IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/jbwige/v55y2014i2p30n6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Enemy on the Farm: The Economic Contribution of German and Italian POW Employment in Britain and the British Dominions during and after the Second World War

Author

Listed:
  • Custodis Johann

    (Department of Economics University of Warwick Coventry, CV4 7AL United Kingdom)

Abstract

This paper attempts to fill the gap of the economic aspect of prisoner of war (POW) employment with regards to German and Italian POWs in British hands during and after the Second World War. It quantifies German POW employment in Britain and Canada, its productivity, economic contribution and revenues for the captors. Germans and Italians contributed almost 200 million man days and at peak one per cent to GDP to the British economy, mostly in agriculture and mostly post-war. Canada’s rural sector equally appreciated German POW labour and revenues almost exceeded costs. German POWs presented an asset in disguise: The unskilled, unwilling enemy was turned into a compliant and productive fire fighter against raw material bottlenecks.

Suggested Citation

  • Custodis Johann, 2014. "The Enemy on the Farm: The Economic Contribution of German and Italian POW Employment in Britain and the British Dominions during and after the Second World War," Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte / Economic History Yearbook, De Gruyter, vol. 55(2), pages 1-30, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:jbwige:v:55:y:2014:i:2:p:30:n:6
    DOI: 10.1515/jbwg-2014-0015
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/jbwg-2014-0015
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/jbwg-2014-0015?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tobias A. Jopp, 2018. "On the economics of forced labour. Did the employment of Prisoners-of-War depress German coal mining productivity in World War I?," Working Papers 0132, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:jbwige:v:55:y:2014:i:2:p:30:n:6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.