German Agricultural Occupation of France and Ukraine, 1940-1944 Margot Lyautey, Marc Elie
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German Agricultural Occupation of France and Ukraine, 1940-1944 Margot Lyautey, Marc Elie To cite this version: Margot Lyautey, Marc Elie. German Agricultural Occupation of France and Ukraine, 1940-1944. Comparativ. Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung, Leipziger Uni- versitätsverlag, 2019, 29, pp.86 - 117. 10.26014/j.comp.2019.03.05. hal-02562731 HAL Id: hal-02562731 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02562731 Submitted on 18 May 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. German Agricultural Occupation of France and Ukraine, 1940–1944 Margot Lyautey / Marc Elie ABSTRACTS Dieser Aufsatz vergleicht und vernetzt die nationalsozialistische landwirtschaftliche Ausbeu- tung von Frankreich und der Ukraine. Sie trägt zu unserem Verständnis der Prinzipien, Funkti- onsweise und Auswirkungen der Ernährungs- und Agrarpolitik im NS-Reich sowohl im Westen als auch im Osten bei. Wir befassen uns zunächst mit der allgemeinen Ernährungs- und Be- schafungspolitik des Dritten Reiches und wie sie sich auf die Völker und die Landwirtschaften in Europa unterschiedlich ausgewirkt hat: Wie haben die Nationalsozialisten eine Agrarpolitik für ihr ganzes Reich konzipiert, geplant und gestaltet? Wir zeigen, wie der Traum von einer au- tarken kontinentalen Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft („Großraumwirtschaft“), die Pläne zur Kolonisie- rung vor allem des Ostens, aber in geringerem Maße auch des Westens (der „Generalplan Ost“ in seinen verschiedenen Varianten) und der Wille, große Teile der sowjetischen Bevölkerung durch Hunger zu zerstören (der „Hungerplan“) sowohl in Visionen als auch in Umsetzungen miteinander interagierten. Zweitens vergleichen wir, wie deutsche Besatzer die landwirtschaft- liche Ausbeutung in ihren wichtigsten landwirtschaftlichen Eroberungen durchführten. Wie haben deutsche Agronomen die Landwirtschaft der von ihnen dominierten Gebiete Ukraine und Frankreich verändert? Mit welchen Ergebnissen? Wir zeigen, dass sie sich in beiden Fällen in erheblicher Weise auf die existierenden Machtstrukturen stützten. Drittens unterstreichen wir die Zusammenhänge und Transfers zwischen diesen beiden Besatzungsregimen: die Praxis, Landarbeiter massenhaft umzusiedeln, um den Bedarf an Arbeitskräften in der Agrarprodukti- on zu decken, den Einsatz von deutschen „Landwirtschaftsführern”, die Tätigkeit der Landbe- wirtschaftungsgesellschaft Ostland sowohl in der besetzten Sowjetunion als auch im besetzten Frankreich und den Anbau der Gummipfanze Kok-sagyz. This paper compares and interconnects Nazi agricultural exploitation of Ukraine and France. It contributes to our understanding of the principles, workings, and implications of the food and agriculture policy in the Nazi empire both in the West and in the East. We are dealing frst Comparativ | Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 29 (2019) Heft 3, S. 86–117. DOI: 10.26014/j.comp.2019.03.05 German Agricultural Occupation of France and Ukraine, 1940–1944 | 87 with the food and procurement policy of the Reich and how it diversely impacted peoples and agricultures in Europe: how did the Nazis imagine, plan, and craft an agricultural policy for their whole empire? Specifcally we show how the dream of an autarkic continental economic community (“Großraumwirtschaft”), the plans to colonize mostly the East but to a lesser extent the West, too (the “Generalplan Ost” in its several variants), and the will to destroy large swathe of the Soviet population by starvation (the “Hungerplan”) interacted with one another both in visions and in implementations. Second, we compare how German occupants carried out agricultural exploitation of Ukraine and France, which were the main agricultural acquisitions of Nazi Germany. How did German agronomists set about to transform the agriculture of the countries they dominated? With what results? We show that both in the East and in the West they relied on existing administrative structures. Third, we underline connections and transfers between these two occupation regimes: the practice of forcibly and massively moving peas- ants to ft production needs, the institution of German agricultural managers to rule local farm- ers (“Landwirtschaftsführer”), the establishment of the Ostland farming company both in the occupied Soviet Union and occupied France, and the culture of the rubber-plant kok-sagyz. Introduction Since the groundbreaking work by Aly and Heim,1 historical research has amply dem- onstrated how the racial and expansion policies of the Nazi regime were linked to its food and resource policy.2 Questions of grain and oilseed procurement were linked to the Eastern drive and to the extermination of Jews, Sinti, and Roma, and to the starva- tion of prisoners of war (POWs) and civilian Poles, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Russians, and others. To feed the German army high rations and to sustain the population of the Reich with sufcient food supplies, the German government organized starving rations in occupied territories and destroyed ethnic minorities and captives. Not only the long- term colonial vision – and its carrying out – of a Europe under German dominion with a de-industrialized, de-urbanized, and re-agrarianized Eastern Europe, freed from Jews, Communists, and “useless” persons, led to organized mass killings; but the organization of the food procurement from occupied territories to the Reich was a major factor bring- ing about intentional devastation and death by shooting, hanging, gazing, and hunger in the Generalgouvernement and the occupied Soviet territories.3 Although agriculture and agricultural sciences under the Nazis in Germany proper are well studied,4 contemporary historiography has long shown little interest for German 1 G. Aly / S. Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung: Auschwitz und die deutschen Pläne für eine Neue Europäische Ordnung, Hamburg 1991. 2 C. Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde: die deutsche Wirtschafts- und Vernichtungspolitik in Weißrußland 1941 bis 1944, (2nd ed.), Hamburg 2012; A. J. Kay, Exploitation, Resettlement, Mass Murder: Political and Economic Planning for German Occupation Policy in the Soviet Union, 1940–1941, New York 2006; T. Tönsmeyer / P. Haslinger / A. Laba (eds.), Coping with Hunger and Shortage under German Occupation in World War II, Cham 2018. 3 Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde; W. Lower, Nazi Empire-building and the Holocaust in Ukraine, Chapel Hill 2005; K. C. Berkhof, Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule, Cambridge, MA 2004. 4 G. Corni / H. Gies, Brot – Butter – Kanonen: Die Ernährungswirtschaft in Deutschland unter der Diktatur Hitlers, 88 | Margot Lyautey / Marc Elie agricultural policies in the occupied territories, in the West and East. Comparing and interconnecting how Germans diversely exploited peasants in their European colonies is a task ahead of us.5 Te goal of this paper is more modestly to provide the reader with an understanding of the principles, workings, and implications of the food and agriculture policy in the Nazi empire both in the West and in the East. We are dealing frst with the general food and procurement policy of the Reich and how it diversely impacted peoples and agricultures in Europe: how did the Nazis imagine, plan, and craft an agricultural policy for their whole empire? Specifcally we show how the dream of an autarkic con- tinental economic community (Großraumwirtschaft), the plans to colonize mostly the East but to a lesser extent also the West (the Generalplan Ost in its several variants), and the will to destroy large swathes of the Soviet population by starvation (known in the historiography as the Hungerplan) were distinct but interacted with one another both in visions and in implementations. Second, we compare how German occupants carried out agricultural occupation in the territories they occupied, taking two case studies, Ukraine and France, which were the main agricultural acquisitions of Nazi Germany. How did German agronomists set about to transform the agriculture of the countries they dominated? With what results? We show that, notwithstanding vastly diferent occupation regimes, they relied on ex- isting administrative structures to a considerable extent in both countries. Tird, we underline interconnections between these two occupation regimes: the practice of for- cibly and massively moving peasants to ft production needs, the institution of German agricultural managers to rule local farmers (Landwirtschaftsführer), the Ostland farming company both in the occupied Soviet Union and occupied France, and the culture of the rubber-plant kok-sagyz. Berlin 1997; S. Heim (ed.), Autarkie und Ostexpansion: Pfanzenzucht und Agrarforschung im Nationalsozialis- mus (Geschichte der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft im Nationalsozialismus, Bd. 2), Göttingen 2002; G. Gerhard, Nazi Hunger Politics: A History of Food in the Third Reich, Lanham 2015; T. Saraiva, Fascist Pigs: Technoscientifc Organisms and the History of Fascism, Cambridge, MA 2016. 5 Brandt’s famous work from 1953 does not draw a comparison, but