Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food (29 page)

Even though German farmers managed to maintain a good grain harvest until 1943, the demands on grain supplies became ever greater as the war wore on. Civilians, the military and a growing number of prisoners of war and forced labourers within the Reich placed impossible demands on the productivity of the farmers. Already in August 1940 the bread ration had to be cut, only to be followed by a cut in the cereal ration in May 1941. The decline in meat and fat production meant that Germans came more and more to rely on their bread ration, and when the hard winter of 1941 damaged the grain crops Backe was forced to begin using up the country’s grain reserves in order to maintain the bread ration for the German population. In the spring of 1942 bread, meat and fat rations all had to be cut again.
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By 1943–44 an ordinary German civilian was eating 40 per cent less fat, 60 per cent less meat and 20 per cent less bread than in 1939.
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German agriculture simply could not supply sufficient food for the civilian population, the voracious army and a growing number of prisoners of war and forced labourers. Germany looked to its occupied territories to make up the food deficit.

THE OCCUPATION OF WESTERN EUROPE

The dominant National Socialist attitude towards the countries the Wehrmacht invaded was to treat them as a source of plunder rather than as long-term supply bases. The military policy was that all troops should live off the land, and in every defeated nation the Wehrmacht ruthlessly requisitioned industrial and agricultural goods. In the winter of 1940–41 it became clear that the war was going to last longer than the leadership had hoped, and when the decision was taken to invade the Soviet Union the plan was hatched to use the east as the main source of food for the army, as well as a supplier for civilians in the Reich and possibly even to fill food deficits in western European countries such as Belgium and Norway.
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In the summer of 1942, unable to achieve victory in the east, the National Socialist leadership realized that Germany was engaged in a long war of attrition with the Soviet Union, Britain and the United States – and, to make matters worse, the regime was faced by an internal food crisis. It was then that Göring began to
insist that every morsel of food should be squeezed out of all occupied territories and to insist that hunger should be exported outside the Reich.

Despite the National Socialists’ focus on the east as Germany’s source of sustaining food supplies and their short-term attitude towards the resources of western Europe, the latter actually contributed more food to wartime Germany than the occupied Soviet Union. Denmark and France both exported slightly higher quantities of meat to the Reich (768,000 and 758,000 tons respectively) than was received from the Soviet areas (731,000 tons). Moreover, if the official figures for the amounts of food requisitioned by the occupying forces are counted together with the amounts exported to Germany, then Denmark, Holland and France collectively contributed 21.4 million tons of grain-equivalent, in comparison to the 14.7 million tons provided by the occupied Soviet Union.
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Even though collectivization had modernized Ukrainian agriculture it was not as productive or as efficient as western European agriculture, which was better placed to restructure in order to withstand the disruptions of war. With hindsight, Backe would have done better to turn his attention to exploiting the food resources of western Europe rather than those of the Soviet Union.

GREEK FAMINE AND BELGIAN RESIlieNCE

The National Socialist policy of plunder wreaked havoc in countries such as Greece, where agriculture was basic and peasant-based. When the German army arrived in April 1941 the officers of the high command requisitioned all the food they could lay their hands on: oranges, lemons, currants, figs, rice and olive oil. Whereas the British navy had brought in shipments of food for the Greek civilian population throughout the military campaign and even the Italians had distributed pasta and olive oil, the Wehrmacht made no attempt to feed the Greeks. To make matters worse, the German troops were expected to live off the land and many units were not even provided with a mess, eating instead in local restaurants.
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The food situation rapidly deteriorated and in the summer of 1941 Marcel Junod, a Swiss Red Cross delegate in Athens, reported that the streets were filled with ‘walking spectres.
Here and there old men, and sometimes young ones, sat on the pavement. Their lips moving as if in prayer but no sound came. They stretched out their hands for alms and let them fall back weakly. Pedestrians passed backwards and forwards before them without paying the least attention. Each one was asking himself when his own turn would come.’
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Although Greece was a predominantly rural country, the peasantry, especially on the islands, produced mainly cash crops such as olive oil, tobacco and currants. The population was dependent on the annual import of 450,000 tons of American grain for one-third of its food but the British blockade of occupied Europe cut Greece off from all imports.
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The compartmentalization of the country into three zones of occupation under the Germans, the Italians and the Bulgarians prevented food from circulating, and in particular it meant that what little food there was available in the north did not get through to Athens and the south.
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Meanwhile, the escape of the Greek merchant marine before the Germans arrived left the islands more or less cut off from the mainland.
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In a pattern which could be observed in every economy affected by the wartime loss of imports, inflation set in and producers and retailers withdrew their food supplies from the market. They either hoarded them, speculating on further price rises, or sold them on the black market, often to German agents collecting food for the military. The Greek government therefore lost access to what little food supply was left in the country and was unable to protect the poor and the needy from spiralling food prices by giving out food aid.
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The numbers of the poor swelled daily as the Germans requisitioned and dismantled industrial plant for transport to the Reich, leaving thousands unemployed. In Athens the government was only able to provide rations of 458 calories per person, not even half of what most people need to maintain the body’s normal functions. In November this fell to a paltry 183 calories, the equivalent of one or two slices of bread a day. In August people began to drop dead in the streets of Athens.
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By January 1942 the death rate was 2,000 per day and infant mortality had risen to over 50 per cent. Families would leave the bodies of their children in the streets, hoping to continue using their ration cards. One island in the Aegean sarcastically conveyed the message to Athens, ‘send bread or coffins’.
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Meanwhile, the health of German troops in North
Africa greatly improved that summer as small ships laden with fresh fruit and vegetables began to sail from Greece to the Libyan port of Bardia.
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In the summer of 1941 the Red Cross, the United States government and campaigning groups within Britain
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all argued that it was imperative that the British government revise their blockade policy and allow food aid to get through to the Greeks. When he had announced the blockade in August 1940 Churchill had been adamant that there was to be no question of food aid. To send in food, even for innocent civilians, would, he argued, simply relieve the Germans of the need to feed the people, and help their war effort. Besides, the Nazis were not to be trusted – the food would most likely be diverted into German stomachs. The former American President Herbert Hoover, who had risen to prominence in public life as a self-appointed organizer of food relief during the First World War, was infuriated by Churchill’s stance. He described him as ‘a militarist of the extreme school who held that incidental starvation of women and children was justified’.
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Churchill eventually caved in to the pressure to allow relief for Greece through the blockade. The famine was on such a vast scale that it aroused American public opinion against the policy. Further rational argument came from Oliver Lyttelton, Minister of State in Cairo, the headquarters for the North African military campaign. Lyttelton was facing protests from the Greek community in Egypt where the British position was never particularly secure. He telegrammed the British government with the warning: ‘History will I believe pronounce a stern judgement on our policy. I appeal not only to mercy but to expediency … we shall undermine the resistance of an ally and lose a possible centre of successful insurrection against the Axis if we continue to starve the Greeks … I have no doubt where the balance of advantage of winning the war lies.’
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In January 1942 shipments of wheat were allowed through the blockade and from April regular cargoes of wheat and other foodstuffs were shipped into the Greek ports.
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But by then at least 20,000 people had already died
of starvation. Even after April the food brought in by the Allies was never enough. Although it halted the large-scale urban famine, the Greeks continued to die of starvation. Reinforcing Churchill’s argument that the Germans were not to be trusted, relief eventually became a tool which the occupying armies used mercilessly against the guerrilla resistance fighters in the mountainous areas. Villagers in those areas where the partisans were active were denied any food aid; instead, their homes and fields were burned to the ground in an attempt to clear the area and deprive the resistance fighters of their support network. In 1943 and 1944 much of the Greek countryside starved. By the time Greece was liberated in 1944, half a million Greeks, 14 per cent of the population, had died from hunger and associated diseases.
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This was a civilian casualty rate eight times higher than that suffered by Britain.

Food aid for Greece was the only significant exception Churchill was willing to make and the blockade against the rest of occupied Europe was enforced throughout the rest of the war. Campaigners from the relief organizations continued to plead for aid to be allowed through, arguing that if Britain stood by while Germany used starvation as a weapon of war it would call into question the humanitarian rhetoric that Churchill himself used so liberally.
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But it was Churchill’s fixed idea that no quarter could be given in the fight against Germany. Perhaps, if the defence of the strategy had been tempered by greater acknowledgement of the suffering it caused, it would not have created such a large question mark over the reputation which the Allies claimed for themselves as representatives of the forces of ‘Good’ over ‘Evil’.
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In theory Belgium was in a similar position to Greece. It depended on annual imports of 1.2 million tons of grain from overseas, which came to a sudden halt with German occupation. As the Wehrmacht moved in the quartermasters, field units and individual soldiers scrambled to buy or requisition as much food as possible.
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However, after an extremely difficult winter in 1940–41, farmers rallied and succeeded in producing enough food to provide adequate amounts for almost all the population. The Belgians did not succumb to famine like the Greeks. The usual explanation for this is that Germany was willing to support the country with food imports for the sake of its industrial goods, at least two-thirds of which were exported to the Reich. On the contrary,
Belgium did not in fact survive on food sent in from Germany but was left to feed itself. Throughout the four long years of occupation Belgium received only 849,000 tons of grain imports, enough to cover three-quarters of a year’s pre-war consumption.
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A little food was smuggled in across the French and Dutch borders but the reason the Belgian population did not starve was because its agricultural sector proved itself able to adapt to wartime circumstances.
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The wartime productivity of Belgian agriculture was not the result of the efforts of the Belgian version of the German Reich Food Corporation, which was set up by the occupying forces. Indeed, the Corporation Nationale de l’Alimentation et de l’Agriculture proved incapable of influencing disaffected farmers, and its collection system was only able to muster sufficient food to distribute a daily ration of between 1,000 and 1,500 calories per person. What kept the Belgians alive was the food which the farmers channelled on to the black market. Farmers in large enterprises were able to illegally siphon off only a part of their produce, but farmers with smallholdings probably sold virtually everything they produced on the black market, which eventually developed into an alternative food economy.
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The extent of the black market is indicated by the absurd statistic that the smaller an animal and the easier it was to conceal, the fewer the number of such animals – rabbits, chickens, goats – were recorded in the official figures.
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Belgian agriculture was much more modern than Greek peasant farming, and the farmers were sufficiently flexible to be able to switch to crops rather than livestock, and increase grain and potato production. The high prices their goods fetched on the black market provided sufficient incentive to produce. In 1943 a kilogram of black market bread cost 49 francs compared to 2.60 on the legal market, a kilogram of meat sold for 190 francs while the official price was 34 francs. This would suggest that if the occupying administration had applied a fair pricing policy it might well have been able to gain much more from Belgium than the paltry 27,200 tons of fruits and vegetables which Belgium exported to the Reich in 1942, falling to only 7,300 tons in 1943.
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