• @KurtGodel7:

    It is correct to say that FDR publicly disavowed the plan, and told the American people it would not be implemented. While some people are inclined to take him at his word, others believe that the public statements made by politicians should be investigated before being accepted.

    So what you are saying is you know the plan was not impemented but will continue  to claim it was  because you ‘do not believe public staements by politicians’.
    Very convincing argument!

    Rationing went on until 1954 in Britain


  • Due to the Cold War and the fact that Europe was ravaged by a World War.


  • @Lazarus:

    @KurtGodel7:

    It is correct to say that FDR publicly disavowed the plan, and told the American people it would not be implemented. While some people are inclined to take him at his word, others believe that the public statements made by politicians should be investigated before being accepted.

    So what you are saying is you know the plan was not impemented but will continue  to claim it was  because you ‘do not believe public staements by politicians’.
    Very convincing argument!

    Rationing went on until 1954 in Britain

    Your representation of my statements bears no relation at all to anything I’d written. The idea that the Morgenthau Plan was never implemented is your position, not mine. Proposals for government programs and policies are often modified before being implemented. The original version of Obama’s heath care plan, for example, received substantial modification before being passed by Congress. It would be highly misleading at best to use the existence of such modifications as the basis for claiming that “the Obama health care plan never passed.” You seem to be using the modifications made to the original Morgenthau Plan as the sole basis for your claim that it was never implemented.

    JSC 1067 was intended to create starvation in Germany, exactly as the original version of the Morgenthau Plan had been. As statements from General Clay and other sources make clear, JSC 1067 succeeded in that objective. The argument could be made that the extent of the starvation and death toll would have been even greater had no modifications to the original Morgenthau Plan been made. However, Morgenthau’s reaction to JSC 1067 is telling:


    On May 10, 1945 Truman signed the JCS 1067.[45] Morgenthau told his staff that it was a big day for the Treasury, and that he hoped that “someone doesn’t recognize it as the Morgenthau Plan.”[6]


    You mentioned that rationing continued in Britain after the war; with the implication being that the Allies did not have the food with which to feed Germany during the postwar era. That rationing argument has been discredited.


    However later research has revealed that the bread rationing in the UK was not necessary, it was in fact “not primarily for economic reasons – in order to save wheat – but for psychological and political reasons” as a political ploy in order to get US support in reconstruction funds and US wheat. Rationing did not reduce the level of food consumption in the UK.[64] In fact, the UK rationing let the UK “retain its privileged position as the only food importing country which did not suffer a significant reduction in calorie consumption.”[64] The Germans in the UK zone were receiving half the UK ration.[64]


    In one of my earlier posts, I quoted sections of Herbert Hoover’s report. You will recall that Hoover noted that Allied postwar policy placed sharp restrictions on German production of fertilizer. Those restrictions greatly reduced food production in both Germany and in European nations which had hitherto imported German fertilizer. Despite this artificially induced, significant reduction in Europe’s food supply, Germany’s neighbors returned to pre-war normal food conditions by 1947. Germany’s food situation was even worse in 1947 than it had been in '45 or '46. In 1947, the U.S. Congress warned that continuation of the then-present postwar occupation policy:


    …can only mean one of two things, (a) That a considerable part of the German population must be “liquidated” through diseases, malnutrition, and slow starvation for a period of years to come, with the resultant dangers to the rest of Europe from pestilence and the spread of plagues that know no boundaries; or (b) the continuation both of large occupying forces to hold down “unrest” and the affording of relief mainly drawn from the United States to prevent actual starvation.[52]


    The Morgenthau Plan did not harm only Germans. It also cost a number of British and American soldiers their lives, by strengthening Germany’s will to fight. To illustrate the effect the Morgenthau Plan had on Germany’s will to fight, William Donovan, head of the OSS (the forerunner of the CIA), sent FDR the following excerpt from an article in a Swiss newspaper.


    So far, the Allies have not offered the [anti-Nazi] opposition any serious encouragement. On the contrary, they have again and again welded together the people and the Nazis by statements published, either out of indifference or with a purpose. To take a recent example, the Morgenthau plan gave Dr. Goebbels the best possible chance. He was able to prove to his countrymen, in black and white, that the enemy planned the enslavement of Germany. The conviction that Germany had nothing to expect from defeat but oppression and exploitation still prevails, and that accounts for the fact that the Germans continue to fight. It is not a question of a regime, but of the homeland itself, and to save that, every German is bound to obey the call, whether he be Nazi or member of the opposition. [1]


    In The Wages of Destruction, Adam Tooze wrote,

    pp. 672 - 674


    Until 1948, however, the food supply in all four zones of occupation fell well short of what was required. . . . the evidence of serious malnutrition was unmistakable. Mortality rates increased as did the incidence of hunger-related diseases. The birth weight of babies fell drastically. Even the most intrepid statisticians hesitate to plumb the depths to which Germany had fallen by the end of 1945. . . .

    Nor should we underestimate the intensity of hatred felt towards Germany by its neighbors and former enemies.  . . . Germany’s former enemies thought it better to forget the sense of rage which clearly motivated much of Allied policy in the immediate aftermath of the war. . . .

    The initial post-war period thus went a long way toward confirming Hitler’s apocalyptic view of politics.



  • This is the way Germany treated the Poles in 1940-41

    T. Tsarota, Warschau unter dem Hakenkreuz, Paderborn: 1985, p. 113,
    1940

    1st Quarter Poles 609 calories; Jews 503 calories
    2nd Quarter Poles 704 calories; Jews 449 calories
    3rd Quarter Poles 698 calories; Jews 331 calories
    4th Quarter Poles 938 calories; Jews 369 calories
    Yearly average Poles 737 calories; Jews 413 calories

    1941

    1st Quarter Poles 611 calories; Jews 237 calories
    2nd Quarter Poles 553 calories; Jews 219 calories
    3rd Quarter Poles 531 calories; Jews 198 calories
    4th Quarter Poles 981 calories; Jews 360 calories
    Yearly average Poles 669 calories; Jews 253 calories

    and you are whining because some Germans ‘only’ got 1,500 calories in the worst period!


  • A demolition of the claim it was a blockade that killed the jews

    I am not allowed to post links so dont think I am deliberately trying to steal anothers work.

    _It is, however, important, to separate the so-called “Jewish question” from the availability or lack of food in the Third Reich. Plans for the expulsion, ghettoisation and annihilation of the Jews were, for the most part, in place long before any effects of an embargo could have affected food supplies for the German civilian population:

    A circular order issued by Reinhard Heydrich on the 3rd of September, 1939, addressed to all senior principals in the SD, the Security Police the Gestapo and the border police specified:

    …the most Draconian measures against anyone even suspected of hostility to the Reich and the war effort. The key paragraph ordered the referral of all information on arrested suspects to Heydrich’s office for decision. 1
    The following is emphasized in the original circular:

    …because on the basis of higher authority the brutal liquidation of such elements will follow. 2

    Furthermore:

    On March 9, 1940, Himmler issued the blanket order forbidding the wartime release of Jews held in concentration camps. 3

    The mechanism for extermination was in place long before any effective blockade or embargo could have taken place.

    Whatever embargo the British or French naval fleets might have attempted during that time would not have been enormously successful. In reality, the British were suffering considerably from the German blockade with severe food rationing in place long before the United States entered the war. Such rationing did not take place on the same scale in Germany even during the closing months of the war. One reason for any apparent food shortage in Germany is lamely explained in the following excerpt:

    On December 14, 1940, Herbert Backe, the State Secretary who was the driving force in the Food and Agriculture Ministry, released a confidential report on the European food situation which caused a stir at the top level of the Reich Government. Citing critical shortages in the first wartime continental harvest, Backe drafted far-reaching plans for German rationing and for the wholesale confiscation of foodstuffs from occupied Europe. The goal was to take enough from elsewhere to offset what otherwise would be disastrous shortages in meat and grains available to the German population. Backe further concluded that the longer-term food shortages could only be solved through an attack on the Soviet Union, followed by wholesale confiscations of Russian foodstuffs and livestock. Even if all the Russian food and agricultural resources became available to Germany and her allies, Backe concluded, the only way to guarantee a blockade-proof Nazi Europe would be to kill off millions of Russians by liquidations, starvation, or deportation. 4

    Backe’s report did not take into account the Nazi policies that had led to the decline of German agriculture from 1933 onward. His statement could well have attempted to cover up those Nazi policies that led to a decline of farm production:

    Between 1933 and 1939 the agricultural population of Germany within the boundaries of 1937 declined from 20.8 percent to 18 percent of the total population and workers in agriculture and forestry decreased from 28.9 percent to 26 percent. At least 700,000 people migrated from the country to the cities. […] Until 1935 farm income increased , but thereafter stagnated , while the national income continued to rise by 6 to 12 percent annually. Farm income amounted to 8.7 percent of the national income in 1933, but only 8.3 percent in 1937. And in order to make a living, the farmer, and particularly the small farmer, had to put in more and more hours of work. 5

    As early as 1914, Germany had produced about 80 percent of her food. It is unlikely that the populace would have suffered any great threat of starvation early in the Second World War, more so that huge shipments of food confiscated from Poland, the Ukraine and other Eastern European nations flowed into the Reich. By the time that food was becoming scarce in late 1944 and early 1945, most of the victims of the Holocaust were dead.

    Even that scarcity was relative. When the British captured the infamous Bergen-Belsen camp on April 15, 1945:

    [They]…discovered the conditions which were to astonish and horrify the world a day or so later. Briefly, these were that in a camp of the approximate dimensions of 1500 by 350 metres were confined about 40,000 men and women in the most extreme state of starvation and emaciation, many of them suffering from typhus; that there were, in addition, 13,000 unburied corpses, and that for the living there was little food… 6

    There was, however, a great sufficiency of food within and in the vicinity of the camp:

    Major A. L. Berney, sworn. examined by Col. Backhouse - I am with 817 Military Government Detachment. On 15th April I was sent by Headquarters 8 Corps to Colonel Taylor of the Occupying Forces of Belsen Camp. On the next day I was asked to find the nearest food store which I did at the north of the Panzer Troop School about three kilometers from the camp. I found the Hauptmann in charge of the store who informed me that he was responsible for sending some food from his store to the camp - potatoes and turnips. He did not give me any reason as to why it was the only stuff furnished. I obtained a list of food in the store from him, and remember there were 600 tons of potatoes, 120 tons of tinned milk, 30 tons of sugar, upwards of 20 tons of powdered milk; cocoa, grain, wheat and other foodstuffs. […] There is a very large bakery there with a capacity, I was told, of 60,000 loaves a day, which was fully staffed. It appeared to me that there was a very vast quantity of all the necessary materials for making bread. The bakery is still working now [20th September 1945 -HWM] and most of the staff 7

    The infamous Dr. Johann Paul Kremer, who witnessed gassings in Auschwitz and survived the war, wrote in his diary while in Munster, on March 31, 1945:

    […] At last I was able to get the tinned meat I wanted (a layer of lard on top and pork underneath). … I therefore got 8 heavy tins for myself and Mrs. Glaser. … The neighbors finally came with plenty of beef which had been distributed before and so at Eastertide 1945 nobody had to endure hunger in Munster.

    and on April 1, 1945:

    We had a magnificent dinner today. Delicious beef broth with noodles, beans with bacon, potatoes, apple sauce and red whortleberries. For breakfast we had cold ham, bread and butter with real coffee and plenty of whole milk. At 4 P.M. _told that all sorts of fine things could be had free from the magazine of the military barracks in the ‘Univ-Sportzplatz’ such as peas, biscuits, noodles etc. I got to work filling …two big air-raid shelter paper bags which I had brought… 8

    Photographs of the civilian population of Germany taken immediately after capitulation do not show a people ravaged by starvation. On the contrary, most civilians appear to be well-fed and well-dressed.

    Finally, it might be useful to review the assessment made by the Bombing Research Analysts of the Medical Branch of the United States War Department:

    The health of the German people was the basic factor upon which depended the ability of Germany to wage war. The continuity and nutritional adequacy of Germany’s food supply constituted the foundation of their health.

    Although Germany’s agricultural economy was incapable of feeding her own population without imports, she was able to withstand prolonged blockade by war. The effect of blockade was in large measure circumvented by the operation of the German system of supply control which in turn assured the continuity of Germany’s ultimate source of productive capacity. In consequence, the extent to which the Allied bomber offensive capacity interfered with the German food supply system is a measure of its contribution to the defeat of Germany.

    Since Germany could not raise within her own boundaries sufficient food to supply her population adequately, self-sufficiency was a question of serious national consequence long before the war. Even prior to the advent of totalitarian rule many national officials labored on the problem of increasing the degree of self-sufficiency in Germany. With the inception of the Nazi regime, the measures invoked to achieve this end became progressively harsher.

    By the beginning of the war, Germany’s over-all self-sufficiency in food had reached a level of approximately 83 percent, on the peacetime basis of 2200-2400 calories per day, according to Hans-Joachim Riecke, State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture.

    The country could be fed at a reduced level by the produce raised within its own boundaries if food were perfectly controlled and evenly distributed. […] Consequently, it is clear that all German civilians could be fed at a uniform level of adequacy during a war only by control of the country’s food supply at the national level and by continued operation of the transportation network of the country. 9

    The main thrust of the bombing offensive was against heavy industry and chemical production. The damage caused to grain mills involved in the production of rye was 9 percent whereas to wheat it was 35 percent. It appears that damage to food processing industries was only incidental to attacks on other industrial targets or area bombing.

    I hope that this brief essay - which does not pretend to do more than offer a few examples - will serve as a guide to other reading material on the subject.

    Harry W. Mazal OBE

    –------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Notes

    Berenbaum, Michael & Peck, Abraham J. (editors) “The Holocaust and History,” 1998, Indiana University Press, Essay: pp. 160-186 “Executive Instinct” by Charles W. Sydnor, Jr.

    Krausnik, Helmut, “Anatomie des SS Staates” vol. 2, pp. 98-115, 1965, Freiberg Verlag.

    Berenbaum, Michael & Peck, Abraham J. (editors), opus cit., p. 169

    Ibid, pp. 173-174.

    Holborn, Hajo. “A History of Modern Germany 1840-1945,” 1969, Princeton University Press. p. 758

    Phillips, Raymond (Editor). “Trial of Josef Kramer and Forty- Four Others,” 1949, William Hodge and Co., Ltd. p. xxiii.

    Ibid, pp. 54-55.

    Bezwinska, Jadwigs and Czech, Danuta (editors). “KL Auschwitz Seen by the SS,” 1994, Howard Fertig, pp. 268-270.

    War Department (Washington D. C.) “The Effect of Bombing on Health and Medical Care in Germany”, Oct. 30, 1945, Chapter Eleven, “Food Supply and Nutrition” by Major Henry J. Rugo, Quartermaster Corps, AUS., pp 264-293.__


  • @Lazarus:

    A demolition of the claim it was a blockade that killed the jews . . .

    Thank you for citing sources to support your claims, instead of merely relying on emotion-laden terms and characterizations. The picture of Germany’s food situation Mazal has presented radically differs from the one presented in Adam Tooze’s The Wages of Destruction.

    Some of the statements Mazal made do not directly support his conclusions. For example, he points out that the percentage of Germans involved in agriculture had experienced a modest decline during the '30s. But does that decline mean that some German farmland was being abandoned, and going unused? Does it mean that Germany’s food production decreased as a result of the decline? Or does it merely mean that farmers were using better machines to become more efficient? Mazal does not present any data to help answer these questions. He nevertheless leaves the reader with the impression that Germany’s food production could have been increased if it had devoted more people to its agricultural sector. Over the last century, use of increasingly large-scale and effective agricultural machinery has allowed the U.S. to dramatically reduce the percentage of people who are farmers, while increasing food production. Something similar may have been happening in Germany during the '30s–a possibility Mazal seems to dismiss without researching or addressing.

    I went to Mazal’s website; the focus of which is “The Holocaust, Antisemitism and War Crimes.” The homepage has nine separate links to Nazi-related war crimes articles or other documents, and none to articles or documentation about non-Nazi war crimes. I looked for, but did not find, a link to a section of the site describing Mazal and his qualifications for historical research. A Wikipedia article notes that he is a member of The Holocaust History Project and describes him as a “chemist.”

    My sense is that Mazal writes for the purpose of promoting a specific viewpoint. That fact does not invalidate his conclusions. However, if it’s a choice between believing the work of a renowned historian, such as Adam Tooze, and believing the history-related claims of an ideologically motivated chemist, I know which I’ll choose. That statement is not based solely on Tooze’s qualifications; but on my own personal observations of the very high quality of his work.

    For you to assert that Mazal has “demolished” any aspect of Tooze’s work is simply not credible. This is especially true because one of the sources upon which Mazal relied was a document created by the U.S. War Department in 1945. If Mazal wants to make the case that Germany’s wartime food situation was not that bad, why would he rely on the claims of governments that have an obvious vested interest in agreeing with him? Whenever any government–be it Nazi, communist, or democratic–makes claims that make itself look good, and its enemies look bad, those claims should be taken with a grain of salt. The U.S. government had a glaringly obvious vested interest in making it seem as though Germany could have fed itself and the people in its occupied territories had it chosen to do so; and that the millions of deaths which occurred were therefore solely the result of the Nazis’ cruelty. (As opposed to having been caused by the Anglo-American food blockade.)

    This is not the only case of Mazal having relied on a non-credible source. In the “what’s new” section of his website, he offers a link to, “The complete deposition made in the Polish Courts on May 24, 1945 by Henryk Tauber.” The Polish courts in May of 1945 were controlled by the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had a long track record of conducting show trials; especially in relation to politically sensitive topics. Mazal’s willingness to rely on documentation from Soviet-controlled courts detracts significantly from his own credibility. Finding a less credible source than a Soviet-controlled, politically sensitive trial would literally be impossible.


  • Yes anyone disputing your calumy is ‘biased’ but you are completely open minded on the subject……

    The problem you have is the German plans for Russia (made long before any blockade began to have any effect and before the invasion of Russia ) specificaly state that millions of Russians and Poles were going to be denied food and thus would die of starvation.
    It was policy to kill these ‘sub-humans’ and only deluded fools swallow the  lie that it was forced on Germany. They were shot, gassed, worked to death or killed for sport as well as starved so  who are you going to blame for the gas-chambers? The tooth fairy?
    Strange that  whilst  the POW’S and civilians starved not one of the guards did. Seems food was only ‘in short supply’ if you were a non german.
    Read of the  storehouses full of food found at the concentration camps when they were liberated and tell me again food was short.

    Nice of you to ignore the Polish calorie chart I gave.
    You seemed  very upset when  the Germans only had 1500 calories but are completely unmoved the Poles got half that.
    One would think you were biased…


  • @KurtGodel7:

    Mazal’s willingness to rely on documentation from Soviet-controlled courts detracts significantly from his own credibility.

    And your  naivety and willingness to swallow  wholesale right wing sources  (as well as distorting Toze) shows you to be something we call a  ‘useful idiot’

    Here are the calorie  counts given in Tooze:

    Ration levels in German occupied areas in 1940/41
    German soldier: 4000
    German civilian: 2570
    Norwegian: 1600
    Czech: 1600
    Belgian: 1300
    French: 1300
    Pole (General Government): 609 (later 938)
    Polish Jew (General Government): 503 (later 369)
    Belorussian Jew: 420

    More:
    The average German allocation was 3000 calories prewar.
    2078 calories in 1942/3
    1981 calories 1943/4
    1671 calories 1944/5
    1412 calories 1945/6

    Hitler, before WW2:

    _What then is the question? Only that we need grain and timber. For the grain I need space in the east; for the timber I need a colony, only one [colony]. We can survive. Our harvests in 1938 and in this year were excellent. We can survive, in spite of the triumphant cries of others that we will starve. We have achieved these harvests thanks to the persistence of our people and above all due to the use of chemical fertilizers. However, one day the soil will have had enough … What then? I cannot stand by and let my people starve. Am I not better off then in putting two million men on the battlefield, than in losing them to starvation? Perhaps there are still among the apostles of humanity (i.e., those who seek peace at any cost), those who remember 1919. I do not want to repeat that. I will not repeat that. Free trade, open borders, that is all practical, we had these things. However when everything depends upon those masters of the seas (i.e., the English), when we can be brought low by a blockade, then it is my duty to create a situation whereby by my people can live off of their own fat. That is the only question, the rest is insanity."

    "I do not harbor any romantic aims. I have no wish to rule. Above all I want nothing from the West; nothing today and nothing tomorrow. I desire nothing from the thickly settled regions of the world … All of the notions that are ascribed to me by other people are inventions.

    ‘Everything I undertake is directed against Russia. If the West is too stupid and too blind to comprehend this I will be forced to reach an understanding with the Russians, turn and strike the West, and then after their defeat turn back against the Soviet Union with my collected strength. I need the Ukraine and with that no one can starve us out as they did in the last war.’“however, I must have a free hand in the east. To repeat: it is a question of grain and timber, which I can find only outside of Europe.”_

    The people in the east were marked down as expendable long before WW2  and the blockade started


  • Hey the Czechs! My people! Okay so the Germans got more food big deal. If my country was invaded and I needed to feed occupied nations by rationing I’d give my people more food. That’s just being bias. But I’d also give those occupied people more food if things were going better. Simple. Stop using history references with your MASSIVE amouts of cliff notes and just use COMMON SENSE!


  • @Lazarus:

    The people in the east were marked down as expendable long before WW2  and the blockade started

    The quotes you provided from Hitler do not support that conclusion. The fact that the stated aim of the Nazi foreign policy was to expand at the expense of the Soviet government (which is what he said) does not prove that he had made plans to exterminate Eastern Europeans (which seems to be what you want him to have said).

    You complained that I did not address the caloric figures you’d provided earlier. I’d already addressed the subject of Germany’s food shortage in my earlier posts, and saw no reason to repeat myself. But to avoid misunderstandings, the picture Tooze painted in his book was remarkably clear. The Nazi leadership was deathly afraid of damaging civilian morale within Germany, and felt that significant food reductions would do exactly that. Even so, there were times when Germany’s food crisis was so bad that significant reductions in rations to German citizens were made. Those reductions caused health problems, and confirmed the Nazi leadership’s fears about the loss of civilian morale. The Nazi government responded by extracting more food from its occupied territories. That worsened the food situation in those occupied territories–and especially among Jews–while allowing the German government to undo the previous ration reductions to its own citizens.

    As Private Ryan has pointed out, it is normal for a government to place a higher priority on feeding its own citizens than on feeding the non-citizen residents of territories it occupies. If the U.S. was subjected to famine or near-famine conditions, would it allow its own people to experience severe deprivation and malnutrition in order to feed people in occupied Afghanistan and Iraq? Portraying the Nazi government’s unequal allocation of food as somehow indicative of the Nazis’ uniquely evil/genocidal nature simply ignores how most governments throughout human history respond to famine.

    You claimed that, “the German plans for Russia (made long before any blockade began to have any effect and before the invasion of Russia ) specificaly state that millions of Russians and Poles were going to be denied food and thus would die of starvation.” I’m not exactly clear on what source you are using to support that claim. For the record, I do not consider Mazal a credible source. If, however, you are relying on Tooze (a credible source) for that claim, it is important to look at the description Tooze actually gave.

    Tooze wrote that in 1940, the German leadership had recognized its food situation was unsustainable. Germany itself was a food deficit nation, as were all the major nations it occupied. (Not to mention most or all of the smaller nations it occupied.) It was felt that a successful invasion of the Soviet Union would produce many benefits, among which would be the elimination of this food problem. However, most territories in the western Soviet Union (with the exception of the Ukraine) ran at food deficits. Even the surplus of the Ukraine was not as large as it once had been, due to Stalin’s urbanization and industrialization. An invasion of the Soviet Union would actually increase the absolute magnitude of Germany’s food deficit. But by diverting food away from the conquered Soviet territory, outright starvation could be averted in other territory occupied by Germany.

    In addition, the raw materials, manpower, and industrial capacity of captured Soviet territory were to be used to build airplanes. Airplanes which would allow Germany to cancel out the influence of the large numbers of military aircraft being built in British and American factories; and which were being used to attack German cities.

    The invasion of the Soviet Union was done to eliminate communism; which Hitler hated. It was also done because it was felt that conquering Soviet territory would give Germany its best chance to survive the British food blockade and the Anglo-American military aircraft production effort.


  • So Germany was short of food.

    To help stop the shortages she was ‘forced’ to attack Poland.
    Now she had to feed the Poles as well as her own people.
    Now she had to invade Russia to get food to feed the Poles.
    Once in Russia she had to feed the Russians……
    and on and on and on.
    Can you not see the stupidity of such an argument?
    If she had not invaded other countries then she would not have  to feed the populations.
    If she did not invade Poland she  would not be blockaded and could buy food.
    This is complete and utter madness and I am suprised anyone could be so gullible.

    October 1941, Hitler Monologue, Führer Headquarters, in Madajczyk, Generalny, pp. 69-70.

    _“The [eastern] region must lose the character of the Asiatic steppe, it must be Europeanized!  It is for this purpose that we are building great highways to the southern tip of the Crime and to the Caucasus.  German cities established along these roadways will stretch like a string of pearls, and around these will be German settlements.  The two or three million people we need [for this program] can be found quicker than we think.  We will take them from Germany, the Scandinavian lands, Western Europe, and America.  Chances are that I will not live to see this, but in twenty years twenty million people will inhabit this territory.  In three hundred years we will have a blossoming parkland of extraordinary beauty!

    As for the people indigenous to the area, we will be sure to select those [of importance].  We will remove the destructive Jews entirely. … We will not enter Russian cities, they must die out completely.

    24 October 1939, Heinrich Himmler: Geheimreden 1933 bis 1945 und andere Ansprachen. Edited by B.F. Smith and A.F. Peterson (Frankfurt/Main: Propyläen Verlag, 1974), pp. 124-125.

    “When we consider the issue [of eastern people], we first have to recognize that we have already long occupied ourselves with the Polish-Slavic problem … then we must clearly conclude, and thus have I received my tasks from the Führer, that in at least in the provinces which currently belong to Germany, the problem of the Polish minority must be solved, it must be eliminated in our lifetime.

    ========================================
    19410523 Document: *EC-126; Description: Economic Policy Directive for Economic
    Organization, East, Agricultural Group, 5/23/1941. (USA 316)
    must be eliminated
    Document EC-126: Economic Policy Directives for Economic Organization, East, Agricultural Group [partial translation]", in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. Volume VII: US Government Printing Office, District of Columbia: 1947. pp. 295-298:

    Dated    5/23/1941

    In future, Southern Russia must turn its face towards Europe. Its food surpluses, however, will only be paid for if it purchases its industrial consumer goods from Germany, of Europe. Russian competition from the forest zone must therefore be abolished. It follows from all that has been said that the German administration in these territories may well attempt to mitigate the consequences of the famine which undoubtedly will take place, and to accelerate the return to primitive agricultural conditions. An attempt might be made to intensify cultivation in these areas by expanding the acreage under potatoes or other important food crops giving a high yield. However, these measures will not avert famine. Many tens of millions of people in this area will become redundant and will either die or have to emigrate to Siberia. Any attempt to save the population there from death by starvation by importing surpluses from the black soil zone would be at the expense of supplies to Europe. It would reduce Germany’s staying power in the war, an would undermine Germany’s and Europe’s power to resist the blockade. This must be clearly and absolutely understood._

    The above was written before the invasion of Russia and whilst Germany had no food shortages at all.
    It was at a time Germany could import food via Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Sweden.
    A time when Germany could buy food from Russia rather than attack and starve the Russians.

    Plenty more documents exist that show the plan was to deliberately starve millions of Poles and Russians by stealing their food.
    It was nothing to do with a blockade.


  • @Lazarus:

    So Germany was short of food.

    To help stop the shortages she was ‘forced’ to attack Poland.

    Do you honestly believe the above is an accurate representation of anything I’ve written?

    I attempted to look up the source for the first quote you provided–the so-called “Hitler Monologue” source–but without success. If you would provide more information about it, it would be helpful.

    The second quote you provided was written by Heinrich Himmler. The main theme of the second quote was Himmler’s thought that the “problem” of the Polish minority needed to be solved. That quote supports a statement I had already made: namely, that the Nazi government had drawn up plans to forcibly relocate 30 - 50 million Poles eastward in the postwar era.

    The third quote you provided was written in May of 1941–shortly before the invasion of the Soviet Union. It described the Nazi government’s plans for diverting a portion of the food from conquered Soviet territory westward, to ease the food crisis elsewhere. Those who formulated this plan clearly recognized that Germany would be unable to feed everyone within its borders, and had decided that residents of conquered Soviet territories would be among the millions who starved. Adequately feeding people in the conquered Soviet territories would have increased starvation elsewhere.

    In reference to the third quote, you erroneously claimed that “The above was written before the invasion of Russia and whilst Germany had no food shortages at all. It was at a time Germany could import food via Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Sweden.” The British food blockade was also directed against neutral nations which bordered Germany. A nation such as Spain, for example, was allowed to import as much food as might be required to meet its own food deficit, but not more than that. This would prevent it from acquiring a food surplus to sell to Germany. While that measure did not create starvation in the neutral nations in question, it did mean that those nations were unable to prevent the British government from causing widespread starvation in German-held territory. In The Wages of Destruction, Tooze illustrated the British blockade’s effectiveness at causing starvation.

    pp. 418-419


    After 1939 the supply of food in Western Europe was no less constrained than the supply of coal. . . . 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. . . . By the summer of 1940, Germany was facing a Europe-wide agricultural crisis. . . . By 1941 there were already signs of mounting discontent due to the inadequate food supply. In Belgium and France, the official ration allocated to ‘normal consumers’ of as little as 1,300 calories per day, was an open invitation to resort to the black market.


  • '12

    There is only one thing this thread convinces me about.  That those who make excuses for what the Nazis did are douches.  It is nothing short of amazing that educated people can even ‘debate’ this.


  • Guys keep the thread clean. This is just a healthy disscussion. I think what Kurt says makes sense. Like I said before. Hitler had a “list” of sorts that said "okay the Poles lose food first. Then the French. Then the Germans.


  • The attempts to portay Germany as the innocent victim in all this are risable.
    All Germany had to do was stop invading Poland and there would be no blockade.
    It is also  silly to claim that it was food shortages that led to the murder of millions.
    Long before the war mental Adolf made no secret that he was going to kill all the Jews and take  ground in Russia. There are dozens of documents where this is laid out in great detail.
    The plan was to remove the population of Poland and Russia. This meant the 10’s of millions who lived there would  be left to starve.
    These plans were made when there were no food shortages and only the most rabid Nazi fanbois would try and claim it was unintentional.
    Murder was the aim right from the start and it is sickening to see otherwise intelligent people try and claim it was all Britain’s fault.
    Nazi propaganda obviously worked  and feeble minded people who  try and make excuses for mass murder are sick.

    My inability to post links is crippling me here and I simply have not got the time to try and work round the restrictions
    This is not my most important task at the moment I am afraid I am just going to have to answer in general terms.


  • Yes  he did plan on killing the Jews. But that wasn’t from lack of food. It was from “The Final Solution”. He didn’t plan on killing the Slavs until later. Actually he first was to send them to Siberia not kill them.


  • Yes the  fiction they were to be sent to Siberia.
    Perhaps you can explain how these 20 million+ plus people were to get to Siberia when Germany took all their trains, all their  livestock, all their food, all their vehicles?
    How are the young and the old to make a journey of several thousands miles on foot with no food?
    This is just more excuse making.


  • HEY! I never said no body was gonna die on the way. But hey if 20 million people are going somewhere I’d say at least of couple hundred thousand are gonna make it. You see I’m not making excuses. I’m IMPLYING! Use you Noggin bud. In the words of Samuel Clemens, a fellow Missourian of mine (of course YOU may know him as Mark Twain) “It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt,”. In other words think of your answer REAL hard.


  • @Lazarus:

    How are the young and the old to make a journey of several thousands miles on foot with no food?
    This is just more excuse making.

    German POW´s did walk that kind of a distance…without food all the way to gulags in siberia… Stalingrad , Massgraveyard…


  • Walked all the way without any food?

    I know they thought they were superman but that does not mean they all came from Krypton!

    Rubbish, pure and simple.

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