Importance of prisoners of war for the war economy
From the beginning of the war in September 1939, conscription into the "Wehrmacht" (German armed forces) created bottlenecks in the labour market, which were compensated for by the employment of civilian foreign forced labourers and the use of prisoners of war.
Under certain conditions, the international agreement on the treatment of prisoners of war allowed all healthy prisoners to be used as labourers according to their respective abilities. Only officers were allowed to be used for labour only at their express request. However, it was generally not permitted to use the prisoners for work that was directly related to combat operations and armaments production. However, this requirement was fundamentally disregarded by the Germans.
More than 80% of the captured soldiers and non-commissioned officers were used for labour in the war economy. According to the General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment, in August 1944 there were 5.783 million civilian foreign forced labourers and 1.930 million prisoners of war compared to the 22.939 million German workers and employees. This means that just under 6.5 per cent of all workers in Germany were prisoners of war.