Great famine in Greece

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Great Famine ( Greek Μεγάλος Λιμός Megálos Limós ) in autumn and winter 1941/1942 was by far the worst famine in the history of Greece . It was the result of an occupation policy of the National Socialist German Reich designed for maximum economic exploitation during the occupation of Greece . Estimates of the number of people who died from starvation, direct or indirect , in Greece during World War II vary between 100,000 and 450,000.

chronology

The 3 zones of occupation in Greece. Blue: Italian zone, red: German zone and green: Bulgarian zone

prehistory

As part of the Balkan campaign , the 12th Army of the German Wehrmacht crossed the border to Greece on April 6, 1941 . On April 9th, a Wehrmacht corps with strong aeronautical support from dive fighters broke through the mountain fortifications of the Metaxas line at Fort Roupel in the Strymonas valley . On the same day, German tank units reached Thessaloniki and occupied the city. The campaign on mainland Greece ended on April 29 with the capture of Kalamata in the south of the Peloponnese.

1941

Arbitrary exploitation

Wehrmacht soldiers loot a shop, 1941

On April 28, 1941, members of the Wehrmacht began sacking Athens . The journalist Laird Archer reported how Wehrmacht soldiers cleared out business after business in the inner city. The captured goods were sent home by the soldiers in small packages, empty shops were marked on the outside for soldiers who followed. The occupiers viewed the goods as their spoils of war. This was a disregard of the Hague Land Warfare Regulations of 1907. It is also reported how employees in offices and shops found empty business premises after just a few days. Shop fittings and furniture were used as fuel. The trade collapsed within a very short time. The confiscation of a lot of equipment and all vehicles, for example mills and delivery vehicles to bicycles, largely prevented the processing, preservation and distribution of food.

Exit bans and the prevention of the movement of goods initially had little effect because of the stock keeping that was customary at the time. The seizures and looting by Wehrmacht members were also of a rather arbitrary nature. In the countryside, the effects were far less severe, as, unlike in Athens, Thessaloniki and the Cyclades Islands, there was flora and fauna that offered something edible beyond the confiscated food. For example, kernels were ground into flour, roots and small animals were eaten. In the two regions of Thessaly and Epirus, at least until 1943, there were no fatalities due to food shortages.

On the islands of Lesbos and Chios , the presence of German soldiers was not sufficient for patrols and controls. Looting and reprisals were largely limited to the first days of the occupation. Barter trade developed between the soldiers and the population over time.

Systematic exploitation

The systematic dismantling of production facilities was planned and organized by the occupation authorities.

Food was withdrawn in large quantities and systematically. A notification to the Reich Ministry of Food stated that a daily bread ration of 192 g had been set for Athens, but that this was reduced to 92 g shortly afterwards. The distribution of bread in the countryside has ceased entirely. The confiscated food was mainly used to supply the Wehrmacht troops on the Eastern Front , Southeastern Europe and Africa. The value of the confiscations of food from state warehouses in the first few months was then estimated by the Greek government at £ 15,480,334. According to the Wehrmacht, 4,000 tons of figs, 181,000 tons of raisins and grapes, 10,000 tons of olive oil, rice, sugar, fat and other foodstuffs were confiscated in November 1941. Then 2,500 tons of olive oil were given to the collaborating government for distribution to the population. Günther Altenburg , the general representative of the German Empire in Greece, obtained a better supply of workers who were active in the extraction of raw materials.

In July 1941, 495 tons of olive oil, 50 tons of leather goods, 81 tons of soap and 52 tons of fur were shipped from Lesbos and Chios in July 1941, some of them against payment, but with money that had previously been stolen. A second shipment contained 25,000 oranges, 4,500 lemons and 100,000 cigarettes. The population showed itself to be cooperative with the occupying power, so the islands received a delivery of 400 tons of wheat. This was shown to the BBC and other media. Further deliveries from the two islands remained without consideration.

Public activities to alleviate hardship

Children work as shoe shine for Wehrmacht soldiers, Kavala 1941

At the end of 1941, hamster journeys by the population were still possible by train. Athenians could exchange valuables such as silver cutlery and gold jewelry - if they still had any - for food in the countryside. In one case in which two girls had some knowledge of German, soldiers took them along on the truck, but later all their food and valuables were stolen after they were told they only had to get out for a brief inspection. According to Italian reports, some families secretly buried their dead at night in order to keep the ration cards.

International relief efforts

In September 1941 the Turkish ship SS Kurtuluş reached Greece with an aid shipment. This was more of a symbolic nature and could not alleviate the suffering, but led to worldwide attention for the situation in Greece. The winter of 1941–1942 was an extreme winter with low temperatures and worsened the situation of the population. The International Red Cross (IRK) dealt with the situation. Sweden volunteered to transport 15,000 tons of wheat from Canada. However, until 1942 Great Britain maintained its blockade of the Mediterranean, so that the deliveries could not be carried out at first - ostensibly because, according to the Hague Land Warfare Regulations, the occupiers of a country would have to take over its supplies. Behind this, however, was the Foreign Office's calculation that the Axis powers would be increasingly preoccupied with this area if there were to be uprisings due to the famine; this would tie up resources and forces. At the end of March 1942, the British finally gave in - for humanitarian reasons and at the request of the Vatican - and allowed the first aid shipment of the IRK to pass through.

The occupation authorities kept records of the deaths. The average number of deaths in November in 1941 quadrupled over the same period from 1931 to 1940; In the period from January to March alone, this increased sixfold. The death rate in newborns reached 90%.

With the aim of alleviating the misery caused by the exploitation through food deliveries, Oxfam was founded in Oxford in 1942 from an initiative founded in autumn 1941 .

1942

Systematic exploitation from 1942

Another measure taken by the occupiers was the extreme increase in the amount of money and the payment of the Wehrmacht soldiers with this money. On October 1, 1942, the German-Greek goods equalization company was founded. The Bank of Greece was forced to give up its foreign exchange reserves in the form of a forced loan , the amount of which at the end of the war was 476 million Reichsmarks . The continued - albeit less intensive - removal of economic goods was formally offset by a steady increase in the "occupation costs". Greece had to pay high costs of this kind for the occupation of its country - according to the Greek historian Gabriella Etmektsoglou even the highest per capita of the occupied countries. The historian Götz Aly points out that in 1942 the occupation costs and government expenditures caused primarily by German and secondarily Italian occupation troops claimed around 90 percent of the actual national income. "Jewish communities in Greece were imposed special taxes. The occupation brought, so Kaspar Dreidoppel in his study, Greece ruined: “dismembered, exploited, starved, humiliated”.

After finished goods could no longer be produced from the end of 1942 due to the dismantling of machines and tools, the exploitation concentrated on food and raw materials. Representatives of German industry were brought in for this. Between May 1941 and November 1944, around 28,000 tons of pure chromium were transported from Greece, which covered a quarter of the needs of the German war economy in World War II .

German propaganda and justification

Critical voices regarding the supply situation of the population were rejected by the authorities. The German press went a step further and suggested that the country was supported by the Axis powers: “The people in the Greek cities, which currently only seem to consist of traders, surreptitious traffickers, thieves and work-shy, earn it with food deliveries from the Axis powers on Life to be held […]. How long the Axis powers can afford in their hard struggle to feed a population of millions of idlers remains to be seen. "

When the allied Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano complained about the situation in Greece, Hermann Göring said to him in November 1941: “We cannot also take care of the starving Greeks” and advised him not to take the situation seriously. The historian Mark Mazower concludes: "The officials in Berlin were more interested in Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands if Germany had food left over." Although Italy was already struggling with food shortages at this point, Rome tried much harder than Berlin To ship aid supplies of grain to Greece. Since the occupied area was to be integrated into the Italian habitat in the long term, the fascist government had good reasons to act more cautiously: "Greece [...] should remain economically viable." In contrast, the Berlin Foreign Ministry was of the opinion that Greece would henceforth be "in the Italian area of ​​responsibility and a delivery from German stock is out of the question ”.

In order to construct a legal justification for the deliberate removal of food, the German side not only referred to the “occupation costs”, but in the later phase also to the fight against partisans . In one of the Nuremberg post-war trials , a staff officer made the following statement: “In order to disrupt enemy activity in the long term, the leadership endeavored to break into the organizational centers of the resistance with stronger forces and to destroy the livelihoods of the insurgent groups there. That meant evacuation or destruction of hostile supply stores, destruction of the communications network and destruction of the main gang nests. "

The reporting had turned negative from 1943, one means of this new hostility to Greece was to suggest that the Greeks harbor an antipathy towards Germans.

The situation of the population

Time magazine described Greece as "Hungriest Country" and reported on February 9, 1942 that a week earlier a loaf of bread in Athens had cost the equivalent of $ 15. Potatoes, figs, raisins and tomatoes are no longer available at any price. The situation was accompanied by numerous epidemics.

After a year of occupation, in April 1942 the “German News” in Greece asked about the extreme effects of economic policy: “Will Greece survive?” The US American Life magazine reported in the August 3, 1942 issue: People are dying in Athens on the streets because, weakened by hunger, they can no longer look for something to eat. In some areas, 20% of the population has starved to death since the beginning of the year. The Germans slaughter the calf that provides their troops with milk. " The report shows pictures of streets in Athens lined with corpses, as well as a municipal vehicle that collects corpses.

The famine subsided: late 1942 to 1944

A decrease in the death rate was recorded in late 1942. However, it is also possible that relatives did not report deaths due to the aid deliveries. It is almost certain that figures in the Italian-administered towns were falsified in order to simulate a lower mortality rate, even though the catastrophic supply situation was primarily due to the Wehrmacht. While the Wehrmacht continued to confiscate and take away food on a large scale, the meager aid supplies from the Allies and neutral states were distributed via the Red Cross.

The destruction of the infrastructure and, due to the hostilities, severely limited opportunities to bring goods into the German Reich before they perished, partly led to an alleviation of the need in rural areas. It is said that for a long time the inhabitants of an island only ate oranges or grapes.

Looting of houses and apartments in 1944 was not an arbitrary reward for soldiers, but targeted raids by mountain hunters . The German soldiers realized in 1944 at the latest that a withdrawal from Greece was only a matter of time. Most of the time, some residents of a village were taken hostage, while other soldiers cleared the village and then set it on fire. At the same time, extensive exit bans and the destruction of transport infrastructure such as bridges and railway lines should prevent possible resistance to the measures.

Consequences of the famine

Number of victims

Population development (presumably the monthly deaths in relation to the birth rate) in the city of Athens
Graphic with the numbers 1941–1944

Estimates of the number of people who died from starvation, direct or indirect, in Greece during World War II vary between 100,000 and 450,000. The historian Kaspar Dreidoppel, who cites these estimates, positions himself as follows: “Personally, I tend towards the number of 100,000 deaths for the entire period of hunger”. He admits that recent relevant studies, such as Violetta Hionidou's dissertation, assume the number of starvation deaths is much higher. Hionidou assumes that the food crisis has killed around 5 percent of the total Greek population, which corresponds to around 360,000 victims of hunger. In his final consideration, Dreidoppel expressly rates the German occupation practice in Greece as a “hunger strategy”.

British historian Mark Mazower estimates that up to 1943, the German warfare and occupation, including that of the loss of birth with related demographic losses, cost 300,000 lives, directly or indirectly as a result of food shortages. For the main focus of the famine, the winter of 1941/42, Mazower cites tens of thousands of starvation deaths, other historians around 100,000.

The causes are not to be confused with retaliatory measures against the civilian population, which were ordered by the National Socialists and justified as retaliation for attacks by partisans .

Later effects

  • The number of people who sustained long-term health damage as a result of the famine is likely to exceed the number of fatalities many times over.
  • The combination of war and famine brought enormous influx of radical forces. The communists were able to gain a foothold in rural areas for the first time.
  • The dismantling of Greek industry and the associated job losses led to a new wave of emigration overseas after 1945. The lack of machines in agriculture led to an unproductive subsistence economy . The country was economically destabilized and got into civil war .
  • The meaning of the word κατοχή for "available means" changed in the Greek language to "occupation, oppression".

Persecution of perpetrators after the end of the war

The German government viewed the persecution of perpetrators as a burden on German-Greek relations . Negotiations were made with Greece to reduce the number of perpetrators who were to be prosecuted. Of 911 suspects accused of "murder, assault, rape, robbery, looting and arson," the federal government promised to prosecute 22 people. Most of the proceedings were discontinued after they were passed on to the state authorities.

Negotiations on compensation payments

A financial settlement for the damage caused was not the subject of the discussions in 1952–1953 . Greek and Italian plaintiffs sued Germany for compensation payments in Italy and won the case in local courts. As a result, Germany lost two lawsuits in Italy, most recently in October 2016.

See also

literature

  • Kaspar Dreidoppel: The Greek Demon: Resistance and Civil War in Occupied Greece 1941-1944 . Balkanological publications by the Eastern Europe Institute (Berlin). Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz 2009, ISBN 978-3-447-05929-9 (also: Berlin, Freie Univ., Diss., 2008).
  • Mark Mazower : Inside Hitler's Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941-1944 . Yale University Press, New Haven / London 1993, ISBN 0-300-06552-3 .
  • Lilika Nakou: The children's inferno: stories of the great famine in Greece. Gateway Books, Hollywood 1946, OCLC 12032713 .
  • Violetta Hionidou: Famine and death in occupied Greece: 1941-1944. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge / New York 2006, ISBN 0-521-82932-1 . (Abstract) Paperback edition 2012, ISBN 978-1-107-40543-1 .
  • Martin Seckendorf: A unique raid. The Wehrmacht in Greece 1941–1944. In: Johannes Klotz (Hrsg.): Model of the Wehrmacht? Wehrmacht crimes, right-wing extremism and the Bundeswehr. Papyrossa, Cologne 1998, ISBN 3-89438-162-0 , pp. 96-124.
  • Conrad Roediger : The international relief operation for the population of Greece in World War II. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , vol. 11, no. 1 (January 1963), pp. 49–71, ifz-muenchen.de (PDF).
  • Hermann Frank Meyer : Bloody edelweiss. The 1st Mountain Division in World War II . 3rd, updated edition. Ch. Links Verlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3-86153-447-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Laird Archer: Balkan Journal. WW Norton, New York 1944, OCLC 602392801 , pp. 196-199.
  2. ^ Mark Mazower: Inside Hitler's Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941-1944 . Yale University Press, New Haven / London 1993, ISBN 0-300-06552-3 , section “Plunder and collapse of the market”, 2009, p. 23.
  3. ↑ Violetta Hionidou: Famine and Death in Occupied Greece, 1941-1944. 2006, p. 60ff.
  4. ^ Maximiliane Rieder: German-Italian economic relations. Continuities and breaks 1936–1957 . Campus, Frankfurt am Main, ISBN 3-593-37136-7 , p. 190.
  5. ↑ Violetta Hionidou: Famine and Death in Occupied Greece, 1941-1944. Cambridge, University Press 2006, ISBN 0-521-82932-1 , p. 66.
  6. ↑ Violetta Hionidou: Famine and Death in Occupied Greece, 1941-1944. 2006, p. 57.
  7. ↑ Violetta Hionidou: Famine and Death in Occupied Greece, 1941-1944. 2006, p. 60ff.
  8. ↑ Johannes B. Gadarian: The Flight. From the famine to the bombing war. Videel, Niebüll 2003, ISBN 3-89906-491-7 , p. 33ff.
  9. ↑ Johannes B. Gadarian: The Flight. From the famine to the bombing war. P. 37ff.
  10. ↑ Malte König: Cooperation as a power struggle. The fascist axis alliance Berlin-Rome in the war 1940/41 (Italy in der Moderne, vol. 14), Cologne 2007, p. 193.
  11. ^ Conrad Roediger: The international relief campaign for the population of Greece in World War II, in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 11.1 (1963), pp. 49–71, here 56 f.
  12. ↑ König: Cooperation as a Power Struggle , p. 192 f.
  13. ^ Eduardo D. Faingold: The Kalamata Diary: Greece, War, and Emigration. Lanham Maryland, 2010, ISBN 978-0-7391-2890-9 , p. 13.
  14. ^ Statement of the German Federal Government of February 11, 2010 (PDF; 113 kB)
  15. ^ Martin Seckendorf: On the economic policy of the German occupiers in Greece 1941–1944. Exploitation that resulted in disaster. 2008.
  16. ↑ Gabriella Etmektsoglou: Criminal states, innocent Citizens? Aspects of Greek-German relations during World War II and its aftermath. In: Gerd Bender, Rainer Maria Kiesow, Dieter Simon (ed.): The other side of commercial law. Control in the dictatorships of the 20th century (= Studies on European Legal History, Volume 208). Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-465-04002-3 , p. 81.
  17. ↑ Götz Aly: Hitler's People's State. Robbery, Race War and National Socialism. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 278.
  18. ^ Kaspar Dreidoppel: The Greek Demon: Resistance and Civil War in Occupied Greece 1941–1944 . Balkanological publications of the Eastern European Institute of the Free University Berlin. Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz 2009 (also: Berlin, Freie Univ., Diss., 2008), p. 42.
  19. ↑ a b Mark Mazower: Hitler's Empire: Europe under the rule of National Socialism. CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-59271-3 , p. 266.
  20. ↑ Dieter Wunderlich: Goering and Goebbels. A double biography . Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 2002, ISBN 3-7917-1787-1 , p. 182.
  21. ↑ Götz Aly, Susanne Heim: Vordenker der Vernichtung. Auschwitz and the German plans for a new European order. Fischer Frankfurt am Main, 1993, ISBN 3-596-11268-0 , p. 365.
  22. ↑ König: Cooperation as a Power Struggle , p. 191 f .; on supply bottlenecks in Italy, cf. ibid., p. 189 and 267-272.
  23. ↑ König: Cooperation as a Power Struggle , p. 198 f.
  24. ↑ König: Cooperation as a Power Struggle , p. 182.
  25. ↑ Kaspar Dreidoppel: The Greek demon. Balkanological publications by the Eastern European Institute at the Free University of Berlin, Volume 46 Resistance and Civil War in Occupied Greece 1941–1944, p. 331.
  26. ^ Anne Mrotzek: The Power of Words - How German Propaganda Causes War Events, 2011, p. 6.
  27. ↑ time.com Time-Magazine, Monday, Feb. 09, 1942.
  28. ^ RJ Overy, Gerhard Otto, J. Th. M. Houwink ten Cate: The "new order" of Europe: Nazi economic policy. Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-926893-46-X , p. 214.
  29. ↑ Tim Dyson, M., Cormac Ó Gráda: Famine Demography: Perspectives from the Past and Present. 2002, p. 187.
  30. ↑ Violetta Hionidou: Famine and Death in Occupied Greece, 1941-1944. 2006, p. 64.
  31. ↑ Carsten Gansel, Matthias Braun (ed.): It's about Erwin Strittmatter or from the argument about memory. V&R unipress Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-89971-997-0 , p. 355.
  32. ↑ Matthias Braun: It's about Erwin Strittmatter or about the argument about memory. P. 357.
  33. ^ Kaspar Dreidoppel: The Greek Demon: Resistance and Civil War in Occupied Greece 1941–1944 . Balkanological publications of the Eastern European Institute of the Free University Berlin. Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz 2009 (also: Berlin, Freie Univ., Diss., 2008), p. 24; in the case of Violetta Hionidous, Dreidoppel refers to her dissertation Famine and death in occupied Greece: 1941–1944. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge / New York 2006.
  34. ^ Kaspar Dreidoppel: The Greek Demon: Resistance and Civil War in Occupied Greece 1941–1944 . Balkanological publications of the Eastern European Institute of the Free University Berlin. Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz 2009, p. 487.
  35. ↑ Mark Mazower: Inside Hitler's Greece. The Experience of Occupation, 1941-1944 . Yale Nota Bene book 2001, (first edition Yale University Press 1995), ISBN 0-300-08923-6 , p. 41.
  36. ↑ Mark Mazower: Hitler's Empire: Europe under the Rule of National Socialism. CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-59271-3 , p. 266.
  37. ^ Richard Clogg : History of Greece. Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-929889-13-7 , p. 154; Martin Seckendorf: A unique raid. The Wehrmacht in Greece 1941–1944. In: Johannes Klotz (Hrsg.): Model of the Wehrmacht? Wehrmacht crimes, right-wing extremism and the Bundeswehr. Papyrossa, Cologne 1998, p. 116; Hagen Fleischer: Greece. In: Wolfgang Benz u. a. (Ed.): Encyclopedia of National Socialism . 2nd edition, German. Munich, 1998, ISBN 3-423-33007-4 , p. 495.
  38. ^ Eduardo D. Faingold: The Kalamata Diary: Greece, War, and Emigration. 2010, p. 15.
  39. ↑ Georgios Babiniotis (Γεώργιος Μπαμπινιώτης): Λεξικό της Νέας Ελληνικής Γλώσσας. ( Lexicon of the Modern Greek Language. ) Β 'Έκδοση, Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας, 2005, ISBN 960-86190-1-7 , p. 872.
  40. ↑ Hans Booms, Ulrich Enders, Konrad Reiser: The Cabinet Protocols of the Federal Government. therein: Minutes of the 268th cabinet meeting, 1989.
  41. ↑ Historians: Germany avoided reparations - an interview with Hagen Fleischer. Deutschlandradio Kultur, accessed on November 14, 2011 .
  42. ↑ Germany's new defeat before an Italian court , Tagesspiegel, accessed on December 6, 2016.