HN 2: The British and their Works

2.2
Workforce turnover
The instruction of the REME officers to go ahead with the
production programme as discussed at the end of June 1945
brought the Volkswagenwerk face to face with the problem of
insufficient labour. A few days later, discussions took place with
the municipal administration concerning the immediate
measures required. Within a week some 1,000 skilled workers
would be procured from other towns in the British-occupied
zone. This, in the view of the factory representative, would "not
be a problem". There was no question of their being housed in
Wolfsburg, because the accommodation available here was
either occupied by the British army or already filled to bursting.
In order to provide accommodation for the new recruits, both
factory and town council were convinced of the necessity of
"clearing the foreigners" from the hutments camp "Am
Hohenstein" and then from the Laagberg camp. If possible, the
foreigners should disappear entirely from the environs of
Wolfsburg, so that the German employees could "go about their
work undisturbed and uninconvenienced by the aliens". 92
The attack was directed against the "displaced persons" (DPs).
Many of these workers, most of whom had been forcibly recruited
from the countries once occupied by Nazi Germany, had
been housed in the hutments seized on the orders of the US
troops. Here they awaited repatriation, or the chance to emigrate
overseas. And there were hordes of them: immediately
prior to the occupation of Wolfsburg the forced labourers
working at the Volkswagenwerk made up approximately 83 per
cent of the workforce, which was 9,121 employees strong. 93
Because the foreign workers were occupying housing space and
were also a financial burden, the Volkswagenwerk management
and the local authorities insisted that they be expelled from
the city.
Following an agreement between mayor Laurent and factory
manager Brörmann, the town had taken on the financial
burden for the foreign workers’ board and lodging at the end of
May 1945. However, the municipal administration hastily
withdrew its promise to compensate the Volkswagen plant for
maintenance of the hutment camps, including loss of rent.
Because the camps and hostels were ultimately only a drain on
resources, on 10th July 1945 Brörmann transferred them into the
trusteeship of the council for the symbolic consideration of one
Reichsmark. In return the council undertook to make the accommodation
units available in "perfect condition" by preference to
employees of the Volkswagenwerk. 94 But the agreement could
not be adhered to, because the Allies set up a central DP camp in
Wolfsburg and the British military government requisitioned
the majority of the camps. The city, located on the border
between the British and American zones of occupation, briefly
became a transit station for the repatriation of displaced
persons. At the beginning of 1946 almost 9,000 DPs of different
nationalities were living there, with more arriving every day. 95
The initial confidence of the factory management that the
labour requirement could easily be met turned out to be just as
misplaced. The gap left in the workforce by the return of the
foreign workers was something from which the company would
not really recover until the early 1950s. Nor could this gap be