Less Than Slaves: Jewish Forced Labor and the Quest for Compensation by Benjamin B.FerenczReview by: Edward L. HomzeThe American Historical Review, Vol. 85, No. 5 (Dec., 1980), p. 1225Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1853330 .

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Modern Europe 1225

piness in presentation, however, this monograph can be recommended as a useful addition to studies of the agrarian history of the Third Reich.

J. E. FARQUHARSON

University of Bradford

BENJAMIN B. FERENCZ. Less Than Slaves: Jewish Forced Labor and the Quest for Compensation. Cambridge: Har- vard University Press. 1979. Pp. xxii, 249. $15.00.

During World War II Nazi Germany coerced mil- lions of persons to work in the factories and farms of the Third Reich. Most of these workers were for- eigners ruthlessly recruited throughout Europe, many were POWs, and some were concentration camp inmates. Their treatment and employment varied from normal to diabolic depending on the racial judgment of the Nazis, the changing fortunes of war, and the whims of accidental circumstances. Still, none suffered more than the Jewish concentra- tion camp inmates. Their fate was clear; for these unfortunates, whom a survivor called "less than slaves," labor and death were almost synonymous. Years after the war, some of the surviving victims tried to win retroactive payment from the promi- nent German corporations that had so shamelessly exploited them. Benjamin B. Ferencz, a former American prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials and later a leader in the Jewish restitution efforts, de- scribes the legal actions, negotiations, and political pressures that finally compelled several companies grudgingly to make a few meager payments. It is not a very pretty tale, for none of the companies ever acknowledged any legal or moral responsibility for their wartime actions. They claimed they had to accept labor from the government regardless of its origins-a claim that was patently untrue, as the author indicates.

It is not particularly suprising that German cor- porations were fearful to make payments to their forced workers lest it be taken as a confession of guilt, nor is it surprising that the few firms that made payments did so to improve their corporate image and enhance their prospects for profits. Cor- porate morality was never very strong in Germany, or for that matter anywhere else. I. G. Farben and the electrical concerns of AEG and Siemens were worried about their sales abroad, Krupp was eager to sidestep the Allied order to sell off his Rheinhau- sen coal and steel operations, while Rheinmetall's payments came as a result of political pressure from America. They all stalled and tried to minimize the number and amount of the claims, and some, like the Flick concern, never did pay a cent. There was neither shame nor the slightest gesture of atone- ment. Willy Brandt could kneel before the victims

of Nazism, but not German business. In the end, the five German companies paid 14,878 claimants DM 51,935,095 and closed their books on the mat- ter. By maintaining their innocence, the firms possi- bly sought to avert further claims by the millions of foreign workers used so cheaply during the war, or perhaps they were continuing the "conspiracy of si- lence."

This book reveals the callous attitude of German business that supported Hitler and profited thereby, but it does not try to explain the great problems in- volved. It is essentially the interestingly told narra- tion of the legal attempts by the survivors to achieve compensation. There is no attempt to analyze the relationship of business to Nazism or even the mo- rality and politics of some of the issues that are in- volved. The historian is not going to find much of use or new here, which is a pity because the author's training and experience obviously gave him the op- portunities to study and understand the intricate nature of German business and society that few his- torians have ever had. Unfortunately Ferencz is too much the advocate and not enough the judge.

Most of the documentation for the book comes from the Nuremberg trials and subsequent legal proceedings, the correspondence between Jewish groups and German corporations, and the news me- dia. The author has marshaled his facts and pre- sented his argument well, but theni only a few ever doubted the merits and justice of his case.

EDWARD L. HOMZE

University of Nebraska, Lincoln

HANS W. GATZKE. Germany and the United States: A "Spe- cial Relationship?" (American Foreign Policy Li- brary.) Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1980. Pp. xvi, 314. $17.50.

The American Foreign Policy Library is designed to provide the interested public with an introduction to the modern history of foreign countries with par- ticular reference to their relationship with the United States. The volume under review is to do this for German-American relations from the begin- ning of American independence into the mid-1970s. A general description of Germany's past and pres- ent is followed by a chapter on German-American relations from 1776 to 1914. The dramatic turn of World War I is appropriately given a chapter to it- self, as is the Weimar period, the Hitler years from 1933 to 1939, and the period of World War II. Al- most half the book covers the years since 1945 with emphasis on the development of the German Fed- eral Republic, its institutions and history, and its relationship to the United States as well as to

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