Bakke plan
Herbert Ernst Bakke is one of the little-known war criminals of the Third Reich who managed to escape the punishment he deserved. The SS Obergruppenfuehrer hanged himself on his own in early April 1947 in a cell at the Nuremberg prison, without waiting for his extradition to the Soviet Union. This man (by the way, a native of Batumi) held the high post of the Reich Minister of Agriculture and Food since 1942, responsible for the cannibalistic policy of destroying millions of people by starvation. He even had attempts at scientific activity - in the mid-1920s he wrote his thesis "Die Russische Getreidewirtschaftals Grundlage der Land- und Volkswirtschaft Russlands", in which he described in detail grain growing in the USSR. Since then, Herbert has been breathing very unevenly towards the fertile Ukraine. In many ways, his work (which he, by the way,not defended) became the reference book of the occupiers in assessing the agricultural resources of the Soviet Union in the early 40s.
Herbert Ernst Bakke.
There was another document called the "12 Commandments of the Bakke" (dated June 1, 1941) and intended for German officials employed in the eastern lands. It contains the following expressions:
One of the main provisions of the Bakke Plan was the withdrawal of food from the conquered territories in amounts exceeding the needs of the indigenous population. In territories controlled by the Germans, food norms, for example, for Jews, were only 184 units in terms of calories. The Poles received about 700 calories, and the German population more than 2,600 calories. This scheme very well reflected the practical approach of the Germans to cleaning up living space - controlled hunger made it possible to simultaneously feed the German population and starve millions in the East.
Promotional video:
In the previous part of the story, we touched upon the problem of the forced import of labor for the needs of the Third Reich, which, of course, needed to be fed somehow. In the book "The Price of Destruction" Adam Tuz points out some contradictions between the ideological dogmas of the destruction of the Slavs with the Jews, and at the same time an acute shortage of labor. According to the same book, in terms of importing calories, the situation at first was also not very consistent and logical. Already in June 1941, the Reishbank issued a report in which it proved with mathematical precision that Germany would have nothing special to profit from in the spacious agricultural fields of Ukraine. In those days, both labor productivity on collective farms and the general technological level of Soviet agriculture lagged noticeably behind European ones. According to the calculations of Reishbank,the Germans would have had to spend several years modernizing, which was then an unaffordable luxury.
A poster calling for the harvest & hellip;
And this poster reminds of the threat of the death penalty for refusing to agricultural work.
In 1940-1941, the Germans in their country were able to collect 24 million tons of grain, which was 3.5 million tons less than a year earlier. Together with stocks and imports, Germany at that time had nearly 34 million tons of grain. The leadership had to use reserves and reduce the number of pigs, which led to a reduction in the population's meat supply by the end of 1942. And then there was Goering with his order for the delivery of labor from the eastern territories - the Third Reich, as mentioned earlier, lacked labor. Bakke, already realizing that the grain reserves of Ukraine were too exaggerated by him, protested. They say, there is nothing to feed, we do not even have enough food for prisoners of war, and then there are Ostarbeiters. To which Goering replied:
It's funny, but Bakke was not too lazy and thought that there would not be enough cats in Germany for such purposes, and horse meat is already being used by the Germans themselves for food. I probably forgot to mention that the total use of cats for food threatens the Third Reich with an invasion of rodents with all the ensuing consequences. Be that as it may, Bakke's arguments were not heard, and the imported ostarbeiters were forced to drag out a half-starved existence. So, in December 1941, for a week, workers engaged in hard labor received 16.5 kg of turnips, 2.6 kg of ersatz bread, 3 kg of potatoes, 250 g of substandard meat (most often horse meat), 130 g of fat, 150 g of yeast, 70 g of sugar and a little more than 2 liters of skim milk. Erzats bread was baked mainly from bran, sugar production waste, as well as straw and leaves. Besides the fact that this was certainly not enough to replenish forces,such a diet also permanently disabled the digestive system. Although on paper everything was beautiful - 2500 calories a day. Worst of all, even this meager ration, in the overwhelming majority of cases, did not reach either the prisoners of war or the ostarbeiters.
German body fat
In the spring of 1942, an unprecedented thing happened - the Ministry of Food reduced food standards for the civilian population of Germany. This was the inevitable way out before the influx of foreign labor and the decline in overall food supplies in the Reich. In the book, Adam Tuz cites the results of research by German nutritionists - the fat deposits of working burghers have ceased to increase. And this was akin to the loss of a strategic resource base for waging war. In industries such as the mining industry, the German leadership expected a drop in labor productivity as a result. It would seem that the situation should be corrected by the labor of prisoners of war and ostarbeiters brought in from abroad. But they were dying of hunger, and it was possible to increase their allowance only at the expense of the native Germans. In its turn,The Germans were very clear about this - the SD everywhere recorded waves of dissatisfaction with both the decline in nutritional norms and the flourishing of the black market. This situation was already passed once by the leadership of the Third Reich during the implementation of the T4 program or Aktion Tiergartenstraße 4. Peaceful Germans then almost took to the streets when they learned that insane and handicapped compatriots were secretly killed in hospitals. Thereafter, T4 was quickly phased out and focused on a "more acceptable" holocaust for the population.that insane and handicapped compatriots are secretly killed in hospitals. Thereafter, T4 was quickly phased out and focused on a "more acceptable" holocaust for the population.that insane and handicapped compatriots are secretly killed in hospitals. Thereafter, T4 was quickly phased out and focused on a "more acceptable" holocaust for the population.
Propaganda photographs illustrating the tolerable living conditions of the Ostarbeiters. In all fairness, it should be noted that by 1943 the nutritional norms for workers from the eastern territories had indeed changed for the better.
So in this situation, no one planned to redistribute food between the indigenous people and visitors. As a result, many military-industrial firms complained that Ukrainians were fainting at their machines almost every day. At the same time, many found the strength to organize food riots and actions of insubordination. So, in Untertürkheim, at the famous Daimler-Benz plant in mid-1942, the ostarbeiters refused to go to work until their nutrition was improved. The leaders of the plant sent the most important rebels to a concentration camp, but immediately wrote to the very top with a request to increase the proportion of carbohydrates in the diet. Fritz Sauckel himself, the Labor Commissioner for the Third Reich, lost his temper at the news. He did his job of importing slave power, but there was nothing to feed them. Rich and fertile Ukraine was under German rule,and on the territory of Germany workers (albeit Ostarbeiters) died of hunger.
- he frightened his subordinates.
Sauckel did not manage to get enough food from the Ukraine, or to deliver Jews to the conveyor belt. Already in 1942, on the initiative of Herbert Bakke, the Wehrmacht was seriously cut in food supplies, forcing them to independently seek food for themselves in the occupied lands. We are well aware of the consequences of this. The next victim was Poland, which until that time received allowance from the Reich - all fertile lands were alienated in favor of Germany. Now from the occupied country they demanded the supply of grain and meat already to Germany, which caused the death of many hundreds of thousands of residents, especially Jews in the ghetto. Siphoning everything possible from their eastern neighbors, the Germans, like a mantra, repeated Goering's words:
Discontent within the primordially German territories was most feared by the bonza of the Third Reich. And here, perhaps, we come to the main point of the entire fascist ideology - it finally brought tangible material benefits to the population. No matter how disgusting it may sound, if not for the purposeful extermination of Jews and Slavs as potential consumers, German citizens already in mid-1942 felt an acute shortage of calories. And it is not known how it all would have ended in the end. Meanwhile, the Germans were incredibly lucky - in the fall of 1942 they reaped a good harvest, brought in a lot of "imported" products, and finally increased food norms. The burgher's fat began to grow again …
Author: Evgeny Fedorov