![]() ![]() Without the need to reduce the numbers of mouths to feed, the extermination of Jews would most probably have petered out after the initial killings of "Bolshevik" Jews in occupied Soviet territory in 1941. In August 1942, the German occupation authorities in Poland decided to cut off food supplies to all the Jews in Poland except for the 300,000 working in German war industries, an estimated 1.2 million people, for the purpose of countering a looming food-supply crisis Generalgoverneur Frank explicitly recognised that thereby those 1.2 million Polish Jews were condemned to death. But once the decision had been made, the imperative of extracting food from conquered Soviet territory became one of the main objectives driving German policies and actions.Īnd food shortages, the need to conserve scarce food supplies for the German population and other favoured groups, were most definitely the driving force behind the ongoing extermination of the Jewish populations of occupied countries, particularly in Poland. ![]() Rather, it was dictated by strategic reasons, the need to knock the Soviet Union out before its military power grew to the point where it became a threat, and to eliminate it as a potential ally for Britain. ![]() I doubt that the decision to invade the Soviet Union rather than Britain was related to the food supply. Six million dead Jews was six million fewer mouths to feed in a German empire where food imports were cut off, fertilser was scarce and food production was falling. Both Tooze and Aly link the food situation with the Holocaust. How would Germany have fed 60 million people in an occupied Britain cut off from its food imports? Whereas Russia and Ukraine were seen as "breadbaskets" that would solve all Germany's problems. The decision to invade Russia rather than Britain in 1941 could well be seen in this light. I think an interesting article could be written on "World War II in Europe as a war for food," based on Tooze and Aly's books. ![]()
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