Figure 1.--Brüder im Geiste: Hermann Göring und Staatssekretär Herbert Backe im Juni 1941 auf einer Spazierfahrt in der Umgebung von Görings Hauptquartier "Jägerhof" bei Rastenburg in Ostpreußen. Während Backe einen brutalen Hungerplan ausarbeitete, der seiner Einschätzung nach sicher 'zig Millionen' Russen hinraffen würde, kündigte Göring der Sowjetunion 1941 martialisch das 'größte Sterben seit dem Dreißigjährigen Krieg' an. This translates as, "Brothers in spirit: Hermann Göring and Secretary of State Herbert Backe in June 1941 on a ride around Göring's hunting lodge near Rastenburg (Hitler's eastern command post often called the Wolf's Lair) in East Prussia. While there they worked out the brutal hunger plan that would in Backe's estimation [hinraffen?] easily eliminate 'tens of millions' of Russians. Göring discussed the impending invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 (Barbarossa), which would achieve the 'biggest mass destruction since the Thirty Years War'." Source: Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz (BPK).

Some of th officials most associated with the NAZI Hunger Plan included Reicharshall Göring, Reichführer SS Himmler, SS Obergruppenführer Heydrich, and Minister of Food Darré. The two officials most directly associated with the Hunger Plan were Backe and Göring. Backe in the Ministry of Food (REEUL) is generally seen as the author of the Hunger Plan which is sometimes referred to as the Backe Plan. He was powerul force in the Ministry even before he was finally appointed Minister (May 1942). Hitler appears to have more confidence in Backe than the original minister, Daree. Many of the NAZI war criminals are very well known. The Hunger Plan which may have killed 4-5 million people, mostly Soviets, was one of the great crimes of the War. Yet ouside historians spcializing in NAZI history, he is virtually unknown. Hitler had even more confidence in Göring for the radical process if implementing the Hunger Plan. Göring had enormous responsibilities for managing the German economy as part of a 5 Year Plan. Details for the Hunger Plan were developed in what became known as the Green Folder.

Staatssekretär Herbert Backe

Herbert Backe in the Reichsministerium für Emährung und Landeswirtschaft (Ministry of Food and Agriculture--REEUL) is generally seen as the author of the NAZI Hunger Plan which was sometimes referred to as the Backe Plan. He was powerul force in the Ministry even before he was finally appointed Minister (May 1942). Hitler appears to have more confidence in Backe than the original minister, Daree. Many of the NAZI war criminals are very well known. The Hunger Plan which may have killed 4-5 million people, mostly Soviets, was one of the great crimes of the War. Yet ouside historians spcializing in NAZI history, he is virtually unknown. Backe was born in Geiorgia, at the time a Tsarist province. With the outbreak of World War I, Tsarist officias interned him as an enemny alien. He managed to escape and get to Grmany duruing the Russian Civil War. He was at the time of World War II one of a rising tier of young second level professionals in the NAZI Party. He was an advocate of invading and deindustrialing the Soviet Union. He wanted to demolish Soviet industry and eliminate the Soviet industrial work force. He thought that the Soviet Union should be turned back to an agricultural economy focused on produing whet for western Europe. This coincided with Hitler's idea in Mein Kampf. There was no idea of taking control of Soviet industry which ws substantial, bur rather retuning the East to an area of peasant agriculture. Backe was critical of Stalin's agriultural policy, gich was to seize control of it through collectivization and use the agricultural harvest to finance industriliztion. As a result, Soviet grain exports were only a fraction of Tsarit levels. This made Germany dependent of trans-Atlantic grain (American, Argentine, and Canadian). Backe wanted to end this dependence by sezing control of Soviet grain production. In Backe's view this would create a continent Grossraumwirtschaft and an efficuent division of labor, an industrialized Western Europe and a peasant-based agricultural eastern Europe. This mean eliminating the uneeded urban population of the Soviet Union. Staatssekretär Backe took the lead role in this matter. Darré was apparently not informed of the Barbarossa planning. Darré was both the REFUL Minister and the Reich Farming Leader (Reichsbauernführer). After the launch of Barbarossa, Backe informed Darré that he received instructions that the Führer did not want planning conducted in the Ministry, but rather transferred as a Four-Year Plan task. This meant that it was turned over to Reichmarshal Göring who was Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan. Of course secrecy was a a principal factor here, but Hitler seems to have been concerned about Darré when it came to such a radical matter as the Hunger Plan and starving millions of people. [Kay, p. 53.]

Minister of Food Richard Walther Darré

Richard Walther Darré popularized the 'Blut und Boden' phrase as the NAZIs were rising to power He wrote a book titled Neuadel aus Blut und Boden (A New Nobility Based On Blood And Soil) in 1930. He was a strong proponent of eugenics. He saw breeding as the solution to the problems of the German Volk. Darré was an influential NAZI and and played a major role in developing race theory. Darré helped popularize the NAZI Party in rural areas that played a key role in the NAZI rise to power. Hitler rewarded Darré by appointing him Minister of Food and Agriculture. Hitler by the time of World War II, however, came to regret this appointment as radical plans began to surface about dealing with Poles and Jews. And as he lost influence with Hitler, he also found other NAZI leaders distancing themselves from him. Darré from an early point got on poorly with Economy Minister Hjalmar Schacht, in part because of poor harvests in the mid-1930s tht Darré did mothing to address. Hitler did not trust Darré to take the radical actuins he wanted, namely starve millions of people to death. Darré saw slavery as a more practical approach, namely because he saw the benefit of not destroying a useful labor force. Darré described his vision in a speech (1940). We are not sure as to the venue. Luce published a transcript of the speech in Life Magazine during 1940. He explained that "... by blitzkrieg ... before autumn [here he was obviously already thinking about Barbarossa]... we shall be the absolute masters of two continents ... a new aristocracy of German masters will be created [with] slaves assigned to it, these slaves to be their property and to consist of landless, non-German nationals .... we actually have in mind a modern form of medieval slavery which we must and will introduce because we urgently need it in order to fulfill our great tasks. These slaves will by no means be denied the blessings of illiteracy; higher education will, in future, be reserved only for the German population of Europe...." [Darré, Secret Speech] Himmler broke with Darré as plans for Generalplan Ost were being finalized. Himmler saw Darré as too theoretical. Actually the opposite seems true. Himmler demanded that Darré resign his SS post (1938), leader of the RuSHA so Günther Pancke could take over. Darré finally was forced to resign as Reich Minister (1942). Publically thereason was his health grounds. He was succeeded by Staatssekretär Herbert Backe who had prepared the Hunger Plan which met Hitler's objectives. Hitler wanted large numbers of people eliminated.

Reichmarshal Herman Göring

Hitler had even more confidence in Göring for the radical process of implementing the Hunger Plan. Göring had enormous responsibilities for managing the German economy as part of a Four Year Plan. Details for the Hunger Plan were developed in what became known as the Green Folder. The Green Folder was essentially the master policy directive for the economic exploitation of the conquered Soviet Union. The Holocaust is widely known today, much less well know is that the policy guidelines meant inevitably the death by starvation of millions Slavic people--a kind of enlarged Holocaust. The detils were worked out in the SS's Generalplan Ost and Staatssekretär Herbert Backe's Hunger Plan. It included both the neglect of Soviet POWs resulting in huge mortality rates and the denial of food to urban Soviet populauions which also resulted in high mortality rates. The Green Folder documents sufaced in the Nuremberg Trials after the War.

SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich

We do not yet know of SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich involvement in the Hunger Plan as developed with Brbarossa. Heydrich was, however, at the center of the policy of ghettoizing Polish Jews. It is not known with any certinty what Heydrich envisiond would be outcome of this effort. As it developed, however, sarvation became one of the outcomes because the Germans once the ghettoes were closed, controlled what went in and out of the ghetto and rations were set at starvation levels. Starvation proved, however, a slow process. And unlike the non-Jewish Poles, once confined in ghettoes, Polish Jews had few options. Conditions were at first ameliorated by emergency American food shipments, but even before the death camps were opertional (Spring 1942), Jews were dieing in large numbers as a result of both malnutritin and outright starvation. Somne 0.4-0.5 Jews perished because of this aspect of the Hunger Plan. For Hitler this was not fast emough. Heydrich knew how to cury Hitker's favor. His answer was Opertion Reinhard.

Reichführer SS Heinrich Himmler

Reichführer SS Heinrich Himmler supported Backe and other NAZI officials promoting a radical approach in the East. Himmler was among many NAZIs who had a romantic vision of a connection between the land and the German soul. Himmler's vision was more racially tinged than Backe's vision, but he saw a need to securing the German food supply at any cost so as to prevent the debilitating impact of the British naval blockade which impeded the Germn war effort during World War I. Other luminaries in the NAZi Party had ideas about gaining control of the Soviet grain supply before Hitler announced his intention ton invae the Soviet Union (December 1940). Himmler gave his support to the Hunger Plan as soon as the ideas emerged in Barbarossa planning.

General Georg Thomas

Planning for the Hunger Plan was done in secrecy. It had to include the Wehrmacht, presumably from an early stage. Pnly the Wehrmacht had the manpower and logistics capability needed to seize the available food. The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) unit was the Defence Economy and Armament Office, led by General Georg Thomas. Thomas was ruthless pragmtist who saw that logistical limitations meant that the invading German forces would have to live off the land. There were several factors at play here. The Wehrmnacht launched Barbarossa with a relatively limited logistical capacty. An inadequate truck fleet and fuel shortages was a major problem. This was compounded by the inadequate capaciy of the Soviet rail system. These probles did not show up in the smaller, shorter campigns in the West. They surfaced wihin a short period after Barbarossa unfolded. The basic sollution to the logistical problem was rather than shipping food east to the advancing Wehrmacht forces was for the advancing units to live off the land, loot food from Sovet collective farms and food stocks. As part of the planning, OKW did nothing to prepare for the resulting food shortages the civilans in Soviet cities woud face. In fact the elmination of this unwanted population was at the heart of the Ungr Plan, This was a violatuion of estblished internationl law. The consequences were clear from the beginning in Wehrmcht planning documents, "1) The war can only be continued if the entire Wehrmacht is fed from Russia in the third year of the war. 2) If we take what we need out of the country, there can be no doubt that tens of millions of people will die of starvation." [Tooza, p. 479.] Thomas worked with Backe in Barbarossa planning. Thomas' role in economic planning ended when Albert Speer and his Armament Ministry, took over almost all the expertise relating to armament issues. Thomas resigned from the Wehrmacht Defence Economy and Armament Office (November 1942). Thomas saw from an early point that Hitler was leading Germany into awar thatv it did notvhave the indstrial capacity and resources to win. He becamne active in the resistace movement not because of the crimes committed by the NAZIs, but for the pragmatic reason that the war colud not be won and Germany was being destroyed. After the July Bomb Plot (July 1944), the Gestapo discovered that he was involved, but probably not his full role and he was arrested. He managed, however, to survice the War. He died in Allied custody (1946).

Sources

Darré, Richard Walther. "Secret Nazi Speech: Reich Minister Darré discusses the world's future under German rule", Life Magazine (December 9, 1940), pp. 43-44. The terrible detil in this article, incongrousily came with Ginger Rogers on the cover. The true nature of the NAZI regime was still not fully understood. And the editor apparently was not positive that Darré, still Ministr of Food and Agriculture actually openly said such things. The editor added "Even if [this address] was not delivered exactly as recorded here, it might have been"

Kay, Alex J. Exploitation, Resettlement, Mass Murder: Political and Economic Planning for German Occupation Policy in the Soviet Union, 1940-1941.

Tooze, Adam. The Wages of Destruction (Viking, 2007).

Created: 9:11 PM 10/29/2012
Last updated: 8:49 AM 3/22/2013