Agriculture and Food in National Socialist Austria

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The Agriculture and Food in Nazi Austria refers to the entire agricultural sector and agricultural policy in Austria after the connection . It is shaped by the influence of German agricultural policy on Austrian agriculture and the transfer of the structures and laws of German to Austrian agriculture, such as the Reichserbhofgesetz or the Reichsnährstand .

prehistory

In the corporate state of Austria , agriculture was the pillar of the economy, which is why agricultural products were promoted more than industrial products. As in German agriculture , protectionist measures were taken after the Great Depression in 1929 to protect domestic agriculture from the competition of falling world market prices and to secure a higher income for farmers. The agri-friendly regime imposed z. B. a ban on imports of rye , barley and cattle and supported agriculture by means of intervention purchases, which soon turned out to be too expensive.

The shift in priorities from industry to agriculture was based on statistics. The market price of wheat and rye rose continuously (see Table 1) and in foreign trade agricultural products achieved higher yields than industrial products, although this was also due to the high level of subsidization . Despite the subsidies, the farmers often got into debt beyond their means, because from 1933 to 1937 a total of 71,135 farms were auctioned.

Type of grain 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937
Wheat
acreage / price 		209.421
25.40		 216,309
33.58		 219,602
June 35		 231.817
35.67 		243,309
36.47		 252.472
35.30		 259.900
37.03
Rye
acreage / price 		378.003
25.86		 387.125
29.25		 387.545
22.55		 381,709
01/24 		381.942
25.43		 372.642
25.65		 360.600
26.78

Table 1: acreage in hectares , price in shillings per 100 kilograms.

Agricultural policy after the Anschluss

On March 12, 1938, the German Wehrmacht invaded Austria, which was tantamount to an annexation . In Germany large were reforms in the agricultural sector a few weeks to months after the seizure of power of the NSDAP been introduced, these reforms would be transferred taking into account the regional agricultural circumstances to the Austrian agriculture.

Already on March 18, a kind of provisional farmer's trade association, similar to the German Reichsnährstand , with its seat in Vienna began its work. The later founder of the FPÖ , Anton Reinthaller, was entrusted with building up the Austrian Reichsnährstand . Since there were difficulties with the implementation of the law, it was not until May 14, 1938 that the organization of the Reichsnährstand was officially recognized in Austria and incorporated into the German Reichsnährstand. The Reichsnährstand took over the tasks of the dissolved Ministry of Agriculture and Food. Most of the employees were German officials from the "Altreich", Austrians were rarely placed in top positions because of "lack of experience". Through the Reichsnährstand, Austrian agriculture received a new administrative structure. The competencies that lay with the federal states during Austrofascism were reduced to three "state farmers":

  • Rural farming community Donauland ; Responsible for the Gaue Niederdonau ( Lower Austria ), Upper Danube ( Upper Austria ), parts of Burgenland and Vienna, initially with administrative headquarters in Linz , but from December 1938 in Vienna .
  • Landesbauernschaft Südmark ; Responsible for the Gaue Steiermark , parts of Burgenland and Carinthia with administrative headquarters in Graz .
  • Landesbauernschaft Alpine country ; Responsible for the districts of Salzburg and Tyrol-Vorarlberg with administrative headquarters in Salzburg.

These three rural farming communities were subordinate to a total of 70 district farming communities, which in some places had other subordinate administrative offices. Anton Reinthaller was the head of the Donauland farming community, with Sepp Hainzl in the southern part of the country and Jörg Wurm in the Alpine region. In 1942 the three rural farming communities were restructured for "political and economic reasons" in such a way that they ultimately resembled the former federal states of Austria and thus contained eight administrative areas. The Burgenland remained divided.

The primary goal of the Reichsnährstand was to optimize Austrian agriculture according to the requirements of the war. While the peasantry in Germany had been adjusted to the greatest possible autarky by the National Socialists for five years, Austria wanted to achieve a similar effect through appropriate mechanization , amelioration, etc.

Similar to the Reichsnährstand, the Reichserbhofgesetz , an ideologically based law to support indebted farmers and control all farmers, came into force soon after the Anschluss. On July 27, 1938, it was decided with an implementation regulation. One of the most important points in the law was the new right of inheritance , by which the farmer was no longer allowed to inherit his farm according to his will, i.e. to divide his property among the children to the most capable of his relatives or, above all, his property. However, the law also offered a hereditary farm protection against pledging, which, however, also brought some credit problems with it.

The Reichserbhofgesetz (Reichserbhofgesetz) protected the farms from pledging, but the National Socialists also tried to support the farmers in reducing their debts, in particular with the "construction campaign" and the "debt relief campaign". Since Reichserbhöfe were not allowed to go into debt of their own free will, since an Erbhof was "unburdened", the Reich tried to provide the farmers with capital for investments with the "construction campaign", the so-called "construction loan". These loans had an interest rate of only 2% with a maturity of 5 to 30 years depending on the performance of the Court. The extent of the construction campaign can be shown well with the Landesgau Donauland. By 1944, 13.3% of all agricultural holdings had submitted an application for development. Of these, 48.9% were positively received and supported with funds of over 20 million Reichsmarks. On average, 15% of the money was used for machinery and equipment, 43% for construction work.

In addition to the investment opportunity in the "construction campaign", the Nazi rulers also introduced a system for reducing debt, the "debt relief campaign". In order to enjoy the benefits of the debt relief campaign, the farm owner had to submit an application for debt relief by December 31, 1938. Debt was discharged in two ways: either by converting claims into non-cancellable repayment claims with 4.5% interest and repayment installments of less than 1% over a period of 51 years, or by redeeming the claims by the German Reich, in which the Creditors received their claims in cash and the farmers had to repay the amount over a period of 30 to 60 years. In both cases the creditors were often disadvantaged. However, with the debt relief agreement, the farmer also agreed to extensive operational monitoring and had to provide evidence of debt relief. These restrictions were sometimes a reason to withdraw the debt relief application. 22,000 applications were submitted to the Vienna regional office, and a year later 8,000 farmers withdrew their application. By February 28, 1945, a total of 30,331 farmers had submitted an application for debt relief, which corresponds to 6.2% of all Austrian farms in which 79,882,875 RM had already been invested.

nutrition

Immediately after the Anschluss, the Third Reich tried everything to make Austria's ailing agriculture fit for war. Despite extensive mechanization, financial incentives and attempts to curb the rural exodus, the harvest yields fell continuously immediately after the connection (see table). The main reasons were labor and animal labor deprivation as a result of the war . The proportion of arable land in Austria also fell from 1,890,157 hectares in 1938 to 1,689,681 hectares in 1944.

wheat rye barley potato Fodder beet
1938 5,174 5,489 3,016 31,008 20,327
1939 4,473 4,893 2,855 27,648 19,374
1940 2,849 3.131 2,798 26,033 17,248
1941 3,417 3,884 2,338 26,021 19,950
1942 2,760 2,701 2,218 22,515 20,156
1943 3,434 3,557 2.147 17,728 18,084
1944 2,938 2,790 1,808 17,509 17,456

Table 2: Harvest quantities in 100 kilograms.

Forced laborers in agriculture

After the invasion of Poland , the first forced laborers were employed in Austrian agriculture. In the further course of the war more and more forced laborers of various nationalities came to Austria, in 1942 there were over 94,000, in 1943 there were already over 188,000, in 1944 the total was 196,000. Especially " Eastern workers " were employed in agriculture, while Western Europeans were primarily employed in industry. The forced laborers received a pay, but this was well below the pay of a German, furthermore they did not have health insurance and were often poorly fed. In some cases women only received half the wages that men received.

Differences between Austrian and German agriculture

Although agriculture was strongly supported in Austria at the time of Austrofascism, its productivity was mostly below that of German agriculture (see Table 2). This was mainly due to the fact that agriculture in the Third Reich received most of the subsidies alongside the war industry, and propaganda campaigns such as the production battle generated further increases in productivity. Furthermore, Austria was much more limited in terms of agricultural land due to its Alpine landscape.

rye wheat barley potato Sugar beet
Germany 17.3 21.6 19.9 160.0 294.0
Austria 15.1 15.8 16.3 133.0 254.0
Austria in%
of Germany		 87 73 82 83 86

Table 3: Harvest yields in 100 kg per hectare, average 1930–1934.

The enormous difference in production can perhaps be explained by the lower consumption of fertilizers in Austrian agriculture (see Table 3). Germany promoted the use of fertilizers with financial incentives, import duties were lifted and the price of fertilizers was subsidized. Gradually, the German fertilizer laws were also transferred to Austria. The price of nitrogen fell by approx. 32%, the price of potash salt even decreased by approx. 45%.

nutrient Germany (1936) Austria (1933)
nitrogen 19.8 1.5
Potash salt 32.7 2.7
phosphoric acid 21.0 2.7

Table 4: Comparison of artificial fertilizer consumption in kilograms per hectare of agricultural land.

German farms were not only better equipped than Austrian ones when it came to using fertilizers, but also when it came to mechanization. In a monthly report by the Statistisches Reichsamt in 1939 it was stated: "On average in the old Reich there were three and a half times more electric motors (and) four and a half times more motorized tractors and motorized plows [...] per 1000 hectares of agricultural cultivated area [...] than in the Ostmark 1930 ". During the entire period of the German occupation of Austria, the mechanization of Austrian agriculture continued (see Table 4). Up until 1940, around 2,000 tractors had been used in the Donauland rural farming community alone since the annexation. Due to the topography of Austria with its many alpine pastures and mountain farmers , however, the machines were sometimes hardly usable. In the late course of the war, the production of agricultural machinery was reduced in favor of armaments production, and fuel for engines and nitrogen for fertilizers became scarce.

Machine type 1930 1939 1945 1946
Tractors 753 1,782 4,900 7,237
Electric motors 50,384 88.051 110,000 142,526
Internal combustion engines 19,336 38,892 37,000 44,237
Seed drills 26,535 40,724 60,000 53,892
Mowers 24,866 41,502 60,000 58,223

Table 5: Use of agricultural machines in Austria.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ see: Tálos, Neugebauer: Austrofaschismus. 2005, p. 186.
  2. ↑ see: Tálos, Neugebauer: Austrofaschismus. 2005, p. 215.
  3. ↑ cit. n .: Tálos, Neugebauer: Austrofascism. 2005, p. 216.
  4. ^ Mooslechner, Stadler: Agriculture and Agricultural Policy. 1988, p. 70.
  5. ^ Arno Buschmann: National Socialist Weltanschauung and legislation. 1933-1945. Volume 2: Documentation of a development. Springer, Vienna a. a. 2000, ISBN 3-211-83407-9 , p. 113.
  6. ↑ cit. n .: Mooslechner, Stadler: Agriculture and agricultural policy. 1988, pp. 83f.
  7. ↑ cit. n .: Mooslechner, Stadler: Agriculture and agricultural policy. 1988, p. 88.
  8. ↑ cit. n .: Mooslechner, Stadler: Agriculture and agricultural policy. 1988, p. 77.
  9. ↑ cit. n .: Mooslechner, Stadler: Agriculture and agricultural policy. 1988, p. 78.
  10. ↑ cit. n .: Mooslechner, Stadler: Agriculture and agricultural policy. 1988, p. 78.
  11. ↑ cit. n .: Mooslechner, Stadler: Agriculture and agricultural policy. 1988, p. 79.
  12. ↑ cit. n .: Mooslechner, Stadler: Agriculture and agricultural policy. 1988, p. 80.

literature

  • Michael Mooslechner, Robert Stadler: Agriculture and Agricultural Policy. In: Emmerich Tálos , Wolfgang Neugebauer (ed.): Nazi rule in Austria 1938–1945 (= Austrian texts on social criticism. Vol. 36). Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-900351-84-8 , pp. 69–94.
  • Emmerich Tálos, Ernst Hanisch , Wolfgang Neugebauer (eds.): Nazi rule in Austria. A manual. öbv and hpt, Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-209-03179-7 .
  • Emmerich Tálos, Wolfgang Neugebauer (Hrsg.): Austrofaschismus. Politics - Economy - Culture. 1933–1938 (= politics and contemporary history 1). 5th, completely revised and expanded edition. Lit, Münster u. a. 2005. ISBN 3-8258-7712-4 .

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