Justice Delayed

Research Paper # 97268

History > European - World Wars
Holocaust Studies
Law > Business

Justice Delayed

This paper explores restitution and the forced auto laborers of the Holocaust.

5,431 words () | 43 sources | APA | 2002 United States

Paper Summary:

The paper describes how General Motors and Ford became an integral part of the Nazi war effort in Germany. The paper discusses the subhuman conditions faced by slaves and forced laborers who performed strenuous, back-breaking work for these corporations. The paper addresses how a modern state came to rely heavily on forced labor through cruel and oppressive measures. The paper looks at the compensation finally offered by Ford, Volkswagen, Daimler-Benz and General Motors and the survivors' reaction to this.

From the Paper:

"After the autumn of 1941, the German political-economic logic of occupation was set aside and the Third Reich vision of total conquest took over. Taking its cue from the political regime, the automobile industry threw tens of thousands of foreign workers and concentration camp inmates into its battle to produce airplane motors, trucks, tanks, and spare parts. The facilities of the automobile factories had become collections of labor processes and assembly lines which the brutalized men and women deported from their homes could service. The dialectic which haunted the history of this industry- the seemingly inescapable economic vulnerability of its enterprises in a land where most people still couldn't afford to purchase their own cars, coupled with its constant effort to project power and to accumulate wealth- consumed the thousands of laborers working in its factories."

Sample of Sources Used:

Aly, Gotz. Final Solution: Nazi Population Policy and the Murder of the European Jews, Edward Arnold Publisher, 1999.
Bellon, Bernard P. Mercedes in Peace and War: German Automobile Workers, 1903-1945, Columbia University Press, 1990.
Borkin, Joseph. The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben, Macmillan, 1979.
Brady, Robert A. The Rationalization Movement in German Industry: A Study in the Evolution of Economic Planning, Howard Fettig, 1974.
Browning, Christopher. Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers, Cambridge University Press, 2000.