How would the Morgenthau Plan have killed people?

[wildviper121]

I see it commonly stated that the Morgenthau Plan, which held that the heavy industries of Germany were to be destroyed, would have killed 25-30 million people.
That number I think comes from critics who looked at the difference in population between pre- and post-industrial Germany.

But how SPECIFICALLY would this plan have starved millions of Germans?? I’m no expert on agricultural production but it doesn’t seem to me that food production relies too much on heavy (armament) industries.

It certainly would have made plenty of Germans jobless, but with the Allies already giving Germany food, this would be an economic issue, not a starvation issue.

What am I missing?

 

[Declan]

In post-war Germany, the food situation was in dire straits as a result of the decimation brought on by the war. The immediate post war food production in Germany was well below what the population required. As a result the country needed to import food.

This food was not free.

This was because many other countries in Europe also had their own food challenges as a result of the war, and in such circumstances food becomes a very finite resourse. So occupied Germany had to pay with what they could: raw materials and manufactured goods from whatever factory that was left standing. Since Germany had restructured the economy of the continent to focus on it's highy industrialized one; occupied Germany would still have been to go-to place for those goods.
By dismantling the factories, that's removing a massive chunk of goods the Germans could have used to pay for food.

It would be the demand far outstripping supply, that no price hike could ever cover. People would end up going without food and starving to death.

 

[InvaderX]

For the same reason that millions of people would starve today if you suddenly dismantled an entire country's industrial base and purposefully set them back to an agrarian existence. If you cannot pay for food, you do not get food, and if you do not get food, you die. And when food is already scarce, people who do have food aren't going to be giving it away to those in need (if they even have enough to spare in the first place).

As @Declan says above, Europe as a whole was not doing great in terms of feeding itself immediately after the war. Do you think the Soviets or the French are going to give away what food they do have to the starving Germans, who mind you had just stopped being the greatest existential threat either of those nations ever faced? I don't think so. Not unless the Germans can pay for it. And without industry, they can't, not at a state level and not at an individual level. And they will not be able to produce enough food so soon after the war to prevent mass deaths (if they ever could produce that much food in the first place - industrialization and global trade allows for nations' populations to grow beyond the ability of their own domestic food production to sustain. It may well be that Germany cannot feed such a large population even if its agriculture is in tip-top shape, and without industry, they don't have anything to trade for extra food).

 

[wildviper121]

In post-war Germany, the food situation was in dire straits as a result of the decimation brought on by the war. The immediate post war food production in Germany was well below what the population required. As a result the country needed to import food.

This food was not free.

This was because many other countries in Europe also had their own food challenges and in such circumstances food become a very finite resourse. So occupied Germany had to pay with what they could: raw materials and manufactured goods from whatever factory that was left standing. Since Germany had restructured the economy of the continent to focus on it's highy industrialized one; occupied Germany would still have been to go-to place for those goods.
By dismantling the factories, that's removing a massive chunk of goods the Germans could have used to pay for food.

It would be the demand far outstripping supply, that no price hike could ever cover. People would end up going without food and starving to death.

Seems like the US shipped them food anyways—this is what I meant by it being an economic issue; there were issues with food imports in real life due to the trade problem you mentioned, but millions did not die

Food in occupied Germany - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[wildviper121]

For the same reason that millions of people would starve today if you suddenly dismantled an entire country's industrial base and purposefully set them back to an agrarian existence. If you cannot pay for food, you do not get food, and if you do not get food, you die. And when food is already scarce, people who do have food aren't going to be giving it away to those in need (if they even have enough to spare in the first place).

As @Declan says above, Europe as a whole was not doing great in terms of feeding itself immediately after the war. Do you think the Soviets or the French are going to give away what food they do have to the starving Germans, who mind you had just stopped being the greatest existential threat either of those nations ever faced? I don't think so. Not unless the Germans can pay for it. And without industry, they can't, not at a state level and not at an individual level. And they will not be able to produce enough food so soon after the war to prevent mass deaths (if they ever could produce that much food in the first place - industrialization and global trade allows for nations' populations to grow beyond the ability of their own domestic food production to sustain. It may well be that Germany cannot feed such a large population even if its agriculture is in tip-top shape, and without industry, they don't have anything to trade for extra food).

US shipped Germany food even tho in real life there were restrictions on German industrial sales

Food in occupied Germany - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Declan]

Seems like the US shipped them food anyways—this is what I meant by it being an economic issue; there were issues with food imports in real life due to the trade problem you mentioned, but millions did not die

Food in occupied Germany - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

1. Would not be adequate
2. Germans still had to pay for majority of their food
3. The Morgenthau plan would render absolutely zero aid to alleviate starvation making this point moot.

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

For the same reason that millions of people would starve today if you suddenly dismantled an entire country's industrial base and purposefully set them back to an agrarian existence. If you cannot pay for food, you do not get food, and if you do not get food, you die. And when food is already scarce, people who do have food aren't going to be giving it away to those in need (if they even have enough to spare in the first place).

As @Declan says above, Europe as a whole was not doing great in terms of feeding itself immediately after the war. Do you think the Soviets or the French are going to give away what food they do have to the starving Germans, who mind you had just stopped being the greatest existential threat either of those nations ever faced? I don't think so. Not unless the Germans can pay for it. And without industry, they can't, not at a state level and not at an individual level. And they will not be able to produce enough food so soon after the war to prevent mass deaths (if they ever could produce that much food in the first place - industrialization and global trade allows for nations' populations to grow beyond the ability of their own domestic food production to sustain. It may well be that Germany cannot feed such a large population even if its agriculture is in tip-top shape, and without industry, they don't have anything to trade for extra food).

To present that in another way: Subsistence agriculture would not feed a population the size of Germany, or even half that. There was simply not enough productive land available for subsistence farming techniques. The other method is mechanized farming, as the US and most of Europe were practicing in one form or another. In the case of Germany mechanized farming was falling short & regular imports from the USSR, or North and South America filled the gap. Mechanization requires fuel & to have that agricultural Germany must either import petroleum, or manufactor it through Coal conversion with industry its not allowed to have.

Assuming a form of adequate hyper mechanized industry is achieved you then have 25%, 15%, or 5% of the population growing food, and the rest are? Running a cozy Gasthaus on every rural corner? Selling each other insurance? Operating village pastry shops? Writing novels, debating philosophy, painting pictures of Cows at pasture?

Germany & the rest of Europe were not autarkies. With no industry in the Rhine basin or Ruhr the massive investment in Swiss hydropower losses the majority of its revenue stream. The Swedes lose a major purchaser of its Iron Ore. Argentinia and Kansas lose a wheat market, Texas loses a percentage of its Beef exports, and petroleum exports. Spain & Portugal have fewer customers for their Wolfram Ore, Turkey fewer customers for its Chromium. Italiys surplus of skilled labor can no longer take the train across the Alps for employment. The fallout from this does not just mean impoverished Germans living in pastoral squalor. it means a massive economic blow across Europe with serious reverberations across the Atlantic.

 

[Ogrelord420]

To put it very simplistically Germany needed to import food, and to do that they needed to produce manufactured goods that could be traded for food (directly or indirectly). If Germany was industrialized, they would have to rely on subsidence farming, which would have been disastrous since most urban workers aren't prepared for that.

 

[LeonardWood6]

Well, the thing is, Germany even pre-war didn't wasn't self-sufficient in food, and indeed that was why they attacked the USSR, partly out of gaining the breadbasket of the USSR: Ukraine. And now, with the Morgenthau Plan? You must realize that the Morgenthau Plan did not allow Germany to have even a TINY bit of industry. The Plan called for the dismantling of Germany's entire industrial base, setting them back to an agrarian existence. But Subsistence Agriculture would not feed a population the size of Germany, which was around 100 million. Only mechanized farming could do that. Mechanization requires fuel, & to have that vital fuel, Germany needed to manufacture it synthetically through Coal conversion. How do you get that coal? Mining for it, which is an industry. What did the Morgenthau Plan call for? Germany could NEVER have an OUNCE of industry. Besides, you must also realize that artificial fertilizer is a problem too. Fertilizer is needed to grow vast amounts of crops to feed a vast amount of people. And with the Morgenthau Plan calling for Germany to not have any industry... well, say goodbye to any fertilizers. Meaning less amounts of food domestically being produced, already a disaster, but this is compounded by the fact that since Germany now doesn't have any industry of worth, they cannot sell anything to get food. So, they can't produce it domestically, and internationally, they can't buy it. What's the result? A humanitarian catastrophe, and millions dying of starvation.