ABSTRACT
The treatment of foreign workers by German civilians in small towns and rural communities (in Wurttemberg, at least) was based on three responses, which demonstrate conflicting as well as converging interests between the inhabitants and the incomers. In Württemberg, complaints about the conduct of some foreign workers were different in content from, but qualitatively equivalent to, those made of German women evacuees from northern industrial towns — who were also, in effect, "foreigners" in rural Wurttemberg. The shortage of labor in rural Württemberg meant especially the shortage of male workers on family farms, with the progressive call-up of able-bodied farmhands and farmers virtually complete by mid-1943. Attempts to deploy homegrown resources, through young women in the Pflichtjahr and Arbeitsdienst (Labor Service) schemes proved both ineffective and, among farmers, often unpopular. Wurttemberg was one of the last areas of Germany to be reached by the invading armies of the Americans and the French in April 1945.
