One of the most indefensible policies inspired by the Morgenthau Plan was the engineered famine following the defeat of Nazi Germany. It was a policy that rivaled the policies practiced by the Nazis themselves. The most frequent defense is to deny that a famine took place or that it was the result of uncontrollable circumstances. Thus R. Bruce Craig was able to claim that Morgenthau and White “possessed strong humanitarian instincts.” This is utter nonsense.
Historian Robert Dallek attributed the fact that Europe was on the verge of total collapse in 1947 to "droughts, unprecedented cold and crop failures." Steven Ambrose attributed the critical food situation in postwar Germany to a worldwide food shortage. Professor James F. Tent claimed, “By the spring of 1947, and thereafter to the end of the military occupation, the number and variety of supplemental programs expanded to the point that some observers asked with only slight irony if there were any normal consumers – that is, those consuming 1,550 calories per day – left in the British and American zones.” Undoubtedly as a result of the disruption caused by the war there was a deficit of food throughout Europe. However, this was made considerably worse by occupation policies. Denying that this famine existed is equivalent to Holocaust denial. Its existence and proof that it resulted from government policies is indisputable.
Steven Ambrose is an excellent unintentional source to refute the "droughts, unprecedented cold and crop failures" thesis. In his book Eisenhower and the German POWs, a book designed to refute James Bacque's claim about the murder of POWs, Ambrose quotes President Truman’s Secretary of Agriculture, Clinton P. Anderson, as saying, “Fortunately for this country and for the world American farmers produced record crops of both wheat and corn again in 1946.” His book also contradicts Professor Tent's claim about the "normal consumers." Twelve pages later in the book following Tent's claim there is a photograph of seven children dying of starvation. Senator Eastland of Mississippi testified before the Senate, “We have surplus foods in this country, but there is no effort made to send the food abroad, where it is so urgently needed. I know that the control commission is withholding food at this time.”
Engineered famine was a tool used to great effect by the Soviets in the Ukraine. Millions died while the New York Times reported there was no starvation. A relief worker described the situation in Germany in 1946: "Starvation is not the dramatic thing one so often reads and imagines... of people in mobs crying for food and falling over in the streets. The starving... those who are dying never say anything and one rarely sees them. They first become listless and weak, they react quickly to cold and chills, they sit staring in their rooms or lie listlessly in their beds... one day they just die. The doctor usually diagnoses malnutrition and complications resulting therefrom. Old women and kids usually die first." Like the Ukrainian famine it was concealed for decades.
The original "Handbook for Military Government in Germany" before White's modifications planned to prevent disease and unrest in occupied areas by maintaining a 2,000 calorie ration by importing foodstuffs if necessary. It also stated, "German food and other supplies will be utilized for the German population to the minimum extent required to prevent disease and unrest." The White modification permitted disease and unrest as long as it did not endanger the occupying forces. "You will estimate requirements of supplies necessary to prevent starvation or widespread disease or such civil unrest as would endanger the occupying forces."
Apparently the supplies needed to prevent endangering the occupying forces were extremely low. In July 1945 Calvin Hoover of the Economic Intelligence Brach reported that in some urban areas the consumer rations were as low as 700 calories per day. During that month General Clay claimed, "we had determined what supplies were available and found that the ration for the normal consumer had to be set at levels varying from 950 to 1150 calories per day." Field Marshall Montgomery, the Commander of the British Zone, concluded that the loss of life in the winter 1945-46 was going to be "very heavy." The daily ration for an average adult then was 1,042 calories, which Montgomery said meant, "we are going to let them starve gradually." Richard Wiggers estimated, “the average daily ration level in the western occupation zones during the summer of 1945 fluctuated between 700-1190 calories.” General Clay reported, "The authorized allowance in the bizonal area dropped to 1,040 calories a day in April 1947. Apparently Professor Text did not read General Clay's memoirs.
In spite of these dire conditions relief agencies were prohibited. Eisenhower had forbidden the North American Quakers to come to Germany; a policy he recommended the War Department keep secret. Professor James Tent attributed Clay’s opposition to relief agencies working in Germany to his “distaste for carpetbaggers.” Thus, the Catholic Relief Services, Unitarians, Mennonites and others relief agencies were categorized as “carpetbaggers.” CARE package shipments to individuals remained prohibited until 5 June 1946.
Another inexcusable policy was the intentional destruction of food. General Clay remarked, "Hunger was to be seen everywhere and even the refuse pails from our messes, from which everything of value had been removed, were gone over time and time again in a search for the last scrap of nourishment." Why was "everything of value" removed? Eugene Davidson reported, "American wives were told never to allow leftovers to get into the hands of their maids - the food was to be destroyed or made inedible." Edward Peterson reported that, "Germans noted Americans threw food away and were bitter that leftovers from army kitchens were frequently forbidden to hungry children, and sometimes even burned in front of them." Karl Vogel claimed Eisenhower himself ordered that food provided to prisoners by women in the area surrounding the camp be destroyed." And Colonel Francis Miller wrote of an acquaintance, “Against orders, I supplied him some nourishing food.” Charles Lindbergh recorded, "German children look in through the window. We have more food than we need, but regulations prevent giving it to them. There does not appear to be a surviving written record of this policy but it is obvious that it existed. In spite of this privation German taxpayers were paying for “one ton of water bugs to feed a U.S. general’s pet fish.”
What were the consequences of these policies? Like the Ukrainian famine it is impossible to give an accurate number of deaths. James Bacque puts the number in the millions. Herbert Hoover reported, "There is the illusion that the New Germany left after the annexations can be reduced to a 'pastoral state.' It cannot be done unless we exterminate or move 25,000,000 people out of it." In 1945 Clay commented, "The death rate in many places has increased several-fold and infant mortality is approaching 65 per cent in many places. By the spring of 1946, German observers expect that epidemics and malnutrition will claim 2.5 to 3 million victims between the Oder and the Elbe." Clay made no mention of death rates in the west were similar conditions prevailed. Edward Peterson reported that, "The death rate of children and old people in Berlin rose to fantastic heights; more than half the babies born in Berlin in August [1945] died. In the U.S. zone 30 percent of the children in their first year died." Earl Ziemke gives an infant mortality rate for Berlin of 660 per thousand in July 1945. This number is repeated by Eugene Davidson who wrote, "More than half the babies born in Berlin in August died, mainly of malnutrition a U.S. government report showed some months later. There were 1,448 deaths out of 2,866 births."
Senator Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska commented: The American people should know once and for all that as a result of this government's official policy they are being made the unwilling accomplices in the crime of mass starvation. . . . Germany is the only nation subjected to a deliberate starvation policy. In January 1946 34 U.S. senators "stated that the food situation in occupied Germany "presents a picture of such frightful horror as to stagger the imagination, evidence which increasingly marks the United States as an accomplice in a terrible crime against humanity." In March 1946 the Senate approved a resolution requesting "the President take executive action designed to eliminate the starvation conditions resulting from the policies for which this Government is directly responsible."
Senator William Langer announced, "I hold in my hands photographs which have been taken at the beginning of the winter in the city of Berlin. These photographs are interchangeable for horror with the photographs with which we became familiar from Dachau, Mauthausen, Buchenwald, and other extermination camps. These are photographs of children between the ages of 5 and l4…" “America has become an accomplice in one of the most staggering crimes ever committed against humanity.” 1946 Senator Homer E. Capehart of Indiana addressed the Senate: For nine months now this administration has been carrying on a deliberate policy of mass starvation without any distinction between the innocent and the helpless and guilty alike.
American policy had transformed an entire country into a vast concentration camp. General Montgomery in October 1945 he telegraphed London: "I do not think we should provide a ration less than Belsen concentration camp." Harold Zink reported, "The amount available for German use hardly equaled the food supplied by the Nazis at such notorious concentration camps as Dachau where thousands died from starvation." Victor Gollancz quoted Gerald Barry, the editor of The News Chronicle as saying, "the actual daily ration is now as low as the prisoners of Belsen received in the worst days." According to theologian Prince zu Loewenstein the official ration in the French zone in January 1947 was 450 calories per day, half the ration of the Belsen concentration camp.
