HN 2: The British and their Works

The chronic housing shortage represented a massive obstacle to
the building up of a core workforce at the Volkswagenwerk until
the early 1950s. In the first post-war years, a comprehensive new
housing project was out of question for lack of the necessary
construction materials. Most employees had to make do with
provisional accommodation in a camp, separated from their
families. This only reinforced the general migratory tendency,
whereas highly qualified specialists who were in demand elsewhere
too, and management staff, were difficult to recruit
under the prevailing housing conditions.
Of necessity, in order to alleviate this problem the company
turned to renovating and extending the emergency accommodation
units. The "Gemeinschaftslager" (general camp) on
Fallerslebener Straße was completely refurbished in 1947, with
the big dormitories being subdivided into rooms for six to eight
people, which also made them a bit homelier. In the Reislingen
camp, two canteen hutments were turned into eight new
accommodation units. For the apprentices and younger employees,
for whom the Volkswagenwerk had once again made
training courses available in November 1946, 104 the "youth camp"
was renovated, which attracted the special commendation of
the district commandant Colonel Dollard. With the conversion
of the Laagberg camp the factory management had taken a
small step towards the achievement of its goal to build up a
core of skilled workers. By the end of 1947, 140 families took up
residence here, the attractiveness of the accommodation being
enhanced by the neighbouring allotments, the opening of a
general store and the formation of a school class. Despite the
fullest support of the British resident officers, up until 1949 the
company was unsuccessful in its attempts to secure release of
the Hohenstein camp. This was the more regrettable since it
was, in Hermann Münch’s view, admirably suited for conversion
into a family colony, and would have marked a turning-point in
the setting-up of a core workforce. For this reason the general
manager constantly pressed for the return of the factory-owned
accommodation, seeing in this the "key to relieving the deplorable
housing situation in Wolfsburg." 105
The labour shortage was further aggravated by a high level of
absenteeism which rose in the production sector to an average
of 25 per cent in the first half of 1947. The fact that a quarter of
the workforce failed to turn up for work was on the one hand to
be accounted for by the necessity of securing personal survival
by means of scavenging sorties and black-market activities. On
the other, poor nutrition and the general exhaustion led to
large-scale indisposition, and the official sickness rate in June
1947 was at nine per cent. 106 The health of the Volkswagen workforce
was in any case below average, made up as it was from a
majority of refugees and former soldiers. To what extent the bad
work morale played a part, as the British factory officers suspected,
is difficult to assess. It was a fact that in the years prior
to currency reform there was a total absence of material incentive,
with the Reichsmark visibly crumbling as a means of
payment. Many people only took on regular employment in
order to get a residence permit, housing and ration cards. In
March 1947 general manager Münch learnt that all the workers
from one department repeatedly left their workplaces before
the bell at 4.40 p.m. The head of the department insisted that he
had been powerless to stop this. This incident led to closer
examination of the managers’ suitability for the job. Münch
therefore ordered the heads of department to draft a report