What the generals believed was irrelevant. They had higher orders, which they dutifully followed. And here we come to a good stopping point in this discussion, one with some relevance to the holocaust and the fate of the 70% of Jews deemed non-employable and apparently resettled somewhere in Russia
Returning to a document I've posted and referenced multiple times
The Führers Decision on Leningrad (Entschluß der Führers über Leningrad), transmitted by the Naval Warfare Command (Seekriegsleitung) to Army Group North on 29.09.1941
for anyone interested, more documents about the siege of Leningrad can be found
here
Fascinating. Notably you don't want to expand on what this means in detail. But let's do it anyway;
From
The
“Extermination Camps” of
“Aktion Reinhardt” An Analysis and Refutation
of Factitious “Evidence,” Deceptions and Flawed Argumentation of the “Holocaust Controversies” Bloggers
Carlo Mattogno Thomas Kues Jürgen Graf. 2015.
Page 177 to 178
Was “hunger planning” indeed “reiterated” after the invasion of the
USSR? On 16 September 1941 – that is, nearly three months after the start of Operation Barbarossa – Göring participated in a conference about the war economy of the occupied Eastern territories during which he declared:343
(Quoting the Nazis)
“It is clear that a differentiation in the nourishment is necessary. First
come the fighting troops, then the other troops on enemy territory, and then the homeland troops. The ratios are to be established accordingly. Then the German non-military population will be provided for. Only then comes the population in the occupied territories. In the occupied territories, as a principle, nourishment is to be secured only for those who work for us. Even if one desired to nourish all the remaining inhabitants, this could not be done in the newly occupied Eastern areas.”
This is a hard-nosed policy, perhaps, but it clearly has nothing to do with a deliberate plan to starve Eastern populations as an end in itself.
(Quoting here Harrison, one of these bloggers)
“On November 13, 1941, Wagner confirmed that ‘non-working
prisoners of war in the prison camps are to starve.’” (p. 95)
The source adduced by Harrison is “AOK 18 Chef des Stabes, Merkpunkte aus der Chefbesprechung in Orscha am 13.11.41, NOKW-1535” (footnote 15 on p. 95).
The same document was quoted by Roberto Muehlenkamp (Another blogger) in a forum posting already on 13 November 2002.344
There he presented the extract from the German document published in excerpted form in the catalogue of the controversial Wehrmacht war crimes exhibition,345 together with his own English translation, which differs slightly from that given by Harrison.
I do not have a copy of the original document in question either, hence I take the following passages from the literature:346
““The question of feeding the civilian population is catastrophic. In order to arrive at any result at all, a classification had to be made. It is clear that within this classification the armed forces and their needs have to be at the very top. Only an existential minimum can be granted to the population. In this way, the countryside will fare somewhat bearably. The question of feeding the big cities, however, is unsolvable. There can be no doubt that Leningrad in particular has to starve, for it is impossible to feed this city. The leadership’s only task can be to keep the armed forces away from this and from manifestations linked to this. […]
Supplying the population:
1. Supplying the farming population will not cause particular problems.
2. The urban population can receive only very minor amounts of food. For big cities (Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev) nothing can be done for now. The repercussions resulting from this are tough but inevitable. People working for the immediate German interest are to be fed with direct food allocations at their places of work in such a way that their working strength can be more or less maintained.”
Clearly these passages do not envision any plan to intentionally
starve the civilian population in the occupied east, but display rather a sober and pragmatic concern for the tragic effects of a “catastrophic” food situation.
Page 179 to 180
Moreover, other documents clearly refute any notion of a deliberate
program for starving Soviet POWs.
For example, a Merkblatt für die Behandlung sowjetischer Kriegsgefangener (Bulletin for the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war), without date, opens with these words: 350
“The treatment of enemy prisoners of war broadly affects our ability to
conduct war, whether from the military, political or economic point of view. Correct treatment is just treatment. Justice, which does not exclude hardness where it is required, is not only military law, but also a principle of prudence.”
After having underlined the importance of each of these three aspects of the problem, the document then comes to the following conclusion:
“Therefore: adequate nourishment and a good treatment of all prisoners of war from the moment of their capture.”
Page 180 to 181
In the report of a conference at the Reichsministerium für Ernährung
und Landwirtschaft (Reich Ministry for Nourishment and Agriculture) held on 24 November 1941 under the title “Nourishment of Russian prisoners of war and civilian workers” details of the projected level of provisioning are even laid out in chart form:
ten dishes containing a total of 2,540 kcal were specified, and that for prisoners engaged in merely “light” work!355
The question is thus not as cut-and-dried as Harrison would have his reader believe.
German planners did indeed anticipate wide-spread hunger as a consequence of the food situation in 1941, but the records of their own deliberations make it clear that deliberately starving prisoners of war to death was neither envisioned by policy nor recommended in practice.
In his “Working Guidelines for the Civil Administration,” part of the so-called “Braune Mappe” or “Brown Folder” outlining policy for the occupied Eastern territories, Rosenberg declared:362
“Where a pressing demand of the population for food supplies exists,this is to be satisfied within the limits of possibility in order to avoid famines. It may be desirable to hand out allowances in money or in kind to those in desperate need (the unemployed and the like).”
German policy in the occupied Eastern territories thus was not one of plunder for plunder’s sake; food was indeed requisitioned for use by troops in the short term, but occupation authorities simultaneously pursued a long-term policy of reconstruction and investment.
An affidavit submitted to the Nuremberg Tribunal in March 1946 by Dr. Ing. Carl Heinrich Dencker, an expert in agricultural technology for the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, gives some insight into the scope of this effort.
For example, while the Soviets destroyed the major part of local agricultural machinery during their retreat, the Germans were able to repair 40% of the damaged machines, and themselves delivered replacement machines to make up the remaining 60%. In the years 1942 and 1943 alone the Reich sent into the occupied Soviet territories approximately 271,000 machines or spare parts worth some 180 million Reichsmarks, and further delivered some 8,000 tons of fuels and 65,000 tons of lignite briquets each month.
The machinery was given to the kolkhoses and sovkhoses (agricultural collectives), which paid only 1/6 of their value, to wit 30,000,000 RM; the remaining 5/6 of the cost, 150,000,000 RM, was absorbed by the German administration as an “Abschleusungsbetrag” (write-off).363
So much for the Germans’ alleged “starvation plan” for the occupied East
End of excerpt.
So Chugger. Can you explain what the fuck exactly your problem is?
