Hunger Plan

The Hunger Plan (German: der Hungerplan, der Backe-Plan) was a partially implemented plan developed by Nazi bureaucrats during World War II to seize food from the Soviet Union and give it to German soldiers and civilians. The plan entailed the genocide by starvation of millions of Soviet citizens following Operation Barbarossa, the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union (see Generalplan Ost). The plan created a famine as an act of policy, killing millions of people.^[1]

The Hunger Plan was first formulated by senior German officials during a Staatssekretäre meeting on 2 May 1941 to prepare for the Wehrmacht (German armed forces) invasion and the Nazi war of extermination (Vernichtungskrieg) in Eastern Europe. Its means of mass murder were outlined in several documents, including one that became known as Göring's Green Folder. As part of the plan, Nazi military forces were ordered to capture food stocks in occupied territories, redirect them to supply German troops and fuel the German war economy.^[2][3] In addition to the extensive exploitation of resources to support the German war economy, the Hunger Plan intended to create an artificial famine in Eastern Europe, which would have resulted in deaths of around 31 to 45 million inhabitants through forced starvation.^[4][5]

The original plan was orchestrated by Herbert Backe, who led a coalition of Nazi politicians dedicated to securing Germany's food supply. He was politically allied with Heinrich Himmler, who was a member of the same coalition. The plan is estimated to have eliminated 4.2 million Soviet citizens between 1941 and 1944, but most of its victims were Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians. The plans to starve the entire civilian population of the occupied territories had been abandoned by the end of 1941, because the goal was considered to surpass the capability of the German military forces.