The "artificial" famine in the German-occupied USSR

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Sid Guttridge
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Re: The "artificial" famine in the German-occupied USSR

#91

Post by Sid Guttridge » 22 Jan 2014, 14:58

Hi Gorque,

I would go back to the phrase "malign neglect". The German treatment of the Ukrainian population was one of calculated indifference on a number of fronts. To take three examples, while the Romanians broke up collective farms, the Germans did not. While the Romanians reopened Odessa University, the Germans did not do the same. While the Romanians reopened Odessa hospital so successfully that the Germans were sending their wounded there, the Germans did not do likewise.

The Nazis intended to resettle the Ukraine with German farmers. The Ukrainians were to be the interim farm labour force requiring minimal education and skills. They were expendable and therefore their wellbeing was not a significant factor to the Germans. They were therefore treated with "malign neglect", with the famine as one result.

Cheers,

Sid.

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Gorque
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Re: The "artificial" famine in the German-occupied USSR

#92

Post by Gorque » 22 Jan 2014, 19:26

Hi Sid:

I don't believe I ever stated that the Germans treated the Ukrainians well, did I? I did state what the German long-term plans for the area were, which more or less coincide with what you've written, and which, BTW, matched their plans for the Poles. In short, it was not a "promising" future for neither the Ukrainians nor the Poles, and before anyone jumps down my throat again, I'm using the term "promising", once again, as a euphemism. The short-term evidence for their plans can be found by reviewing the nutritional chart WM provided us and looking at the maximum rations to be provided for those aged 14 and under. If German wanted to be viewed as benevolent, then they would have provided for much greater rations to this age group much as they did for their own youngsters. In typical Nazi cunning, they employed promises of future land ownership on the collective farms that the Ukrainians were working for their new masters in the hopes of increased agricultural output.

"Intentional" starvation of the locals does not make sense in view to the German long-term colonization plans and the short-term resource exploitation of the area. But then again, considering the labor shortages that the Reich was enduring, neither did the intentional murder of the innocents nor, using your term, the malign neglect of the Soviet POW's in '41.


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wm
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Re: The "artificial" famine in the German-occupied USSR

#93

Post by wm » 22 Jan 2014, 20:35

I think it should be add only the people in cities were to be starved. The food producing villages were not affected - at least then. Those allowances were for Ukrainian/Russian cities only.

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Re: The "artificial" famine in the German-occupied USSR

#94

Post by wm » 22 Jan 2014, 20:36

LWD wrote:That's rather a leap. percentage of arable land under cultivation doesn't necessarily equate to the food per acre or per capita produced.
Maybe not, but they had lots of land, so farmers there tended to settle on quality arable land leaving the white unpromising land alone.
LWD wrote:That's self contradictory. I.e. you say that famines were precluded then go on to mention there were local ones. In a larg geographic area distribution becomes as important as production and as I seem to recall something about a rather massive famine in the Ukraine not many years prior to WWII.
Well, the reasons were the same.
The crop failures were caused by acts of God, famines were caused by the total ineptness of the Government.
Despite the poor harvest of 1891, there was enough food available to feed the population, but this would only have been possible if the harvest was rightly distributed. This was almost impossible because the limited means of communication could not establish equilibrium between certain areas. In some areas there was a surplus and in others there was a deficit. Most of this grain, however, was exported. This was due to government economic policies that encouraged the sale of Russian grain abroad to strengthen the national economy.
By the fall of 1891 it had become obvious that a major calamity could be prevented only by the shipment of enormous quantities of grain into the stricken provinces. The government was ignorant of the famine until tax collectors reported that the peasants of the region had nothing with which to pay them. Petersburg thought that the collectors were to blame and the Emperor sent men into the interior to investigate. The grain buyers, however, knew of the situation. They quickly bought and exported reserve grain before an Imperial ukase forbidding the export of wheat, oats and rye was issued.
The central treasury, with its slow, cumbersome procedures was the main source of famine relief. For this reason, aid reached the afflicted areas tardily. Relief was also slowed even more because there was no system of distributing assistance; everything was done on a trial and error basis.
David P. Lilly The Russian Famine of 1891-92
LWD wrote:
During the WW2 that region was under German control - separated from the rest of Russia, so the surplus had to be enormous, most of the Russians were on the other (relatively "wheatless") side of the frontline.
??? Again leaping to conclusions. The quantity of land under German control doesn't necessarily equate to the food produced.
But the fact that land was called the breadbasket of Russia or even of the world does.

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Re: The "artificial" famine in the German-occupied USSR

#95

Post by David Thompson » 22 Jan 2014, 22:12

Two posts from Gorque and Paul Lantos, containing personal remarks about other posters, were removed by this moderator. Avoid the practice in future posts - DT.

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Gorque
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Re: The "artificial" famine in the German-occupied USSR

#96

Post by Gorque » 22 Jan 2014, 23:32

wm wrote:I think it should be add only the people in cities were to be starved. The food producing villages were not affected - at least then. Those allowances were for Ukrainian/Russian cities only.

Well that's major discussion changer. Time for some re-evaluation.:)

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Re: The "artificial" famine in the German-occupied USSR

#97

Post by wm » 23 Jan 2014, 00:23

Not quite. Peasants/farmers were simply entitled to nothing. They were supposedly generally able to feed themselves.
It would be hard to starve them - they were food producers after all, and the Third Reich needed food badly.
They were needed, but were nothing more but slaves anyway.

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Re: The "artificial" famine in the German-occupied USSR

#98

Post by Gorque » 23 Jan 2014, 01:27

I know its OT, but this is the opposite of what occurred in the early 30's. I take it then that the food requisitioning in '41 was nowhere near as drastic and the yield was improved.

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Re: The "artificial" famine in the German-occupied USSR

#99

Post by David Thompson » 23 Jan 2014, 03:53

Let's keep the discussion on this particular "artificial" famine. We have open threads on the earlier Ukrainian famine.

Sid Guttridge
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Re: The "artificial" famine in the German-occupied USSR

#100

Post by Sid Guttridge » 23 Jan 2014, 15:19

Hi Gorque,

I was not suggesting that you were claiming the Ukrainians were treated well.

My points were:

1) That the Nazis were indifferent to the fate of the Ukrainians because of their wider lebensraum aims.

2) That the Romanian examples show that there was other options open to the Germans that were more benign for the Ukrainians, but which the Nazis chose not to take.

Even if famine in the Ukraine was not a matter of proactive policy, it was also something the Nazis appear to have been indifferent to, at best. At the least they were guilty of a sin of omission through "malign neglect".

As regards the interim usefulness of the Ukrainians as labour, this essentially applied to agricultural labour. The educated urban population of the cities, where starvation was at its worst, were not part of that rural project.

Cheers,

Sid.

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Re: The "artificial" famine in the German-occupied USSR

#101

Post by Gorque » 23 Jan 2014, 17:43

Hi Sid:

My apologies on the misinterpretation. This time it was me that read deeper into to what was written. :oops:

A question for all: How much could the troubles that the Ostbahn was experiencing with the weather, track repair and regauging as well as with the German locomotives unsuitability to the Soviet climate have contributed to this problem?

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wm
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Re: The "artificial" famine in the German-occupied USSR

#102

Post by wm » 23 Jan 2014, 21:08

Sid Guttridge wrote:Even if famine in the Ukraine was not a matter of proactive policy,
It was proactive in Kiev at the end of 1941:
he [Hitler] never stopped hating the "Russian" cities and their inhabitants. (He does not appear to have entered any of them while he had the chance.) Under no circumstances should the Germans actually live in these cities, which he argued had been entirely emptied of things of cultural value by the Bolsheviks. Even living in barracks was preferable. During the initial advance, Hitler insisted that the large cities-Kiev, St Petersburg, Moscow-should be razed to the ground.
On 8 July 1941. Chief of General Staff Franz Halder recorded in his diary that Hitler wanted to flatten St Petersburg and Moscow with the air force, "to prevent from staying there people whom we will have to feed in the winter."
Halder reported that Hitler predicted a "national catastrophe, which will rob both Bolshevism and Muscovy [dus Moskowitettum] of its centers."
Hitler first ordered measures directed specifically against the city of Kiev one month later. On 12 August 1941, his Headquarters issued a "supplement to directive 34" (Ergünzzmg der Weinswig 34), signed by Chief of Army Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel. The attack on Kiev should be halted. for "it is proposed to destroy the city by incendiary bombs and gunfire as soon as the supply positions allows."
On 18 August Generaloberst Halder. the chief of the General Staff of Army Command, noted in his war diary, "'Reduce to rubble' ['in Schutt und Asche'--i.e., Hitler's words]: Half of the job must be done by the Air Force."
A
Apparently because of a lack of bombs for such a large operation, Kiev in actual fact was not bombed in a significant way. The German army eventually entered a virtually intact city on 19 September. Hitler was furious and later recalled his anger. On the evening of 8 August 1942 at "Werwolf," he insisted once again that Petersburg "must be razed to the ground," and then " I was so enraged back then when the Air Force did not want to let Kiev have it. Sooner or later we must do it after all, for the inhabitants are coming back and want to govern from there."
Because neither Kiev nor any other major city in the "east" was ever raze to the ground, a second option regarding the city dwellers-starvation-quickly gained prominence.
Ukrainian memoirs published in the West basically agree that beginning in October "the Gestapo," that is, members of Einsatzgruppe C, barred people at the city outskirts who did not live in Kiev from entering and confiscated food imports.
Kiev was a dead city. Besides Germans and policemen, one rarely met a passer-by in the Street. Those whom happened to see were all mainly disabled old men and women. Emaciated or swollen from hunger, they roam the streets, going from house to to house, searching for charity. Kiev has become a city of beggars...
Walking on Kirov Street, I saw w and dirty men, women, and children. They begged anyone getting closer to them for charity, but did not receive it. There also came across people who were lying and sitting; they were so emaciated that they were unable to move.
Today is Boxing Day. The Germans are celebrating. They all walk full and content, all have lights in Christmas trees. But all of us move about like shadows, there is total famine. People are buying food by the cup and boil a watery soup, which they eat without bread, because bread is given out only two times per week, 200 gram. And this diet is the best-case scenario. Those who have things exchange them in the countryside, but those who have nothing swell up from hunger, they are already dying. Many people have typhus.
By 1 April 1942, well after the first winter of famine, Kiev had officially 352,139 inhabitants (including a probably too low figure of 2.797 Germans). On 1 July 1943-over four months before the German departure and the arrival of the Red Amy-Kiev had officially 295,639 inhabitants. The drop from the estimated 600,000 of October 1941 to less than 300,000 cannot be exclusively ascribed to the famine, but it seems to have been the most significant cause.
The famine was clearly artificial. We know that peasants were very eager to visit the cities and barter with the proceeds of the rich harvest. But roadblocks, manned by native policemen, were installed which by mid- 1942 had the express purpose of confiscating "surplus" food. Although not a complete blockade, such cordoning off cost many lives.
Karel Berkhoff, Everyday Life in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine

Sid Guttridge
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Re: The "artificial" famine in the German-occupied USSR

#103

Post by Sid Guttridge » 31 Jan 2014, 14:12

Hi Gorque,

You ask: "How much could the troubles that the Ostbahn was experiencing with the weather, track repair and regauging as well as with the German locomotives unsuitability to the Soviet climate have contributed to this problem?"

They could have contributed to "this problem", had the political will been there to address the famine. However, it appears the will was lacking.

The Nazis had certain priorities related to winning the war and future lebensraum policy but the well being of the Ukrainians appears to have been low on these agendas, regardless of whether the Ostbahn had resolved its problems or not.

Cheers,

Sid.

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Re: The "artificial" famine in the German-occupied USSR

#104

Post by Marcus » 10 Jan 2015, 19:28

The attached is from the thesis "The German army and National Socialist occupation policies in the occupied areas of the Soviet Union 1941-1943" by Theo J Schulte.
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calories3.png (111.06 KiB) Viewed 511 times
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calories4.png (95.2 KiB) Viewed 511 times
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calories5.png (45.45 KiB) Viewed 511 times
/Marcus

michael mills
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Re: The "artificial" famine in the German-occupied USSR

#105

Post by michael mills » 16 Feb 2015, 03:25

Some interesting information on whether German extraction of food from occupied Soviet territory caused an "artificial famine" in that territory is provided in the book "Management of Agriculture and Food in the German-Occupied and Other Areas of Fortress Europe", by Karl Brandt, published by the Food Research Institute of Stanford University in 1953.

Karl Brandt was a German economist who left Germany in 1933, and returned in 1945 as economic adviser to the Military Government of the United States Zone of Occupation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Brandt_(economist)

The book contains a total of six chapters on German food and agricultural policies in occupied Soviet territories. The relevant passage is in Chapter 10, "Summary Food-Economic Account of the War Against Soviet Russia".

Page 147:
During the whole occupation period (mid-1941 to mid-1944) the Reich received 1.8 million tons of grain from the occupied Soviet terriotries for consumption in the Reich. This represented an annual average of 600,000 tons. In the light of the total annual grain crop in the Reich during the war years of 23 to 24 million tons, this supply was not of decisive importance in the rations in the Reich. But the main asset in the grain balance was the feeding of the German army and the German occupation personnel, the German-employed Russian civilians, and the army horses. This quantity amounted to at least 7.4 million tons (4,050,000 tons for the Wehrmacht, plus 3,341,000 tons for German civilian-administration agencies and German-employed indigenous people), or more than 2.4 million tons but probably up to 2.7 million tons a year. Thus, the annual grain supply for German purposes amounted to over 3 million tons or 14 percent of the German grain crop.

Perhaps the best measuring rod for the size of this delivery is the known shipment of grain from the area under Soviet rule. According to Lazar Volin, the Ukraine, the North Caucasus, and the Central agricultural regions shipped out in the years 1932-34 an annual average of more than 3 million tons of grain and flour; in the very good crop year of 1937 the Ukraine, Crimea, and North Caucasus regions shipped more than 5 million tons, part of which went, however, to White Russia and Smolensk.
The upshot is that the annual amount of grain extracted from the occupied Soviet territories was no greater than the annual amount exported in the period 1932-34, and considerably less than the amount exported in 1937.

Thus, the question is whether the extraction for German purposes from the occupied territories of an amount of grain equal to pre-war annual exports of grain from those same territories under Soviet rule would have been sufficient to cause a food-shortage of such a magnitude as to cause an "artificial famine" costing millions of lives.

The historical fact is that the first part of the period 1932-34, the years 1932-33, did in fact coincide with a huge famine in Ukraine and the North Caucasus that did cost millions of lives. However, there was no known famine during the second part of the period, the years 1933-34.

Various reasons are given for the 1932-33 famine, one being that the Soviet Government continued to export the same quantities of grain in a situation of food shortage caused by crop failures.

Thus, the answer to the question of whether German food extraction caused an "artificial famine" in the German-occupied Soviet territories would probably depend on the relationship between the amount of grain extracted and the size of the harvest during the years of occupation.

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