Pictured: Pit № 7 of the Escarpelle mine, circa 1930.
Quoting Steve Cushion in On Strike Against the Nazis, pages 17–22:
After the [Fascist] invasion, the mining companies took their revenge for the defeats they had suffered at the hands of the miners during the period of the Popular Front, 1936–38. Even before the occupation authorities demanded it, the mine owners stopped recognising the socially progressive legislation of 1936 and set about restoring “a taste for work and discipline”.27 The mine engineers, who had abandoned the good veins of coal during the Popular Front, quickly reopened then for the benefit of the [Fascists].
However, even though the extraction machinery was old and worn out, OFK 670 demanded a 25% increase in productivity over the 1938 average. Piecework rates were cut back and the working day was lengthened by half an hour. Despite the decree of 28th June 1940 which froze wages and prices, there was a vast increase in the rate of inflation, while wages remained the same.28
The workers’ response started very quickly in the Pas‐de‐Calais mining basin, with short wildcat strikes in August, September, October and November 1940. In January 1941, at pit number 7 of the Escarpelle mine, all the workers arrived half an hour late. The [Axis] responded by arresting two Communists from each pit.29
[…]
Traditionally, the vast majority of miners in the Nord‐Pas‐de‐Calais had voted for the SFIO, but the anti[fascist] stance of the PCF publications in the region gave considerable credibility to the Communist agitation, while many of the social democratic trade union leaders became detached from the mass of workers because of their support for the collaborationist Vichy régime of Marshal Pétain. At the national level, the trade union official, René Belin, who was a member of the SFIO and who had been appointed Minister of Labour in the Vichy government, signed the decree which dissolved the trade unions.
[…]
In addition to the problems caused by the food shortages, the employers were also trying to use the [Fascist] occupation to organise a productivity offensive. The Bedaux system consisted of “scientifically” breaking down the work of a miner into units of production. An average worker produced 60 units. If he exceeded this number, he was paid more but if he failed to achieve it he was penalised. This meant that wages were individually calculated.
The discipline in the mines was hard and the companies had their own police forces, the équipes de surveillance33. The foremen played an essential rôle in fixing wages as they were responsible for organising the distribution of tasks. In order to assert their authority, they had a range of penalties at their disposal, ranging from a simple fine through to dismissal.34 The method used in the Nord‐Pas‐de‐Calais differed from the classic Bedaux system in that work was organised in small teams of 4 rather than individual payments.
The Vichy government and the occupation created an environment that was extremely favourable for the implementation of the new system.35 However, this productivity offensive started a revolt among the mineworkers as they struggled to defend their working conditions.
[…]
The difficulties of organising a strike under the noses of the [Fascist] occupation forces and the French Police were enormous. Strikers from one pit would picket another where they were not known in order to avoid being denounced by scabs or informers. Militants from the Jeunesse Communiste were present with their revolvers to reinforce the picket lines and to deter the French police.40
(Emphasis added.)
Click here for events that happened today (March 21).
1933: The Third Reich established a special court to handle crimes against the country. Three Fascist judges presided it and it had no jury. Likewise, officials held the Reichstag’s opening ceremonies at the Garrison Church in Potsdam. In China, Imperial troops captured Yiyuankou Pass of the Great Wall near Beiping.
1934: The Reich issued an emergency decree making it an offence to spread malicious gossip, spread ‘defeatist’ or ‘demoralizing’ comments, make defamatory remarks about political figures or the NSDAP, or utter remarks likely to cause ‘foreign policy difficulties’. Additionally, the Reich reintroduced Sondergerichte Courts, special courts without the usual safeguards in legal procedure, to deal with political cases.
1938: Anticommunist officials transferred female prisoners at Moringen concentration camps to the Lichtenburg concentration camp, which was a camp exclusively for women prisoners. On a minor note, the Reich commissioned F10 into service.
1939: Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain attempted to persuade French President Albert Lebrun to enter into a British–French–Polish alliance to contain the Third Reich; somebody also sent a similar proposal sent to the Polish leadership via the British ambassador in Warsaw, but the Polish government responded coolly. On the same day in Berlin, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop stated that if Poland continued to disagree with the Reich’s demands for Danzig, and if Poland continued to resist signing the Anti‐Comintern Pact, then the present German–Polish friendship would deteriorate. That aside, Fascist heavy cruiser Deutschland set sail for Memel, Lithuania. Meanwhile, Berlin demanded Lithuania to send representatives to the warship on the following day to sign Memel over to the Reich. In China, the Imperial Japanese 6th Division crossed the Xuishui River west of Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province and marched toward Wuning.
1940: Paul Wenneker began serving as a naval attaché at the Reich’s embassy in Tōkyō, and that morning Fascist submarine U‐38 sank a neutral Danish merchant ship north of the Shetland Islands, Scotland, slaughtering five. Later, U‐38 damaged another Danish ship, killing somebody in the process.
1941: The Axis forces in both southeastern Libya and eastern Ethiopia struggled against the Allies, but Axis submarine U‐105 attacked Allied convoy SL‐68 hundres of miles west of Cap blanc, massacring dozens.
1942: Berlin placed Fritz Sauckel in charge of mobilizing neoslaves from occupied territories, and the Axis deported Jews from the Lublin ghetto in occupied Poland to Belzec, Majdanek, and other concentration camps. The Reich introduced harsh laws against unnecessary rail travel, and 151 Axis bombers attacked the British airfield at Magwe in northern Burma as forward elements of Imperial Japanese 55th Division at Oktwin engaged Chinese troops. General Walther von Seydlitz‐Kurzbach led an Axis assault out of the Demyansk, Russia to the northwest, too.
1943: Chancellor Adolf Schicklgruber, Hermann Göring, Wilhelm Keitel, Karl Dönitz, Heinrich Himmler, Fedor von Bock, Erhard Milch, and others visited the Zeughaus in Berlin to inspect an exhibition featuring captured Soviet weapons. It was the head of state’s first public event in four months. At the Zeughaus, Colonel Rudolf von Gersdorff wore an overcoat packed with explosives with the intention of killing the Chancellor, but this Chancellor’s schedule changed unexpectedly, and so his early departure from the exhibition caused one to call off the homicide attempt. After departing from the exhibition, this group of Axis leaders attended a memorial ceremony for the Heroes’ Memorial Day.
1944: A Junkers Ju 88A‐14 from 8/KG6 of the Luftwaffe shot down during the night by a Mosquito of № 488 Squadron RAF crashed on three B‐26 Marauder bombers of the U.S. 323rd Bombardment Group (Medium) at RAF Earls Colne at Earls Colne, Essex, England.
1945: The Empire of Japan made the first operational sortie with the Yokosuka Ohka (Cherry Blossom) suicide aircraft. The sixteen Mitsubishi G4M2e bombers of 321st Squadron launched aircraft were intercepted short of their target and were forced to jettison their piloted weapons. As well, an Axis V‐2 rocket hit the Packard factory in London at 0939 hours, destroying it and damaging a baker’s dozen factories and 662 houses; it slaughtered thirty‐two, seriously injured one hundred, and lightly injured four hundred sixty. Another rocket hit Primrose Hill in St. Pancras (though officially listed as in Hampstead), London, damaging the reservoir and injuring fourteen victims.