Had the harvest in Poland been as good in 1941 as it was in 1942, would there have still been a Holocaust in Poland?

[Futurist]

Had the harvest in Poland been as good in 1941 as it was in 1942, would there have still been a Holocaust in Poland? This is a question for everyone here but I'm especially interested in hearing what wm has to say about this topic.

I recently read a bit of Adam Tooze's Wages of Destruction and it really does look like the food situation for Germany and German-controlled territories was rather dire in 1941 and that tragically the Holocaust helped deal with this problem by eliminating several million additional mouths to feed. What also helped according to Tooze, of course, was that the 1942 harvest was much better than the 1941 harvest--as wm himself has previously posted out on this forum, I believe. In turn, this made me wonder if there would have still been a Holocaust in Poland--and especially on such a massive scale--had Poland's harvest in 1941 been comparable to what it was in 1942.

Any thoughts on this?

[Futurist]

You know, I'm surprised that the Holocaust made the difference between starvation vs. non-starvation in Nazi German-controlled territories considering that the number of Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust was six million whereas the total number of Europeans under either direct or indirect Nazi rule might have perhaps been in the range of 200-300 million. So, just 3-5% of the total population under Nazi rule were Holocaust victims--which doesn't look or sound like that much!

[wm]

Nobody says it made a difference, but, disregarding any moral considerations if your ship is in danger of sinking it's reasonable to preventively throw overboard the least valuable merchandise first.

That what they (preventively) did. The others were going to get it too, but the Germans ran out of time, resources, and sometimes actually it was unnecessary.

And anyway, 60 million Germans got the food the 6 million no longer needed. That was something.

[Futurist]

But why not simply have the Jews starve as opposed to outright murdering them? I mean, that was what was going to happen to the Poles if there wasn't enough food for everyone post-Holocaust, no?

[wm]

It was impossible to seal off the ghettos, it took way too many people and resources - and the Polish disease was everywhere and affected everybody anyway.

[Futurist]

Was it really necessary to seal off the ghettos for this to actually work, though? I mean, without the bumper crop harvest of 1942, a lot of Poles would have ended up starving in 1943 (according to Adam Tooze) even though Poles weren't trapped in ghettos.

[wm]

The Nazis couldn't afford such experiments, they had a problem to solve and they needed a sure solution right then.
They couldn't afford to sit and wait for a year for something to happen or not, they literally fought an existential war, they couldn't afford that.

[Futurist]

By that logic, though, shouldn't the Nazis have outright murdered a lot of Poles if the food situation would not have improved by the end of 1942?

[wm]

That would destabilize entire occupied Poland and stop food production they needed.

[Futurist]

So, the reason that the Nazis were able to get away with murdering Jews and not Poles is that the former would NOT have destabilized occupied Poland whereas the latter would have?

[wm]

Of course, the Jewish minority was small and disposable.
Tooze says at some point of time the Nazis realized they didn't need the Jews at all - the East Europeans (Ukrainians, Russians, Bielorussians) could replace them.

[Futurist]

What did the Nazis previously think that they needed the Jews for?

Also, if I could wave a magic wand and transfer all of the Jews under Nazi rule into Poles, Ukrainians, et cetera at the end of 1941, would this mean that the Nazis would then have them starve as opposed to outright murdering them?

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Guys,

If one looks at the following site, one will see that the so-called "Holocaust" really took off in August 1942, at exactly the point that the good 1942 harvest was coming in.

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau7292

There therefore seems to be no necessary correlation between food availability and the mass murder of Jews.

Indeed, it could be argued that the mass murder of Jews really took off despite an increased availability of food.

Cheers,

Sid.

[wm]

I admire your efforts, but just no.

The consensus among historians is that Hitler ordered the Holocaust in December 1941.
That work on methods of mass extermination started earlier.

And that earlier, he ordered the extermination of Soviet POWs (3 million), the so-called extermination/Holocaust by bullets (about 700,000), and the extermination of Polish elites (50,000 or more).

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi wm,

Nice try, but that doesn't alter what I posted;

"There therefore seems to be no necessary correlation between food availability and the mass murder of Jews.

Indeed, it could be argued that the mass murder of Jews really took off despite an increased availability of food."

The fact remains that the great majority of Jews were killed after the 1942 harvest eased the food situation. This decouples any necessary correlation.

Cheers,

Sid.