Authors: Stephen G. Fritz
Although German authorities initially attempted to stretch scarce food resources simply by providing the Ostarbeiter with starvation rations, this was clearly a counterproductive strategy. It served no purpose to import workers into the country only to starve them so that they could perform little useful labor. Nor, given the “crushing impact” and “deterioration in morale” among Germans at the regime's ration cuts in the spring of 1942, could Nazi officials seriously countenance further deep reductions in consumption. As early as mid-February, on learning of the need for ration cuts, Goebbels worried that the situation was resembling that of World War I. Given Hitler's near-pathological anxieties about a food crisis triggering domestic unrest, the propaganda minister had little difficulty persuading his Führer to act in a radical manner against privilege so that the hardships of war would be seen to fall equally on all. Indeed, as early as April, the Nazi state proclaimed the death sentence for anyone engaged in black market activity. That same month, Hitler was granted special new powers by the Reichstag to take action against anyone harming the Volksgemeinschaft, which, given the powers he already possessed, had to be seen as a populist warning.
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Nazi officials also drew the logical, if radical, conclusion from the brewing food crisis: if not enough food was available to sustain everyone, the optimal solution would be to concentrate rations on those who did productive labor while reducing the population of those who did not. The Führer, after all, had long made it clear that it was unacceptable for anyone to starve in Germany while the Wehrmacht controlled Ukraine; German authorities would simply have to find better ways to utilize the meat and grain of the occupied areas. Although the hunger policy had not produced the desired results in 1941, Backe, put in charge of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture in April, in essence returned to its basic principles in 1942: food had to be distributed from east to west on a massive scale; the Wehrmacht would have to feed itself completely from the eastern territories as all food shipments from the Reich would cease; and entire groups, most notably the Jews, were to be excluded completely from the food supply. Backe, who combined in his person the ice-cold
technocrat and the ideologue with close ties to Himmler and Heydrich, recognized the intersection of ideology and opportunism. The hunger policy was now to be directly coupled to the strategy of racial genocide; if the decision to accelerate the killing of the Jews had been taken for other reasons, the food crisis now supplied a powerful additional incentive. The German food supply would be secured at any price.
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By early summer, Backe made the connection between food policy and genocide specific. There were, he indicated in response to protests from administrators in Poland about the reduction in rations, “in the General Government . . . still 3.5 million Jews. Poland is to be sanitized within the coming year.” In mid-July, Himmler communicated orders that all Jews in Poland not needed for work were to be killed by the end of the year; the food crisis had helped accelerate the Final Solution. Indeed, the hunt for grain was to be pursued with utter ruthlessness whether the victims were Jews or Slavs. After a tense meeting on 5 August with the Gauleiter, who gave vent to the growing resentment of the German population at the uncertain food situation, Goering the next day, in a meeting of the
Reichskommissars
and military commanders of the occupied areas, gave full scope to Backe's plan, authorizing a fundamental rearrangement of the food supply in Europe. To Goering, it was inconceivable that the Third Reich controlled “regions . . . such as we never had during the last world war, and yet I have to give a bread ration to the German people. . . . The Führer repeatedly said . . . if anyone has to go hungry, it shall not be the Germans, but other peoples.” It was time, Goering emphasized, to reassert basic priorities:
God knows, you are not sent out there [to the east] to work for the welfare of the people in your charge, but to get the utmost out of them so that the German people can live. . . . It makes no difference to me in this connection if you say that your people will starve. Let them do so, as long as no German faints from hunger. . . . We conquered such enormous territories through the valor of our troops, and yet our people have almost been forced down to the miserable rations of the First World War. . . . I am interested only in those people in the occupied regions who work in armaments and food production.
In former times, Goering noted, the matter had been simpler: “Then one called it plundering.” Perhaps unnecessarily, Gauleiter Koch, the Reichskommissar for Ukraine, assured Goering that the grain from his area would be obtained at any price.
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The radical demands formulated by Backe and Goering meant that anyone not working for the German war effort would be cut off from the food supply. The first group to disappear, as always, was the Jews. By the autumn of 1942, the gas chambers at Treblinka, Chelmno, Belzec, and Auschwitz were operating full bore, and a palpable sense of relief descended on Berlin. Not only had the food crisis been averted, but rations for both Germans and foreign workers had also been increased substantially. Total European deliveries of grain more than doubled, while there was a huge increase in deliveries of potatoes, meats, and fats, especially from France, Poland, and the occupied Soviet territories. Nor, despite expectations, had the food ration been completely cut in the General Government, where there had been an unexpectedly good harvest. By year's end, however, virtually all the 3 million Jews residing there had been killed; if the harvest had not been so good, millions of Poles would have joined them. The desperate German effort to improve the dismal food situation had created a functional connection between the accelerated extermination of the Jews and the improvement in the food rations that would sustain the Nazi labor force. Sauckel's mobilizations had provided Germany vital labor, while the synthesis of racial and food policies had resolved the food crisis; in both cases, those left on the outside were the Jews of Europe.
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As labor and food problems were being resolved in the most inhumane ways, another obstacle loomed. If the slim thread of German hopes rested on completing the defeat of the Red Army in 1942 and seizing the oil, food, and raw materials of European Russia vital to the confrontation with the Anglo-American powers, the offensive capacity of the Ostheer, or at least Army Group South, had to be rebuilt as quickly as possible. This, in turn, required a drastic increase in weapons production from the armaments industry, a sector of the economy that was sputtering badly as a result of a variety of overlapping problems. Just six months after his mid-July decision to reorganize the armaments industry in favor of the Luftwaffe and the navy, Hitler now had to reverse course and give priority to the army, but production lines could not simply be switched overnight. This constant shifting in weapons priorities also made the rational allocation of scarce resources difficult, especially in the absence of any clear central direction of the war economy. The welter of agencies clamoring for dominance over the war economy made things worse as it led to a confusion of responsibility and stifling bureaucratic interference. In addition, the catastrophic state of the transport system slowed the delivery of vital raw materials, especially coal, which resulted in crippling power shortages and the shutdown of numerous
factories. The shortage of labor and lack of key raw materials further hampered production, especially given the reluctance to make severe cuts in the civilian sector. Even the celebrated Nazi effort of the 1930s to win the support of workers through appeals to quality German craftsmanship backfired, as antiquated modes of production resulted in the waste of scarce materials and left many firms resistant to rationalization and mass production methods. Despite having access to the resources of much of Europe, the German war economy was badly underperforming. As Fritz Todt noted in January 1942, with obvious understatement, Germany “should have been more prepared to fight a total war.”
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Reeling from the crisis in front of Moscow, German economic leaders now scrambled to put just such a system in place. On 15 January, Goering demanded a rigorous conversion to a war economy, emphasizing that the civilian sector could no longer be maintained at existing levels and that all production capacity should be concentrated on the needs of the Wehrmacht. On the twenty-first, General Thomas echoed Goering's opinion and took the further step of calling for the German war economy to be centrally controlled. Thomas obviously expected that he would be the person given extensive powers to manage the armaments sector, but, in a blow to the military, he was outmaneuvered by Todt, who, as minister for armaments and munitions, had already taken vital steps to rationalize arms production. An advocate of doing away with the “inertia of the old,” Todt had earlier pioneered a system of industrial autonomy that left the development and production of weapons and equipment to industry. In December 1941, he sought even greater efficiencies of production by replacing what had been a cost-plus system of letting contracts, in which firms were reimbursed the full production costs as well as a profit based on a percentage of the costs, in favor of a system of fixed prices. In the former, firms had little incentive to cut costs since, the greater the expenditure, the larger the profits. With the fixed-price system, Todt introduced greater competition, forcing firms to rationalize production, reduce costs, and work more efficiently. The firm that had the lowest production costs for the same performance was now the yardstick for all others. Those firms that chose the lowest price calculated by Todt's ministry for a particular product did not have to pay any taxes on its manufacture, while those choosing the middle price category had to pay taxes. Those electing the highest price had to prove special difficulties. Under the new system, a manufacturer who did not cut costs quickly, which, in practice, meant increasing productivity, was soon eliminated from the supply chain.
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Despite the improvements promised by his system, Todt understood
that, for production levels to rise significantly, the entire German economy had to be mobilized fully for war. By the end of January, he presented Hitler, who greatly admired his talented minister, with plans for the centralization of the German armaments industry. Hitler, now aware of the gross inefficiencies of weapons production and eager to increase the output of weapons, backed the changes. On 6 February, Todt chaired the first joint meeting of all the committee chairmen in the Ministry for Armaments and Munitions, at which time he revealed that the focal point for the reorganization of production had been switched from the army to his ministry. His triumph, however, proved short-lived. Two days later, after a contentious private meeting with Hitler at Rastenburg, Todt's plane burst into flames shortly after takeoff and crashed, killing all aboard. The nature of his death and the fact that Hitler rejected the findings of the crash investigation and personally dictated the official version led to speculation at the time and since that Todt had been murdered, although by whom remained unclear. Suspicion naturally fell on the Führer, but, even though Todt expressed doubts about the war to Hitler, he nonetheless remained a loyal and dedicated supporter who had just taken energetic efforts to reorganize war production. Speculation has also centered on the SS, but the most likely culprit was Goering, a man rapidly losing his influence and control over the economy to his ambitious rival. Goering, in fact, hurried to the Führer immediately on learning of Todt's death in order to declare himself ready to take over the latter's tasks, only to find Hitler already meeting with Todt's successor, Albert Speer. The unaccustomed speed with which Hitler had named Speer the new minister of armaments only confirmed his intention to maintain the changes Todt had introduced and to avoid a relapse into the tired intrigues and rivalries that had plagued war production until now. In March, he made this clear when he finally approved the subordination of the entire economy to the needs of the war.
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Whatever the reality of Todt's death, it now launched the meteoric rise of Albert Speer, who proceeded both to expand on and to benefit from the changes already introduced by Todt. The so-called production miracle launched by Speer in 1942 was, in fact, largely the result of a continuation of the reforms already set in motion by Todt. Key to Speer's success was both tighter administration and central control of important physical resources such as raw materials, factory equipment, and labor as well as the standardization of production practices. Speer also introduced a system of industrial committees, a fundamental change in regulatory practice that aimed at mobilizing industry through a process of self-regulation, by which industrialists would be allowed input
into the allocation of raw materials and the awarding of contracts. In April, he established the Zentrale Planung, a central planning agency that permitted the coordination of all armaments plans that came under his jurisdiction. Although the Luftwaffe and the navy retained their independence, in practice Speer cooperated closely with Erhard Milch, the head of Luftwaffe armaments programs, thus extending his influence. Speer also staffed his new offices and committees with younger men from an engineering and business background, bringing needed expertise into the design, development, and organization of weapons programs as well as allowing him to circumvent army obstruction.
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With the new administrative structure in place, which for the first time allowed for the coordination of much of the German armaments industry, Speer was able fairly quickly to raise production levels simply by utilizing industrial capacity more fully and rationally. By August 1942, production of weapons had risen 27 percent from its February low, that of tanks by 25 percent, and that of ammunition by 97 percent. Although vital to the continuance of the war, Speer's ability to increase production was hardly miraculous. In most cases, his ministry better exploited factory space by encouraging more shift work, rationalized the supply chain, reduced the number of firms engaged in the manufacture of weapons and equipment, and concentrated output in the largest or most efficient firms. At the same time, Speer established a new set of organizations, known as
rings
, to manage the supply of raw materials, semifinished products, and components. Based on the principle of self-responsibility, the rings essentially amounted to an Auftragstaktik policy for industry, in which the Reich Armaments Ministry would set targets, leaving responsibility for meeting them to industry. Finally, Speer also attempted to get the army to reduce the number of modifications to weapons in the pipeline as well as to accept both a reduction in the number of weapons types and a standardization of parts and components. Through such simplification and standardization, not only would a more rational use of labor resources and higher levels of automation be possible, but the need for highly skilled labor would also be reduced. The result of this de-skilling and increased use of machine tools was a sharp rise in labor productivity in the armaments industries, while more effective allocation of raw materials and the massive labor mobilization campaign provided an additional boost to production.
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