Husum was hell on earth. In the winter of 1944–1945, 1,500 male concentration camp prisoners were transported from Neuengamme to this northern German town. They were required to dig anti-tank trenches in the vicinity, anticipating a possible Allied invasion from the North Sea. The work was extremely heavy for the already severely weakened and undernourished prisoners. After a ten- to fifteen-kilometre-long march from the barracks to the worksite, the workers had to dig deep trenches in teams of three. As the holes quickly filled with groundwater, many were standing in cold water all day. Within a month of the worksite’s establishment, the gruesome working conditions had led to the death of thirty-four prisoners, a further 178 in November, and seventy-nine in December. Around 750 severely ill workers had to be transported back to Neuengamme and replaced with new prisoners. In late December, the Husum camp was closed.

Considering the horrific conditions under which concentration camp prisoners were put to work in Husum and elsewhere, and given the fact that until the last few months of the war their work was of less economic significance compared with that of other labouring groups, many historians drew the conclusion that the Schutzstaffel (SS) deliberately attempted to exterminate the prisoners by working them to death. The construction of buildings and infrastructure, and the manufacturing of goods, was only secondary to the punishment, dehumanization, and terrorization of the millions of prisoners under Nazi control.

Yet, it is precisely this notion of “extermination through labour” that Marc Buggeln challenges in his book Slave Labor in Nazi Concentration Camps. Although the mass murder of Jews and members of the Roma and Sinti communities was certainly one of the objectives of the Nazi regime, other categories of prisoners escaped immediate death and served their years of imprisonment working for the German war economy. To get a balanced understanding of the factors that influenced their working conditions, Buggeln focuses particularly on the extensive concentration camp system of Neuengamme, which, in addition to the main camp near Hamburg, consisted of around eighty-five subcamps by the end of the war. Although circumstances for prisoners were deadly in all subcamps, and often as horrific as in Husum, the subcamps were diverse in size, function, and living conditions. Rather than “extermination through labour”, Buggeln concludes, it was extreme criminalization, exploitation, and indifference to the well-being of the prisoner that characterized the behaviour of the SS.

In the first chapter, Buggeln gives a historic overview of the organization of labour in the concentration camp system. Although the camps initially developed largely independently of concerns over the German labour market, prisoners had to provide compulsory labour from 1933 onwards. After the elimination of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the SS became responsible for the administration of the concentration camps, and soon began to use the manpower of the prisoners to safeguard its own status and economic position within the Nazi regime. In 1938, the SS and the Inspector General for Construction Albert Speer agreed on using prisoners to produce construction materials within the camps. This plan, and other attempts to capitalize on the labour of concentration camp prisoners, were largely unsuccessful, and concentration camp labour remained marginal to the German economy as a whole. The same was true for attempts after 1942 to deploy camp labour in armaments production. Only after the spring of 1944, when the Allied advance caused the system of recruiting foreign forced labourers to collapse, did the effective deployment of concentration camp prisoners become crucial. At this point, the prisoners were the last contingent of workers that could be used to fill the gaps in the disintegrating German war economy.

Despite the fact that, in economic terms, the deployment of prisoners in the war effort was insignificant until the final stages of the war, the desire of the SS to make the prisoners economically productive shaped the organization of the concentration camp system, and therefore the experience of prisoners. In September 1942, the top leaders of the Nazi regime became convinced that armaments production within the concentration camps was impossible, and that the prisoners could best be deployed in existing factories and construction sites. This gave the impetus to lease prisoners out to companies and to the German state and military, and caused the rapid expansion of the subcamp system. Between the end of 1942 and 1945, the total number of Neuengamme subcamps grew from only a handful to eighty-five. Some were very small, others accommodated more than a thousand prisoners, and together they comprised up to seventy per cent of the total prison population in the Neuengamme concentration camp system.

It is by shifting our attention from the main camp to the various subcamps that Buggeln attempts to refine our understanding of the concentration camp experience. In fact, Buggeln argues, many factors were of influence in determining the workload and the chances of survival. Of course, the type of labour was very important. Did prisoners work in the productive sector or in construction works? Was it heavy physical labour, or precise repetitive work on the production line? Did it take place inside a factory or in the open air? Were they under constant surveillance or were there opportunities to hide and to work slowly? Among the prisoners there were displays of solidarity, but also various factors that prevented collective action and mutual aid, such as divisions along national and linguistic lines, and a hierarchy among prisoners. Finally, the composition and behaviour of the camp guard and the presence of civilians and free labourers also determined the chances of prisoners’ survival. These factors, combined, made camps such as Husum particularly deadly, but others slightly more bearable.

Because of the varied nature of work in the subcamps, Buggeln refutes attempts to define a “survivor type” of prisoner, based on specific characteristics. It is equally difficult to sketch a profile of the typical camp guard. In two chapters, Buggeln explores the many factors that influenced the lives of prisoners and the violent behaviour of Nazi camp guards. These schematic analyses are supplemented with biographical accounts of perpetrators and survivors to demonstrate how individuals worked and tried to endure these circumstances.

Buggeln’s desire to be detailed and complete and to engage with various debates in the field makes the book at times chaotic. The chapters differ considerably in approach, methodology, and length, with four chapters of under twenty pages, and the other four of more than fifty pages. The reader risks becoming confused by the many headings, subheadings, and preliminary conclusions. It is also unfortunate that the author does not use charts and graphs rather than just simple tables, making the statistical data difficult to read. Despite this organizational weakness, Buggeln’s detailed analysis of life in the subcamps of Neuengamme provides many insights that can be further tested in the context of other concentration camp systems and labour regimes, in the Third Reich and beyond. Buggeln successfully pairs meticulous source work with a broad knowledge of existing scholarship, and often engages actively with colleagues in the field.

Another problematic side of the book is Buggeln’s use of the term “slavery”. Already in 2008, Buggeln had addressed the question “Were Concentration Camp Prisoners Slaves?”.Footnote ¹ In that article he challenged the central positioning of slavery in the American South as the paradigmatic example of slave labour. However, neither in that article, nor in the present book does he give a clear-cut definition of slavery, and he resorts to refuting arguments against using that term with regard to concentration camp prisoners. This leads to the question whether “slavery” is being used as a juridical or socio-economic concept, or merely as a term to indicate extreme labour coercion. The concentration camp “slaves” were not the only coerced labour force around, and although they certainly worked under the worst imaginable conditions it would have been interesting to contrast their position with the labour of, for example, the POWs and foreign forced labourers. Given the title of the book, both the concepts of “slavery” and “labour” merit more conceptual deliberation.

In general, however, Buggeln’s book contains many important findings and balanced conclusions that are of use for the historiography on labour and coercion in general. Fascinating is his analysis of the evolution of violence in relation to the importance of camp labour. He concludes that around 1942–1943 there was a significant decline in the frequency of collective punishments and an increasing reliance on exemplary individual punishments; these were more deadly to the individual prisoners but had less negative impact on overall production. Buggeln also concludes that no more than forty extremely violent guards and fifty to a hundred administrators were enough to effectively terrorize 40,000 prisoners. Equally shocking is the extreme utilitarianism of industrialists and factory managers in exploiting the labour of concentration camp prisoners. In sum, Slave Labor in Nazi Concentration Camps is very successful in providing insight into the mechanisms and circumstances that made Husum and other subcamps among the most horrific places in modern history.