ABSTRACT
The Donau-and Alpengaue the Mauthausen concentration camp, which became operational on 8 August 1938, served as a hub for the renting out of slave laborers to arms factories and, to a lesser extent, to agricultural concerns. Under the aegis of the SS-Wirtschafts-Hauptamt, the SS Central Economic Agency, individuals from concentration camps, who were completely deprived of all rights, were "rented out" as were others to a number of arms factories in the Donau-and Alpengaue. Camps such as Lannach with their relatively "easy" prison regime are at one extreme of this system in the Donau- and Alpengaue, Mauthausen and Gusen, which practiced extermination through work, mark the other end of the scale. Of the 300,000 prisoners of war on Austrian soil, roughly 260,000 were utilized as forced laborers. Foreign workers and concentration camp prisoners were already used on the territory of the Reich even before the outbreak of World War II.
