6. Labor Force in the Synthetic Fuel Plants

Faced with a growing labor shortage as the war dragged on, German industrial firms, including synthetic fuel producers such as IG Farben, Brabag, Sudetevlandische Treibstoffewerke AG, and Hydrierwerke P litz AG, increasingly supplemented their labor force with paid coerced (forced) laborers and (or) concentration camp inmates (slave laborers) of many nationalities. French, Belgian, Polish, British, Serbian, Czech, Hungarian, and Russian laborers, Jews and non-Jews, worked in the prewar plants in Ludwigshafen in western Germany and Leuna in eastern Germany and in several of the synthetic fuel plants constructed after the war had started. P litz in northern Germany (July 1940), L tzkendorf in central Germany (1940), Wesseling in western Germany near Bonn (August 1941), Br x in Bohemia (October, 1942), and the Blechhammer plant (1942) and Heydebreck saturation plant in Upper Silesia (April 1944) used forced laborers and (or) concentration camp inmates. IG Farben's labor force contained about 9 percent forced laborers and concentration camp inmates by 1941, the number increased to 16 percent in 1942, and to 30 percent of all workers in its synthetic fuel plants near the war's end. In addition to the forced laborers and concentration camp inmates, some free foreign workers came from Germany's allies, mainly Italy and Romania.