How much did soldiers in The Wehrmacht earn?

by Kenap
kieslowskifan

The answer is actually not really a straightforward one as one might expect. Like many militaries, the Wehrmacht employed a standardized system of pay scales based on specialists, rank, service, etc. (the 1945 War Department's Handbook on German Military Services has these tables under section 6). However, the nature of wartime economies often distorts how cash is used during wartime. Counter-intuitively wages either matter very little because of price controls and a restricted marketplace, or become more important because of the black market. But the unique nature of German occupation adds a further, more complicated layer, to the nature of the German wartime economy as it relates to soldier's pay.

The Third Reich created an occupation economy based upon a systematic plundering and the Wehrmacht was both an official and unofficial arm of this plundering. The Reich issued the pay of its occupation forces into the currency of the country in which they were stationed in, and the exchange rate to the German Reichsmark was pegged at an artificially high level. This was ostensibly to curb inflation, but it made many German occupation soldiers quite wealthy over the short term. A soldier's family within the Reich might expect to receive material goods (clothes, furniture, food, etc.) in addition to their soldier's remittance. Barborossa increased this problem as paymasters in the East would try and grab as much Western currency for soldiers to exchange their surplus Rubles. The drying up of Rubles (the Bank of Moscow remained out of German hands) led to the issuing of Ukrainian occupation currency, but the problems still remained in that the cash could be exchanged for Western currencies.

In short, the German military economy was something of a basketcase that amplified the normal distortions of a wartime economy. It was a system that benefited German soldiers at the expense of the nations that bore the misfortune of occupation.

Sources

Aly, Gotz. Hitler's Beneficiaries Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2013.

U. S. War Department. Handbook on German Military Forces. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off, 1945.