@221B:
Can we get some numbers on the food shortages in the sphere of influence of Nazi Germany? I’ve read about the food shortages in WW1 but never for WW2.
Below are some quotes from The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze. Tooze’s book has been praised by The Times (London), The Boston Globe, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, etc. From p. 168:
One way or another, virtually everyone alive in Germany in the 1930s had an acute, personal experience of prolonged and insatiable hunger. [Due to the Anglo-French food blockade of WWI and the hunger during the Versailles Treaty.]
From page 419:
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 of grain accumulated since 1936. . . . The shortfall in the European harvest of 1940-41 confirmed Herbert Backe’s worst fears. Unless Germany could find additional sources for millions of tons of grain, it would soon need to make serious cuts to food rations . . . And the situation in the urban centers of the occupied territories was, of course, far worse than in Germany. By 1941 there were already signs of mounting discontent due to the inadequate food supply. In Belgium and France, the official food ration allocated to ‘normal consumers’ of as little as 1,300 calories per day, was an open invitation to the black market. Daily allocations in Norway and the Czech protectorate hovered around 1,600 calories.
From page 477:
The second programme, which openly envisioned the killing of millions of people within the first twelve months of the German occupation, was agreed between the Wehrmacht, all the key civilian Ministries and the Nazi political leadership as early as the spring of 1941. Nor can the so-called ‘Hunger Plan’ be described as secret. It was referred to in official instructions issued to thousands of subordinates. And, perhaps most importantly, no effort was made to hide the wider rationale of the individual acts of brutality that the programme required. On the contrary, all German soldiers and occupation administrators were enjoined to understand and to commit themselves to its strategic logic. This genocidal plan commanded such wide-ranging support because it concerned a practical issue, the importance of which, following Germany’s experience in World War I, was obvious to all: the need to secure the food supply of the German population, if necessary at the expense of the population of the Soviet Union.
As we have discussed, the ‘bread basket of the Ukraine’ played a key role in all the various military-economic assessments of the Barbarossa campaign prepared over the winter of 1940-41. For Hitler it was the key priority, to be achieved prior to any other military consideration, the importance of which was only reinforced by the alarming decline in German grain stocks. 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.
From page 539:
Backe had not been bluffing in 1941. In light of the extension of the war into the indefinite future, Germany was facing a severe food problem. The German grain harvest of 1940 and 1941 had been well below average and imports from the occupied territories had not made up the difference. For lack of feed the swine herd had been reduced by 25 per cent since the start of the war, triggering a cut in meat rations as of June 1941. Bread rations had only been sustained by making severe inroads into grain stocks. By the end of 1941 these were nearing exhaustion. When the order to ship large numbers of Eastern workers to Germany for work was first given by Goering in November 1941, Backe protested vigorously. The 400,000 Soviet prisoners of war already in Germany were more than he could provide for. Goering had spoken casually of feeding the Eastern workers on cats and horse-meat. Backe had consulted the statistics and reported glumly that there were not enough cats to provide a ration for the Eastern workers and horse-meat was already being used to supplement the rations of the German population. If the Russians were to be given meat, they would have to be supplied at the expense of the German population.
From page 541:
Backe was in an impossible position. The Fuehrer had demanded more workers. Gauleiter Sauckel was dedicated to delivering them. Hitler and Sauckel now demanded that the workers be fed, which was clearly a necessity if they were to be productive. And yet, given the level of grain stocks, Backe was unable to meet this demand. What was called for was a reduction in consumption, not additional provisions for millions of new workers. The seriousness of the situation became apparent to the wider public in the spring of 1942 when the Food Ministry announced cuts to the food rations of the German population. Given the regime’s mortal fear of damaging morale, the ration cuts of April 1942 are incontrovertible evidence that the food crisis was real. Lowering the rations was a political step of the first order, which Backe would never have suggested if the situation had not absolutely required it. The Wehrmacht had prepared the way in 1942, by decreeing a ration cut for the fighting troops. When the reduction in the civilian ration was announced it produced a response which justified every anxiety on the part of the Nazi leadership. . . . [The morale effect of the cut] was, reported the SD’s informants, ‘devastating’ like ‘virtually no other event during the war.’ Studies by nutritional experts added to the leadership’s concerns.
From page 549:
The overriding need to improve the food situation actually created a perverse functional connection between the extermination of the Jewish population of the General Government [of occupied Poland] and the improvement in food rations that was necessary to sustain the labor force in the mines and factories of the Reich. . . . . In the summer of 1942 it was the concerted extermination of Polish Jewry that provided the most immediate and fail-safe means of freeing up food for delivery to Germany.
Elsewhere, Tooze describe near-starvation conditions among the people of occupied Poland. He also described Germany’s inability to prevent starvation among the millions of Soviet POWs in German factories, despite the clear necessity of feeding Germany’s factory workers. The food situation in Germany and German-held territories was abysmal during WWII. Allied propagandists were able to persuade the general public that the suffering, starvation, and death which occurred in Nazi Germany were due solely to Hitler’s cruelty and racism; as opposed to being natural, inevitable consequences of the Anglo-American food blockade and the Soviets’ scorched earth policy.