They used slave labor too, don't forget!

Slave labor is most efficient when it comes to non-skilled, hard work. Mining, agriculture, sex (where it still survives even in the Western world), where the output is easily checked and counted.

When it comes to anything sophisticated done by qualified people, like "making advanced tools for the Führer", the options for subtle sabotage are there and pissed-off people will use them.

In general, German occupation authorities had better results when they actually paid the workers and gave them vacation vouchers. But of course the racial theories got in the way, as it was unthinkable to treat, say, Jews as normal employees.

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05 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Counterpoint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka

	▲	inglor_cz an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Sure you can stuff smart people into penal colonies, but what is their productivity? I am not aware of anyone like Kapica or Kolmogorov producing their best results in a penal camp. OTOH we have a notorious railway tunnel in Prague from the 1950s, designed by imprisoned engineers. Guess what, it is half a foot too narrow to put two tracks into. Someone got the last laugh.

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ceejayoz an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> Slave labor is most efficient when it comes to non-skilled, hard work.

And yet, we invent things like the cotton gin, "enabling much greater productivity than manual cotton separation", patented in 1794.

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aaronbrethorst 16 minutes ago | parent [-]

I’m not entirely sure what point you’re trying to make. The invention of the cotton gin increased the use of slaves; it didn’t decrease it.

https://freedomcenter.org/voice/eli-whitney-cotton-gin/

	▲	ceejayoz 7 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> The invention of the cotton gin increased the use of slaves; it didn’t decrease it. Because the efficiency increase in that part of the process meant we could grow so much more cotton to be processed. It wasn't very profitable before that, because slave labor wasn't very efficient at the process. (This led, eventually, to more automation of the planting/harvesting process.)