# Did occupied Europe provide a net economic benefit to the Nazi war machine? Would it have? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 18, 2018, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-occupied-europe-provide-a-net-economic-benefit-to-the-nazi-war-machine-would-it-have/806916 "2018-01-18T18:31:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-occupied-europe-provide-a-net-economic-benefit-to-the-nazi-war-machine-would-it-have/806916/1 "2018-01-18T18:31:37Z")
So in most strategy games, there is some concept of economy where you can conquor territory and set up some sort of resource extraction apparatus. It depends on the game, but in Civilization you could conquer a city and get it to pay taxes to you. In Starcraft or Total Annihilation there were crystal/metal deposits. In RISK I think you get more dice. So at least in the game world, taking more land almost instantly means more income which almost instantly means a greater ability to fight. So by this logic, since the Nazis controlled the bulk of Europe, it should have provided a huge boost. All those extra people they could conscript and put to work in the munitions factories, all that extra territory to extract war materials from, and so on. But unlike the video games, people rebel and do a shitty job and in the mechanized age of warfare in ww2, quality was starting to matter a ton more than it probably did in the past. Sabotaged or mediocre tank and aircraft parts were possibly worse than useless. Conscripts who don’t support your side and are waiting for their moment to defect are probably worse than no conscripts at all. So what’s the historical dope on this? Did the Nazis gain a net benefit (extra military forces in excess of the costs to occupy it), and if so, was it very much? If they had 5 or 10 years to consolidate, would it have been very much? I wonder why Britain had so many problems, especially postwar. Shouldn’t they have been rolling in the dough, controlling all of India and a substantial fraction of the land area of the Earth? I never really understood this. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-occupied-europe-provide-a-net-economic-benefit-to-the-nazi-war-machine-would-it-have/806916/2 "2018-01-18T18:58:40Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > Conscripts who don’t support your side and are waiting for their moment to defect are probably worse than no conscripts at all. > > So what’s the historical dope on this? Did the Nazis gain a net benefit (extra military forces in excess of the costs to occupy it), and if so, was it very much? I don’t think they got conscripts, except slave labor for their factories, for the reasons you mentioned, but they _did_ get volunteers. I don’t know how much resources went to occupation because even if I had them I don’t know how to break that out from what they would have had to post there for logistics purposes anyway since they were going to attack the Soviet Union anyway. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-occupied-europe-provide-a-net-economic-benefit-to-the-nazi-war-machine-would-it-have/806916/3 "2018-01-18T19:12:22Z")
Despite what movies would have you believe, the Germans didn’t actually have to expend many resources fighting partisans. Partisan warfare in most parts of occupied Europe was of no real consequence; the outlier was, of course, Russia. The occupied parts of Europe and the lesser fascists countries provided significant benefit to the Nazi war effort through the use of resources. Germany needed the food, minerals, oil and such they either got from allies or looted from the conquered. There is little doubt that the industrial capacity of countries like France and Belgium was really never used, though. Germany itself was not fully ready for war, from an economic point of view, and throughout the war the German approach to using their ill-gotten gains was basically to steal things and ship them back to Germany. Materials, machines, oil, minerals, and slave labor were hauled back to Germany to increase its own industrial capacity. Food was looted by the ton and brought back to feed Germans; Germany was not remotely close to self-sufficient in food production. The nature of the looting differed from place to place; in France is was just a straight up heist, in places like Poland it was a sociopathic murder spree, and in lesser Axis countries like Romania it was an offer they could not refuse. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-occupied-europe-provide-a-net-economic-benefit-to-the-nazi-war-machine-would-it-have/806916/4 "2018-01-18T19:18:47Z")
The war and occupation did not last long enough for it to become an issue. Certainly, short term a lot of material was transferred. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-occupied-europe-provide-a-net-economic-benefit-to-the-nazi-war-machine-would-it-have/806916/5 "2018-01-18T19:19:48Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > So by this logic, since the Nazis controlled the bulk of Europe, it should have provided a huge boost. All those extra people they could conscript and put to work in the munitions factories, all that extra territory to extract war materials from, and so on. The Food helped the Nazis immensely, and was factored in from the beginning: because the Nazis prepared the war in advance, they did Impact studies on how Long and how much the Reich could feed its own citizens, and how much it relied on imports. Same for raw materials: capturing one part of the Sowjetunion with oil fields was very important to get gasoline for the vehicles. They also tested replacements, like Margarine for Butter, or how to run cars on Wood gas instead of gasoline, before the war started. This was immediately obvious at the end of WWII, when the Food Situation in Germany turned much much worse before, since there was no more plundering. During the War, the Netherlands resorted to eating tulip roots because Food was so scarce because of the plundering. > [@](#): > > But unlike the video games, people rebel and do a shitty job and in the mechanized age of warfare in ww2, quality was starting to matter a ton more than it probably did in the past. Sabotaged or mediocre tank and aircraft parts were possibly worse than useless. A lot of slave labour was from the concentration camps, and was not used directly in the Munition or steel industry, but rather for pure grunt work - digging a huge Underground cavern in North Germany to protect development of the V rockets from Allied bombing raids, for example. Working in moors or quarries. There was also not a lot of opportunity to rebel or Sabotage: those who worked were fed at the end of the day, those who didn’t, weren’t. Those who were suspected of Sabotage, or rebelled, were shot. The guards were SS or similar. Also, putting 50 or 100 slave workers or kidnapped Russians into a big factory of a 1 000 workers meant that no single Person could effectivly Sabotage anything, but any attempt would quickly be found out. > [@](#): > > Conscripts who don’t support your side and are waiting for their moment to defect are probably worse than no conscripts at all. In many countries, from the Netherlands to Ukraine, a part of the Population was full on board with the Nazi idea of supremacy, had their own Fascist parties before\*, and voluntarily joined the SS as guards or otherwise collaborated. The Nazis encouraged this, because having a national government in Charge lends much more authenticity to it towards the rest of the world than a full occupation where a German is put in Charge. - Even in Britain there were the black-shirts. > [@](#): > > So what’s the historical dope on this? Did the Nazis gain a net benefit (extra military forces in excess of the costs to occupy it), and if so, was it very much? There was a book several years ago where a Young Student wrote their Thesis on the often-touted Efficiency of the Nazis and found out that despite first plundering German Jews, then the occupied countries, Nazi economy was very very inefficient. Like Mussolinis “Trains on time” it was mostly Propaganda. Hitler famously encouraged different departments with overlapping responsibilities, leading to in-fighting and duplication, because he was afraid of any one department having too much power and influence, thus displacing him. > [@](#): > > I wonder why Britain had so many problems, especially postwar. Shouldn’t they have been rolling in the dough, controlling all of India and a substantial fraction of the land area of the Earth? I never really understood this. I have a thread about that [https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=847207](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=847207) ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-occupied-europe-provide-a-net-economic-benefit-to-the-nazi-war-machine-would-it-have/806916/6 "2018-01-18T20:47:12Z")
The Germans really liked one Škoda tank: _“The Panzerkampfwagen 38(t) was originally a Czechoslovak tank of pre-World War II design. After Czechoslovakia was taken over by Germany, it was adopted by the German Army, seeing service in the invasions of Poland, France and the USSR.”_ The Germans built over 1000 of these in Czechoslovakia. They aided the war effort quite a bit. Also food from France was a big help. The French provided a entire SS division of volunteers. 40000 Belgians served, 80000 Latvians (who had good reason to hate the USSR), etc > **[Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffen-SS_foreign_volunteers_and_conscripts)** > > During World War II, the Waffen-SS recruited significant numbers of non-Germans, both as volunteers and conscripts. In total some 500,000 non-Germans and ethnic Germans from outside Germany, mostly from German-occupied Europe, were recruited between 1940 and 1945. The units were under the control of the SS Führungshauptamt (SS Command Main Office) beneath Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Upon mobilization, the units' tactical control was given to the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (High Command o Th... ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-occupied-europe-provide-a-net-economic-benefit-to-the-nazi-war-machine-would-it-have/806916/7 "2018-01-18T23:21:53Z")
Nazi Germany used \*\*\*15 million \*\*\*imported slave laborers during the course of the war. There were \*\*\*11 million \*\*\*displaced persons at the end of the war in Germany who had been used for forced labor. Per [wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labour_under_German_rule_during_World_War_II): > [@](#): > > The use of forced labour in Nazi Germany and throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II took place on an unprecedented scale.[2] It was a vital part of the German economic exploitation of conquered territories. It also contributed to the mass extermination of populations in German-occupied Europe. The Nazi Germans abducted approximately 12 million people from almost twenty European countries; about two thirds came from Eastern Europe.[1] Many workers died as a result of their living conditions - mistreatment, malnutrition, and torture were the main causes of death. They became civilian casualties of shelling.[3] At its peak the forced labourers comprised 20% of the German work force. Counting deaths and turnover, about 15 million men and women were forced labourers at one point or another during the war.[4] > > The defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 freed approximately 11 million foreigners (categorized as “displaced persons”), most of whom were forced labourers and POWs. In wartime, the German forces had brought into the Reich 6.5 million civilians in addition to Soviet POWs for unfree labour in factories.[1] Returning them home was a high priority for the Allies. However, in the case of citizens of the USSR, returning often meant suspicion of collaboration or the Gulag. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), Red Cross, and military operations provided food, clothing, shelter, and assistance in returning home. In all, 5.2 million foreign workers and POWs were repatriated to the Soviet Union, 1.6 million to Poland, 1.5 million to France, and 900,000 to Italy, along with 300,000 to 400,000 each to Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Belgium.[5] ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-occupied-europe-provide-a-net-economic-benefit-to-the-nazi-war-machine-would-it-have/806916/8 "2018-01-18T23:24:53Z")
There are two books you need to read about this, which, I think, between them, answer your question; Mark Mazower’s “Hitler’s Empire”, and Adam Tooze’s “The Wages of Destruction”. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-occupied-europe-provide-a-net-economic-benefit-to-the-nazi-war-machine-would-it-have/806916/9 "2018-01-18T23:52:12Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > Nazi Germany used \*\*\*15 million \*\*\*imported slave laborers during the course of the war. There were \*\*\*11 million \*\*\*displaced persons at the end of the war in Germany who had been used for forced labor. Per [wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labour_under_German_rule_during_World_War_II): Sure, but were they actually a _net economic benefit_ to the Nazi Empire? I read somewhere that the Final Solution was a huge net drain on the German Wartime economy. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2018, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-occupied-europe-provide-a-net-economic-benefit-to-the-nazi-war-machine-would-it-have/806916/10 "2018-01-19T01:09:35Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Sure, but were they actually a _net economic benefit_ to the Nazi Empire? > > I read somewhere that the Final Solution was a huge net drain on the German Wartime economy. The Final Solution was certainly a drain; signficant resources had to be put into operating it, and it produced next to nothing. But the Nazis knew that from the outset; their motivation was ideological and political, not economic. But the Final Solution was only a very small part of the overall war effort. As others have said, the Nazis basically supported their war effort by looting conquered, occupied and reluctantly-allied territories, which meant that they could get away with doing much less to put the domestic economy on a war footing than, e.g,. Britain did. Domestic production in Germany continued to rise throughout the war and in fact didn’t peak until February or March 1945. What this suggests is that for much of the war output was well below what it might have been. One one view, the Nazi war model relied on continuous expansion and conquest, so that more and more resources became available for looting. Once the tide turned this model was of course no longer functional, and the wheels started to come off. It was only then that Nazis set about mobilising the domestic economy more effectively. ---
**Author:** ![BuckChongo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ee7513/32.png) [@BuckChongo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BuckChongo)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2018, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-occupied-europe-provide-a-net-economic-benefit-to-the-nazi-war-machine-would-it-have/806916/11 "2018-01-19T03:09:02Z")
I’ve read that they set up huge slave labor camps near vital factories and when the Allied bombers destroyed a factory thousands of slaves were swarming the site to clean it up even before the planes got back to base, often getting production restarted in a few days. Germany occupied an even larger area of East Europe and Russia during WW1, I’ve often wondered how they would have faired if they hadn’t pissed their last army away in the 1918 Luddendorf offensive, they could have entrenched closer to home and perhaps held out long enough to take advantage of the new resources they controlled in the East, avoiding the complete economic and agricultural collapse that ended their war. Britain conquered an empire to exploit it economically, and succeeded wonderfully. The Germans just seem to have been in it for the fight, happy just to spoil the other’s milk. Funny how they dominate the Euro economy these days. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2018, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-occupied-europe-provide-a-net-economic-benefit-to-the-nazi-war-machine-would-it-have/806916/12 "2018-01-19T07:58:51Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > I read somewhere that the Final Solution was a huge net drain on the German Wartime economy. Yes and no - deporting Jews to the concentration camps was a waste of Trains that could’ve transported Army stuff to the Eastern Front, instead. Whether the SS rounding up the Jews would’ve been better used at the front instead - not all of them were the fittest or youngest People. Rounding up civilians when armed is different than fighting Russian soldiers. And slave labour was partly used instead of heavy machinery, so there was some saving of fuels or steel / machines. Also, cleaning the ghettos by deporting the Jews meant plundering their possessions, too. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2018, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-occupied-europe-provide-a-net-economic-benefit-to-the-nazi-war-machine-would-it-have/806916/13 "2018-01-19T13:15:23Z")
Also note that Germany knew it needed to import food and raw materials so much that after the [Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact) of 1939 they signed [credit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Credit_Agreement_(1939)) and [trade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Commercial_Agreement_(1940)) deals with the USSR. One of the things the Soviets got in return was German military equipment! That was how desperate Germany was for resources. As the Soviets retook Ukraine and such, the food situation got worse and worse in Germany. ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2018, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-occupied-europe-provide-a-net-economic-benefit-to-the-nazi-war-machine-would-it-have/806916/14 "2018-01-19T13:27:42Z")
I am in the middle of _Japan Prepares for Total War._ It reinforces my impression that it is hard to make money stealing stuff. China cost a lot more than it provided in return. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2018, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-occupied-europe-provide-a-net-economic-benefit-to-the-nazi-war-machine-would-it-have/806916/15 "2018-01-19T15:11:42Z")
The German economy in the late 1930s was a complete mess on the verge of bankruptcy, and was running out of hard currency to back its trades for raw materials. Hitler absolutely didn’t want to go into any sort of ‘war economy’ measures since, aside from not being at war yet, reducing the standard of living would likely lead to revolt. Seizing first Jewish property, then the treasuries of Austria and Chzechoslovakia helped keep it afloat for a bit, and the Molotov-Ribbentorp pact helped with raw materials, but this still wasn’t enough. Looting all of the countries conquered in 1940 is what gave the currency to let Germany’s economy keep chugging along until 1942, when the first big hits to the consumer economy happened. This was all entirely short-term, though - Germany would have had severe economic problems even if they somehow managed to get a peace treaty that let them keep the occupied territory. The 5-10 years wouldn’t really be a chance ‘to consolidate’, but would instead require either a massive reworking of the economy and significant reduction in either military spending or German civilian standard of living, or a series of increasingly more desperate short-term measures. Cutting the military when you’re occupying a lot of land and have most of the world pissed off at you isn’t a great idea, but cutting the civilian standard of living leads to lack of support for your government. The increasingly dismal lifestyle for occupied Europe would also lead to more problems and more expenses. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2018, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-occupied-europe-provide-a-net-economic-benefit-to-the-nazi-war-machine-would-it-have/806916/16 "2018-01-19T15:13:41Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > Also, cleaning the ghettos by deporting the Jews meant plundering their possessions, too. What you gain by stealing people’s personal property, as a percentage of the material needed to fight a world war, is statistically next to zero. The Nazi murder of six million Jews and millions of other people was not economically productive, but it was of course the central point of Nazism. The Nazis were not murdering people to help fight wars. The Nazis were fighting wars so that they could murder people. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2018, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-occupied-europe-provide-a-net-economic-benefit-to-the-nazi-war-machine-would-it-have/806916/17 "2018-01-19T16:20:59Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Sure, but were they actually a _net economic benefit_ to the Nazi Empire? Did you actually read what was quoted? > [@DrDeth](#): > > I read somewhere that the Final Solution was a huge net drain on the German Wartime economy. Clearly not; the Nazi use of imported forced labor had very little to do with the Final Solution, they are at best tangentially related. The Holocaust involved deporting Jews from the rest of Europe to be killed in extermination camps set up in Eastern Europe, or being rounded up and shot by Einsatzgruppen in the wake of Barbarossa, or the murder of Soviet POWs through starvation and neglect while they were still in Eastern Europe. Nazi use of slave labor involved abducting 12 million people from 20 European countries to be imported into Germany proper for use as slave labor. That was 20% of their economy, and 12 million warm bodies freeing up men for military service. So to answer your question, yes, it was of enormous economic benefit to Nazi Germany to use 15 million forced laborers over the course of the war. ---
**Author:** ![spifflog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@spifflog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spifflog)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2018, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-occupied-europe-provide-a-net-economic-benefit-to-the-nazi-war-machine-would-it-have/806916/18 "2018-01-19T16:32:52Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Sure, but were they actually a _net economic benefit_ to the Nazi Empire? > > I read somewhere that the Final Solution was a huge net drain on the German Wartime economy. The net economic benefit of occupied Europe and the net economic benefit of the final Solution are two different things. One could argue that the systematic hunting, transportation and killing of 6,000,000 people was not an economic benefit. And while I believe that the myth of Nazi Germany being a finely tuned, well oiled machine is just that - a myth, it’s hard to argue that slave labor in the millions and the theft of the natural resources of Europe wasn’t a net benefit. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2018, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-occupied-europe-provide-a-net-economic-benefit-to-the-nazi-war-machine-would-it-have/806916/19 "2018-01-19T16:48:29Z")
Here’s an article on economy under the Nazis (German) with literature at the end [Wirtschaft im Nationalsozialismus – Wikipedia](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirtschaft_im_Nationalsozialismus#Kriegswirtschaft) Here about forced labour [Forced labour under German rule during World War II - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labour_under_German_rule_during_World_War_II) ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2018, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-occupied-europe-provide-a-net-economic-benefit-to-the-nazi-war-machine-would-it-have/806916/20 "2018-01-19T16:50:20Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > Nazi use of slave labor involved abducting 12 million people from 20 European countries to be imported into Germany proper for use as slave labor. That was 20% of their economy, and 12 million warm bodies freeing up men for military service. Freeing up men for the front was important enough that later in the war, women were “encouraged to volunteer” to work in factories; since child-care was state-organized anyway for indoctrination, this made it easier. Also, 1 000 People eating warm Food at work saved energy compared to 1 000 People all cooking at home. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-occupied-europe-provide-a-net-economic-benefit-to-the-nazi-war-machine-would-it-have/806916.md?page=2)