In the Field-of-Force of Food

Everyday Nutrition of Rural Forced Labourers in the Province of Niederdonau, 1939–1945

Abstract

For ideological reasons, the Nazi regime aimed at separating labourers from all over Europe forced to work in the Reich from the German people. The German ‘table community’ (Tischgemeinschaft), promoted by the authorities, served as a model for the inclusion of ‘us’ and the exclusion of ‘them’. Numerous examples of German citizens and forced foreign labourers sharing the same table, however, indicate the limits of Nazi racial policy, especially in the rural world. The article challenges the mainstream interpretation of this evidence as being an expression of resistance within the Catholic-Conservative milieu. Rather, the ‘table community’ of Germans and foreigners was an efficient institution to increase labourers’ motivation and to exercise control according to the logic of the peasant family economy.