Total War and starvation

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TheMarcksPlan
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Total War and starvation

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Post by TheMarcksPlan » 21 May 2022, 06:15

Most readers will know that losing Ukraine was bad for Soviet food supply. Less appreciated (popularly) is how the demands of total war - on labor, chemicals (fertilizer), machine production, fuel, etc. - had perhaps as big an impact on Soviet food supply as did the territorial losses. I was interested to see if we can disentangle these effects analytically. In a rough we way can, and my analysis shows that Total War cost the SU about as much food supply as did territorial loss.

First let's look at Soviet agricultural output during the war. From Mark Harrison's Accounting for War:

Image

As you can see, grain production fell during 1942 to 31% of 1940 levels. Yet the best source indicates that the areas lost by November 1941 had produced "only" 38% of SU's prewar grain harvest. Fortress Dark and Stern, p.124, citing Sovetskii tyl v pervyi period Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny (Moscow: Nauka, 1988), p. 311. A loss of 38% percent of production implies 62% remaining, yet 1942's grain production was only 31% of 1940's.

Some of this disparity reflects agricultural loss to Fall Blau. How much? In another post I used League of Nations statistics to derive the distribution of sown Soviet land by region.

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The lands lost to Blau (roughly North Caucasus and "Lower Volga and Don") held no more than 12% of prewar cropland and ~15% of prewar grain production. Because SU had two harvests (Spring and Winter wheat), probably only half of the harvest was lost in lands temporarily taken during Blau. Note that because Blau didn't conquer all of the regions, 12% is an overestimate and 15% perhaps is as well (I can only estimate the productivity of those lands relative to SU land generally, but show in the linked thread that my estimates roughly cohere with Soviet statistics). Note also that SU recovered some land lost by November 1941 during the Winter Counteroffensive, so merely subtracting Blau's losses underestimates the amount of prewar grain production SU held during 1942.

The foregoing parameters imply that, during 1942, SU was missing lands that produced ~45% of its prewar grain harvest. That would imply ~55% remaining. The proportional delta between 55% (SU's remaining prewar grain-producing regions) and 31% (SU actual 1942 grain production) is negative 44 percent.

These figures are of course rough estimates but the headline stats suggest that Total War was reducing Soviet agricultural output by about as much (proportionally) as did the Ostheer's conquests. The Soviet Union was literally starving itself to hold back the fascist hordes.

This is reflected in the calorie consumption stats for the wartime SU, which show 1942 as a nadir for food supply. From Fortress Dark and Stern:

Image

Despite the significant recovery in 1943, Fortress's authors show in Hunger and War, a study of Soviet starvation mortality during WW2, that 1943 was actually the peak year for starvation-caused adult deaths. The caloric deficits accrued during 1942 put many Soviets on the brink of collapse; the moderate improvements in 1943 were insufficient to save many.
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