Labour battalions have been a form of

alternative service Alternative civilian service, also called alternative services, civilian service, non-military service, and substitute service, is a form of national service performed in lieu of military conscription for various reasons, such as conscientious ...

unfree labour Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, or violence, including death or other forms o ...

in various countries in lieu of or resembling regular

military service Military service is service by an individual or group in an army or other militia, air forces, and naval forces, whether as a chosen job (volunteer military, volunteer) or as a result of an involuntary draft (conscription). Few nations, such ...

. In some cases they were the result of some kind of discriminative segregation of the population, while in some others they have been a conscious choice.

Political reasons

In some countries labour battalions were created from part of population which for various reasons were not suitable for regular military service, often because this population was considered "undesirable" or "unreliable", e.g., political enemies, population of occupied territories or "lower races". Examples include labour battalions in the late

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...

and early

Turkish Republic Turkish Republic may refer to: * Turkey, archaically the "Turkish Republic" * Northern Cyprus Northern Cyprus, officially the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), is a ''de facto'' state that comprises the northeastern portion of the ...

both during World War I and during World War II,

labour service in Hungary during World War II Labour service () was required of "politically unreliable" and Hungarian-Jewish men in Hungary during the Holocaust and World War II after they were prohibited from serving in the regular armed forces by passage of the Hungarian anti-Jewish laws. ...

, labour battalions established by

Francoist Spain Francoist Spain (), also known as the Francoist dictatorship (), or Nationalist Spain () was the period of Spanish history between 1936 and 1975, when Francisco Franco ruled Spain after the Spanish Civil War with the title . After his death i ...

(estimated in 700 labour units overall, excluding the approximately 300

concentration camps A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or ethnic minority groups, on the grounds of national security, or for exploit ...

) during the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War () was a military conflict fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republican faction (Spanish Civil War), Republicans and the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the Left-wing p ...

as a form of repression of political enemies that continued through the dictatorship, as well as labour battalions in other territories held by

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

and its allies (see also " Hiwi").

Alternative service

In some countries labour battalions are a form of

civil conscription Civil conscription is the obligation of civilians to perform mandatory labour for the government. This kind of work has to correspond with the exceptions in international agreements, otherwise it could fall under the category of unfree labour. Th ...

instead of

military conscription Conscription, also known as the draft in the United States and Israel, is the practice in which the compulsory enlistment in a national service, mainly a military service, is enforced by law. Conscription dates back to antiquity and it conti ...

for people who cannot join military service for various reasons, e.g., due to bad health or being

conscientious objector A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of conscience or religion. The term has also been extended to objecting to working for the military–indu ...

s to any forms of violence, as long as they aren't considered unfit for other work. In the British Army during the First World War, labour or pioneer battalions were initially formed in December 1914 from recruits with skilled trades or experience in manual labour, trained to fight as infantry but usually used to build trenches and carry out other manual labour. Early in 1916 these began to also include men not assessed as fit enough to fight to carry out a similar role and were sometimes also known as Infantry Works Battalions. Initially assigned to individual regiments, the existing Labour and Infantry Works battalions were grouped together in February 1917 to form the new Labour Corps. Until the last days of the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

with obligatory military duty in the state, men deemed unfit to regular military duty but not unfit for other work, as well as many able-bodied ones, were assigned to ''

construction battalion United States Naval Construction Battalions, better known as the Navy Seabees, form the U.S. Naval Construction Forces (NCF). The Seabee nickname is a heterograph of the initial letters "CB" from the words "Construction Battalion". Dependi ...

s'' (стройбаты) of the

Soviet Army The Soviet Ground Forces () was the land warfare service branch of the Soviet Armed Forces from 1946 to 1992. It was preceded by the Red Army. After the Soviet Union ceased to exist in December 1991, the Ground Forces remained under th ...

. Similar armed forces branches existed in other Eastern European countries throughout the communist period between the end of World War II and the end of the 1980s. An interesting example are the Bulgarian Construction Troops (Строителни Войски), first established in 1920 to circumvent the limits on the size of the military imposed by the

Treaty of Neuilly-Sur-Seine The Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine (; ) was a treaty between the victorious Allies of World War I on the one hand, and Bulgaria, one of the defeated Central Powers in World War I, on the other. The treaty required Bulgaria to cede various territor ...

at the end of World War I. Over the years this branch became a blend of a corps of engineers and a means for some to fulfill the mandatory conscription in place during communism in the country.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Labour Battalion Conscription Non-combatant military personnel Forced labour

Political reasons

Alternative service

See also

References