The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, both in the main trials and the later proceedings against leading industrialists, SS officers and bureaucrats, centered on National Socialist policy toward foreigners and conditions in the concentration camps. One of the four principal charges against defendants in the bill of indictment was the "program of slave labor"--a formulation fuzzy both in terms of conception and the concrete facts. This was the major count on which Sauckel, Speer, the managers at Flick, IG Farben and Krupp and the top echelon at the SS Business Enterprises Office (the WVHA) were tried and convicted.

Nonetheless, there was never any real public debate in the Federal Republic on the whole question of the deployment of forced labor under the Nazis. By contrast, the mass deportations and massive forced labor program were often discussed in the media and public sphere abroad. Thus, the resounding international call for "reparations" after the end of the war was to a very particular degree aimed at compensating a specific group, namely the so-called "displaced persons." For the Jewish victims, that expectation for compensation was partially met as a result of the 1952 agreement concluded between the Bonn government, the state of Israel and the Jewish Claims Conference on the one hand and later West German legislation on indemnification on the other. That is also true for a certain number of the German concentration camp prisoners, where the courts recognized they had been victims of specific National Socialist wrongdoing and were thus entitled to compensation in accordance with West German law.

According to the basic principle of West German legislation on indemnification, any individual who was persecuted and suffered harm at the hands of the National Socialists for racial, political, ideological or religious reasons can claim compensation. Yet in practice, that principle has restricted: in the main, it has been applied to Germans and individuals who either now or in the past had some "spatial relation" to the territory of the Federal Republic or the former German Reich. In addition, there are requirements regarding various qualifying dates. It is true that a large portion of the total sum of some 100 billion D-marks paid out in connection with the Federal German Law on Compensation (Bundesentschaedigungsgesetz, BEG) has gone to persons resident abroad--yet only those who fulfilled the qualifying prerequisites mentioned. By contrast, the BEG does not cover claims raised by nationals of countries that were former enemy states. The upshot is that the largest groups of foreign victims of National Socialism have been excluded from receiving compensation: namely foreign civilian forced laborers and foreign concentration camp prisoners, including those Jews who returned to one of the Eastern bloc countries after 1945. And then there are the former POWs. Right from the outset and down to today, there has never been any discussion of compensation, in accordance with international law, for them.

After the war, the central question in dealing with compensation claims by former foreign concentration camp inmates and forced laborers was: should they be classified as individual claims put forward by private persons or considered part of the demands for reparations made by the former enemy powers? Right from the beginning, just in view of the expected huge magnitude of such claims, the German side contemplated only a lump-sum payment for reparations, since in line with international law, claims deriving from the effects of war or occupation can be raised solely by one state against another. They cannot be brought by individuals against the former enemy. The relevant precedent cited in this regard was the Versailles Treaty, which had dealt accordingly with such claims.

The principal legal foundation for this view were the provisions on reparations in the international agreements concluded in the immediate postwar period, especially the Potsdam Agreement. The latter had divided the German assets set aside for reparations into a so-called "eastern estate" and a "western estate." The Soviet Union was to satisfy its reparations claims by removal of assets from the Soviet Zone of Occupation; in addition, it was to receive certain supplementary payments from the western zones. Furthermore, the Soviet Union was also to satisfy Polish claims by assets withdrawn from its zone of occupation. On August 16, 1945, the Provisional Polish Government declared its acceptance of this scheme. According to this legal view, nationals of a former enemy country were thus excluded from direct compensation and were dependent on payment from their own state. Those payments were in turn to be covered by the respective country from the sum of German reparations to be agreed upon. However, the Polish side in particular was opposed in principle to such an approach: right from the end of the war, it had argued for making a distinction between "individual indemnification" and "state reparations." Yet given the postwar historical situation, such legal reasoning had only secondary political importance: it was more a topic for specialists, and did not engage the broader public. Under the impact of the deepening East-West conflict, any consideration by the Federal Republic of claims by Polish or Soviet nationals was now out of the question. The unresolved issue of a divided Germany prevented the conclusion of a peace treaty for the foreseeable future--and thus likewise the working out of a final settlement on reparations. Moreover, the difficult economic situation in West Germany in the early postwar period meant that in the eyes of the West Germans--and the Western Allies who were bent on strengthening the fledgling West German state--it appeared politically and economically absurd for the Germans to make any additional reparation payments, particularly in the light of experience after World War I and the lessons of Versailles.

In stark contrast, the Soviets continued to drain off further large-scale reparations from the Soviet Zone and latter GDR. Moreover, the Bonn government resorted to weighing wrongdoing on the scales: it countered Eastern demands based on persecution of the civilian population by the German occupiers during the war by pointing to the injustices perpetrated against the German population during expulsion from the Eastern territories. Although the political determination of Bonn to reject any such claims was thus clear, Bonn's legal support for this remained shaky as long as there was still no overall resolution of the question of reparations as a whole anchored in clearer agreements--and particularly some arrangement for settling the claims of former concentration camp inmates and foreign workers.

The favorable solution of this problem for the German side came about through a kind of back door, namely in the form of the London Debts Agreement of February 27, 1953. At the beginning of the 50s, the still unresolved question of debts owed by the German Reich was a major hurdle blocking the full reintegration of the West German economy into the international economic order. These included both prewar debts and financial liabilities to the Western powers, especially the United States, deriving from postwar economic aid. Bonn's credit-worthiness--and thus the prerequisite for West German economic recovery and growth as a whole--were bound up with reaching some settlement on this question. As early as March 1951, the Bonn government had declared its readiness to recognize these obligations. At the same time, it had pointed to its financial weaknesses and the staggering burdens the young republic was shouldering. Yet early on in preliminary discussions among the Western allies, the American position prevailed over the views of the French, and initially also of the British side. The Americans argued that in settling the question of debts owed, no demands should be included in the agreement that had their basis in the German conduct of the war or National Socialist occupation policy. In the negotiations, the Bonn government committed itself to covering the debts of the Reich by an agreed-upon overall sum to be paid out in annual installments, thus satisfying the international creditors. The total sum of 7.3 billion D-marks, spread out over 12 years, might be seen as a remarkable success for the German side when contrasted with the far higher initial figures that had been put forward by the negotiation partners. Since Washington was the main creditor in the London Debts Agreement, bilateral payments over and beyond the sum agreed upon were unlikely, so that virtually all the Western and several Eastern creditor nations accepted the agreement.

The decisive stipulation in the London Agreement was patterned on stipulations in the Transition Agreement of May 26, 1952 and the Paris Reparations Agreement. Article 5 (2) stated: 

 A review of claims deriving from World War II by states who  were at war with Germany or whose territory was occupied by  Germany, and claims by nationals of those states against the  German Reich or against offices and individuals acting on  its agency ... will be deferred until the final settlement  of the question of reparations.

This article was the immediate consequence of the arguments repeatedly raised by the German delegation: they reiterated that the Federal Republic would be insolvent should further claims for reparation be made. But the Western allies, Washington in particular, also pressed for a stipulation that payment of debts was to have priority over all other claims. The American delegation rejected all attempts to obligate the German side to pay reparations to former forced laborers or others persecuted by National Socialism, especially persons from Communist Eastern Europe.

Significantly though, the Dutch delegation raised objections to the stipulations in Art. 5 (2). They argued that such a far- reaching regulation would also affect individual claims for indemnification by citizens of the Netherlands. The head of the Dutch delegation gave one example: the wage claims of former Dutch concentration camp inmates against their German employers, such as IG Farben. He stated that the Dutch government "wished to arrive at an agreement with Germany regarding this. It did not want to defer the matter until final settlement on reparations as based on the formulation in the London Debts Agreement." The heads of the delegations from the three Western allies and the Federal Republic were clearly against this Dutch initiative. Once again, they cited the financial weakness of the Federal Republic and the priority of debt claims by the Allies over all other questions of reparations. This attempt by the Dutch delegation is so significant because it points up that all participants, especially the Germans, were well aware what was at stake here: namely the need to stave off any claims raised by former concentration camp inmates and civilian forced laborers against German offices.

The settlement of debt payment itself as the core of the London Agreement has long since been concluded. It was evident after only a few years that given the overall economic upswing in the Federal Republic, the financial obligations of Bonn consequent from the agreement were far less weighty than the initial fears voiced in discussion with the parties to the agreement. On the contrary, after a few years Bonn was pleased it was able to reduce its dangerously high level of foreign currency reserves by means of repayment of debt ahead of time. Yet the innocuous-sounding formulation in Art. 5 (2)--the temporary deferment of the review of reparation claims--had, due to the absence of a final peace treaty, become a permanent arrangement: nothing less than the settlement of all claims for reparations deriving from World War II and at the same time the basis for rejecting all claims for compensation by former foreign concentration camp inmates and Fremdarbeiter--which is to say the overwhelming proportion of all the victims of National Socialist persecution.

However, the staving off of all reparations claims by foreign victims of Nazi persecution anchored in the London Agreement relates not only to claims based on persecution personally suffered. It also encompasses all claims to back wages by former forced laborers. According to the Hague Land Warfare Convention, the occupying power is obligated to pay immediately in cash for any work performed by the inhabitants of occupied territories. Now since concentration camp inmates were never paid any wages whatsoever and civilian forced laborers, especially those from Poland and the Soviet Union, were paid far far less than German workers (and in practice frequently nothing at all), the objection raised by the Dutch representative called attention precisely to this delicate point glossed over in the London Agreement.

Furthermore, there is a second important relevant agreement worth mentioning in this connection. On August 22, 1953, the Soviet Union declared its intention to dispense with any further withdrawal of reparations from its zone (the SZO/GDR) and "in agreement with the government of the People's Republic of Poland (in respect to their portion of reparations), to completely terminate the withdrawal of reparations from the German Democratic Republic in the form of shipments of goods or in any other form, effective January 1, 1954." From the West German legal perspective, Poland and the Soviet Union had, by this declaration, effectively waived all claims to reparations respective to Germany AS A WHOLE, including any claims by individuals.

Bolstered by this agreement, all claims for compensation directed to Bonn by former camp inmates and Fremdarbeiter from abroad were dismissed without exception: it was argued that these were claims for reparations; and all such claims had either been deferred in accordance with the London Agreement or were now invalid as a result of the waiving of further reparations claims by Poland and the Soviet Union. Moreover, down to 1965, Federal German legislation on indemnification explicitly excluded claims by nationals of states with which the Federal Republic had no diplomatic relations.

Along with this basic legal position, there were nonetheless several legal cases brought before the courts pertaining to the problem of payment of wages, the liability of private firms and the validity of stipulations in the London Agreement after fulfillment of its obligations. The question of wages withheld was conclusively decided by the Federal Supreme Court in a ruling handed down on February 26, 1963: the claim of a Polish concentration camp prisoner for back payment of unpaid wages for the forced labor he had performed was rejected, citing the London Debts Agreement in support. It was argued that the rejection of the demands by the Dutch representative during the London negotiations meant "that the intention of Art. 5 was not only to protect the Federal Republic qua state, but also to protect its economy and currency." Yet to what extent did this affect private firms? After all, it was quite conceivable that foreign concentration camp prisoners and Fremdarbeiter would file civil suits directly against armaments firms where they had been deployed as forced laborers. These demands were likewise dismissed: the firms had to be regarded as persons acting in the "agency of the Reich." Because "with allocation of forced laborers, the government entrusted the 'quasi-employers' ... with the shaping and implementation of the relation of control by force that existed between workers and the state. ... The 'quasi-employers' functioned as auxiliary organs of the state administration of prisoners." That view is certainly hard to defend in the light of historical research; yet the decisive point here is that it prevailed.

The upshot of this interpretation was that former foreign forced laborers or concentration camp prisoners were unable to raise legal claims either for payment of back wages or for reparations by the firms where they had been employed in wartime. If you bear in mind the fact that in 1944, approximately one third of all those employed in the German armaments industry were foreign civilian workers and POWs--and that in numerous firms, foreigners made up far more than 50 percent of the work force-- the significance of this legal view, which became increasingly more accepted, should be evident.

Only the Claims Conference, exerting enormous political pressure, was successful in obtaining reparations payments from several large firms, such as IG Farben, Krupp, AEG and Siemens. These were lump sums, expressly declared to be voluntary and legally non-binding, set aside to indemnify Jewish camp inmates who had been deployed there as forced laborers. Yet the firms explicitly excluded claims by non-Jewish concentration camp inmates (with the exception of the settlement reached with IG Farben in liquidation in 1958) as well as demands by civilian and POW forced laborers.

But even the very small number of former forced laborers who met the requirements stipulated in the BEG were excluded from compensation. Why? Because forced labor was not viewed by the German authorities as a form of "typical Nazi wrongdoing." The final legal interpretation pertaining to the status of forced laborers was handed down by the Federal Supreme Court in a ruling on December 7, 1960. A Polish worker had been arrested during the war and sent to Germany for forced labor. Initially he was deployed as a forced laborer on a farm in Allgaeu. Later the man was sent to the concentration camps Dachau, Buchenwald and Dora, where he worked in forced labor. The Federal Supreme Court rejected his claim for compensation. The judges argued that when it came to recognizing an entitlement to reparations, the motives of the persecutors were crucial. Yet in his case, it was not "typically National Socialist" reasons of persecution which had led to his deportation to Germany. Rather, the decisive factor had been the "labor shortage" in the Nazi Reich. The court argued that the key motive in the thinking of the labor deployment authorities had been "solely to recruit new workers to bolster the German economy, particularly the armaments industry." Moreover, the fact that the Pole in question had been imprisoned in a concentration camp should, the court contended, not be regarded as persecution for reasons entitling the person to reparations:

Rather, everything suggests that the plaintiff had  been deployed as a forced laborer in an armaments firm  attached to the concentration camp Dachau, and later in the  assembly of V-1 rockets in the "Dora" plant near Nordhausen,  for one reason only: namely because he was a skilled  mechanic who was needed in the armaments industry. 

Subsequently, any former forced laborer who submitted a claim for reparations to the German authorities received a standard reply from the Federal Administrative Authority informing the person that:

his deployment as laborer ... constituted part of  various measures to remedy the shortage of labor as a result  of the war, a measure that affected persons of all  nationalities. After careful consideration by the court, we  believe the conditions of work mentioned by the plaintiff  are attributable to the general deterioration in living  conditions during the course of the war. Hence, the claim  had to be rejected.

Yet what if the object of the London Agreement--namely the settlement of outstanding debts--was subsequently invalidated because creditor demands had been met? From the early 1960s on, that appeared likely in the foreseeable future. Since, due to the lack of a peace treaty, there had been no settlement of the question of war reparations, it could be argued that the corresponding paragraph in Art. 5 deferring a review of claims might lose its justification and thus validity. Yet that too was disputed. The reply to all those who "repeatedly attempted to raise claims regarding war debts, especially accruing from forced labor" was that "even after settling all obligations deriving from the agreement on debts, the stipulations regarding war claims would still be valid."

This line of argumentation for the view professed by the leading commentator on the London Agreement, Gurski, an official from the Federal Finance Ministry, is revealing. According to its preamble, the aim of the London Agreement was "to contribute to the development of a flourishing community of nations. Normal economic relations on the part of the Federal Republic within such a 'flourishing community' are conceivable only if domestically there is a secure standard of living and social services." Only by staving off potential claims in keeping with Art. 5 of the Agreement had it become possible for the Federal Republic to "participate in efforts for the defense of the free world, and later in developmental aid." This tack of argumentation was also pursued in respect to payments in accordance with the BEG and the agreements with Israel and the Claims Conference. If one were now to take the claims of former camp inmates into consideration as well, the goal of a "flourishing community of nations" as a prerequisite for these payments would be at risk. That also was true when it came to claims against private firms because such demands would be so onerous that it would result in a loss of tax revenues. This in turn harmed the state and hence was detrimental to the "flourishing community of nations."

Victims of Persecution in the West

 On December 10, 1953, shortly after the first federal BEG became law, the Allied High Commission complained to the government in Bonn that according to this law, nationals of West European countries who had suffered persecution at the hands of the National Socialists were excluded from any compensation. One year later, the Allies stated that "the chief example" of this were the "forced laborers or concentration camp inmates with French passports who had been deported from France and subjected to inhuman treatment in the Reich." Referring to the London Debts Agreement, the representatives of the Bonn government argued that this was clearly a problem of reparation law; moreover, the potential financial burden deriving from this for the Federal German government was excessive. Representatives of the three Western powers took a different tack. In their view, the wrongful acts under discussion here perpetrated by the Nazi regime could not be considered measures of war; consequently, no settlement of reparation claims was involved. The second law on reparations passed in 1956 likewise contained no reference to victims of Nazi persecution from Western Europe. In June 1956, the Bonn government, which had evidently underestimated the importance of this question for countries in Western Europe, found itself confronted with similarly worded notes from eight West European governments: these demanded compensation for nationals from these countries who had been persecuted by Germany during the war (in legal jargon, "persons from the West who were victims of persecution," Westverfolgte). These demands were dismissed both in German public opinion and by the Bonn government. Yet ultimately Bonn declared its willingness to enter into individual negotiations with the intervening powers regarding these claims, albeit with the proviso that given the clear and unequivocal position of the law, all that could be possibly negotiated were voluntary payments by the Federal German government--not obligations by Bonn under the terms of international law.

In the context of these global reparations treaties with 11 Western European countries, Bonn agreed to lump-sum payments amounting to 876 million D-marks. France was to receive almost 400 million, or nearly half the total amount. However, it was obvious that these treaties could not exclude similar claims brought by states in the Eastern bloc, particularly Poland. Yet the entire issue remained a non-starter as long as Bonn had no diplomatic relations with Poland and the prevailing climate between East and West remained unchanged. Only after this freeze began to thaw did Poland's long-standing demands for compensation for Polish concentration camp prisoners and forced laborers take on renewed political importance. The juridical basis for these claims was the difference long stressed by the Polish side between reparations settlements between sovereign states on the one hand, and the personal claims of individual victims on the other. This controversy remained a heavy burden troubling German- Polish relations in the subsequent period. Here too ultimately, a temporary compromise was found which made it possible to eliminate this impediment to German-Polish reconciliation--and to do so without official recognition of the legality of Polish demands by the Bonn government. During the Helsinki Conference on August 1, 1975, Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt concluded an agreement with the Polish head of state Gierek that fulfilled these conditions: Bonn granted Poland a loan of one billion D- marks with favorable terms. At the same time, an agreement was reached on the mutual recognition of pension claims, as a result of which Poland received another 1.3 billion D-marks. As a counter gesture, Poland agreed to permit some 120 to 125 thousand ethnic Germans to emigrate to Germany over a period of four years.

Though the granting of the loan can be viewed as a form of "indirect reparations," it is a different picture in the case of the agreement on pensions. Due to the pension deductions paid in by Polish forced workers in Germany during the war, a settlement of pension claims by individuals, possibly geared to the standard amounts for German pensions, would have turned out to be far more costly. Immediately after the agreement was concluded, the Polish government introduced a sizable increase in the pensions of former concentration camp inmates in order to show demonstratively just how such funds would be used. Nonetheless, these treaties remained controversial both in Poland and Germany, due to the fact that many former victims of National Socialism in Poland viewed these agreements as signaling the loss of their right to a PERSONAL CLAIM FOR INDEMNIFICATION.

Thus, the Federal Republic paid out a total of 876 million D- marks to Western countries in connection with compensation claims from concentration camp inmates and forced laborers. Along with the agreement on pensions, which was basically favorable financially from the standpoint of the Federal Republic, Bonn also granted a "soft" loan with attractive terms to Poland amounting to 1 billion D-marks. Compared with payments to Nazi victims based on the BEG, this was comparatively small change. And the basic legal position of each and every administration in Bonn remained unaltered: namely the rejection of all individual claims by foreigners, citing in support the London Agreement on Debts, particularly if such claims were founded on alleged persecution as a result of deportation or forced labor.

Two Plus Four

That changed when the prerequisites of the London Agreement melted away along with the division of Germany and an arrangement was worked out in the Two-Plus-Four Accord tantamount to a peace treaty. In order to contain the probable and quite substantial consequences--the question of compensation for forced labor had played a significant role in negotiations on Two-Plus-Four--Bonn concluded an agreement with the CIS states of the former Soviet Union and with Poland for a one-time payment of 1.5 billion D- marks. Of this, Poland was to receive 500 million and the other CIS states one billion marks. These monies were to be used to provide compensation to victims of National Socialist persecution. Corresponding foundations were then set up in these countries to distribute these funds. However, during these negotiations, Bonn stuck to its view that forced labor was not a typical form of Nazi wrongdoing that entitled its victims to compensation. The Bonn government was determined not to give up the legal position it had always adhered to; it was concerned to avoid opening the door to further demands by forced laborers from other countries.

By contrast, private firms remained adamant in their dismissal of claims by former forced laborers. Down into the 1980s, the topic was rarely discussed in public. Only later in that decade, and then with greater intensity as Germany entered the 1990s, were German firms confronted with increased demands by former forced laborers for compensation. The argument advanced was that the government had already done much as a result of the BEG, the lump-sum payments to Western countries, the loan to Poland and payments in line with Two-Plus-Four--yet the private firms had done precious little, aside from payments made by four enterprises to Jewish prisoners in the 1950s. This did not begin to change until the initiatives by Volkswagen and Daimler in the late 1980s, though only few firms have to date followed suit. The companies continue to reject inquiries or claims from former forced laborers, pointing to the London Debts Agreement, the February 1963 Supreme Court ruling--or simply dismissing such claims out of hand.

However, that legal position was shaken by the rulings in various lower courts and then by the Federal Supreme Court stating that the Two-Plus-Four Accord was tantamount to a peace treaty, thus eliminating the legal basis for exclusion of forced laborers from possible indemnification and rejection of their claims. In response, various organizations of former forced laborers in the United States and Europe sought legal counsel and instituted law suits against German firms. Soon after taking office, the Schroeder government declared its commitment to making sure that such compensation would be made available, and those talks began whose auspicious conclusion we should hopefully now witness within a few days. It would indeed be a gratifying development if, despite all the adversity and setbacks, it can still prove possible to accord these individuals, who had to suffer such a heavy fate, a modicum of at least partial satisfaction, both materially and symbolically, as our century draws to a close.