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

Discussions on all aspects of Poland during the Second Polish Republic and the Second World War. Hosted by Piotr Kapuscinski.
Post Reply
User avatar
wm
Member
Posts: 8753
Joined: 29 Dec 2006, 21:11
Location: Poland

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

#76

Post by wm » 18 Jan 2020, 11:15

Their death was pre-planned, even before Barbarossa started. People who were going to die didn't need shelter.

The fact is before even anybody thought about the Holocaust the plan to kill tens of millions of Russians was accepted and (partially) implemented.
By December 1940 the entire military and political leadership of the Third Reich was convinced that this was the last year in which they could approach the food question with any confidence. Nor was this simply a German problem.
All of the Western European territories which had fallen under German domination in 1940 had substantial net grain deficits. Unless additional sources of feed grain could be secured, the only solution was a mass slaughter of Europe's animal herds reminiscent of the famous 'pig massacre' of 1916.
On 2 May 1941 the State Secretaries representing all the major Ministerial agencies met in conference with General Thomas to draft plans for the occupation. The result is one of the most extraordinary bureaucratic records in the history of the Nazi regime.
In far more unvarnished language than was ever used in relation to the Jewish question, all of the major agencies of the German state agreed to a programme of mass murder, which dwarfed that which Heydrich was to propose to the Wannsee meeting nine months later.
According to General Thomas's secretariat the meeting concluded as follows:
1.) The war can only be continued, if the entire Wehrmacht is fed from Russia in the third year of the war.
2.) If we take what we need out of the country, there can be no doubt that many millions of people will die of starvation.
3.) The most important issues are the recovery and removal of oil seeds, oil cake and only then the removal of grain.
...
In November, Goering boasted to Count Ciano, the Italian Foreign Minister, that the starvation of 20 - 30 million Soviet citizens was an essential element of Germany's occupation policy.

... the guidelines issued by the OKW for the management of agriculture in the occupied Eastern territories — the so-called 'Green Book' — called for all of the industrial and urban centres of western Russia, including the wooded region between Moscow and Leningrad, to be cut off from their food sources.
As a result, the German occupation authorities were instructed to prepare themselves for a human catastrophe on an unprecedented scale. 'Many tens of millions of people in this area will become surplus to requirements and will die or will be forced to emigrate to Siberia.'

In case the occupying authorities should be moved to alleviate the situation, the guidelines reaffirmed the essential connection between mass starvation and the continuation of the German war effort:
Efforts to save the population from death by starvation by drawing on the surplus of the black earth regions can only be at the expense of the food supply to Europe. They diminish the staying power of Germany in the war and the resistance of Germany and Europe to the blockade. There must be absolute clarity about this... A claim by the [local] population on the German administration... is rejected right from the start.

The Wages of Destruction

btw
Yad Vashem is a private entity that doesn't follow the historical method in their research and is seriously biased on the side of Israeli nationism. In my opinion, their leadership is of questionable quality (Tommy Lapid - firebrand right-wing nationalist) bordering on ignorance (Yisrael Meir Lau.)

Sid Guttridge
Member
Posts: 10158
Joined: 12 Jun 2008, 12:19

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

#77

Post by Sid Guttridge » 18 Jan 2020, 14:45

Hi wm,

By April 1942, when further rationing was introduced in Germany, the several million Soviet POWs were already dead! Even then it was another two years before the food situation inside Germany became critical.

I should also point out that you are now arguing that it was a matter of pre-invasion policy that millions of Soviet citizens should be starved to death - not a matter of unavoidable necessity brought about by immediate circumstances in the winter of 1941-42.

However one looks at it, the responsibility for the deaths of Soviet POWs taken by the Wehrmacht lies totally at Germany's door.

Cheers,

Sid.


User avatar
wm
Member
Posts: 8753
Joined: 29 Dec 2006, 21:11
Location: Poland

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

#78

Post by wm » 18 Jan 2020, 18:59

Further rationing was introduced in April 1942, earlier the Wehrmacht rations were reduced, and food allocations in the occupied territories.

That Germany survived the "lean" period in 1941 isn't any proof the lean period didn't exist.

It's a proof that the Germans identified the impeding catastrophe early (by December 1940 the entire military and political leadership of the Third Reich was convinced) and avoided it thanks to, among others, the so-called Hunger Plan described above.

Additional rationing for the German population was introduced last because of the regime's mortal fear of damaging morale.

The food situation inside Germany became critical two times, in 1941 and in 1945.

User avatar
Steve
Member
Posts: 982
Joined: 03 Aug 2002, 02:58
Location: United Kingdom

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

#79

Post by Steve » 19 Jan 2020, 21:36

“Their death was pre-planned, even before Barbarossa started. People who were going to die didn't need shelter.”

We seem to be getting somewhere with this explanation from wm as to why the Soviet prisoners of war were not given any food and shelter. It was not about a lack of food and shelter but pre-planned murder.

It would also seem that wm has dropped his original reason for the killing the Jews which was that they were a source from which resistance could come. The quotation he gives from “The Wages of Destruction” makes it clear the mass murder of a large part of the population of the USSR was agreed to from at least 2 May 1941. There is no mention here of any special reason for targeting the Jews though of course they were targeted.

It is a refreshing change to see someone apparently change their views after a robust discussion.

The following is from the British Ministry of Economic Warfare dated 7 August 1940 prepared for the War Cabinet on the German food situation. “If the Germans distribute reserve, plus this year’s harvest, equitably among the populations under their control, there will be, even if the harvests are very light, enough grain and potatoes to sustain life, with a margin of calories in hand until the harvest of 1941 is gathered”. Of course the Germans had no intention of distributing the 1940 European harvest equitably so I find it hard to believe that the they were suffering any great hardships in the 1940/41 period.

https://haydncorper.com/index.php/germa ... g-the-war/

Futurist
Member
Posts: 3642
Joined: 24 Dec 2015, 01:02
Location: SoCal

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

#80

Post by Futurist » 20 Jan 2020, 07:28

wm wrote:
12 Jan 2020, 10:46
That's true.
But the French people probably disagreed with that and didn't give a damn about future permanent threats.

They had endured a multi-year meatgrinder already - barely, with numerous mutinies of their army.
They had no stomach for another one.
BTW, wm, your post here appears to contradict your post in another thread:

viewtopic.php?f=111&t=245514
wm wrote:
16 Nov 2019, 23:17
Post-1945 Poland was actually 25 percent smaller than the pre-war one.
In 1941 the Soviets occupied 51,6% of Polish territory and obviously they weren't going to return even an inch of it.

Considering the enormous sunk costs of armaments it would be highly unreasonable for the Allies to accept any peace deal less than unconditional surrender and accompanying full reparations.

What would have happened is anybody's guess but certainly Poland would received less than in reality and would be a shadow of pre-war herself.

User avatar
wm
Member
Posts: 8753
Joined: 29 Dec 2006, 21:11
Location: Poland

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

#81

Post by wm » 22 Jan 2020, 23:30

The first one is about the population and its unwillingness to accept a long war ("stalemate in the battle of France could have ended in negotiations" so " Germany couldn't afford to stain its reputation with genocide.").

The second "had France not fallen in 1940" was about a relatively short war (I don't quite believe a stalemate was possible), and the fact such a war needed to end in unconditional surrender to be worthwhile.

User avatar
wm
Member
Posts: 8753
Joined: 29 Dec 2006, 21:11
Location: Poland

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

#82

Post by wm » 22 Jan 2020, 23:52

Steve wrote:
19 Jan 2020, 21:36
We seem to be getting somewhere with this explanation from wm as to why the Soviet prisoners of war were not given any food and shelter. It was not about a lack of food and shelter but pre-planned murder.
It was about the much earlier predicted serious lack of food that required pre-planned murder.

Steve wrote:
19 Jan 2020, 21:36
It would also seem that wm has dropped his original reason for the killing the Jews which was that they were a source from which resistance could come. The quotation he gives from “The Wages of Destruction” makes it clear the mass murder of a large part of the population of the USSR was agreed to from at least 2 May 1941. There is no mention here of any special reason for targeting the Jews though of course they were targeted.
The killings and the Hunger Plan were required by the Barbarossa operation, the Nazis believed the operation wasn't possible without them.
The killings (and the Plan) were so successful they led to the Holocaust, "it was so easy - let's do some more."
It was two distinct operations - for similar, but not quite reasons.

Steve wrote:
19 Jan 2020, 21:36
The following is from the British Ministry of Economic Warfare dated 7 August 1940 prepared for the War Cabinet on the German food situation.
The rapport was based on ignorance.

"among the populations" but what about livestock.

"Unless additional sources of feed grain could be secured, the only solution was a mass slaughter of Europe's animal herd"

User avatar
Steve
Member
Posts: 982
Joined: 03 Aug 2002, 02:58
Location: United Kingdom

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

#83

Post by Steve » 24 Jan 2020, 06:42

The British report on German food supplies was not based on ignorance. The British would have had the figures for pre war food production in Europe. They could make an estimate of how much food assuming a normal harvest would be available to Germany. The neutral countries including the USA had embassies in Berlin and could tell them what was happening inside Germany in relation to food rationing.

I would not dispute that the Germans were on short rations at the end of 1940 but they were nowhere near starvation. The problem was largely solved when Germany concluded an agreement with the USSR to import 2.5 million tons of grain starting from the summer of 1941 and concluding by May 1942.

On Nov. 29 wm posted on this topic “The German invasion of the USSR was forced by the failure of the war with Britain”, and he is right.

Hitler may have dreamed of a German Empire in the east with a Slav population as serfs but this is not the reason he gave for launching Barbarossa. Reducing the Slav population by 30 millions which Himmler said in January 1941 would have to be done was also not the reason he gave. Hitler did want the natural resources of the USSR but he was getting them due to his agreement with Stalin and also receiving raw materials from Japan along the Trans Siberian railway. If the talks with Molotov in November 1940 had been a success there may not have been an invasion.

Hitler gave his reasons for attacking the Soviet Union to various people. On March 30 1941 he talked to over 200 senior officers in the Reich Chancellery. England’s hopes had been placed in the United States and Russia. The Russian problem had to be settled without delay. This was the key to accomplishing Germanys other tasks. Manpower and material would then be at her disposal. It was a clash of two ideologies. Communism is an enormous danger for our future. An entry in Goebbels diary on June 16 1941 gives a summary of Hitler’s reasons. We have to act Moscow wants to keep out of the war till Europe is exhausted and sucked of her life blood. The German action would put a stop to this. The defeat of Russia would free some 150 divisions and massive resources for the conflict with Britain. The thrust of the campaign is clear Bolshevism must fall and England will have its last conceivable weapon knocked out of her hand. Hitler wrote to Mussolini on June 21. Time was not on Germany’s side. The Soviet Union would be stronger in a year’s time, England – pinning its hopes on the USSR – would be even less ready for peace and by then the mass delivery of material from the USA would be coming available.

Hitler though that England would not conclude peace because it was resting its hopes on the USSR and the USA. Eventually he would be faced with England and the USA in the west with Stalin behind him. Eliminate the USSR and England may conclude peace but if not he would have the resources of the USSR and could concentrate all his forces in the west. This was the main reason for the invasion, securing food supplies, raw materials, destroying communism, wiping out the Jewish population in the east, a German Empire in the east these were all fringe benefits.

Source used is Hitler 1936 – 1945 Nemesis by Ian Kershaw.

Futurist
Member
Posts: 3642
Joined: 24 Dec 2015, 01:02
Location: SoCal

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

#84

Post by Futurist » 24 Jan 2020, 06:55

Very interesting! Anyway, what about if Britain would have made peace in 1940? Would Hitler have still invaded the Soviet Union, except this time for reasons other than the ones that were given in real life?

User avatar
wm
Member
Posts: 8753
Joined: 29 Dec 2006, 21:11
Location: Poland

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

#85

Post by wm » 24 Jan 2020, 11:14

The plans:
Moscow, 1940
AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE STATES OF THE THREE POWER PACT, GERMANY, ITALY, AND JAPAN, ON THE ONE SIDE, AND THE SOVIET UNION ON THE OTHER SIDE

The Governments of the states of the Three Power Pact, Germany, Italy and Japan, on the one side, the Government of the U. S. S. R. on the other side, motivated by the desire to establish in their natural spheres of influence in Europe, Asia, and Africa a new order serving the welfare of all peoples concerned and to create a firm and enduring foundation for their common labors toward this goal, have agreed upon the following:
...
SECRET PROTOCOL No. 1
Upon the signing today of the Agreement concluded among them, the Representatives of Germany, Italy, Japan and the Soviet Union declare as follows:
1) Germany declares that, apart from the territorial revisions in Europe to be carried out at the conclusion of peace, her territorial aspirations center in the territories of Central Africa.
2) Italy declares that, apart from the territorial revisions in Europe to be carried out at the conclusion of peace, her territorial aspirations center in the territories of Northern and Northeastern Africa.
3) Japan declares that her territorial aspirations center in the area of Eastern Asia to the south of the Island Empire of Japan.
4) The Soviet Union declares that its territorial aspirations center south of the national territory of the Soviet Union in the direction of the Indian Ocean.
The Four Powers declare that, reserving the settlement of specific questions, they will mutually respect these territorial aspirations and will not oppose their achievement.

User avatar
wm
Member
Posts: 8753
Joined: 29 Dec 2006, 21:11
Location: Poland

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

#86

Post by wm » 24 Jan 2020, 11:34

Steve wrote:
24 Jan 2020, 06:42
The British report on German food supplies was not based on ignorance. The British would have had the figures for pre war food production in Europe. They could make an estimate of how much food assuming a normal harvest would be available to Germany. The neutral countries including the USA had embassies in Berlin and could tell them what was happening inside Germany in relation to food rationing.
The fact they forgot to include in their estimations animals that consumed a large part of the grain proves otherwise.
They didn't know it was a normal harvest or an abnormal one.
The didn't know that Germans were going to invade Russia and needed for that millions and millions of grain they didn't have.


Steve wrote:
24 Jan 2020, 06:42
I would not dispute that the Germans were on short rations at the end of 1940 but they were nowhere near starvation. The problem was largely solved when Germany concluded an agreement with the USSR to import 2.5 million tons of grain starting from the summer of 1941 and concluding by May 1942.
Assuming 300 million people lived under Germany's rule it's 20 gram per day = 65 calories. It was nothing.


Steve wrote:
24 Jan 2020, 06:42
Hitler did want the natural resources of the USSR but he was getting them due to his agreement with Stalin and also receiving raw materials from Japan along the Trans Siberian railway. If the talks with Molotov in November 1940 had been a success there may not have been an invasion.
He was getting them and had to pay for them, with money he didn't have.

Steve wrote:
24 Jan 2020, 06:42
Hitler gave his reasons for attacking the Soviet Union to various people. On March 30 1941 he talked to over 200 senior officers in the Reich Chancellery.
It would be hardly appropriate to admit Germany was in a desperate situation, that the only option available was a round of Russian roulette.
They might have asked: who was responsible for that.

User avatar
Steve
Member
Posts: 982
Joined: 03 Aug 2002, 02:58
Location: United Kingdom

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

#87

Post by Steve » 25 Jan 2020, 02:38

I am curious to know wm how you know that the English forgot to include an estimate of animal grain consumption in their 1940 estimate. I only quoted (source available) the conclusion of a memorandum which is all that is published in my source. The memorandum is dated August 9 and by then (barring unforeseen weather) you should have a good idea of the harvest size. Last year the German agriculture ministry on August 29 issued precise estimates for the 2019 harvest.
https://www.reuters.com/article/grains- ... SL5N25P3R5

I would not dispute that the food situation in parts of occupied Europe was bad but we are discussing Germany which was seizing the food of occupied Europe.

How much of what Hitler received from the Soviet Union and Japan prior to June 41 was paid for with cash I do not know. A lot of the trade seems to have been barter. The British knew in the spring of 1940 that Germany was supplying the USSR with heavy machinery, machine tools and semi manufactured goods. In an economic agreement signed in January 1941 the Russians promised delivery of 2.5 million tons of grain and 1 million tons of oil by May 1942 in exchange for capital goods. German dependence on Russia was growing and very likely was a factor in Hitler’s thinking.

Germany’s situation was not desperate in 1941. Because of the British blockade Germany’s main choke points were food and oil. With imports of grain from the USSR the food situation was manageable. In December 1940 the British estimated that a shortage of oil would not restrict the military position of Germany before October 1941. The German invasion of the USSR in 1941 was not restricted by a shortage of oil but by the weather in December.

Churchill would not have made peace with Hitler. Could Hitler have faced the UK and the USA in the west while becoming increasingly reliant on the USSR?

User avatar
wm
Member
Posts: 8753
Joined: 29 Dec 2006, 21:11
Location: Poland

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

#88

Post by wm » 28 Jan 2020, 00:00

Te collapse of European agriculture under pressure of Nazi wartime economy in 1940.
As was true of Germany, the high-intensity dairy farms of France, the Netherlands and Denmark were dependent on imported animal feed. Grain imports in the late 1930s had run at the rate of more than 7 million tons per annum mostly from Argentina and Canada. These sources of supply were closed off by the British blockade.

In addition Western Europe had imported more than 700,000 tons of oilseed. Of course, France was a major producer of grain in its own right. But French grain yields depended, as they did in Germany, on large quantities of nitrogen-based fertilizer, which could be supplied only at the expense of the production of explosives.

And like German agriculture, the farms of Western Europe depended on huge herds of draught animals and on the daily labour of millions of farm workers. The removal of horses, manpower, fertilizer and animal feed that followed the outbreak of war set off a disastrous chain reaction in the delicate ecology of European peasant farming. By the summer of 1940, Germany was facing a Europe-wide agricultural crisis.

Danish farmers began systematically to cull their swine herds and poultry flocks. Dutch yields steadily deteriorated in line with the fall in fertilizer supplies.

Most dramatic of all was the situation in France, where the grain harvest in 1940 was less than half what it had been in 1938.

In Germany itself, 1940 brought a noticeable fall in grain yields and this was compounded by the poor harvest in Yugoslavia and Hungary, which were amongst the Reich's main suppliers.

In 1940 German grain imports from Yugoslavia and Hungary fell by almost 3 million tons, a shortfall offset only by a dramatic increase in deliveries from Romania.

The rations set for the German population at the outbreak of the war had been relatively generous. But they could be sustained in 1940-41 only by making severe inroads into the large stocks accumulated since 1936.

The Reichsnaehrstand started the war with a reserve of 8.8 million tons of grain, almost enough to provide bread for the German population for an entire year. In the first year of the war, these were reduced by only 1.3 million tons.

The Wages of Destruction

Sid Guttridge
Member
Posts: 10158
Joined: 12 Jun 2008, 12:19

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

#89

Post by Sid Guttridge » 28 Jan 2020, 13:00

Hi wm,

From that I deduce that Germany had 7.5 million tons of grain reserves going into 1941, or slightly less than "almost enough to provide bread for the German population for an entire year". And this was before the 1941 harvest, however poor, was taken in!

It still looks as though Nazi Germany chose to starve several million soviet POWs to death over 1941/42 rather than having no choice but to let them starve.

Cheers,

sid.

User avatar
wm
Member
Posts: 8753
Joined: 29 Dec 2006, 21:11
Location: Poland

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

#90

Post by wm » 01 Feb 2020, 00:36

Grain reserves, previously considered fairly safe, also appeared increasingly tenuous, as the Germans faced a 1.6 million-ton shortfall for 1940 even under optimal conditions.
If there were a poor harvest and if the Soviets failed to deliver their roughly 1 million tons of foodstuffs, the German people might soon be facing a repeat of the winter of 1916-17 [a famine called the Turnip Winter].
Ericson, Edward E., Feeding the German Eagle: Soviet Economic Aid to Nazi Germany, 1933–1941
German's monthly grain stocks without Soviet imports (in thousands of tons) in 1940:
Jul = 4037
Aug = 4150
Dec = 2198

in 1941:
May = 426
Jul = -675
Aug = -1013
Dec = -1203

in comparison:
Sep. 1939 = 5613

Post Reply

Return to “Poland 1919-1945”