What is the German famine?

Answer 1

Depending on what time period you are talking about it can be a variety of things, although I'm assuming we're talking one of two famines:

Or the WWI Famine, which hit Germany during the middle of the First World War, in 1916. Since the only thing that could stop the fungus that caused the famine was a form of copper, which was being used by the German government entirely for military purposes, the famine is sometimes said to have led to the eventual downfall of the Germans in WWI.

added/corrected information:

Between 1915 and 1919, German access to food was blockaded in violation of international law. Winston Churchill declared his intention to "starve Germany into submission." As of the end of the first world war, 765,000 Germans had died of starvation. But the blockade was not lifted with the armistice, it remained in place and German civilians continued to die until under duress Germans signed the Versailles Treaty.

In 1986, Ohio University Press published "The Politics of Hunger, The Allied Blockade of Germany, 1915-1919," by C Paul Vincent.

In 1938, Herbert Hoover toured Europe and met with Hitler and Goering. The emissary who extended the invitation for the meeting said that Hoover Hitler "wished to express the appreciation of the German people for my [Hoover's] part in their relief from starvation . . .during the Armistice, and for the rehabilitation of the German children afterward."

Assessing Hitler, Hoover wrote: "Hitler had three idees fixes: to unify Germany from its fragmentation by the Treaty of Versailles; . . .a drive for "Lebensraum;" and to destroy the Russian Communist government. . . .It was obvious that Hitler had the support of the German people, who still bitterly recollected . . .their sufferings from the continued blockade after their surrender in the war, from the famine which was its aftermath, and from the brutalities of the Communist uprisings in German cities during the Armistice period." (see "Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover's Secret History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath."

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The above is off topic and sanctimonious. In World World 1 the Germans also tried to starve Britain into surrender. There is no famine generally referred to as the German famine.