ABSTRACT
Leading Nazis were deeply convinced that the loss of the battle for food was central to Germany’s defeat in World War I. The chapter deals with the German efforts to make Germany “blockade-safe” and the resulting exploitation policies in both Western and Eastern Europe, pointing out the differences in scope as well as in ideological background and introducing some of the central figures. Even before the attack on the Soviet Union, German planners decided that several millions of people would have to starve to feed the Wehrmacht and the German population. Within this context, German food policies and mass murder policies regarding Jewish populations and the Soviet POWs intersected. Although the focus is on German policies and policy makers, it also shows that the local authorities of the occupied states couldn’t do much to relieve the situation in the West, and even less in the East.
