#8

Post by michael mills » 26 Aug 2008, 05:20

Documented German planning for the invasion of the Soviet Union, dating from the early months of 1941, show conclusively that the planners regarded Germany has bearing the burden of feeding the entire European Continent, or at least that part of it controlled by it or within its sphere.



That burden was the imperative that drove the plans to extract vast quantities of food from conquered Soviet territory, at the expense of the population there. The policy objective was to extract as much as was needed to feed German-controlled Europe (with priority being given to the German population of course), with the native population of conquered Soviet territory receiving only what was left over after that extraction had been carried out. The German planners recognised that that course of action might well lead to famine among the Soviet population, especially in urban and food-deficit areas, and were prepared to accept wide-spread starvation as "collatoral damage".



In cases where the Allies were prepared to breach their own blockade and supply emergency food aid to populations within the German sphere that were experiencing famine conditions, the Germans did nothing to prevent such aid being supplied. The best-known case is that of Allied vessels bringing food supplies to Greece by agreement with the Axis occupiers.



A lesser-known case is that of the food aid supplied to occupied Poland by charities in the United States (including the American-Jewish Joint Distribution Committee). Again the German occupiers did nothing to stop the inflow of food, and even agreed to let 14% of the aid be directed to the Jewish population of Poland. The flow of food-aid continued until the United States entered the war at the end of 1941 and acceded to the measures of economic warfare being waged by Britain.