Service of obligatory work

See also: STO

The service of obligatory work (STO) was, during the Occupation of the France by the Nazi Germany, the requisition and the transfer against their liking towards Germany of hundreds of thousands of French workers, in order to take part in the German effort of war (factories, agriculture, railroads, etc). The people requisitioned within the framework of STO were lodged in camps of workers located on the German ground.

With the active complicity of the Vichy government (the French forced workers are the only ones of Europe to be required by the laws of their clean State, and not by a German ordinance), the Nazi Germany imposed the installation of the STO to compensate for the shortage of manpower due to its soldier sending on the Russian face.

History

The gauleiter Fritz Sauckel, called the " slave trader of Europe " , was charged the 21 March 1942 to bring the labor of all Europe by all the means. It was interested particularly in France. It found with the head of the Régime of Vichy of the civils servant ready to give him satisfaction by mobilizing the French legislation and the police force to the profit of forced recruitment, in particular the Socialist Pierre Laval. A total from 600.000 to 650.000 French workers are forwarded to Germany between June 1942 and July 1944. France was the third supplier of labor forced of Reich after the the USSR and the Poland, and the country which gave him the most skilled workers.

Until September 1943, the plenipotentiary one of Fritz Sauckel in France was the general Julius Ritter, carried out by the group Manouchian on September 23rd.

According to the National federation of the Deportees of Work, founded in 1945 and become in 1979 National federation of the Victims and Survivors of the Nazi camps of the Forced labor: 60000 died in Germany and: 15000 were shot, hung or decapitated for " acts of résistance". The historians consider today these figures excessive, and estimate that between 25.000 and 35.000 STO nevertheless lost the life in Germany. Their employment in bombarded factories of war, often under bad conditions and under the frequent monitoring of the Gestapo in any case, made their death rate higher than that of the prisoners of war. Certain numbers were placed at the disposal them firm, (see the film " the cow and the prisonnier"), of the craftsmen or the administrative offices and railway.

The exploitation of the French labor by IIIe Reich concerned obligatory workers (“them necessary of the STO”), but one also saw leaving for Germany the voluntary workers attracted by remuneration, or wanting to make return a close relation. The latter neither nor less well were treated than required them better, but contributed in the opinion, after the war, with a frequent and unjustified amalgam between necessary of the STO and volunteers. 250.000 prisoners of war also had to work for Reich starting from 1943 after having been " transformés" of liking or force as civil workers.

Allowed in Belgium and although the French Parliament never definitively came to a conclusion about the qualification to give to necessary STO, official designation of " deportee of the travail" was prohibited with associations of victims of the STO by French justice (1992), in the name of the risk of confusion between the deportation towards the death of resistant and of the Jews, and the sending with obligatory work.

Chronology

  • Voluntariate: As of the autumn 1940, volunteers, at the beginning mainly of foreign origin (Russians, Pole, Italians) choose to leave to work in Germany. In all, during the Second world war, approximately 200.000 workers left France would have gone voluntary, including 70.000 women. It is as with autumn 1940 as the occupant proceeded to arbitrary raids of labor in the departments of North and the Pas-de-Calais, attached in Brussels.

  • June 1942: Germany requires France: 350000 workers. Pierre Laval, obliged to make up this summation, announces the 22 creation of the " Changing " who consists in exchanging a prisoner released against three voluntary workers envoys. But only the workmen specialists are in fact taken into account in the exchange, while the slackened prisoners must be peasants, or already old and sick men, therefore unproductive and who would probably have been repatriated in any event. Moreover, the Changing is not personal: one cannot enlist to make release his brother, her husband, his neighbor, etc the lack of success of this measurement (17  000 volunteers at the end of August) rings the knell of voluntariate.

  • Pétain then promulgates the law of requisition of the September 4th 1942, in spite of the opposition of four Ministers and a significant aggravation of the unpopularity of the mode. Less known than the law of February 16th 1943, the law of September 4th strikes in fact only workmen. It was especially applied in the occupied zone, most industrial and most populated. This law, recently redécouverte by the historians, is responsible for the departure forced of almost 250  000 workers in six months.

  • February 16th 1943: introduction of the Service of Obligatory Work (STO) itself. Recruitment, of catégoriel, is done from now on by whole age groups. Young people born between 1920 and 1922 are obliged to work in Germany (or France) as substitute of military service. The age group 1922 was touched, and the exemptions or deferments initially promised to the farmers or to the students disappeared as of June. The Chantiers of Youth contributed also actively to their own young people sending in Germany, by whole groupings.

  • Certaines victims was taken in raids of the Milice and Wehrmacht. PF of Jacques Doriot set up as for him, in 1944, of the Action groups for Social justice (sic) charged to track refractories against money, and to remove labor until in full street.

As a whole, thanks to the essential collaboration of the Vichy government and the French administration, and in particular from a good portion of the Factory inspectorate, the Germans obtained all the men whom they wanted. The first two large requests for Fritz Sauckel were completely provided in a rather short time. Only the development of the maquis and the drying up of human resources prélevables explain the fall of the departures starting from the summer 1943, and the semisuccess of the third " Sauckel" action; (June-December 1943) then the fiasco of the fourth (1944). The department of the the Gironde, thanks to the regional prefect Sabatier and with his general secretary Maurice Papon, was congratulated by the Socialist Pierre Laval of only to have provided more one than the fixed quota, as late as with the autumn 1943.

The STO caused the departure in the clandestinity of almost 200  000 Refractory S, of which approximately a quarter gained the maquis in full formation. The STO accentuated the rupture of the opinion with the Régime of Vichy, and constituted a considerable contribution for the Résistance. Emails also in the immediate future placed it in front of a new task, of a width not less considerable (lack of money, vivres, weapons etc for thousands of suddenly flowed men of the maquis). The refractories with the STO also form the first group within the 35  000 escaped from France which gained Spain then North Africa and engaged in the free France. Of die, place in the maquis or desire to fight, with many refractories were satisfied however to hide in residence or to be engaged in isolated farms where they were used as labor with accessory peasants.

Other French escaped the STO in Germany while engaging themselves in the police force and the firemen, even in the Milice. After the autumn 1943, they were numerous to join a vast protected industrial sector set up by the occupant, and working exclusively for its account.

German factories having used labor STO:

French celebrities ex-STO

Marcel Callo, necessary of the off-set and died STO with Mauthausen for clandestine catholic action, was béatifié in 1987.

An interminable controversy surrounded the past of Georges Marchais, general secretary of the Communist party French (1970 - 1994), shown to have been voluntary in Germany at Messerschmitt and not with the STO according to its dires. According to its biographer Thomas Hoffnung, Marchais was in fact neither volunteer nor necessary STO, it was transferred in Germany by the German company of aviation which already employed it in France since 1940. Its course during the war would not make since to reflect the fate of hundreds of thousands of French, constrained to survive to work for the Germans, either in France, or in Germany, a very vast majority of the nation's economy already being in any event put at the service of the occupants.

Random links:Inflatable cushion of safety | Fingalien | Irvin Furrier | Saint-Maurice (old federal district) | Sakuto Cho