OZAK

The German occupation of the northern Adriatic area of Italy gave rise to the Operationszone ‘Adriatisches Küstenland’, the ‘Adriatic Coast’ Operations Zone (OZAK), where the suspension of Italian sovereignty resulted in a German civil administration, directly under Hitler’s command. As in other European regions formally or concretely annexed to the Reich, its control was assigned to the governor of a neighbouring Gau: the Carinthian Gauleiter Friedrich Rainer. The Supreme Commissioner Rainer assumed absolute political, judicial and economic power, and pledged to meet the German war economy’s need for manpower by encouraging workers to move voluntarily to the Reich. In addition to presenting the economic…

Although the Labour Office of the German High Commissioner had increased the activity of hiring manpower to be sent to the Reich, carried out by the Provincial Employment Offices, the workers’ response fell short of expectations. The Supreme Commissioner, while continuing to maintain that recruitment should take place on a voluntary basis, forced people already employed in companies not connected to the war economy to move to the Reich. In addition, on 29 November 1943 Rainer called up certain age groups for compulsory war service, and then for labour service, with call-up papers sent by mail, on 5 March, 30…

Between September and December 1943 there were large shipments of arms to rural destinations in Hesse and to the factories of Thuringia, Rhineland, Westphalia, Lower Saxony and the aeronautical workshops of Pomerania. Some workers ended up in countries occupied by Germany: skilled workers from the northern Adriatic shipyards were moved to those in Gdansk or employed in the recovery of fossil peat in Baronovici; others were sent to Minsk, to military footwear factories, or to Czechoslovakia, both as farm workers and as construction workers in the service of the German army. The victims of the roundups in Trieste’s western karst…