‘A kind of Siberia’: German labour and occupation policies in Poland and Lithuania during the First World War

2013/02/04 by Christian Westerhoff · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #European history and politics #French Historical and Cultural Studies #Italian Fascism and Post-war Society

paper · doi:10.1080/19475020.2012.761386

openalex publication_date 2013/02/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

Forced labour was not a phenomenon limited to the Second World War. Already in the First World War, German labour policy in occupied Poland and Lithuania was increasingly marked by coercion. It is little known in scholarship that the militarily administered territory of the Baltic (Ober Ost), especially, had developed into a laboratory for forced labour and total war. This article examines the conditions, forms and consequences of forced labour and recruitment in occupied Poland and Lithuania between 1914 and 1918. It will contribute towards explaining the extent to which the German labour policy of 1914–1918 served as a blueprint for the Nazi forced labour system during the Second World War.

Discussions

• To mark Lithuania’s Independence Day, we’re revisiting C. Westerhoff’s study on the Ober Ost "laboratory." 🔗 doi.org/10.1080/1947... [bsky, 6 points, 1 comments]

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