Hunger Plan - Starvation in Other German-occupied Territories

Starvation in Other German-occupied Territories

While the Hunger Plan against the population of Soviet cities and grain-deficit territories was unique in that no such premeditated plan was formulated against the inhabitants of any other German-occupied territory, starvation did affect other parts of German-occupied Europe, including Greece (Great Famine) and Poland (General Government). Unlike the Soviet Union, in Poland it was the Jewish population in ghettos who suffered most heavily, although ethnic Poles also faced increasing levels of starvation. Raul Hilberg has estimated that over half a million Polish Jews died in the ghettos due to starvation. For example, in early 1943, Hans Frank, German governor of Poland, estimated that three million Poles would be facing starvation as a result of the Plan. In August, the Polish capital Warsaw was completely cut off from grain deliveries. Only the above-average harvest of 1943 and the collapsing Eastern Front of 1944 saved the Poles from starvation. Western Europe was third on the German list of food re-prioritizing. Food was also shipped to Germany from France and other occupied territories in the West, although the West was never subjected to the genocidal starvation experienced in the East.

By mid-1941, the German minority in Poland was receiving 2,613 calories per day, while Poles received 699 and Jews in the ghetto 184. The Jewish ration fulfilled a mere 7.5 percent of their daily needs; Polish rations only 26 percent. Only the rations allocated to Germans fulfilled the full needs of their daily calorie intake.

In late 1943 the Plan also bore another success for the Germans: German food supplies were stabilized. In autumn 1943, for the first time since the war began, the food rations for German citizens — which had been cut several times before — were increased.

In the years 1942–1943, occupied Europe supplied Germany with more than one fifth of its grain, a quarter of its fats and thirty percent of its meat.

Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diaries about the Hunger Plan that its principle was that "before Germany starved, it would be the turn of a number of other people".