Bones of Contention: The Nazi Recycling Project in Germany and France During World War II

Denton, Chad B.; Weber, Heike

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-77467-1_7

Cited by 3 publications

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“…Bones represented a crucial raw material for the chemical industry until around 1950 because a wide range of valuable semi-products could be extracted from them. Glue, fats, glycerine, bone coal, bone ash, and bone flour were used to manufacture fertilisers and explosives, to lubricate precision machinery or military equipment, and to produce soap, candle, sugar, or glass (Denton & Weber, 2018). Used cans were processed to regain the tin which was then predominantly delivered to the textile industry in the form of tin salts, used for weighting or dyeing cloth, while the leftover sheet metal was fed into the metal industry.…”

Section: Characteristics Of the Waste Business: Moral Economies Informal Markets Trans-sectoral Materials Streams And Reverse Logisticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For World War I, Roger Chickering highlighted the importance of salvage drives to mobilise the German home front (2007). For World War II, research has primarily concentrated on Nazi Germany (Berg, 2015;Scherner, 2018;Schmelzing, 2017;Sudrow, 2013;Weber, 2013), on some of its occupied territories, among them Vichy and occupied France (Denton, 2013;Denton & Weber, 2018), and on the British (Cooper, 2008;Thorsheim, 2015) and American experiences (Kimble, 2014;Kirk, 1995). The research on World War II suggests a radicalisation of and more systematic governmental approach towards waste collecting and salvaging, and for totalitarian regimes also a deep entanglement with the exploitation of forced and slave labour and occupied economies.…”

Section: The Salvaging Economies Of the Second World Warmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As in Germany, those who called for boycotts in underground pamphlets or tracts, did so at the risk of arrest or imprisonment from local authorities (Denton, 2007). More recent research on Vichy has shown the extent to which French authorities and business interests cooperated with the German military administration to institute widespread salvage drives of paper, rags, scrap iron, and bones (Denton, 2013Denton & Weber, 2018).…”

Section: The Salvaging Economies Of the Second World Warmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Rethinking waste within business history: A transnational perspective on waste recycling in World War II

Denton

Weber

2021

Business History

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Waste and its reuse have constituted an important field of economic activity for most of human history, including modern times. While the collected articles of this special issue exemplify the significance that waste salvage had in mobilising resources in Europe, Asia, and North America in World War II, this introduction situates these cases in a longterm perspective. It explores the continuities and ruptures inside the structures, markets, and actors of the salvage business from late nineteenth century waste reclamation, including the sanitary era of municipal waste disposal, to the more recent era of 'green' recycling. It argues that we need to rethink waste's role within business history by delineating four basic characteristics of the waste business: the moral economies that govern wasting and reusing; the informality of the trade and its operations; the trans-sectorality of the waste streams; and the reverse logistics of the waste salvage trade. Introduction: waste economies and times of warFor most of human history, waste and its reuse have been an important field of economic activity, even if this field became largely invisible in an era of modernisation, industrialisation, and mass production. The articles of this special issue, along with our introduction, highlight the immense scope and significance of the 'business of waste ' (Stokes et al., 2013), but more importantly, they carve out some of the specific characteristics of what it means to deal and trade with waste. They do so by taking the extreme example of World War II as a vantage point: a period when warring states restructured their economies, enforced salvage drives, and began to interfere directly or indirectly with the existent structures, actors, networks, and material flows of the traditional waste and recycling business -referred to at the time as waste salvage or the scrap trade. We argue that the war period can serve as an entry point for historians to uncover otherwise largely hidden actors, structures, and channels of the waste trade because the wartime economy brought them to light; the salvage business underwent substantial transformations in belligerent states which left behind manifold traces in trade statistics, business records, and archives.

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Section: Characteristics Of the Waste Business: Moral Economies Informal Markets Trans-sectoral Materials Streams And Reverse Logisticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Salvaging Economies Of the Second World Warmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Salvaging Economies Of the Second World Warmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Rethinking waste within business history: A transnational perspective on waste recycling in World War II

Denton

Weber

2021

Business History

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“…In a similar vein, the Nazi regime intensified bone recovery -still a rather unexplored economic field, despite its economic and military significance (Denton & Weber, 2018;Vaupel & Preis, 2018). Imported bones as well as bones from slaughterhouses, restaurants, and households served as a resource for the contemporary bone and chemical industries, and they delivered a wide spectrum of chemical semi-products such as glues, glycerine, bone ash, or neatsfoot oil -needed in any precision equipment -some of which were not producible by other means.…”

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confidence: 99%

Nazi German waste recovery and the vision of a circular economy: The case of waste paper and rags

Weber

2021

Business History

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In Nazi Germany , reclaiming waste became an intrinsic component of the regime's economy as well as its ideological, racial, and expansionist ambitions. National Socialist interventions into waste streams began in 1934 with salvage campaigns. The state then brought urban waste policies and municipal waste services under its control, restructuring and 'Aryanising' the waste salvage trade. Moreover, both consumers and producers were prompted to collect and reprocess waste. Over time, the gradual expansion of the Nazi waste recovery policies and campaigns -here referred to as the 'Nazi waste exploitation regime' -brought forth a determined vision of a circular economy in which no waste whatsoever should escape its reclamation for the national community or Volksgemeinschaft. This article sketches the actors, structures, and objectives of this waste exploitation regime for the case of rags and paper and uncovers its entanglement with Nazi racist and genocidal ideology and expansionism.

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Resource Policy of the Third Reich in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine: Waste Recycling in 1941-1943

Perga

2024

pwh

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This article explores the assortment and primary methods of waste collection within the Reichskommissariat Ukraine during the occupation by Nazi forces. The Ukrainian occupational press serves as the primary source for this article. It demonstrates that the extraction of various resources and the plundering of material valuables were directed towards supporting the economic and military power of the Third Reich, with waste collection policies being one of its facets. To facilitate this activity in this realm, the Nazis utilized existing infrastructure within the territory of Ukraine, including warehouses, factories, and offices of Soyuzutyl, established on the eve of the Second World War, as well as the infrastructure of the consumer cooperative system. It is shown that the specificity of Ukraine lies in assigning waste collection duties to consumer cooperatives, which transformed into the primary suppliers of various raw materials for the needs of the Third Reich. Local administrations and individual cooperatives actively participated in this endeavor, and special associations were also established. Additionally, the occupying authorities sought to involve schoolchildren and the broader population, developing various incentive systems for this purpose, although the participation of these actors was minimal. The article examines the peculiarities of waste collection propaganda within the territory of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, which was based on ideological motives such as gratitude for liberation from Soviet rule, as well as economic motives related to the need for waste to produce consumer goods for the local population by enterprises of the Nazi regime. It is argued that primary attention was given to collecting scrap black and colored metals, as well as bones, paper, and rags. The author suggests that the scale of economic plundering of Ukraine was much larger than commonly believed, yet acknowledges that this requires further in-depth research involving a wide range of archival sources.

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Bones of Contention: The Nazi Recycling Project in Germany and France During World War II

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Rethinking waste within business history: A transnational perspective on waste recycling in World War II

Rethinking waste within business history: A transnational perspective on waste recycling in World War II

Nazi German waste recovery and the vision of a circular economy: The case of waste paper and rags

Resource Policy of the Third Reich in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine: Waste Recycling in 1941-1943

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