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Food and agriculture in Nazi Germany describes the food and agricultural policies of Nazi Germany and their consequences from 1933 when the Nazis took power in Germany until 1945 when Germany was defeated in World War II (1939–1945) by the allied nations. Starvation and its associated illnesses killed about 20 million people in Europe and Asia during World War II, approximately the same as the number of soldiers killed in battle. Most of the deaths from starvation in Europe were in the Soviet Union and Poland, countries invaded by Germany and occupied in whole or part during the war. A central focus of Germany's war policy was overcoming chronic food deficits by conquering Poland and the fertile chernozem, or "black earth," region of Ukraine and neighboring republics of the Soviet Union, and expelling, starving, or killing the native populations. German farmers were to be resettled on the vacated lands, thus assuring Germany self-sufficiency in food and enabling Germany to take a secure place alongside the United Kingdom and the United States as a world power. As it worked out, Poland and Ukraine became only minor contributors of food to the civilian population of Germany, as more food came from western European countries such as France and Denmark. To maintain domestic agricultural production while millions of men were serving in the military, Germany imported millions of workers as forced labor. The German state managed to keep its population reasonably well-nourished until at least autumn 1944, but at the cost of killing or starving to death millions of non-Germans. Before World War II In the 19th century agriculture in Germany faced a problem of growing enough food for an increasing population. With competition from imports of inexpensive wheat from North America in the 1870s, Otto von Bismarck adopted a protectionist policy, subsidizing German agriculture by imposing high tariffs on imported food. Agricultural self-sufficiency was seen as an important component of national security. In 1891, German Chancellor Leo von Caprivi said "In a future war feeding the army and the country will play a decisive role." Despite this emphasis on agricultural self-sufficiency, Germany entered World War I in 1914 as a substantial importer of food and fodder. The Allied blockade and trade embargoes exacerbated shortages. By the end of the war in 1918, the German Empire's urban population was starving. 763,000 people were estimated to have died from malnutrition and the incidence of many serious diseases increased. The loss of 13 percent of its territory, including agricultural land, under the Versailles Treaty, increased the difficulties of Germany becoming self-sufficient in food. During the interwar period (1918–1939), Germany isolated itself from the world market for food, attempting to become self-sufficient. Under the Weimar Republic agricultural workers shifted to the right wing as the left-wing Social Democratic Party and Communist Party failed to craft popular agrarian policies. They shifted to far-right parties such as the Nazi Party after mainstream conservatives failed to respond to the crash of commodity prices in the 1920s. Farming lobbyists demanded protectionist trade policies, including quotas on agricultural imports to Germany. In 1931 Chancellors Heinrich Brüning, Franz von Papen, and Kurt von Schleicher used Article 48 emergency powers to decree foreign exchange rationing and import controls, but refused to implement quotas. Farming lobbyists helped convince President Paul von Hindenburg, a Junker with a large estate in East Prussia, to appoint Adolf Hitler as chancellor in a coalition with the German National People's Party in 1933. Nazi organization of the agricultural sector of the economy achieved modest successes in the 1930s. When the Nazis took power in 1933, Richard Walther Darré became Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture. Nazi Germany was 80 percent self-sufficient in basic crops such as grains, potatoes, meat, and sugar. In 1939, Germany had become 83 percent self-sufficient in basic crops. An annual Reich Harvest Thanksgiving Festival celebrated and promoted production. The Nazi government also took measures to achieve "nutritional freedom" by discouraging the population's consumption of foods such as white bread, meat, and butter and centering the German diets on brown bread and potatoes. Consuming imports such as coffee and oranges were discouraged. Two nutritional innovations promoted by the Nazis were quark, a milk product formerly used as animal feed, and eintopf, a one-pot casserole of leftovers eaten the first Monday of every month. The nutrition policies resulted in a decline in consumption of 17 percent for meat, 21 percent for milk, and 46 percent for eggs between 1927 and 1937. The dietary austerity encouraged by the Nazis resulted in a "continuous and chronic state of undernourishment" for some Germans, especially the urban poor. Lebensraum In February 1939, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler told a group of Wehrmacht officers that food was the most important problem facing Germany. The solution proposed to alleviate Germany's dependence on food imports was to create more Lebensraum (living space) for the German people by conquest and colonization. The Nazis did not create the concept of Lebensraum but adopted it as a central element of their racial and economic objectives. Germany indeed had a shortage of arable land. In 1937, farmers in Germany tilled an average of 2.1 hectares (5.2 acres) each compared to 2.8 hectares (6.9 acres) for each French farmer, 3.8 hectares (9.4 acres) for each British farmer, and a munificent 12.8 hectares (32 acres) for each American farmer. Moreover, German agriculture was backward with too many small or inefficient farms and agricultural workers. Farmers and agricultural workers made up 26 percent of Germany's labor force in 1939. (compared to about 17 percent of the U.S. labor force in the same year which produced a large surplus of food.) The Reichsnährstand (Reich Food Corporation), an all-embracing government entity created in 1933 to promote agriculture, said that Germany needed 7 to 8 million hectares, about 75,000 square kilometres (29,000 sq mi), of additional farm land to achieve self-sufficiency in food, insulate Germany from the food shortages that contributed to its defeat in World War I, and enable Germany to match the United Kingdom and the United States in power and influence. To obtain additional farmland, achieve self-sufficiency, and resettle some of its farmers, Germany looked eastward and the conquest of Poland and the Ukraine which was part of the Soviet Union at that time. Ukraine, in particular, was of interest to the Germans because of the extremely fertile "black soils" (chernozems) of about one half of its land area. Germany and the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Poland in September 1939. Germany began planning an invasion of the Soviet Union in July 1940 and inva.... 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