Plan elections

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Memorial plaque for the cultivation battle in Regensberg , Canton of Zurich
Food rationing from October 9, 1940 to June 24, 1948

The plan elections was a program to promote intra-Swiss food cultivation since 1940. He was also named Anbauschlacht and (Swiss) as attachments referred. Before World War II imported the Switzerland around half of its food from abroad. In order to avert a food shortage in the event of an impending embargo by the Axis powers , the agricultural specialist and later Federal Councilor Friedrich Traugott Wahlen brought his cultivation plan, which had been prepared since 1937, to a wider public on November 15, 1940. Due to the war, this became an obligation to cultivate .

"Cultivation battle"

Cultivation of potatoes on the monastery square in St. Gallen (picture from the First World War)

By increasing the domestic production, reducing livestock, with simultaneous expansion of agriculture and rationing should the self-sufficiency in Switzerland are saved. The self-sufficiency cultivation area should be gradually increased from 180,000 to 500,000 hectares. The foundations of the elections plan were older. A corresponding plan had already been implemented during the First World War , but it was far more incomplete.

Food had to be planted up to great heights and for the expansion of arable farming , land should be gained through clearing , amelioration and the inclusion of non-agricultural areas such as fallow land or public parks and sports fields. The planted agricultural area was expanded from 183,000 to 352,000 hectares between 1940 and 1945 . Half a million small-scale planters and the workers of 12,000 industrial companies cultivated an additional 20,000 hectares of non-agricultural land.

The second core element was the change in the direction of production from grass farming or livestock farming to arable farming , using the knowledge that a given area of ​​land feeds significantly more people if crops are grown that provide food that can be used directly, i.e. those that do not only have to be used the animal body must be refined with great energetic losses. Thanks to this joint effort, Switzerland is the only country in Europe that has never had to ration potatoes, vegetables and fruit .

When the election plan was canceled at the end of the war and was no longer the basis of Swiss agricultural policy, it was 60,000 hectares above the 300,000 hectares planned for this point in time. The original goal of the "cultivation battle" of 500,000 hectares was achieved thanks to the end of the war no longer reached. On June 30, 1945 FT Wahlen resigned from the position of commissioner for the cultivation plant in order to enable the conversion of the agricultural economy to a peace economy.

From 1940 to 1945, Switzerland's level of self-sufficiency in food rose from 52% to 70%. Bread grain production doubled, the potato harvest tripled, and the vegetable harvest quadrupled. Since the entire agricultural structure has changed, the degree of self-sufficiency is difficult to estimate. As the mean value from various literature, it is estimated at 52 percent for 1939 and at 70 to 75 or 80 percent for 1943 to 1945.

The elections plan saved the Swiss population and around 300,000 refugees from hunger and excessive deprivation. The "cultivation battle" also had a psychological effect and was a symbol of Switzerland's will to resist .

A similar program in National Socialist Germany was called " Production Battle ". Hitler was striving for a higher degree of self-sufficiency for the German Reich (→ four-year plan ).

Other rationing areas

The election plan did not only include the food supply. A contemporary postage stamp, for example, called on the population to collect waste materials “to hold out”. In addition, z. For example, the heating material (especially hard coal , oil was practically not used for heating during the Second World War) was drastically reduced: A contemporary witness reports that the house heating systems also had to be fired with pine cones and other waste wood because industry had priority with normal firewood.

reception

Although the majority of the population sympathized with the state interventions required by the emergency resulting from the elections plan, there were also cases where state regulations were circumvented or resisted. An example of such disputes is shown in the feature film “ The Black Tanner ” (1986) based on a story by Meinrad Inglin from 1947 . The subject is dealt with under the same title in a play that was performed at the Ballenberg Open Air Museum in 2007 .

In a series of documentaries from 2006 in which contemporary witnesses have their say, the «Association for the Preservation of the Memory of Federal Councilor Prof. Dr. Friedrich Traugott Wahlen and the cultivation plan (1940 to 1945) »contributed to the appreciation of Wahlen and to the memory of his cultivation.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : plan elections  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Albert Tanner: Attachment Battle. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  2. ^ A b Friedrich Traugott Wahlen: The Swiss Cultivation Plant 1940–1945. New year's paper of the Natural Research Society, Zurich 1946
  3. ↑ Silvio Bucher: An overview of the history of the Canton of St. Gallen. In: The Canton of St. Gallen - Landscape, Community, Home . Loepfe-Benz, Rorschach 1985, ISBN 3-85819-084-5 , page 33 (picture from the "add-on battle" in the First World War on the monastery square in St. Gallen)
  4. ^ Friedrich Traugott Wahlen: Our agriculture in wartime. The tasks of our agriculture in the national supply during the war. Lecture given at the Society of Swiss Farmers in Zurich on November 15, 1940 by Dr. FT Wahlen, head of the agricultural section Production and housekeeping in the Federal War Food Office . Benteli, Bern 1940, pages 34–35.
  5. ↑ Plows instead of tanks on the common land. In: Berner Zeitung .
  6. ^ Opinion of the Federal Council of February 28, 2007
  7. ^ Peter Maurer: Cultivation Battle: Agricultural Policy, Plan Elections, Cultivation 1937–1945. Zurich 1985.
  8. ↑ 1942, cf. [1] and [2]
  9. ↑ Friedrich Traugott Elections and the Cultivation Battle 1940–1945. On the website of the former club.