and children or elderly men women and children died, above all, we also have the rounding up of younger men for the purpose of using them as labour. Sources on this subject are sketchy, scattered, it is very difficult to ascertain the actual numbers of those who were actually involved in these rounding up measures and also those who were then actually transported to the Reich with manpower. Scholars have estimated around 100,000 civilians who were transferred from Italy to Germany specifically for inclusion in the German war economy after September 1943. And to a large extent, these are collected by coercive measures and by rounding up. Let me say one last thing about the organisation of the transfer of these workers from the capture zones to the Reich. The organs in charge of recruiting the labour force set up a series of special collection and transit points. And sometimes again the Italian prisons, e.g. Regina Coeli in Rome has this function in part. To a minimal extent, however, compared to what we have seen for deportation for political or racial reasons. Transit camps for workers are facilities made especially for them or adapted for this transport, this concentration and this transit. In central Italy, one of the most important is the collection centre in Florence, which is set up in the building of the Leopoldine schools near the Santa Maria Novella station, so that they can leave directly. Other centres in Tuscany are in Massa in Carrara in the castle of Prato in the Pia casa di beneficenza in Lucca. These are the main ones in Emilia Romagna, instead we have them in Colle Ameno near Bologna and here those taken in the Monte Sole massacre will arrive, for example, Vigarano Mainarda in the Ferrara area, Bibbiano in Reggio Emilia and here we have a sports field. Therefore, structures of various types were adapted to this role, and among the most prominent were the Red Barracks in Bologna, the Via Romanello barracks in Forlì and the main one in the region, which was once again the Fossoli camp. Fossoli camp after the transfer of the SS to Bolzano became a sorting place for labour. It is taken over by the structures of the GdA and is used to sort these raked workers. Further north we have another large centre in Sesto San Giovanni near Milan and also in the Mantua area. And Verona and the surrounding areas act as a hub for transfers to Germany. And several of these centres had first played the role of gathering places for those who presented themselves voluntarily and then instead became places for the round-ups and their catchment area was the territories close to the main cities, the areas of the provinces, but also the neighbouring regions. For example, in Tuscany they arrive from the Marches, from Umbria in the centre of Florence. And in some cases, transfers to Germany are organised from the cities that host the Florence collection centres to this role initially. Then when the course of the war no longer permitted this and there was a need for the Germans to move northwards, the workers were also moved from the collection points in central Italy, beyond the Gothic Line. And so also for this there is a difficulty in understanding the numbers because we have the same population moving from one centre to another. In the collection centres, the rounded up people are divided into those able to work and these are sent to northern Italy, for example to export the herds that the Germans raid and take northwards, or to be used in the ironworkers in the construction of the defensive posts, inserted in the circuits of the Todd Organisation, which exploits Italian workers in Italy in the service of the German troops. Or they were sent to the workers’ camps in Austria and Germany, territories of the Reich. Those who are judged unfit are generally released, but in some cases in Tuscany, for example, they are also held as hostages and in some situations are even shot. In the collection centres, the rounded-up people stay very little, so they really are places of transit, very quickly, they are quickly transferred to the Verona area by bus, lorry, when the trains are no longer running. And from the Verona area they leave for Austria for Germany where we have other sorting places that mark their transfer then to the work area. The conditions in the camps for workers and for some even in private accommodation, the luckiest of whom have the possibility of going to private accommodation with the companies that employ them, are not the extreme conditions of imprisonment in the concentration camps of the SS. But even these civilian workers are subjected to harsh and exhausting work schedules, are underfed and live in precarious situations from a health and hygiene point of view. The mortality rate in their case is low, most of them return, but it is another piece, let’s say of this phenomenon of violence that is typical of Nazi Germany, that is typical of the Second World War, that gives us a further element, in short, of evaluation and judgement on what was the history of these people.