They shifted to far-right parties such as the Nazi Party after mainstream conservatives failed to respond to the crash of commodity prices in the 1920s. Under the Weimar Republic agricultural workers shifted to the right wing as the left-wing Social Democratic Party and Communist Party failed to craft popular agrarian policies.
ĭuring the interwar period (1918–1939), Germany isolated itself from the world market for food, attempting to become self-sufficient. The loss of 13 percent of its territory, including agricultural land, under the Versailles Treaty, increased the difficulties of Germany becoming self-sufficient in food. 763,000 people were estimated to have died from malnutrition and the incidence of many serious diseases increased. By the end of the war in 1918, the German Empire's urban population was starving. The Allied blockade and trade embargoes exacerbated shortages. In 1891, German Chancellor Leo von Caprivi said "In a future war feeding the army and the country will play a decisive role." Despite this emphasis on agricultural self-sufficiency, Germany entered World War I in 1914 as a substantial importer of food and fodder. Agricultural self sufficiency was seen as an important component of national security. With competition from imports of inexpensive wheat from North America in the 1870s, Otto von Bismarck adopted a protectionist policy, subsidizing German agriculture by imposing high tariffs on imported food. In the 19th century agriculture in Germany faced a problem of growing enough food for an increasing population. The German state managed to keep its population reasonably well-nourished until at least autumn 1944, but at the cost of killing or starving to death millions of non-Germans.
To maintain domestic agricultural production while millions of men were serving in the military, Germany imported millions of workers as forced labor. As it worked out, Poland and Ukraine became only minor contributors of food to the civilian population of Germany, as more food came from western European countries such as France and Denmark.
German farmers were to be resettled on the vacated lands, thus assuring Germany self-sufficiency in food and enabling Germany to take a secure place alongside the United Kingdom and the United States as a world power. Most of the deaths from starvation in Europe were in the Soviet Union and Poland, countries invaded by Germany and occupied in whole or part during the war.Ī central focus of Germany's war policy was overcoming chronic food deficits by conquering Poland and the fertile chernozem, or "black earth," region of Ukraine and neighboring republics of the Soviet Union, and expelling, starving, or killing the native populations. Starvation and its associated illnesses killed about 20 million people in Europe and Asia during World War II, approximately the same as the number of soldiers killed in battle. Food and agriculture in Nazi Germany describes the food and agricultural policies of Nazi Germany and their consequences from 1933 when the Nazis took power in Germany until 1945 when Germany was defeated in World War II (1939–1945) by the allied nations.
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