American Relief Administration

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The American Relief Administration ( German  administration of the American relief organization ) was a government enterprise of the United States , which was commissioned to provide affected peoples in sufficient quantities and fair distribution with food after the First World War in the period of the armistice of Europe and to restore the internal Transport systems to help. Privatized she seemed then to 1924 more than Children's Fund A.RA European Children's Fund and experienced during the Russian famine of 1921 its most dramatic use.

The nine months as a government enterprise

Inventory in post-war Europe

The future US President Herbert C. Hoover , as chairman of the United States' food administration, had already ensured that their war allies had enough wheat available. The first estimates of the supply of staple foods on the European continent, made after November 11, 1918, saw that at 60 percent of the average pre-war conditions, which were largely synonymous with a meager life. The livestock had shrunk from 93.3 to 18.4 million head. On the other hand, the USA had ramped up its agricultural production because of the war, and an abrupt loss of customers would cause shocks. The first ideas of entrusting Hoover with a kind of food mission overseas had already matured in June 1918, when "Colonel" Edward M. House suggested aid measures in western Bolshevik Russia - but thought through to the end, this was not in line with the Siberian intervention bring. The Commission for the Belgian Aid Organization , which is closely connected with Hoover , was already close to the necessary project, but was not an American government issue. All that remained was the expansion of the American Food Administration and its grain company to Europe. Here agricultural overproduction, there starving peoples - a flow of goods should actually have resulted from it by itself, but one encountered unexpected obstacles on site.

Crocheting among friends

The most optimistic reaction that Hoover encountered with his offer of aid in Europe was that of the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Eduard Benesch , who announced that his country did not need any support, only to come to the opposite conclusion shortly afterwards. The conditions were no different there than in the other 25 nations, where food shortages could become a problem for 300 to 400 million people. The great power Great Britain suddenly saw the chance to be able to buy food again cheaper on the world market and cared little that the grain company of the American Food Administration was on the verge of guaranteed purchase prices. Ultimately, however, even the British were again dependent on the grain company, with the effect that after the flirtation with the breach of contract, they had to pay more for the unit of quantity than the Germans. These were initially excluded from deliveries in two respects. President Woodrow Wilson had asked Hoover on November 7, 1918, to change the United States' food administration into a new venture whose remit would be aid and reconstruction. A month later, Hoover and his organization moved into 50 offices at 51 avenue Montaigne in Paris, support would be provided by 2,500 officers and men of the American armed forces seconded by General John J. Pershing and control of their resources would no longer be a matter for the Allies. In early January 1919, the United States Grain Company also set up an office in London, with Edward M. Flesh as director. She was appointed agent and paying agent for the American Relief Administration, whose work was solidly grounded in law (No. 274, Congress 65 ) that went into effect February 25, 1919. So there were 23.5 million tons of aid deliveries to the Allies during the war and the armistice period , followed by 13.2 million tons after the peace treaty. Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey were expressly excluded from the benefits, which was due to a supplementary motion by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge .

Compliance enforced by food blockade

Whether completely unfounded, as suggested by Hoover, or based on justified fears after the gigantic destruction in Belgium and France - the German government had to be convinced by First Quartermaster General Wilhelm Gröner that a resumption of the fighting was hopeless - the food blockade was after The ceasefire continued for months, aggravated by a ban on fishing in the North and Baltic Seas. The French Marshal Ferdinand Foch made no secret of the fact that this was intended as a leverage for the peace treaty. Finally, the blockade came to an end six months after the armistice and 1.3 million tons of food flowed into the German Reich , of which 110,000 tons were immediately paid for in cash with gold for 320 million dollars - as was generally 46.5 percent of the ARA -Goods were brokered for cash. $ 9.2 million in donations from the US also secured the Quaker Feeding , which was organized by the American Friends Service Committee with the support of the ARA. The American motto, "Food will win the war", which is still fresh in the public consciousness, did not yet make the appearance of a government organization appear advisable.

The particularly unfortunate situation of the new Republic of Austria can be seen from the fact that in no European country - with the exception of Belgium - had to pump more food per capita and the peak value for branches of the ARA warehouse in Vienna, where food bills are exchanged for ARA food parcels could become. Employees with the experience of the Belgian Aid Organization ensured that children were fed, using aids born of necessity such as the Pelidisi formula to select those most in need . Communist agitators found an interested audience in the starving people and only the fear of a complete loss of food aid took away the Austrians' desire for a revolution. At the request of ARA director Hoover, the Czechoslovak President Masaryk lifted an export ban on coal. Inhibited by American legislation, a way was chosen to finance the food deliveries in which, for example, Great Britain received a loan of 5 million dollars from the " National Security and Defense Fund " with which it ordered goods for Austria from the ARA, a cash sale for the ARA, but in real terms a loan. Deliveries totaled $ 145 million, of which the American portion ultimately turned into a gift.

Different problems in different countries

President Wilson had approved $ 100 million in February 1919, which the ARA could use purely as a grant, but if the benefits were not paid in cash, the benefits were paid on a credit basis in recipient countries, which dampened expectations and did not make the countries look like recipients of alms. In the end, these demands proved to be largely impracticable to a welfare support from the USA - at the latest in 1933, when all countries except Finland declared that they would not recognize their debts to the United States.

The desired effect was to make communism unattractive in a country like Poland , which had seen four enemy invasions in four years. In some places the Poles had to endure seven invasions, and ARA employees in Lviv also experienced shelling from land and bombing from the air. After the Russian rule, there was a civil war in Finland , and hunger was soon the determining problem. While the question of shipping space threatened to turn into a catastrophe for ARA, Finland had the phenomenon of having ships that were not allowed to set sail because they had become stateless. France had long hoped for a collapse of communist Russia - the reintegration of Finland would have been the result - until the "Big Four" managed to recognize Finland on May 3, 1919. In the same month Herbert Hoover had no choice but to ask Rüdiger von der Goltz , who was the commander-in-chief of an occupying army in Latvia, to occupy Riga , since otherwise it was not possible to feed the inhabitants. What then happened was a replacement of red by white terror . In Estonia , too, following the invasion of the Russian Red Army in December 1918, the nutritional situation deteriorated so much that child mortality rose to 35 percent.

In southern Europe, Yugoslavia had a food surplus on Serbian territory, while people were starving in the provinces on the Adriatic. When Hungary was sacked by the Romanian army after the communist interlude of Béla Kun - the opposite had been the case in previous years - the ARA had a wide field for the second point of its mission, the improvement of transport connections. Politically the most difficult was the ARA's approach to the Soviets , especially since Winston Churchill called for the Allies to march on February 14, 1919. The Russians needed food aid, the ARA was on the lookout for a neutral leader, Fridtjof Nansen , a friend of Hoover, seemed suitable, but had to be urged by the Norwegian Prime Minister. On May 14, 1919, the Soviets agreed in principle to an aid organization.

Practical implementation of the assistance

In Paris, the management of the American Aid Organization received the notifications of their personnel at the critical points and then determined the aid measures that were approved by the “Supreme Council of Supply and Relief” and later by the “Food Section of the Supreme Economic Council ” and in Brought into line with the actions of the Allies and other aid organizations. The order then went to the grain company in London, which telegraphed the same to their New York office. That organized the food freighters with the port of Falmouth for the "Northern Relief" (Northern Relief, ie leading across the North or Baltic Sea) and Gibraltar for the "Southern Relief" (Southern Relief, i.e. leading over the Adriatic or the Black Sea). Paris received a notification of the freight and the expected arrival and then informed London of the demand point. There the ships were directed from the London office of the grain company as soon as they came within the range of a wireless communication. At the port of destination, the cargo was usually handed over to the authorities of the recipient country or stored. The grain company took care of the payment processing, while ARA envoys observed whether the deliveries really reached the people in need. Particularly careful attention was paid to foods intended for children's feeding.

Contain a typhus epidemic

In April 1919, an increased incidence of typhus was observed on both sides of the border of the former tsarist empire from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea . Lice were considered to be the carriers of the disease to an undernourished population, which often found themselves in slums after wars, using all fat for food and not for making soap. In the western European capitals one saw a conflagration approaching itself, in allegedly one million cases with 25 percent mortality or more than 100,000 deaths per week. Therefore, a “ sanitary cordon ” was set up west of the areas affected by typhus . Fresh clothes, hair clippers, 250 tons of soap and 500 portable bathing equipment came from the American army. The British Army donated its delousing equipment, as did the previous German army. Border traffic was banned and the American Relief Administration, advancing east, deloused every village and re-dressed the residents until the epidemic was under control.

Follow-up order from children's aid organization

Privatization

In 1919 the ARA had a turnover of 363 million dollars, the end of the official operation came with the peace treaty, but ongoing projects were processed in July and August. The Paris office was closed, staff laid off, and the grain company from London moved back to New York.

Edgar Rickard

At the beginning of the mission, 10 to 12 million children were seen in a pitiful state; there was still work to be done here. Upon request, the heads of the former Food Administration, Herbert Hoover, joined in and the ARA European Children's Fund was founded as a private New York corporation, which seamlessly continued the program with some of the old staff and the remaining equipment. Hoover became President of the ECF (which continued to operate under the well-established name "ARA"), directors were Edgar Rickard in the USA and Walter Lyman Brown for Europe, with an office in London. Starting capital was the remaining funds from the congressional grant and goods paid for by the US President's National Security and Defense Fund, a total of 16 million dollars. Next there was the possibility of using surpluses from the grain company's business, until Hoover raised another 29.5 million dollars with the Council for European Aid (Eurelcon) and its brilliant collection campaign called "Hoover Drive" . However, the economic recovery in Europe was slower than expected, and the 1920 harvest was also poorer than hoped. An estimated 2.5 million children, including 1.0 million German children, therefore needed help until 1921. In 1922, Austria and Poland were the two countries in which the last Central European relief efforts ended.

Systematic feeding of malnourished children

After the outbreak of war in 1914, Belgium was the first country to have food worries. Despite scarce aid, almost epidemic diseases led to the realization that children and expectant mothers had to feed differently. Hoovers Belgian charity set up lunchtime meals in schools, which relieved susceptibility to disease: They developed a large hard biscuit made from flour, sugar, fat and cocoa, which contained everything children need for physical growth. The production was enough to give 2.5 million children a hard biscuit every day, along with stew and condensed milk or, if possible, fresh milk. This experience let Hoover arrange for the establishment of a “Children's Relief Bureau” in Paris shortly after the establishment of the ARA, which from the end of February 1919 took care of children's meals for most of the food consumers. In quick succession AE Peden and AJ Carlson had replaced each other on the line until Walter L. Brown came into play, supported by Parmer Fuller and Maurice Pate - the latter brought the "Belgian Relief" system practiced after the Second World War Child feeding is used in 40 nations, he became director of UNICEF in 1947 . During the nine months of the year, special representatives from the children's aid department joined the ARA aid missions as an authority, but only where there was real need. Secondly, help had to be available to all children who were proven to be malnourished without distinction, for which thirdly leading citizens were prepared to set up an organizing committee that would provide equipment and transportation. Fourth, one had to accept supervision and control of the catering arrangements, which, fifth, had to take place in public soup kitchens. Ultimately, the ARA people should stay out of the internal affairs of the recipient country and limit themselves to delivering food, clothing and medicine. The European Children's Fund, including the Soviet Republics until 1924, provided 338,000 tons of relief supplies worth $ 58.4 million.

The Russian famine of 1921

Trigger for the revolution - and for revolts

Russia was hit by a famine in 1891–92 with almost 400,000 dead, the regularly recurring food shortage promptly set in with the beginning of World War I, became a problem in Moscow and St. Petersburg in 1916 and ultimately a factor in the revolution . Although it was possible to produce grain locally suitable for export, Russia had the lowest yield per unit of acreage on average in Europe. The war withdrew two million horses from agriculture and after the Bolsheviks had confiscated almost 42 percent of the grain harvest there in 1920-21 , there were hunger riots in the Volga German Republic . The drought that set in on top of that led to a catastrophe that could no longer be concealed in the summer. The drought prevailed in southern Ukraine , in the Volga valley from the mouth over the hardest hit area around Samara to Kazan and the Asian border. On July 13, 1921, the government left the role of the one who made an appeal to the world public to the writer Maxim Gorky .

Still active: The American Aid Organization

Hoover had since joined the cabinet of the new President Warren G. Harding as Secretary of Commerce , but had retained his eight or more honorary posts as with the ARA. He offered Maxim Gorky help on the conditions described above, supplemented by the desire to release all American prisoners. A response from Foreign Commissioner Kamenev initiated negotiations that were held between Walter L. Brown and Maxim Litvinov in Riga and led to an agreement on August 20, 1921. The ARA officials initially assumed that every agreement would include Ukraine as a supposed part of Russia. For the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic , however, its head of government Christian Rakowski insisted on a separate treaty - practically identical in content to that of Riga - which was signed on January 10, 1922.

In Moscow, the 30 Spiridonowka Street building served as the headquarters of the American Relief Administration Russian Unit.

William N. Haskell , the year before still High Commissioner for Armenia, as head of the ARA Russian Unit with a staff of 200 Americans set out to cater for up to 18 million people at times - the idea of ​​an aid organization only for children quickly fizzled out. A procurement of funds necessary for operations of this magnitude went beyond the scope of the previous. After the American willingness to donate had been used to the maximum in previous years, an economic depression now clouded the prospects, especially since there was no time for a collective campaign. With five million Eurelcon dollars left over, only federal aid came into consideration. Piles of US corn could be mined if grain company funds were used. A law of December 22, 1921 gave the permission and $ 18.6 million the appropriate use. The handling of the Tsar's gold , which Hoover demanded from the Soviets, was not uncomplicated . This generated around 12 million dollars after obtaining an import permit and granting loans that were covered by this gold. For this, the Russians wanted mainly seed grain, which had to be put in the ground early if it was to serve its purpose - which it did. Finally, the Department of War had surplus hospital supplies, valued at four million dollars, which by law of January 20, 1922, were also entrusted to ARA.

Distribution of food

ARA helpers in Russia, 1922

On September 21, 1921, the first meals were made from imported food in Kazan. Deliveries were made to ten ports, six on the Baltic Sea and four on the Black Sea. Loaders and warehouses needed to be overhauled, which was possible. More locomotives and freight wagons could not be procured, which left the ARA people in the ports on thousands of tons of food, while in the country the number of starved people rose to three to five million. Although soup kitchens were also set up in the Soviet republics, the distribution of food could not be monitored in the same way as in Central Europe, as a sledge transport to remote areas had often preceded it. The children's meals were co-financed by profits from the sale of food packages via food drafts , which found almost a million buyers. A special aid measure took place in favor of the " intelligentsia " - including the Nobel Prize winner Ivan Pavlov - because intellectuals, unlike peasants, had no hidden reserves and were not specifically supplied by the government like the workers. Doctors fighting hunger-related epidemics hardly had anything to eat themselves. The largest donation in this regard was $ 830,000 from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial . In June 1922, three hundred ballet dancers were able to collect food parcels donated by the prima ballerina Anna Pavlova at the ARA kitchen in the former Hermitage restaurant .

Acquaintance with the Comintern

After the relief efforts ended on June 15, 1923, Kamenev "profusely" thanked Hoover on behalf of the government with a promise that the people of the USSR would never forget the aid they had received from the American people through the ARA. Even Alexander Eiduck , a Chekist , the authorized representative of the Russian government had been with the foreign aid organizations, nor the work of all organizations described in his report. Another development had long been underway. Hoover's demand for extraterritoriality for ARA employees had so angry Lenin that he wrote to the Politburo that Hoover should be punished and hit him in the face in public. Remedy entrusted with the task, the "bad impression" that the success of foreign aid had brought the Soviets, was Willi Munzenberg , a man of the Comintern , the unloaded writers like Franz Jung to the Volga sent, with the desired result:

“The members of the ARA (American Relief Commission) require people to take their hats off when they speak to them. One of them, a Mr. Rapp, filed a complaint that someone had once dared to speak to him as a comrade. Why not give such rags the kick they deserve? The Nansen representatives are not much better. "

And:

“A large part of the Ara goods migrate from [sic] the bazaar. You can get condensed milk, cocoa and flour there many times cheaper than anywhere else in Russia. I believe that soon the hoarders will drive from Moscow to the hungry area to buy milk and cocoa cheaply there. "

Although Hoover in the USA was able to raise six hundred times the amount of voluntary donations in relation to Munzenberg's International Workers Aid , he stuck to the general line:

“Capitalist abroad did next to nothing to help. The only help that could come from abroad was the help of the world proletariat, which was enthusiastic about the Soviet republic. "

Meanwhile, Franz Jung got to know the pitfalls of Münzenberg's propaganda work better when he waited with eight freight wagons in the port of Reval for the arrival of 3,000 boxes of “canned milk from Denmark”. Nothing came, and trash could have brought Jung the immediate execution, but he was saved by a "Mr. Fischer, the head of the American Relief Administration", who asked the freight forwarders in Copenhagen and found out the place of unloading in Riga: It wasn't 3000 boxes either but 3000 cans ”. Hoover complained in his memoirs about communist press people and speakers whose mission in the United States was to slander him.

From Emile Francquis alarm call to the feast of the Soviet authorities - summary

Herbert Hoover was entrusted with charitable use of $ 375 million from donations from individuals and groups during the decade of food supply. All in all, including supplies essential to the war effort, 33.8 million tons of goods, mainly food, were shipped from America to Europe, worth $ 5,234,028,208.56. Just as important as the billions are the 56 cents, as they express the nitpicking of the bookkeeping under him. This let accusations such as those by James A. Reed that Hoover had embezzled funds from the Belgian aid organization roll off him. But it also gave his missions a certain immobility when it came to responding to demands, such as those for “ pajok ”, from people who transported food in Russia and were starving themselves. After all, a solution was found in December 1921. Hoover's wonderful ability to make correct decisions in emergency situations was attributed to his training as a mining engineer. He left for Europe in 1918, not without first placing a 50 million dollar order for groceries - approval from Congress still pending. If in those years fame often went hand in hand with the death of many people, Hoover had saved millions from starvation in a very different way.

proof

  • Frank M. Surface / Raymond L. Bland: American Food in the World War and Reconstruction Period. Operations of the Organizations Under the Direction of Herbert Hoover 1914 to 1924 , Stanford University Press, Stanford 1931. Full text .
  • Hermann Stöhr : This is how America helped. The United States' Foreign Aid 1812-1930 , Ökumenischer Verlag, Stettin 1936, pp. 151-172.
  • Herbert Hoover: Memoirs (Vol. 1). Years of Adventure 1874–1920 , Matthias Grünewald Verlag, Mainz 1951, pp. 215–385.
  • Herbert Hoover: Memoirs (Vol. 2). The Cabinet and the Presidency 1920–1933 , Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, Mainz 1952, pp. 20–28.
  • Richard Pipes : Russia under the Bolshevik regime 1919-1924 , London 1994, pp. 412-419.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klaus Wiegrefe : Der Unfriede von Versailles , in: DER SPIEGEL 13/2004, p. 152
  2. ^ Herbert Hoover: Memoirs (Vol. 1). Mainz 1951, p. 315
  3. ^ William R. Grove: War's Aftermath. Polish Relief in 1919 , House of Field Publishers, New York 1940, p. 143
  4. ↑ In the English edition of Herbert Hoover's memoirs (vol. 1, Macmillan, New York 1951, p. 325) and the German translation (vol. 1, p. 292) there is talk of " typhus ". With lice as a carrier, however, “typhus” is apparently the correct translation.
  5. ↑ Based on statistics from the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)
  6. ^ Herbert Hoover: Memoirs (Vol. 1). Mainz 1951, p. 163
  7. ^ Bertrand M. Patenaude: The Big Show in Bololand. Stanford 2002, p. 26
  8. ↑ Detlef Brandes : From the persecutions in the First World War to the Deportation , in: Gerd Stricker (Ed.): German History in Eastern Europe - Russia , Siedler Verlag, Berlin 1997, pp. 137–145
  9. ↑ [o. V.]: Hoover accepts place in cabinet; keeps relief post , The New York Times, Feb.25, 1921, p. 1
  10. ^ Benjamin M. Weissman: Herbert Hoover and Famine Relief to Soviet Russia. Stanford 1974, p. 94
  11. ^ Bertrand M. Patenaude: The Big Show in Bololand. Stanford 2002, p. 51 f. and 207
  12. ↑ Manfred Hildermeier : History of the Soviet Union 1917-1991. Origin and decline of the first socialist state , Munich 1998, p. 253
  13. ^ A b Douglas Smith: The Russian Job. London 2019, p. 188.
  14. ↑ Alexander W. Eiduck: The Russian Famine 1921-1922 and its fight in the light of the facts . In: Arbeiterhilfe und Sovietrußland , Volume 3, Association of International Publishing Houses, Berlin 1922
  15. ^ Richard Pipes: Russia under the Bolshevik regime 1919-1924 , London 1994, p. 416
  16. ↑ Stephen Koch: Double Lives. Spies and Writers in the Secret Soviet War of Ideas Against the West , The Free Press, New York et al. 1994, p. 25
  17. ^ Franz Jung: Hunger on the Volga , Malik-Verlag , Berlin 1922, p. 16
  18. ^ Franz Jung: To the Labor Front in Soviet Russia. To the production struggle of the classes . In: Arbeiterhilfe und Sovietrußland , Volume 1, Association of International Publishing Companies (Frankes Verlag), Berlin / Leipzig 1922, p. 20
  19. ↑ Sean McMeekin: The red millionaire. A political biography of Willi Münzenberg, Moscow's secret propaganda tsar in the West , Yale University Press, New Haven / London 2003, p. 118
  20. ↑ Five years of international workers' aid , Berlin 1926, p. 5, quoted from Babette Gross: Willi Münzenberg. A political biography , Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1967, p. 140
  21. ↑ Franz Jung: The way down. Notes from a great time , (Neuwied 1961), reprint in Uwe Nettelbeck (ed.): Die Republik , Salzhausen 1979, p. 228
  22. ^ Herbert Hoover: Memoirs (Vol. 2). Mainz 1952, p. 28
  23. ^ Edgar Rickard in the foreword to Frank M. Surface / Raymond L. Bland: American Food in the World War and Reconstruction Period. Stanford 1931, p. Vii
  24. ^ Frank M. Surface / Raymond L. Bland: American Food in the World War and Reconstruction Period. Stanford 1931, pp. Ix
  25. ^ Herbert Hoover: Memoirs (Vol. 1). Mainz 1951, p. 222
  26. ^ Frank M. Surface / Raymond L. Bland: American Food in the World War and Reconstruction Period. Stanford 1931, p. 253
  27. ↑ [o. V.]: Vastness of Hoover's work realized as he returns , The New York Times, September 14, 1919, p. 47
  28. ↑ Richard Pipes: Russia under the Bolshevik regime 1919-1924 , London 1994, p. 419

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