Me too. It's kind of contradictory to the foundational narrative. (well, depending on whether the Final Solution was considered from 1933 or they only settled on that as the situation got more desperate between 33 and 41)
I'm sorry that I didn't get back to this, but it's important so this is a quite delayed reply.
So, fundamentally, this starts with Hitler asserting the "Shrinking Markets" theory of economics (an archaic socialist economic concept). TL;DR Tik's 40 minute video: Hitler was certain that in order for Germany to stay industrialized and avoid a judeo-bolshevist revolution from bread riots that would be the result of an industrialized Eastern Europe no longer needing to export food to Germany to get refined goods; Germany would have to conquer Eastern Europe to have a functioning Autarkey (an archaic socialist economic concept of "total economic self-sufficiency / no longer needing outside trade), keep the East permanently under-industrialized to maintain food shipments to Germany and prevent a judeo-bolshevist revolution.
So, just to be clear: Hitler already assumes he will have an inevitable food crisis from the outset.
Once in power, the NSDAP's centralized agricultural economic policies that rewarded "traditional" farming methods tended to not only produce inefficiency from bureaucracy and mismanagement, but lower yields than could have been achieved without the policies in place. Goebbels explicitly mentioned struggles with food problems very badly between 1941-1943.. If his diary is to be believed, the situation is so bad even by 1941, that occupied territories are being unintentionally starved, including in France and Belgium. He makes an interesting comment that rations in Germany have to be adjusted because "even the Bolsheviks left one cow to a farmer." Some of the old members of the Social Democratic Party (the old Weimar boys), complained about the mismanagement too (thinking they would have managed everything better just like every other Socialist ever has). The German military was utterly infamous for plundering the hell out of Eastern Europe, especially stealing food supplies in order to quell the on-going food crisis in Germany, causing intentional famines basically everywhere they went, critically in Greece.
The Holocaust presents a unique solution to the Food crisis. Killing jews certainly prevents the Judeo-Bolshevist revolution that Hitler claims is inevitable. However, starving jews or other undesirable populations to free up food-stuffs for Germany is a major benefit. Even if you can't increase the yield of a Polish farm, if you decrease the population of the country by several million, you're going to have much more food on-hand to import back to Germany. This also goes for Russian POW's.
Basically, Socialist policies guaranteed that Germany would suffer famines that it couldn't prevent. So they instead responded to the hunger in Germany by introducing theft & depopulation policies literally everywhere else.
Me too. It's kind of contradictory to the foundational narrative. (well, depending on whether the Final Solution was considered from 1933 or they only settled on that as the situation got more desperate between 33 and 41)
It's certainly not the conventional narrative of why killings took place.
I'm sorry that I didn't get back to this, but it's important so this is a quite delayed reply.
So, fundamentally, this starts with Hitler asserting the "Shrinking Markets" theory of economics (an archaic socialist economic concept). TL;DR Tik's 40 minute video: Hitler was certain that in order for Germany to stay industrialized and avoid a judeo-bolshevist revolution from bread riots that would be the result of an industrialized Eastern Europe no longer needing to export food to Germany to get refined goods; Germany would have to conquer Eastern Europe to have a functioning Autarkey (an archaic socialist economic concept of "total economic self-sufficiency / no longer needing outside trade), keep the East permanently under-industrialized to maintain food shipments to Germany and prevent a judeo-bolshevist revolution.
So, just to be clear: Hitler already assumes he will have an inevitable food crisis from the outset.
Once in power, the NSDAP's centralized agricultural economic policies that rewarded "traditional" farming methods tended to not only produce inefficiency from bureaucracy and mismanagement, but lower yields than could have been achieved without the policies in place. Goebbels explicitly mentioned struggles with food problems very badly between 1941-1943.. If his diary is to be believed, the situation is so bad even by 1941, that occupied territories are being unintentionally starved, including in France and Belgium. He makes an interesting comment that rations in Germany have to be adjusted because "even the Bolsheviks left one cow to a farmer." Some of the old members of the Social Democratic Party (the old Weimar boys), complained about the mismanagement too (thinking they would have managed everything better just like every other Socialist ever has). The German military was utterly infamous for plundering the hell out of Eastern Europe, especially stealing food supplies in order to quell the on-going food crisis in Germany, causing intentional famines basically everywhere they went, critically in Greece.
The Holocaust presents a unique solution to the Food crisis. Killing jews certainly prevents the Judeo-Bolshevist revolution that Hitler claims is inevitable. However, starving jews or other undesirable populations to free up food-stuffs for Germany is a major benefit. Even if you can't increase the yield of a Polish farm, if you decrease the population of the country by several million, you're going to have much more food on-hand to import back to Germany. This also goes for Russian POW's.
Basically, Socialist policies guaranteed that Germany would suffer famines that it couldn't prevent. So they instead responded to the hunger in Germany by introducing theft & depopulation policies literally everywhere else.