Amerikanische Lebensmittelpolitik im besetzten Deutschland

The hunger-winter of 1947, thousands protest against the disastrous food situation (March 31, 1947).

American food policy in occupied Germany refers to the food supply policies enacted by the U.S., and to some extent its dependent Allies, in the western occupation zones of Germany in the first 2 years of the 10 year occupation of Western Germany following World War II.

Food relief shipments to Germany had been prohibited by the U.S. until December 1945, since "they might tend to negate the policy of restricting the German standard of living to the average of the surrounding European nations". "CARE Package shipments to individuals remained prohibited until 5 June 1946".

In june 1946 a relief worker described the situation encountered in Germany thus:

Captured German soldiers

After the German surrender the U.S. chose to designate large numbers of German prisoners as Disarmed Enemy Forces instead of the Prisoner of War designation under which the captives would have been under the protection of the Geneva convention and therefore would have been entitled to the same food quantities as U.S. troops.

The Allied argument for retracting Geneva convention protection from the German soldiers was similar to that of Nazi Germany vis á vis Polish and Yugoslav soldiers; using the "disappearance of the Third Reich to argue that the convention no longer operated-that POW status did not apply to the vast majority who had passed into captivity on and after May 5". The motive was twofold: both an unwillingness to follow the Geneva convention now that the threat of German reprisals against Allied POWs was gone, and also they were "to an extent unable to meet the high standards of the Geneva code" for the large number of captured Germans.

The conditions these prisoners had to endure were "extremely harsh". Many of the camps in Western Germany were "huge wired-in enclosures lacking sufficient shelter and other necessities" (see Rheinwiesenlager).

Since there was no longer a danger of German retaliation against Allied POWs, "less effort was put into finding ways of procuring scarce food and shelter than would otherwise have been the case, and that consequently tens of thousands of prisoners died from hunger and disease who might have been saved".

Sinzig POW camp

According to S. P. MacKenzie, "callous self-interest and a desire for retribution played a role in the fate of these men", and he exemplifies by pointing out that sick or otherwise unfit prisoners were forcibly used for labor, and in France and the Low countries this also included work such as highly dangerous mine-clearing; "by September 1945 it was estimated by the French authorities that two thousand prisoners were being maimed and killed each month in accidents"

The International Red Cross was never permitted to fully involve itself in the situation in DEF or SEP camps, and even though conditions in them gradually improved, "even the most conservative estimates put the death toll in French camps alone at over 16,500 in 1945".

After the German surrender, the International Red Cross was prohibited from providing aid such as food or visiting the prisoner camps. However, after making approaches to the Allies in the autumn of 1945 it was allowed to investigate the camps in the UK and French occupation zones of Germany, as well as to provide relief to the prisoners held there.

On February 4 1946, the Red Cross was permitted to visit and assist prisoners also in the U.S. occupation zone of Germany, although only with very small quantities of food. "During their visits, the delegates observed that German prisoners of war were often detained in appalling conditions. They drew the attention of the authorities to this fact, and gradually succeeded in getting some improvements made".

German civilian population

Throughout all of 1945 the Allies forces of occupation ensured that no international aid reached ethnic Germans. It was directed that all relief went to non-German displaced persons, liberated Allied POWs, and concentration camp inmates.

General Lucius Clay, then Deputy to General Eisenhower, stated:

The German Red Cross was dissolved, and the International Red Cross and the few other allowed international relief agencies were kept from helping Germans through strict controls on supplies and on travel. The few agencies permitted to help Germans, such as the indigenous Caritas Verband, were not allowed to use imported supplies. When the Vatican attempted to transmit food supplies from Chile to German infants the U.S. State Department forbade it.

During 1945 it was estimated that the average German civilian in the U.S. and the United Kingdom occupation zones received 1,200 calories a day. Meanwhile non-German Displaced Persons were receiving 2,300 calories through emergency food imports and Red Cross help. In early October 1945 the UK government privately acknowledged in a cabinet meeting that German civilian adult death rates had risen to four times the pre-war levels and death rates amongst the German children had risen by 10 times the pre-war levels.

General Lucius Clay stated in October 1945 that:

U.S. occupation forces were under strict orders not to share their food with the German population, and this also applied to their wives when they arrived later in the occupation. The women were under orders not to allow their German maids to get hold of any leftovers; "the food was to be destroyed or made inedible", although in view of the starving German population facing them many housewives chose to disregard these official orders. Nevertheless, according to a U.S. intelligence survey a German university professor reportedly said: "Your soldiers are good-natured, good ambassadors; but they create unnecessary ill will to pour twenty litres of left-over cocoa in the gutter when it is badly needed in our clinics. It makes it hard for me to defend American democracy amongst my countrymen."

In early 1946 U.S. President Harry S. Truman finally bowed to pressure from Senators, Congress and public to allow foreign relief organization to enter Germany in order to review the food situation. In mid-1946 non-German relief organizations were finally permitted to help starving German children. During 1946 the average German adult received less than 1,500 calories a day. 2,000 calories was then considered the minimum an individual can endure on for a limited period of time with reasonable health.

The German food situation became worst during the very cold winter of 1946-1947, when German calorie intake ranged from 1,000-1,500 calories per day, a situation made worse by severe lack of fuel for heating. Average adult calorie intake in U.S was 3,200-3,300, in UK 2,900 and in U.S. Army 4,000.

In a comparative U.S. government study run by former U.S. President Herbert Hoover and published in February 1947, the nutritional situation surveyed in some of Germany's neighbor states (Italy, France, Belgium, Netherlands and the UK) was close to pre-war normal, while the nutritional situation for certain population groups in Germany (mainly children and the elderly) was disastrously low.

The historian Nicholas Balabkins notes that the Allied restrictions placed on German steel production, and their control over to where the produced coal and steel was delivered, meant that offers by Western European nations to trade food for desperately needed German coal and machinery were rejected. Neither the Italians nor the Dutch could sell the vegetables that they had previously sold in Germany, with the consequence that the Dutch had to destroy considerable proportions of their crop. Denmark offered 150 tons of lard a month; Turkey offered hazelnuts; Norway offered fish and fish oil; Sweden offered considerable amounts of fats. The Allies were however not willing to let the Germans trade.

Another consequence of the Allied policy of "Industrial Disarmament" (see The industrial plans for Germany) was that there was a drastic fall in fertilizer available for the German agriculture, further decreasing the food production.

German infant mortality rate was twice that of other nations in Western Europe until the close of 1948.

The adequate feeding of the German population in occupied Germany was an Allied legal obligation under Article 43 of The 1907 Hague Rules of Land Warfare.

Consequences

Richard Dominic Wiggers draws in "The United States and the Refusal to Feed German Civilians after World War II" the conclusion that not only did the Allies violate international law when it comes to the feeding of enemy civilians, they both directly and indirectly caused the unnecessary suffering and death of large numbers of civilians and POW's in occupied Germany, guided partly by a spirit of postwar vengeance when creating the circumstances that contributed to their deaths.

See also

• GARIOA
• CRALOG
• Forced labor of Germans after World War II
• Industrial plans for Germany

Further reading

• Steven Bela Vardy and T. Hunt Tooley, eds. "Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe", Boulder: Columbia University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-88033-995-0. chapter by Richard Dominic Wiggers, "The United States and the Refusal to Feed German Civilians after World War II"
• William Langer, "The Famine in Germany", Published by U.S. Govt. print. off., 1946
• Alexander Häusser, Gordian Maugg, "Hungerwinter: Deutschlands humanitäre Katastrophe 1946/47", 2009, ISBN-13: 9783549073643
• Eugene Davidson, "The Death and Life of Germany", University of Missouri Press, 1999 ISBN 0826212492
• Nicholas Balabkins, "Germany Under Direct Controls: Economic Aspects of Industrial Disarmament 1945 - 1948", Rutgers University Press, 1964
• Herbert Hoover, "The Presidents Economic Mission to Germany and Austria: Report No. 1 - German Agriculture and Food Requirements", February 28, 1947.
• The Journal of a Retread; The observations, problems, and comments of a food and agricultural officer in Military Government in World War II Col. Stanley Andrews U.S. Army (Retired) Alamo, Texas 1975

External links

• ICRC in WW II: German prisoners of war in Allied hands
• Winter of Starvation 1946/47 Film archive doku-drama