Hunger Plan - Effects of The Plan

Effects of The Plan

The Hunger Plan caused the deaths of millions of citizens in the German-occupied territories of the Soviet Union. The historian Timothy Snyder estimates: “4.2 million Soviet citizens (largely Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians) starved by the German occupiers in 1941-1944.” Among the victims were many Jews, whom the Nazis had forced into ghettos, and Soviet prisoners of war, whose movement was most easily controlled by the Germans and thus easily cut off from food supplies. Jews, for example, were prohibited from purchasing eggs, butter, milk, meat or fruit. The so-called "ration" for Jews in Minsk and other cities within the control of Army Group Center was no more than 420 calories per day. Tens of thousands of Jews died of hunger and hunger-related causes over the winter of 1941-1942.

The most reliable figures for the death rate among Soviet prisoners of war in German captivity reveal that 3.3 million died from a total of 5.7 million captured between June 1941 and February 1945, the vast majority directly or indirectly as a result of starvation and undernourishment. Of these 3.3 million, 2 million had already died by the beginning of February 1942. The enormous number of deaths was the result of a deliberate policy of starvation directed against Soviet POWs. The German planning staffs had reckoned on capturing and thus having to feed up to two million prisoners within the first six to eight weeks of the war, i.e. roughly the same number as during the western campaign of 1940 against France and the Low Countries. The number of French, Belgian and Dutch POWs who died in German captivity, however, was extremely low compared with the number of deaths among Soviet POWs.

In spite of the exorbitantly high death rate among Soviet POWs, which were the main group of victims of the Hunger Plan, the plan was never fully implemented due to the ultimate failure of the German military campaign. As the historian Alex J. Kay makes clear, however, "what one is dealing with here is the blueprint for a programme of mass murder unprecedented in modern history". The Germans lacked the manpower to enforce a 'food blockade' of the Soviet cities; neither could they confiscate all the food for their own purposes. However, the Germans were able to significantly supplement their grain stocks, particularly from the granaries in fertile Ukraine, and cut off the Soviets from them, leading to significant starvation in the Soviet-held territories (most drastically in Leningrad, encircled by German forces, where about one million people died). The lack of food also contributed to the starvation of forced labor, prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates in Germany.