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The Hunger Plan (German ''der Hungerplan'', also ''der Backe-Plan'') was an economic management scheme created by Nazi Germany during World War II, that was put in place to ensure that Germans were given priority in food supplies at the expense of the inhabitants of the German-occupied Soviet territories. This plan was developed during the planning phase for the Wehrmacht (German Armed Forces) invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 (Operation Barbarossa). Germany itself was running low on food supplies, and the same problem faced the various territories occupied by Germany. The fundamental premise behind the Hunger Plan was that Germany was not self-sufficient in food supplies during the war, and to sustain the war it needed to obtain the food from conquered lands at any cost. It was an engineered famine, planned and implemented as a rational act of policy for the benefit of the German nation above all others.〔Adam Tooze, ''The Wages of Destruction'', Viking, 2007, ISBN 0-670-03826-1, pp. 476–485 and 538–549.〕 The plan as a means of mass murder was outlined in several documents, including one that became known as Göring's Green Folder. == Outline of the plan == The architect of the Hunger Plan was Herbert Backe.〔Tooze, ''The Wages of Destruction'', pp. 476–485 and 538–549.〕 Together with others, such as Heinrich Himmler, Backe led a coalition of Nazi politicians, dedicated to securing Germany's food supply. The Hunger Plan may have been decided on almost as soon as Hitler announced his intention to invade the Soviet Union in December 1940. Certainly by 2 May 1941, it was in the advanced stages of planning and was ready for discussion between all the major Nazi state ministries and the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) office of economics, headed by General Georg Thomas.〔Tooze, ''The Wages of Destruction'', pp. 476–485 and 538–549. 〕 The lack of capacity of the Russian railways, the inadequacy of road transport and the shortages of fuel, meant that the German Army would have to feed itself by living off the land in the territories they conquered in the western regions of the Soviet Union.〔Tooze, ''The Wages of Destruction'', pp. 476–485 and 538–549. 〕 A meeting on 2 May 1941 between the permanent secretaries responsible for logistical planning for the invasion of the Soviet Union, as well as other high-ranking NSDAP functionaries, state officials and military officers, included in its conclusions: The minutes of the meeting exemplify German planning for the occupation of the Soviet Union. They present a deliberate decision on the life or death of vast parts of the local population as a logical, inevitable development.〔 Christopher Browning: ''The Origins of the Final Solution. The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939 – March 1942''. With contributions by Jürgen Matthäus. Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press and Jerusalem, Yad Vashem 2004, ISBN 0-8032-1327-1, p. 235. 〕 Three weeks later, on 23 May 1941, economic policy guidelines for the coming invasion appeared that had been produced by Hans-Joachim Riecke's agricultural section of the Economic Staff East, which had direct responsibility for the economic and agricultural exploitation of the soon-to-be occupied Soviet territories: The perceived grain surpluses of Ukraine figured particularly prominently in the vision of a "self-sufficient" Germany. Hitler himself had stated in August 1939 that Germany needed "the Ukraine, in order that no one is able to starve us again as in the last war." Yet Ukraine did not produce enough grain for export to solve Germany's problems.〔 Tooze, ''The Wages of Destruction'', pp. 476–485 and 538–549.〕 Scooping off the agricultural surplus in Ukraine for the purpose of feeding the Reich called for: # the annihilation of what the German régime perceived as a superfluous population (Jews, the population of Ukrainian large cities such as Kiev which did not receive any supplies at all)〔On Kiev, see Karel C. Berkhoff: ''Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule''. Harvard University Press, Cambridge 2004, pp. 164–186.〕 # the extreme reduction of the rations allocated to Ukrainians in the remaining cities # a reduction in the foodstuffs consumed by the farming population〔Tooze, ''The Wages of Destruction'', pp. 476–485 and 538–549.〕 In the discussion of the plan, Backe noted a "surplus population" in Russia of about 20 to 30 million. If that population was cut off from food, that food could be used to feed both the invading German Army and the German population itself. Industrialization had created a large urban society in the Soviet Union. The Backe plan envisioned that this population, numbering many millions, would be cut off from their food supply, thus freeing up the food produced in the Soviet Union, now at Germany's disposal, to sustain Germans. As a result, great suffering among the native Soviet population was envisaged, with tens of millions of deaths expected within the first year of the German occupation. Starvation was to be an integral part of the German Army's campaign. Planning for starvation preceded the invasion and became in fact an essential condition of it; the German planners believed that the assault on the Soviet Union could not succeed without it.〔Kay, ''Exploitation, Resettlement, Mass Murder'', pp. 133-139; Tooze, ''The Wages of Destruction'', pp. 476–485 and 538–549.〕 According to Gesine Gerhard, German agricultural officials saw the Hunger Plan as a solution to both the European food crisis and a method for exterminating the "undesirable" Soviet population. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Hunger Plan」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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