Reply #188: Depends on what you mean by "ordinary Germans". You mean German citizens?

[WildNovember]

Some among them WERE exterminated, enslaved, and forced into labor. I don't know what you're talking about when you say "ordinary Germans". You mean Germans who weren't political, mentally challenged, handicapped, of the wrong religion or ethnicity, criminals or "criminals," welfare recipients, etc? Oh, OK.


Before the Nazi seizure of power, many German law enforcement, social work, and welfare professionals as well as many ordinary German citizens believed that compulsory labor was a productive way to integrate social “outsiders” into the local labor force... These so-called outsiders included persons receiving welfare benefits, juveniles and others engaged in petty crime, persons unable for whatever reason to hold down a job, and persons who engaged in socially unacceptable behavior, such as excessive consumption of alcohol or promiscuous sexual activity.

Nazi ideology also identified hard manual labor as a preferred means not only of punishing intellectual opponents, but also of "educating" Germans to be "racially conscious" and to support the racial goals of National Socialism. From the establishment of the first concentration camps and detention facilities in the winter of 1933, forced labor -- often pointless and humiliating, and imposed without proper equipment, clothing, nourishment, or rest -- formed a core part of the concentration camp regimen. By labeling those incarcerated in the concentration camps as criminals, subversives, and asocials who would be “educated” in the camps to proper labor and social discipline, the Nazi leadership could draw upon acquiescence and even support among the German people for the concentration camps.

After 1938, the Nazis increasingly exploited the forced labor of "enemies of the state," so-called asocials, and so-called criminal elements for economic gain and to meet desperate labor shortages. In 1938, the German Criminal Police conducted two major roundups of so-called asocials and so-called criminals to increase the number of forced laborers available in the camps. Initial plans to house large numbers of Soviet prisoners of war and, later, Jewish forced laborers at Auschwitz-Birkenau and Lublin/Majdanek in the winter of 1941-1942 also aimed at creating a captive labor force for the grandiose construction plans of the SS.

In addition to the SS, the German civilian authorities also required inexpensive labor for more immediate construction, urban renewal, and transportation projects. By the end of 1938, German municipal authorities deployed German and Austrian Jews, most of whom had been deprived of independent employment opportunities by antisemitic legislation, at forced labor at a variety of municipal projects.

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007326