American food policy in occupied Germany refers to the food supply policies enacted by the U.S., and to some extent its dependent Allies, in the western occupation zones of Germany in the first two years of the ten-year postwar occupation of Western Germany following World War II.
Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, the German government instituted rationing which resulted in the restricted availability of food. Occasional shortages of food occurred during the war; thus, a black market developed. However, supplies were generally adequate, especially in comparison to the situation in some other European countries. This was in part due to the ruthless exploitation of occupied countries by the German government, [1] which utilized policies such as the "Hunger Plan", which resulted in the deaths of millions of people in German-occupied areas of the Soviet Union when food supplies were redirected to Germany and the German military units operating in the USSR, [2] and the German blockade which resulted in the Dutch famine of 1944–45. Inadequate food rations also formed part of the Holocaust, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths in Warsaw alone, [3] and around two million Soviet prisoners of war were starved to death by German forces over the winter of 1941/42. [4]
Widespread food shortages first began to occur in Germany following the end of the war in May 1945. [5] The production of food was disrupted by the effects of the war, including the destruction of farmland, livestock, and machinery. In addition, labor shortages developed when slave laborers who had been forced to work on German farms returned to their homes. The situation was worsened by a period of poor weather. [6] As a result, the output of German farms was sufficient to provide city residents with only 4,200 kilojoules (1,000 kilocalories) of nutrition per day. [5] At this time, food supplies were limited across much of Europe, including the United Kingdom and France, resulting in continued rationing. [7]
During the planning for the occupation of Germany, the Allies were faced with the issue of whether food allocations for the country should be set at either the minimum needed to avoid disease and political disorder, or levels sufficient to fully meet the population's needs. A principle of ensuring that Germans had no better access to food than the worst-affected Allied country was adopted, but not applied in practice. The Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force initially set the ration scale for Germans at 11,000 kJ (2,600 kcal) per day, the same as levels in Belgium and France and at the top of the scale considered adequate by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. [8]
Once the occupation of Germany commenced, it proved impossible to deliver the intended levels of food. The Allied planners underestimated the extent of the damage to German infrastructure, and overestimated the ability of Germans to grow their own food. As a result, once supplies which had been stockpiled by the German government during the war ran out, the ration scales were reduced to 4,200–5,200 kJ (1,000–1,250 kcal) per day. [8] Most German civilians were able to supplement these rations, however. Displaced persons, including Holocaust survivors, were allocated more generous rations. These averaged only between 6,700 and 8,400 kJ (1,600 and 2,000 kcal) per day, and few of the displaced persons were able to access other sources of food. [9]
After the German surrender, the U.S. chose to designate large numbers of German prisoners as Disarmed Enemy Forces (DEF) instead of using the Prisoner of War status, under which the captives would have been under the protection of the Geneva convention [10] and, therefore, would have been entitled to the same quantities of food as U.S. troops. [10] [11]
The conditions these prisoners had to endure were often harsh. A number of the camps in Western Germany, especially initially, were huge wired-in enclosures lacking sufficient shelter and other necessities. [10] (see Rheinwiesenlager) Since there was no longer a danger of German retaliation against Allied POWs, "less effort was put into finding ways of procuring scarce food and shelter than would otherwise have been the case, and, consequently, tens of thousands of prisoners died from hunger and disease who might have been saved". [10]
The International Red Cross was never permitted to fully involve itself in the situation in DEF or SEP camps; even though conditions in them gradually improved, even the most conservative estimates put the death toll in French camps alone at over 16,500 in 1945. [10]
After the German surrender, the International Red Cross was prohibited from providing aid such as food or visiting the prisoner camps. However, after making approaches to the Allies in the fall of 1945, it was allowed to investigate the camps in the UK and French occupation zones of Germany, respectively, as well as to provide relief to the prisoners held there. [12]
On February 4, 1946, the Red Cross was permitted to visit and assist prisoners also in the U.S. occupation zone of Germany, although only with very small quantities of food. During their visits, the delegates observed that German prisoners of war were often detained in appalling conditions. They drew the attention of the authorities to this fact, and gradually succeeded in getting some improvements made. [12]
The German Red Cross, which during the war had become thoroughly Nazified with its head Ernst Grawitz a major figure in medical experiments on Jews and "enemies of the state", [13] was dissolved, and the International Red Cross and the few other allowed international relief agencies were kept from helping Germans through strict controls on supplies and on travel. [14]
During 1945 it was estimated that the average German civilian in the U.S. and the United Kingdom occupation zones received 5,000 kJ (1,200 kcal) a day. [15] Meanwhile, non-German Displaced Persons were receiving 9,600 kJ (2,300 kcal) through emergency food imports and Red Cross help. [16]
Fearing a Nazi uprising, U.S. occupation forces were under strict orders not to share their food with the German population; these orders also applied to their wives when they arrived later in the occupation. The women were under orders not to allow their German maids to get hold of any leftovers; "the food was to be destroyed or made inedible", although in view of the starving German population facing them many housewives chose to disregard these official orders. [17] Nevertheless, according to a U.S. intelligence survey a German university professor reportedly said: "Your soldiers are good-natured, good ambassadors; but they create unnecessary ill will to pour 20 liters [5 U.S. gallons] of leftover cocoa in the gutter when it is badly needed in our clinics. It makes it hard for me to defend American democracy among my countrymen." [18]
In early 1946, U.S. President Harry S. Truman allowed foreign relief organizations to enter Germany in order to review the food situation. In mid-1946, non-German relief organizations were permitted to help starving German children. [19] The German food situation became worst during the very cold winter of 1946–47, when German food energy intake ranged from 4,200 to 6,300 kJ (1,000 to 1,500 kcal) per day, a situation made worse by severe lack of fuel for heating. [20] Average adult food energy intake in the U.S was 13,000–14,000 kJ (3,200–3,300 kcal), in the UK 12,000 kJ (2,900 kcal) and in the U.S. Army 17,000 kJ (4,000 kcal). [21]
The precise effect of the food crisis on German health and mortality has been a matter of some contention. Speaking of the Anglo-American zones, Herbert Hoover reported that in the fall of 1946, starvation produced a 40 percent increase in mortality among Germans over 70. [22] However, John Farquharson cites statistics indicating that the incidence of hunger-induced edema was low in 1946–1947. [23] According to the British Medical Journal , mortality in the British zone was above its pre-war level until June 1946, when the death rate fell below that of 1938. [24] Also, once it became clear there would be no rising, as threatened by the Nazis during the war, food controls were relaxed.
The historian Nicholas Balabkins notes that the Allied restrictions placed on German steel production, and their control over where the produced coal and steel was delivered, meant that offers by Western European nations to trade food for desperately needed German coal and machinery were rejected. Neither the Italians nor the Dutch could sell the vegetables that they had previously sold in Germany, with the consequence that the Dutch had to destroy considerable proportions of their crop. Denmark offered 150 tons of lard a month; Turkey offered hazelnuts; Norway offered fish and fish oil; Sweden offered considerable amounts of fats. The Allies were however unwilling to let the Germans trade. [25]
Another consequence of the Allied policy of "Industrial Disarmament" (see The industrial plans for Germany) was that there was a drastic fall in fertilizer available for German agriculture, thus further decreasing foodstuff production capacity. [26]
The German infant mortality rate was twice that of other nations in Western Europe until the close of 1948. [27]
The adequate feeding of the German population in occupied Germany was an Allied legal obligation [28] [29] under Article 43 of The 1907 Hague Rules of Land Warfare. [30]
The "Handbook for Military Government in Germany", an occupation document which advocated a quick restoration of normal life for the German people and reconstruction of Germany, was ready in August 1944. The secretary of the U.S. Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr., author of the Morgenthau Plan for partition and deindustrialization of postwar Germany, brought it to the attention of President Franklin D. Roosevelt who after reading it accepted it enthusiastically with the words:
Too many people here and in England hold the view that the German people as a whole are not responsible for what has taken place – that only a few Nazis are responsible. That unfortunately is not based on fact. The German people must have it driven home to them that the whole nation has been engaged in a lawless conspiracy against the decencies of modern civilization.
However, after opposition from some members of the US government, a revised document was drafted, the Joint Chiefs of Staff directive 1067 (JCS 1067). Here the military government of occupation was ordered to "take no steps looking toward the economic rehabilitation of Germany [or] designed to maintain or strengthen the German economy" and it was also ordered that starvation, disease and civil unrest were to be kept below such levels where they would pose a danger to the troops of occupation.
On March 20, 1945, President Roosevelt was warned that the JCS 1067 was not severe enough: it would let the Germans "stew in their own juice". Roosevelt's response was "Let them have soup kitchens! Let their economy sink!" Asked if he wanted the German people to starve, he replied, "Why not?" [31]
By August 1945 General Clay was becoming increasingly concerned about the humanitarian and political situation in the area under his responsibility. He stated "There is no choice between being a communist on 1,500 calories [6,300 kJ] a day and a believer in democracy on 1,000 calories [4,200 kJ]".
Two years later, in July 1947, JCS 1067 was scrapped and replaced by JCS 1779 which noted that "an orderly, prosperous Europe requires the economic contributions of a stable and productive Germany." [32]
General Clay would later remark in his memoirs that "there was no doubt that JCS 1067 contemplated the Carthaginian peace which dominated our operations in Germany during the early months of occupation." [33]
Nicholas Balabkins takes a favorable view of Allied policy, asserting that American food shipments saved the lives of "millions of Germans", although shortages persisted into 1948. [34] Balabkins also notes that some distributed food rations were of poor composition and "considerably below minimum nutrition standards"; without access to additional food from alternative sources recipients would eventually fall prey to starvation. [35] Balabkins also cites an authority who stated that the rations "represented a fairly rapid starvation level", showing the need for the supplemental rations that were provided [36] [37]
Other Losses is a 1989 book by Canadian writer James Bacque, which makes the claim that U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower intentionally caused the deaths by starvation or exposure of around a million German prisoners of war held in Western internment camps after the Second World War. Other Losses charges that hundreds of thousands of German prisoners that had fled the Eastern front were designated as "Disarmed Enemy Forces" in order to avoid recognition under the Geneva Convention (1929), for the purpose of carrying out their deaths through disease or slow starvation. Other Losses cites documents in the U.S. National Archives and interviews with people who stated they witnessed the events. The book claims that a "method of genocide" was present in the banning of Red Cross inspectors, the returning of food aid, soldier ration policy, and policy regarding shelter building.
Japan was occupied and administered by the victorious Allies of World War II from the surrender of the Empire of Japan on September 2, 1945 at the end of the Second World War until the Treaty of San Francisco took effect on April 28, 1952. The occupation, led by the American military with support from the British Commonwealth and under the supervision of the Far Eastern Commission, involved a total of nearly one million Allied soldiers. The occupation was overseen by the U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, who was appointed Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers by the U.S. President Harry S. Truman; MacArthur was succeeded as supreme commander by General Matthew Ridgway in 1951. Unlike in the occupation of Germany and the occupation of Austria, the Soviet Union had little to no influence over the occupation of Japan, declining to participate because it did not want to place Soviet troops under MacArthur's direct command.
The Dutch famine of 1944–1945, also known as the Hunger Winter, was a famine that took place in the German-occupied Netherlands, especially in the densely populated western provinces north of the great rivers, during the relatively harsh winter of 1944–1945, near the end of World War II.
The history of Germany from 1945–1990 spans the period following World War II, from the Berlin Declaration marking the abolition of the German Reich and Allied-occupied period in Germany on 5 June 1945 to German reunification on 3 October 1990.
The Morgenthau Plan was a proposal to weaken Germany following World War II by eliminating its arms industry and removing or destroying other key industries basic to military strength. This included the removal or destruction of all industrial plants and equipment in the Ruhr. It was first proposed by United States Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr. in a 1944 memorandum entitled Suggested Post-Surrender Program for Germany.
The Rheinwiesenlager were a group of 19 camps built in the Allied-occupied part of Germany by the U.S. Army to hold captured German soldiers at the close of the Second World War. Officially named Prisoner of War Temporary Enclosures (PWTE), they held between one and almost two million surrendered Wehrmacht personnel from April until September 1945.
The Council of Relief Agencies Licensed to Operate in Germany (CRALOG) was a nongovernmental organization created in 1946 by the American Council of Voluntary Agencies for Foreign Service and included 11 major relief agencies such as the International Red Cross.
Nazism and the acts of Nazi Germany affected many countries, communities, and people before, during and after World War II. Nazi Germany's attempt to exterminate several groups viewed as subhuman by Nazi ideology was eventually stopped by the combined efforts of the wartime Allies headed by the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and the United States.
Disarmed Enemy Forces is a US designation for soldiers who surrender to an adversary after hostilities end, and for those POWs who had already surrendered and were held in camps in occupied German territory at the time. It was General Dwight D. Eisenhower's designation of German prisoners in post–World War II occupied Germany.
The Wirtschaftswunder, also known as the Miracle on the Rhine, was the rapid reconstruction and development of the economies of West Germany and Austria after World War II. The expression referring to this phenomenon was first used by The Times in 1950.
The Saar Protectorate, officially Saarland, was a French protectorate and a disputed territory separated from Germany. On joining the Federal Republic of Germany in 1957, it became the smallest "federal state", the Saarland, not counting the "city states" of Berlin, Hamburg, and Bremen. It is named after the Saar River.
West German rearmament began in the decades after the World War II. Fears of another rise of German militarism caused the new military to operate within an alliance framework, under NATO command. The events led to the establishment of the Bundeswehr, the West German military, in 1955. The name Bundeswehr was a compromise choice suggested by former general Hasso von Manteuffel to distinguish the new forces from the Wehrmacht term for the combined German forces of Nazi Germany.
The term "home front" covers the activities of the civilians in a nation at war. World War II was a total war; homeland military production became vital to both the Allied and Axis powers. Life on the home front during World War II was a significant part of the war effort for all participants and had a major impact on the outcome of the war. Governments became involved with new issues such as rationing, manpower allocation, home defense, evacuation in the face of air raids, and response to occupation by an enemy power. The morale and psychology of the people responded to leadership and propaganda. Typically women were mobilized to an unprecedented degree.
The reconstruction of Germany was a long process of rebuilding Germany after the destruction endured during World War II. Germany suffered heavy losses during the war, both in lives and industrial power. 6.9 to 7.5 million Germans died, roughly 8.26% to 8.86% of the population. The country's cities were severely damaged from heavy bombing in the closing chapters of the war and agricultural production was only 35% of what it was before the war.
The President's Economic Mission to Germany and Austria was a series of reports commissioned by US President Harry S. Truman and written by former US President Herbert Hoover.
Two global superpowers, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (US), rose in the aftermath of World War II. The war's aftermath was also defined by the rising threat of nuclear warfare, the creation and implementation of the United Nations as an intergovernmental organization, and the decolonization of Asia and Africa by European and east Asian powers, most notably by the United Kingdom, France, and Japan.
Government Aid and Relief in Occupied Areas (GARIOA) was a program under which the United States after the 1945 end of World War II from 1946 onwards provided emergency aid to the occupied nations of Japan, Germany, and Austria. The aid was predominantly in the form of food to alleviate starvation in the occupied areas.
The industrial plans for Germany were designs the Allies of World War II considered imposing on Germany in the Aftermath of World War II to reduce and manage Germany's industrial capacity.
The Hunger Plan was a partially implemented plan developed by Nazi bureaucrats during World War II to seize food from the Soviet Union and give it to German soldiers and civilians. The plan entailed the genocide by starvation of millions of Soviet citizens following Operation Barbarossa, the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union. The premise behind the Hunger Plan was that Germany was not self-sufficient in food supplies; to sustain the war and keep up domestic morale, it needed food from conquered lands at any cost. The plan created a famine as an act of policy, killing millions of people.
Red Cross parcel refers to packages containing mostly food, tobacco and personal hygiene items sent by the International Association of the Red Cross to prisoners of war during the First and Second World Wars, as well as at other times. It can also refer to medical parcels and so-called "release parcels" provided during World War II.