Those who want to live, risk their Lives 
Discipling through Terror

The main objectives of the police, Gestapo and justice system during the Second World War were formed by surveillance, disciplinary action and the terrorisation of millions of forced labourers, besides the genocide of the European Jews and the persecution of the German resistance movement.

The resources necessary in terms of personnel and infrastructure, used by national security agencies to monitor and control forced labourers, were immense. The use of forced labour was connected to ideological and security policy related concerns. The slightest suspicion of acts of sabotage or theft, refusal of labour, resistance, riot or interaction between German women and forced labourers, was enough to trigger severe punishment: incarceration, Gestapo labour-camps, concentration camps or shortcut proceedings in front of one of the “Sondergerichte” (summary courts). The “Sondergerichte” often handed out capital punishment. Towards the end of the war more and more Western Europeans were also put to death by the “Sondergerichte”, which remained in charge of trials against that group all the time. Crimes committed by Eastern Europeans and Poles on the other hand, were handled by the Gestapo within the so called “Sonderbehandlung” (execution without trial).

Private enterprises became collaborators of the Nazi-terror-regime: not simply through executing “minor” punishment themselves, but by reporting “conspicuous” forced labourers to the police, Gestapo and justice system and thus handing them over.