@Zhukov_2011:
@KurtGodel7:
- That a proximate cause of the decision to exterminate the Jews was the desire to reduce pressure on the food supply.
Yeah, number three up there is the one I have a problem with. Please, humor me with “facts” and “sources” to support this point.
Prior to the start of WWII, Hitler had envisioned solving the so-called “Jewish problem” by forcibly shipping Europe’s Jews to Madagascar. Putting the plan into effect would have required victory over the Allies, because Britain had refused to allow large numbers of Jews to immigrate to Palestine or its other colonies. Prior to the British adoption of the White Paper of 1939, “Jewish migration [out of Germany] was impeded by Nazi restrictions on the transfer of finances abroad (departing Jews had to abandon their property), but the Jewish Agency was able to negotiate an agreement allowing Jews resident in Germany to buy German goods for export to Palestine thus circumventing the restrictions.”
That mechanism is explained in more detail in Adam Tooze’s excellent work, The Wages of Destruction. The book has been praised by The Times (London), The Boston Globe, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Sun, and other major media outlets. On pages 89 - 90, Tooze writes,
The Haavara Transfer was designed to take advantage of this loophole. The scheme operated by allowing German Jews to make payments into a fund in Berlin in exchange for certificates crediting them with sufficient Palestinian pounds to allow them to obtain the coveted visa. Hanotea for its part used the funds deposited in Berlin to buy German goods for export to Palestine. The emigrants were reimbursed in Palestinian pounds when the German goods were sold to Jewish or Arab customers. In effect, the arrangement ensured that every Reichsmark of capital exported by a German-Jewish emigrant was matched by a compensating export order. As the Reichsbank tightened its grip on its foreign exchange reserves, Haavara became, despite the tiny size of the Mandate economy, one of the most efficient means for Jews to export capital from Germany. In total, 50,000 people, one-tenth of the German-Jewish population in 1933, were able to use this scheme to make good their escape. . . . [Jews who emigrated under this scheme] paid a discount of only 35 per cent, at a time when the majority of Jewish emigrants were able to rescue only a tiny fraction of their wealth.
Muslim resistance to the above plan inspired Britain to adopt the White Paper of 1939, under which further Jewish immigration into Palestine was severely restricted. Therefore, the Nazi regime had to postpone its efforts to solve the so-called “Jewish problem” via further emigration out of Europe.
Tooze also describes the German food supply.
pp. 418-419
After 1939 the supply of food in Western Europe was no less constrained than the supply of coal. . . . 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. . . . By the summer of 1940, Germany was facing a Europe-wide agricultural crisis. . . . By 1941 there were already signs of mounting discontent due to the inadequate food supply. In Belgium and France, the official ration allocated to ‘normal consumers’ of as little as 1,300 calories per day, was an open invitation to resort to the black market.
p. 539
When the order to ship large numbers of Eastern European workers to Germany was first given, Backe protested vigorously. The 400,000 Soviet prisoners of war already in Germany were more than he could provide for. . . . If the Russians were to be given meat, they would have to be supplied at the expense of the German population.
p 541
Backe was in an impossible position. The Fuehrer had demanded more workers. Gauleiter Sauckel was dedicated to delivering them. Hitler and Sauckel now demanded that the workers be fed, which was clearly a necessity if they were to be productive. And yet, given the level of grain stocks, Backe was unable to meet this demand.
p. 542
Entire groups were to be excluded from the food supply, most notably the Jews. As Goebbels noted in his diary, the new regime would be based on the principle that before Germany starved ‘it would be the turn of a number of other peoples.’
pp. 544 - 545
Faced with Germany’s food shortage in 1942, Backe went much further. He now demanded that the Governor General should reverse the flow. Rather than receive food supplements from Germany, the General Government [of Poland] was to make sizable food deliveries. . . . Backe predicated his demands on the elimination of Polish Jews from the food chain. . . . Eliminating the Jews would . . . reduce the number of people that needed feeding.
p. 549
By the end of August 1942, this extraordinary series of measures spread a palpable mood of relief throughout Berlin. Backe, Himmler, and Goering had staved off a disastrous downward spiral in the food supply.
