Over the course of six months between the end of 1940 and June 1941, German planning staffs developed a concept that envisaged the seizure of substantial amounts of grain from the occupied Soviet territories at the cost of tens of millions of Soviet lives. This concept was the brainchild of the number two person in the Reich Ministry for Food and Agriculture (Reichsministerium für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft, RMEL), Staatssekretär Herbert Backe, and was referred to internally as the Backe plan or some variation of this. What began in the RMEL ultimately became state policy advocated by Germany's military leadership, ministerial bureaucracy, and political elites. This piece will trace and analyze the radicalization of German food policy vis-à-vis the Soviet territories and their inhabitants during the period in question.

The “Severity of the Food Situation”

Proposals for a military campaign against the USSR were being heard in the corridors of power as early as July 1940, and Staatssekretär Backe was informed of Hitler's intentions toward the Soviet Union no later than November 6, 1940. The official directive to commence preparations for an invasion of the Soviet Union, Directive No. 21: Case Barbarossa, was issued a month and a half later, on December 18, 1941. An early occupation of the Donets Basin, a major source of coal, was stressed, and the capture of “the important transport and armaments center” of Moscow was described as constituting “politically and economically a decisive success.”