Reasons germany lost the war

[ML59]

Churchill did not create artificially the famine in Bangladesh but he was, nevertheless, responsible for greatly accruing its deadly effect. He vetoed "for military reasons" the use of the British merchant fleet to move food from India, where it was amply available, to the region hit by the famine. In total more than 3 millions people died due to the vey bad mismanagement of the crisis by the British colonial authorities; it was a major disaster that could be avoided or greatly lessened by a better use of the resources that were available!

[ML59]

No such figure was ever mentioned in that planning document written by Herbert Backe.

What Backe said was that if Germany extracted from the food-surplus regions of the Soviet Union all the food it needed to feed the population of Europe, "zig-Millionen" (= tens of millions) of inhabitants of the food-deficit regions would starve, if they did not move to Siberia (which was in fact a food-surplus region).

No categories of persons to be allowed to starve was mentioned.

This is a translation of the original document, is it correct?

Many tens of millions of people in this country will become superfluous and will die or must emigrate to Siberia. Attempts to rescue the population there from death through starvation by obtaining surpluses from the black earth zone […] prevent the possibility of Germany holding out till the end of the war

It's also curious your statement about Siberia as a "surplus" region; you implicitly seem to state that Siberia was a kind of heaven that could welcome 30 millions of displaced persons without any problem for food, houses, infrastructures, transports and the like. I wonder why the czarist or soviet authorities never thought about this heaven on earth to resolve all the problems of greater Russia!

[grassi]

I wonder why the czarist or soviet authorities never thought about this heaven on earth to resolve all the problems of greater Russia!

Hi,

I do not know whether Siberia was able to feed 30 mio or not.
But Siberia was not only considered as area for colonisation, it was indeed an important destination area for farmers:
Even before Pjotr Stolypin millions moved freely to Siberia.
Western Siberia has something like a black earth zone (but lacks water).
Migration was increased by the Trans-Siberian Railroad.
Every male colonist recieved 15 Desjatins of state land, in addition to that every colonist family recieved 165 roubles as a loan by the state:
Before 1914 many Germans settled in the Kulunda Steppe and near Omsk.
Even during the 1920ies Siberia exported butter with the help of a Danish company to Western Europe.

Best regards


grassi

[Paul Lakowski]

Churchill did not create artificially the famine in Bangladesh but he was, nevertheless, responsible for greatly accruing its deadly effect. He vetoed "for military reasons" the use of the British merchant fleet to move food from India, where it was amply available, to the region hit by the famine. In total more than 3 millions people died due to the vey bad mismanagement of the crisis by the British colonial authorities; it was a major disaster that could be avoided or greatly lessened by a better use of the resources that were available!

Agreed it is always too easy for history to brush such incidents under the carpet and at the same time point a finger at other side. Sometimes I wonder if blaming the other side distracts - from getting blamed yourself.

[Paul Lakowski]

"Churchill's Secret War " is a lot of nonsense : there was a famine in Bengalen (not for the first time) but there was nothing Winston could do to prevent this famine, neither could he alleviate the sufferings of the population :we are talking about more than 40 million people ,about 1943,about wartime .

Britain could do nothing about the Irish Famine, Stalin could do nothing about the 1932 famine, the Negus could do nothing about the famine in Ethiopia in 1973,since WWII millions have died from starvation,and there was nothing we could do .

Nature is stronger than mankind.

Besides, I would not give the BBC much credit,or even any credit,given its anti-western attitude .

I work with many Indi people who violently disagree with this point of view and see it as ignorant and racist. What they ask is .....'Imagine if it were 3 million Canadians starving to death'[?

[ljadw]

there is no difference .

First it has been claimed that Churchill deliberatly created a famine : why should he do this ?

Than it has been claimed that he could prevent the famine : I like to see the proofs for this as 40 million people were suffering from a famine and 3 million died from it

Than it has been claimed that he could alleviate the sufferings : instead of 3 million deaths only 1 million ?

At the end of the civil war there was a big famine in the SU,and,although there was help coming from the US,millions died from hunger,and,it is not proved that the help saved even one live .

The problem is that a lot of people do not understand that it was impossible to prevent the famine,that it was impossible to even alleviate the sufferings :as always,when there is a natural catastrophe (= caused by nature) people refuse to accept this and prefer to blame other people for it .The Jews were blamed for the plague,Louis XVI for the failed harvest of 1789, Metternich for the failed harvest of 1848, etc .

It is easier to blame other people than to blame nature and it is easier to parade draped in the costume of the victil of colonialism that to accept reality which is that nature is always stronger than mankind .

Famines are caused by natural causes.

[ML59]

The Bengali famine was not a "natural event", like you're insisting to claim, but it was a result of economic factors and poorly handled logistic matters; in short, it was originated by human actions and decisions.

[ljadw]

I disagree

[Paul Lakowski]

I disagree

Your still the man with only one watch!!!

[michael mills]

This is a translation of the original document, is it correct?

Have you read the whole document? The part you have quoted is just a small part of it, drawn from the preamble.

The main part of the document is a survey of the Soviet food economy, the amounts and types of food produced in each agricultural area, and the amounts available for meeting the needs of Germany and the part of Europe controlled by it.

In the preamble, Herbert Backe, the Reich Food Minister and the author of the document, presented his theory of the structure of the Soviet food economy, and a strategy whereby Germany could extract food for its own needs from that economy.

Essentially, his theory was that the European part of the Soviet Union, which Germany intended to occupy and exploit, consisted of two differentiated agricultural zones, a food surplus zone in the south, consisting of Ukraine, the Don region and the North Caucasus, and a food deficit zone in the north and centre, comprising Belarus and a large part of Russia proper. The surplus produced by the south flowed northward, covering the shortfall in food production on the food-deficit zone.

Backe claimed that before the First World War, the Russian Empire had been a major exporter of food to the rest of Europe, the exports being derived from the southern food-surplus zone. He further claimed that the Soviet Union had ceased to be a major food exporter due to large population growth in the food-deficit zone, which had resulted in the entire surplus produced in the south now being absorbed by the food-deficit zone. He calculated the size of that population growth since the First World War at 30 million, which figure is apparently the source of the claim that the German occupiers planned to starve 30 million inhabitants of the Soviet Union to death.

Backe's proposed strategy for securing the food surplus produced in the south for Germany was to seal the border between the food-surplus and food-deficit zones, with the result that the flow of food from the former to the latter would be cut off, and could be diverted to Germany instead. He predicted that the cutting off of the flow of food to the food-deficit area would result in a huge food shortage there, causing a massive famine and millions of deaths from starvation, unless a large part of the population could emigrate to Siberia, which was a food-surplus area that the Germans did not plan to occupy.

No doubt Backe's prediction of millions of deaths from a massive famine was based on his own personal experience of the famines that raged during the Russian Civil War, when he was still living there (he had been born in Georgia and had spent the First World War in internment). Those famines had been a result of the fact that the food-surplus areas, Ukraine, the Don, the North Caucasus, Siberia, had all been controlled by anti-Bolshevik forces, whereas the area under Bolshevik control had consisted largely of the food-deficit zone; the fighting between the two sides had halted the flow of food to the Bolshevik-controlled food-deficit zone, causing massive food shortages and famine there.

However, there was a flaw in Backe's theory, namely that he assumed that the whole of the surplus produced in the food-surplus area was absorbed by the food-deficit zone, leaving none available for export. In fact, in the late 1930s, a large part of the food produced in the food-surplus areas was exported, in amounts equal to what Germany planned to extract from the Soviet food economy. Thus, even if Germany had succeeded in extracting all the food it planned to (which it did not), it would not have resulted in the famine that Backe predicted.

The historical fact is that the massive famine predicted by Backe did not occur in the Soviet territories occupied by German forces. Where famine did occur was in the non-occupied part of the Soviet Union, eg in Central Asia and the Ural Industrial Zone, because those regions were now cut off from the food-surplus areas under German occupation, in addition to which the population of the non-occupied regions had been considerably increased by the mass evacuation of large parts of the urban population from the region now under German occupation.

The fact that in April 1942, Erhard Wetzel , in his critique of the first draft of the Generalplan-Ost produced by the RSHA in late 1941, predicted a considerable growth in the native population of the German-occupied areas reflects the realisation that Backe's prediction of a massive famine had been wrong.

[michael mills]

Further to my last message, if anyone wants to read an English-translation of Backe's document, it can be found in this book:


"Germany's Agricultural and Food Policies in World War II: v.2 Management of Agriculture and Food in the German-Occupied and Other Areas of Fortress Europe : A Study in Military Government", by K. Brandt and others, published by Stanford University Press, 1953

[ljadw]

I disagree

Your still the man with only one watch!!!

I am not a Soviet soldier in Hungary .

[ML59]

I disagree

You have the full right to do so, but let me explain the story for what I've learned. There is no unanimous agreement about the reason of the famine but the commonly accepted version is that the crisis was generated not by a real scarcity of rice (by far the main item of the local diet) but by speculation originated by forecast issued by central government about a bad crop (that actually happened) that originated a huge spiral inflation of prices. In this way, millions of bengalis of the lower working classes, especially artisans and manual workers that did not possess any field to cultivate, were simply cut-off from the market being unable to buy enough food to sustain themselves and their families. Additional problems were created by the British military authorities that requisitioned all transportation means like barges, boats, carts, oxens and even elephants for fear of a Japanese invasion, coupled with the refusal of Mr Churchill to release merchant ships to move rice from India to Calcutta and the inability of the colonial authorities to control the rice price inflation (actually, small quantities of rice were put on the market by the Indian government but not enough to achieve any effect on the price).
Food was available for anybody able to pay for it, not for the whom that didn't have enough money; the result was what we know, a major man-created disaster.

[ljadw]

60 million people were suffering from the famine ,from what I have read,there was a shortage of food caused by a bad harvest .

It was also impossible to send enough food in a few weeks to supply 60 million people for a long period (til the next harvest) .

[ljadw]

After reading "The causes of famine" "A refutation of Professor Sen's theory" by Peter Bowbrick,my conclusion is that he is right,and Sen wrong : one can not blame Britain for the starvation and the 3 million dead.

Some facts


1) Even in "normal years" Bengal could not feed its population and had to import food from Birma :some 20 % of the consumption (Birma being lost,this resulted in a los of 20 %)

2) The other 80 % were for 75 winter crop,due to a cyclone ,30 % of the winter crop was lost = 3% of 75 % of 80 = 18 %

3) Thus in 1943 there was a shortage of 38 % for the consumption and this resulted in 1.5 dead by starvation and 1.5 million by sickness

4) How many food was needed? 1 ton could feed between 5.75 and 8.2 people for a year;the shortage amounted to 1.25/2.5 million ton of rice . It was impossible to send this food in a short period .

5) What did Britain ? A lot : 575000 ton of food was sent to Bengalen from other parts in India and from overseas : the claim that Britain refused to send food is nonsense .

6) Those who attack Britain because 3 million died ,must also praise Britain because 57 million survived .

It was almost a miracle that 95 % of the population of Bengal survived and without the intervention by Britain more,much more would have perished .