Food is another weapon that does not make the great headlines, but was absolutely critical to the soviet war effort. The Germans occupied some of the most fertile agicultrural land in the Soviet Union--much of the Black Soil Zone, Depending on just when the estimate we are made, this ammounted to about 40 percent of the productive agricultural land of the Soviet Union. This created a huge problem for the Soviets, how to feed not only the military, but the civilian population manning the factories and mines that supported the Soviet war effort. As the war progressed, Soviet rations when available fell to starvation levels. And people did starve. If you were not in a priority class (military, workers, and young children, it was difficult to survive without asccess to supplementary food, And people did starve. This meant actual starvation as well as people dying from sickness and disease because their immune systems were impaired by inadequate mutrition. The icomic American food item was Spam. It was especially apprecited in the meat/protein-starved Soviet Union. Red Army soldiers referred to it as 'the second front'. Spam and other canned meats were, however, just one part of the enormous quantities of food shipped to the Soviets. There were huge quanties of a wide range of food producrs, both bulk grains and staples as well as packaged (mostly cans) foods. Given the drastic food shortages in the soviet Union. The American food shipments not only provided needed food, but actully prevented a huge number of people from starbingerhaps millions of people. Lend Lease food shipments continued until the Japanese surrender. It could have continued longer, but Stalin was intent on using the NKVD to install Communist police states throughout Wastern Europe. As a result, The Soviets had a very difficult food situartion after the War. Stalin's collectivization before the war and the huge damage done to the collective farms meant that the 1945 harvest was very poor. Damage to the food processing abd trnsport systems were other problems. And even in the post-War era, agriculture would continue to be a problem.

Created: 4:00 PM 8/29/2015
Last updated: 4:00 PM 8/29/2015