Why was slave labour permitted in Britain after WWII?
- Thread starter Emperor Palpatine
- Start date
Where I grew up in Chester a near neighbour was married to an Austrian POW who had stayed on after the end of the war.
My mum's cousin was also dating a German POW who was working on a farm in 1944, they were able to go out to the local dancehall on a Friday & Saturday night as the POW weekend curfew was 1am. He also used to come and eat at my grandad's house because he was a train driver and used to be able to get game birds, chickens and eggs from farmers down the line for a few shovels of coal from the loco.
Slave labour it wasn't.
My mum's cousin was also dating a German POW who was working on a farm in 1944, they were able to go out to the local dancehall on a Friday & Saturday night as the POW weekend curfew was 1am. He also used to come and eat at my grandad's house because he was a train driver and used to be able to get game birds, chickens and eggs from farmers down the line for a few shovels of coal from the loco.
Slave labour it wasn't.
So first you all were claiming that it was OK because the Geneva Convention said the British could make POWs work in fields and such, but it's OK that they cleared mines (which is against the Geneva Convention) because 'they were theirs in the first place'.
Why the special pleading?
Should also be noted that, in the US at least the POWs were paid the same wage a private in the United States army received, $.8 per day. That is actually slightly better than the German army paid them IIRC.
Now I'm certainly not saying that what the UK did was equivalent to slavery, but I just don't see how the above argument is particularly valid.
If you look at actual slavery throughout history, you generally see large populations of the former slaves staying where they were brought even after being freed. USA, Brazil, you name it.
Saphroneth
Banned
Were they forced or were they volunteers? If they were forced, that is indeed a violation of the Convention as of 1950 - though I'd need to check to see if it was considered a violation as of 1945.
I used to know one of the PoWs who stayed on after the war (sadly now deceased). His former home was in what became East Germany, and he had no intention to go back to it.
He also had rather a lot of gliding experience before the war, and made one of the first postwar cross-country glider flights. On landing at the end of it in a field, a Mr F. Giles wanders up to him complete with pitchfork and informs him that he's lucky he didn't land there the previous week, since there were spikes up to stop Germans landing there in gliders. Siegfried's response (and bear in mind that 50 years later when I knew him he still had a very thick German accent) was "it seems you have taken them away a bit too soon". What happened next he never did tell us...
He also had rather a lot of gliding experience before the war, and made one of the first postwar cross-country glider flights. On landing at the end of it in a field, a Mr F. Giles wanders up to him complete with pitchfork and informs him that he's lucky he didn't land there the previous week, since there were spikes up to stop Germans landing there in gliders. Siegfried's response (and bear in mind that 50 years later when I knew him he still had a very thick German accent) was "it seems you have taken them away a bit too soon". What happened next he never did tell us...
Those people stayed because they had no choice, they either had no means of getting back, by themselves or provided by any state or landowner, or had become so culturally diverged from their ancestry that returning was no longer an option.
There was never a question of these PoWs ability to return to Germany after the war. Therefore their choice to remain becomes an important indicator of their treatment.
About a dozen Italian POWs who were crew members of an Italian submarine that surrendered during the war married women from the Italian immigrant community in Portland, Maine, and stayed on after the war. The POWs pretty much had the run of the city as long as they obeyed their curfews. Even the Italians who returned to their homes came back for visits in the postwar years. They crewed their submarine during ASW training for warships escorting convoys to Europe.
Individuals who were bonded in actual slavery throughout history did not have the ability to return to their ancestral homes, because they either did not have the resources to do so, or had diverged so far culturally from their ancestral homes that they didn't want to do so even after they were freed, the Axis POW's had ample ability to return to their home countries after the war and a state that did not prevent them from doing so if they wished; so the fact many chose to stay rather then go back is very telling of how they were treated.
I've looked at this statement and had a nice long think about the war and the way in which some countries treated their POWs and in some cases 'political' prisoners for about 5 minutes now and I have come to the conclusion that you could quite easily be judged by some within this community as being a massive troll for having posted it.
So its trolling to suggest that forced labour, no matter the circumstances is immoral?
Lateknight
Banned
Nah but call it nazieseqe when the people being forced to work were nazi working for the betterment of their victims it seems like a bit much.
Okay calling it naziesque may have been a bit much but I still find the idea of forced labour morally repugnant. Just because its legal doesn't make it okay.
Sior
Banned
Spoken from the point of view of a coddled liberal who has not faced death on a daily basis during the indiscriminate bombing of civilians or fearing the invasion of your country after seeing the destruction, murdering and raping that ensued over the channel.that the prisoners were only made to make good their destruction and help in non military industries is a credit to the allies. The attitudes and mores of the Twenty First Century have no relevance to the actions in the past.