Yes. Instead of outright acquisitions, the German occupiers had issued themselves with what effectively amounted to an unlimited credit for purchasing French goods. That amounts to the same thing; you're adding a voluntary element to the German occupation of France which wasn't there.michael mills wrote:The use of the term "transfers" conveys an impression of seizures or forced deliveries, which did not occur. A more accurate term would be "exports" which were paid for......and of course the amount of available food was affected by transfers to Germany.
As for the cost/benefit balance when assessing the German occupation of France, this post by David Thompson is very instructive http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=62936
I posted an excerpt of the IMT indictment upthread. I don't mind posting it again for your benefit:The occupation costs paid by France, and the artificially low exchange rate imposed by Germany (artificially low by comparison with the pre-war values of the Reichsmark and the franc expressed in dollars) did give German importers enormous purchasing power in France, more than they otherwise would have had. But the point I was making that food acquired by Germans in France, including purchases on the black market, was paid for, which was a decisive consideration for French food producers...
...Removal of Agricultural Produce.
Total: 126,655,852,000 francs, i. e., for the principal products.
Wheat 2,947,337 tons
Oats 2,354,080 tons
Milk 790,000 hectolitres
Milk (concentrated and in powder) 460,000 "
Butter 76,000 tons
Cheese 49,000 "
Potatoes 725,975 "
Various vegetables 575,000 "
Wine 7,647,000 hectoliteres
Champagne 87,000,000 bottles
Beer 3,821,520 hectolitres
Various kinds of alcohol 1,830,000 "...From this website
Obviously, payment for goods was not an issue for the German occupiers, who had practically unlimited credit and the mentioned highly favourable exchange rate to boot.michael mills wrote:From the point of view of a French peasant, it did not matter whether the agricultural produce purchased from him was shipped to Germany to be consumed by Germans or remained in France to be consumed by his fellow countrymen. What mattered to him was whether his produce was paid for at market prices, and not simply seized or compulsorily acquired at a fixed low price. Thus, for French food producers, the time of the German occupation was still a "happy time" in many ways. If there was a flow of food from France to Germany, it was because French producers were willing to sell it to German purchasers for hard cash, not because the German occupiers forced the producers to hand it over.
That, and also the fact that metropolitan France was cut off from oil imports (French fuel stocks were taken as war booty), imports of farming machinery and spares for farming machinery were curtailed, imports of fertilizers were cut off, horses and motor vehicles (which were also requisitioned as war booty) were in short supply and, above all, the crippling shortage of labour, particularly in the non-occupied zone.A reduction in the total amount of food available in wartime France was more probably due on the one hand to a fall in the productivity of French agriculture, which was had a very inefficient structure consisting mainly of small peasant farms, and on the other to the Allied blockade which restricted imports, particularly after the invasion of French North Africa.
Either you're taking the comparison too far, or you are building a straw man. My original point was simply to falsify ThomasG's erroneous claim that the armistice contained no punitive measures.As for the difference between an armistice and a peace treaty, it was Jon G who initially ignored that difference by claiming that the provisions of the Franco-German armistice of 1940 were based on those of the Versailles Treaty of 1919. Any comparison of the two sets of provisions show that the armistice was not as punitive as the Versailles Treaty.
