What size did Hitler want his Polish puppet state to be?

[wm]

The Poles were allocated food rations only marginally better than Jews. So it wasn't about the Jews, the food shortages were real.
And the "productive" Poles and Jews (workers, police, administration) were allocated survivable rations.

The food situation never eased sufficiently. As I said it only prevented famine in Poland. The German food rations weren't increased. Poland wasn't big enough to sustain German war efforts even in the best of times.

When did the bumper crops arrive in Germany, by the way?

They never really arrived, they prevented further reductions of German food rations.

[Futurist]

So, they did arrive but without them Germany would have faced an even more dire situation in 1942 than in 1941?

[wm]

Of course, but they would redirect the suffering to the occupied territories. They would be subjected to man-made famine.
According to Polish historians, it was actually planned for 1944 but rejected at the last moment.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi wm,

Only a few posts ago you had the rural Poles living better than Berliners.

Now you have Poles generally living barely better than the Jews in the closed ghettos!

(This might lead one to assume that the Jews in the ghettos may have been living as well as Berliners!)

The Jews were in closed ghettos without agricultural land and were already dying at increasingly differential rates in 1940.

By contrast, even urban Poles were not kept under such conditions.

And if "it wasn't about the Jews", why didn't they get the same rations as everyone else?

And if, as you say, famine was prevented in Poland, why was it that consistently through 1940 to 1942 Jewish deaths were rising in the ghettos?

By the way, you still haven't provided any source for your proposition that rural Poles were living better than Berliners?

Cheers,

Sid

[Futurist]

Of course, but they would redirect the suffering to the occupied territories. They would be subjected to man-made famine.
According to Polish historians, it was actually planned for 1944 but rejected at the last moment.

What was actually planned for 1944 and why was it rejected at the last moment?

[wm]

They planned to enforce all their existing laws especially that one forbidding selling food outside their distribution system.
Because their food rations were basically genocidal it would lead to famine in cities.

[wm]

Only a few posts ago you had the rural Poles living better than Berliners.

Now you have Poles generally living barely better than the Jews in the closed ghettos!

Obviously rural Poles was a different group from the others, especially townspeople. The former were food producers, the latter weren't.
I didn't write the Poles were living barely better than the Jews. I wrote both groups were allocated similar genocidal food quotas. Two different things.

And if "it wasn't about the Jews", why didn't they get the same rations as everyone else?

Because they were considered less valuable people, people got food according to their value to the Germans.

And if, as you say, famine was prevented in Poland, why was it that consistently through 1940 to 1942 Jewish deaths were rising in the ghettos?

Because they didn't have money to buy food.

By the way, you still haven't provided any source for your proposition that rural Poles were living better than Berliners?

Please you have no grasp o elementary stuff and still demand proof of a complex issue. It will be large scans of Polish text, you couldn't possibly benefit from it.
And anyway the issue is self-evident.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi wm,

No, you didn't write, "both groups were allocated similar genocidal food quotas". Please check.

In fact, in December 1941, it appears that Poles were allocated 654 calories, whereas Jews were allocated just 184. How is this "similar" or "marginally better".

Certainly neither were ultimately survivable on, but it is clear that Poles would last much longer than the Jews. Besides, even urban Poles were potentially able to supplement their rations, whereas the Jews in the sealed ghettos had far less chance to do so (see below).

If the food allocations were purely based on their value to the Germans, then why was there any racial differentiation? Were useless Poles somehow more valuable than useless Jews? Uselessness is uselessness, surely?

And why didn't the Jews have money to buy food? They were, after all, resented for their education and relative communal wealth. They ought to have had more money for it than the Poles.

Remember, there was no physical barrier between rural and urban Poles, but there was between the Jewish ghettos and all Poles. Not only were Jewish rations less, but the fact of ghettoisation made it far more difficult for Jews to supplement their already lower rations than it was for urban Poles, let alone rural Poles

So, you are still being evasive about providing any evidence that rural Poles were eating better than Berliners, even after being asked five times for some sort of sourcing. (And remember, I find it plausible and am not inherently hostile to the proposition. I just want some evidence. It is your resistance to giving any sourcing that is beginning to sow seeds of doubt.)

You do realize that (1) we are meant to give sourcing on AHF and (2) the longer you delay in doing so, the more it discredits everything else you claim?

Cheers,

Sid

[wm]

654 and 184 are similar in their genocidal effects, in both cases, death is certain after a few months.

Yes, the Poles were more valuable and more desirable. According to Nazi ideology, the Jews were destructive people who inevitably disrupted political and economic order.

The Jewish poor didn't have money (probably about 20 percent of all Jews) and they were mostly dying in the ghettos.

The prices of food in the ghettos weren't much different than outside with the exception of Litzmannstadt Ghetto and partially the Warsaw Ghetto.
Even in the Warsaw Ghetto, they weren't that hight to make a substantial difference.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi wm,

Even on your own evidence, you are painting a picture of Poles being allocated over three and a half times as much food as Jews and food prices being higher in two main ghettos.

This is nothing like "similar" or "marginally better".

And this is without the fact that Jews were walled off without agricultural land and so had far less access to supplementary or black market food.

Certainly Polish rations were a third less than allocated to Ukrainians, let alone Germans, so there was undoubtedly a racial hierarchy of misery, but to contend that Poles were in almost the same situation as the Jews is unsustainable.

Cheers,

Sid.

[wm]

As I said there was no difference between 654 and 184 (the League of Nations mandated 2400 per non-working person).
Death was guaranteeing after a few months, 100 percent.
It's a difference between drowning in warm or cold water - no practical difference whatsoever.

Poles in cities and towns lived without agricultural land too. And they walled from the countryside by invisible walls also, i.e., by Nazi laws preventing any food trade except through their own distribution system.
Any infringement was punished by up to the death penalty.

In the Warsaw Ghetto (the best guarded of them all) food was readily available (including luxury items: cakes, caviar, champagne) - to people with money.

I wrote "The Poles were allocated food rations only marginally better than Jews [i.e., genocidal in both cases]"
not " that Poles were in almost the same situation as the Jews," you are misrepresenting my words.

btw correct numbers are 531 vs 198 (during a single, unrepresentative month), it was 609/503 at the beginning of 1940, 611/237 at the beginning of 1941.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi wm,

You are simply digging yourself in deeper.

It would appear from your statistics that while the Polish ration was rising (609-611-654), Jewish rations were falling (503-237-198). The Poles may have been only marginally better off at the beginning of 1940, but by the end of1941 the difference had grown greatly.

It is a sign of desperation for you to cite a tiny handful of Jews with access to caviar and champagne. They were completely unrepresentative.

The Poles not only had demonstrably larger rations than the Jews but they often had access to extra sources of food that the Jews did not.

Urban Poles were not living well, but their situation was nowhere near as bad as that of the Jews. And, according to you, rural Poles had more food than Berliners.

Any source on the Berlin/rural Pole matter yet? I have asked seven times now.

Cheers,

Sid

[wm]

As I wrote death was certain in both cases.

Please explain why you think it's better to die on 609 calories than on 237.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi wm,

I know which I would prefer!

If death was certain, why are there still any Poles?

Do we have any statistics on Polish deaths from hunger under the Germans in WWII?

To answer my own question, I Googled "WWII Casualties of Poland" on Wikipedia.

It does not mention starvation as a direct cause of death, probably because (1) the Germans "only" took 27% of Polish food production and (2) 80% of food was acquired on the black market.

However, it does mention a rise in deaths from other causes brought on by malnutrition, which particularly affected urban Poles. However, urban Poles made up only a third of the Polish population.

However bad it may have been for the one third who were urban Poles, it was much worse for the Jews, who were all enclosed in urban ghettos, on far lower rations, with less acess to black market food, and without access to agricultural land of their own.

Cheers,

Sid.

[wm]

The point was the Germans didn't have enough food for everybody, this is why they resorted to genocide early (by planning the starvation of tens of millions of Russians in 1940).
This is why from the beginning Polish and Jewish food rations vastly insufficient to survive more than a few months.
That there was no deadly famine (although severe malnutrition was massive) in Poland has nothing to do with anything.

The point is the German didn't have enough food for everybody and this is why they resorted to genocide early.