[…]The policy of annihilation by hunger approved by Hitler was directed against two population groups: on the one hand against the people in the "forest zone" of central and northern Russia and Belorussia, on the other against the urban population of the Soviet Union in general. It is true that this plan, which in June 1941 was even checked and in principle approved by the Macroeconomic Department of the German Reichsbank, contained some basic flaws overlooked by its authors.
For instance the surplus and deficit regions in the Soviet Union were by no means clearly separated, and especially Ukraine was not the most important surplus region, for it promised only relatively little "surpluses" even if the population’s food consumption was forcibly reduced. Thus the Macroeconomic Department of IG Farben had to conclude on 26 November 1941 that, "under the assumption of normal nourishment", the territories conquered so far were "all together deficit regions in regard to bread grain", which theoretically would have required supplies from the Volga-Urals region. The main flaw, however, was that no one seems to have thought how the starvation was to occur in an area which at least partially contained German troops.
Nevertheless the intention of letting millions of people in the occupied Soviet territories starve or otherwise perish became the guideline for many decision-makers. In this respect the ominous number of 30 million – by which [State Secretary at the Ministry of Food and Agriculture] Backe considered that the population would have to be reduced – played a part.[my emphasis] The fact that many corresponding statements were made by acting figurers from the areas of Belorussia and "Central Russia" is no coincidence, but likely to be related to the fact that these regions were part of the "forest zone".
Thus the Reichsführer-SS and Head of the German Police, Heinrich Himmler, "at the beginning of 1941, before the start of the campaign against Russia, held [a speech] on the Wewelsburg, in which he stated that the purpose of the Russian campaign was the decimation of the Slav population by thirty million", as the former Head of SS and Police von dem Bach-Zelewski testified in 1946 at Nuremberg. Written orders for this annihilation of Slavs had not existed.
At the speech twelve Gruppenführer (higher SS officers) were said to have been present. In fact the mentioned conference of the SS-Gruppenführer on the Wewelsburg with Himmler took place only between 12 and 15 June. According to a later deposition of the Head of the Personal Staff Reichsführer-SS, Karl Wolff, what Himmler had said on the Wewelsburg was that the death of these millions of people was not the goal, but would be the consequence of the war against the USSR.
To this Bach-Zelewski, at the criminal trial against Wolff, added that Himmler had back then predicted that military actions and crises of food supply would lead to this high number of victims.[my emphasis] Himmler’s announcement, however, came very late and was very vague, just like the food planners’ project left many things open. Coincidence or not, two days before the meeting on the Wewelsburg Himmler had talked with Backe about the agriculture of the Soviet regions to be occupied.
All by themselves Bach-Zelewski’s utterances might be explained as a mere attempt to relieve himself, as he was invoking a higher order. They are supported, however, by a deposition that the former Head of SS and Police for the Eastern Territories, Friedrich Jeckeln, made shortly before in January 1946 at Riga:
"Herf [Eberhard Herf, commander of the Order Police Minsk from about January to March 1942 and August 1943 to January 1944, Head of the Staff of the Anti-partisan Units Reichsführer SS (Bach-Zelewski) for one month in July/August 1943] told me that von dem Bach-Zelewski had told him that he – von dem Bach – had been given by Himmler the order to destroy 20 million Soviet citizens on the territory of Belorussia and other regions east of Belorussia, immediately upon the heels of the advancing German Army."
In this respect it must be taken into account that Bach-Zelewski’s territorial area of action was to be "Central Russia" with head-office in Moscow. He himself even wrote once that it was to lie principally to the east of Moscow up to the Urals. A great part of the so-called forest zone would thus have fallen under his jurisdiction, which could explain why he was given the task to destroy so large a part of those 30 million people, a fact that he "forgot" at Nuremberg. The inferno foreseen for Central Russia was to be to terrible that even Erich Koch, one of the most brutal NS politicians, rejected the place of Reich Commissar in Moscow with the justification that this was "a wholly negative activity".[my emphasis]
In his memoirs the former counterespionage officer of Army Group Center, Rudolf-Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff, wrote about a visit by the head of the Advance Detachment Moscow of Einsatzgruppe B, Professor Franz Six, who shortly after the moving of the staff quarters to Borissow, i.e. presumably in July 1941, told him about the plan:
"He reported that Hitler had the intention to push the eastern border of the Reich up to the line Baku-Stalingrad-Moscow. To the east of this line there would be created a ‘fire strip’ in the area of which all life was to be wiped out. It was intended to decimate the about thirty million Russians living in this area by hunger through the removal or all food from this gigantic area. All taking part in this action would be forbidden under punishment of death to even give a piece of bread to a Russian. The big cities from Leningrad to Moscow were to be leveled to the ground; Head of SS von dem Bach-Zelewski would be responsible for the execution of these measures.[my emphasis][...]
A slightly different version of the same event is given by Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt. According hereto "a special envoy of Rosenberg’s Eastern Ministry, in the company of a high-ranking party officials, visited the Army Group at Borissow." As recalled by the Supreme Commander of Army Group Center, General Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, they had spoken with Bock at the meal about the colonization of Russia until possibly east of Moscow. A quintessence in this respect had been the following:
"Forty million Russians too many! They must ‘perish’!" This meant starving to death. Asked about this by him, Strik, Rosenberg had answered that these were "fantasies" of the SS and some others without significance. Von Bock is supposed to have refused to believe what he heard. Yet the General Field Marshal had met Himmler already on 5 June 1941 and been informed by him that the "goal of the campaign in the East was the splitting of Russia into small single states and the extension of the German sphere of interest far beyond the Urals."
On 6 July he noted the following:
"The region is a hunger region. Its products will hardly be sufficient [...], so that I don’t know how one is to solve the problem of feeding the population." Thus von Bock was by no means that much a stranger to these thoughts. When Himmler visited him on 24 October in Smolensk, he – at least according to Bach-Zelewski’s testimony – thanked him for the murder of the Jews, this "dirty work" which he thus would not have to do himself.
Back to Six. The considerations exposed by him are obviously based on the Backe Plan and also show notable coincidence with Jeckeln’s deposition. In what concerns the execution his vision remained naïve and unclear, like in the "Guidelines of Economic Policy". Fortunately the project could not be put into practice that easily.
The Hunger Plan also appeared on other occasions. For Göring it was a favorite subject. In November 1941 he told the Italian foreign minister Count Ciano that within a year 20 to 30 million people would starve to death in Russia. Maybe this was a good thing, for certain peoples needed to be reduced.[my emphasis] Hitler spoke of a "population catastrophe" of the "Muscovites" and declared that due to lack or destruction of food "millions would have to die".
According to Goebbels, the German leadership declared "publicly that Russia has nothing to expect from us and that we will let it starve to death."[my emphasis] The General Plenipotentiary for Labor Employment, Fritz Sauckel, stated on 4 August 1942, during a visit in the occupied Soviet territories, that when he had been there in the autumn of 1941 "all German authorities had persisted in the conviction that in the following, i.e. in the past winter, at least ten to twenty million of these people would simply starve to death."
At least some occupation authorities on site thus stuck to the guidelines as they were repeatedly stated similar to this: "We cannot feed the whole land. The intelligence has been killed, the commissars are gone. Huge areas will be left to themselves (starve to death)." Also the Eastern Minister Rosenberg repeatedly stated that the starvation death of millions was "a harsh necessity that stands outside any sentiment."[my emphasis] Hans Tesmer, head of the Department War Administration at the Commander of the rear area of Army Group Center (1941-1942) and of Army Group Center (1942-1944) disapprovingly remembered the following: "Slogans came up that in Russia several million might well starve to death, that the Russians were to be kept dumb and other similar views of this sort."[...]
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