Imperious Leader wrote,
Why didn’t Hitler capture merchant ships full of food, rather than sink them?
For that matter, why did Hitler sink (rather than capture) the many, many ships filled with tanks, planes, and other weapons that the U.S. sent to Britain and the U.S.S.R.? Maybe Hitler didn’t want anyone (himself included) to have weapons, which is why he sent them to the bottom of the ocean. Then again, it’s also possible that his u-boat force was better suited to sinking enemy vessels than it was to capturing them, in the face of overwhelming British naval superiority.
Don’t tell lies. Polish Jews were killed in various numbers right after the 39 campaign ended, and not just Jews.
From pp. 466 - 468 of Adam Tooze’s book The Wages of Destruction
A general statement on the outline of the Final Solution, to embrace not only the millions of Jews living in Poland and the Soviet Union but also the far smaller communities of Western Europe, was ready by December 1941. The meeting had to be postponed until January. . . .
The genocidal implications of the Generalplan Ost were clearly revealed by a ‘trial run’ organized in the summer of 1942. On 18 - 19 July 1942, at the same time as Himmler communicated the definitive order for the killing of the Jews in the General Government [of German-occupied Poland], he also issued instructions to Odilo Globocnic to carry out an experimental ‘evacuation’ of the entire Polish population of the Zamosc region.
Herbert Hoover was a loser
He was a failure as president, granted. But that does not detract from the value of his other life accomplishments. The United States entered WWI thinking we were doing so for idealistic reasons. After the war ended, Allied “idealism” was revealed to be a sham. First, the anti-German atrocity propaganda was revealed to have been a pack of lies. Second, the way the Allies actually acted at Versailles bore no relationship at all to the idealism, justice, and fair play that Woodrow Wilson’s public pronouncements had led everyone to expect. The American people lost faith in Woodrow Wilson; and he exited office a discredited president. On the other hand, Herbert Hoover’s efforts to feed Europeans during and after WWI displayed the kind of idealism that Woodrow Wilson had pretended to have. Hoover’s famine relief efforts were so well received by the American people that they eventually propelled him to the presidency. The office of president was not one for which Hoover was well-suited. During WWII, he went back to doing what he did best: famine relief. However, his efforts in that direction were hampered by Allied political leaders’ absolute determination to use famine as a weapon, both during and after the war.
But Hoover was far from alone in pointing to the existence of European food shortages. Below is a quote from pp. 418 - 419 of Wages of Destruction.
Grain imports in the late 1930s had run at the rate of more than 7 million tons per annum mostly from Argentina and Canada. These sources of supply were closed off by the British blockade. In addition Western Europe had imported more than 700,000 tons of oil seed. . . . By the summer of 1940 Germany was facing a Europe-wide agricultural crisis. . . . Most dramatic of all was the situation in France, where the grain harvest of 1940 was less than half of what it had been in 1938. In Germany itself 1940 brought a noticeable fall in grain yields . . .
Below is another quote, from page 477
Nor can the so-called ‘Hunger Plan’ be described as secret. . . . And, perhaps most importantly, no effort was made to hide the wider rationale of the individual acts of brutality that the programme required. . . . This genocidal plan [to starve large numbers of people living in captured Soviet cities] commanded such wide-ranging support because it concerned a practical issue, the importance of which, following Germany’s experience in World War I, was obvious to all: the need to secure the food supply of the German population, if necessary at the expense of the population of the Soviet Union. . . .
By December 1940 the entire military and political leadership of the Third Reich was convinced that this was the last year in which they could approach the food question with any confidence. Nor was this simply a German problem. All of the Western European territories which had fallen under German domination in 1940 had substantial grain deficits.
Germany could just surrender and eat
Erich Hartmann was the highest scoring ace in history. He said the following:
In fact I would say that in our group there were the majority who found all the National Socialist idiocy a little sickening. Hrabak made it a point to explain to the new young pilots that if they thought they were fighting for National Socialism and the Fuhrer they needed to transfer to the Waffen SS or something.
Hartmann described the conditions he saw once the Red Army took over the eastern half of Germany.
The Russians then separated the women and girls from the men, and the most horrible things happened. . . . We saw this; the Americans saw this, and we could do nothing to stop it. Men who fought like lions cried like babies at the sight of complete strangers being raped repeatedly. A couple of girls managed to run to a truck and the Americans pulled them in, but the Russians, most were drunk pointed their guns at the allies and fired a few shots. Then the truck drivers decided to drive away quickly. Some women were shot after the rapes. Others were not so lucky. I remember a twelve year old girl . . . being raped by several soldiers. She died from these acts soon afterward. Then more Russians came, and it began all over again and lasted through the night. During the night, entire families committed suicide with men killing their wives and daughters, then themselves.
But at least a German surrender would allow the Germans to eat, right? Wrong!
On March 20, 1945, President Roosevelt was warned that the JCS 1067 was not workable: it would let the Germans “stew in their own juice”. Roosevelt’s response was “Let them have soup kitchens! Let their economy sink!” Asked if he wanted the German people to starve, he replied, “Why not?”[32]
Toward the end of the war, a description of the Morgenthau Plan (JCS 1067) was leaked. A Swiss newspaper responded with the following words:
So far, the Allies have not offered the opposition any serious encouragement. On the contrary, they have again and again welded together the people and the Nazis by statements published, either out of indifference or with a purpose. To take a recent example, the Morgenthau plan gave Dr. Goebbels the best possible chance. He was able to prove to his countrymen, in black and white, that the enemy planned the enslavement of Germany. The conviction that Germany had nothing to expect from defeat but oppression and exploitation still prevails, and that accounts for the fact that the Germans continue to fight. It is not a question of a regime, but of the homeland itself, and to save that, every German is bound to obey the call, whether he be Nazi or member of the opposition.
