Why were German people starving at the beginning of world war?

Answer 1

In WW1 Britain and Germany tried to starve each other into surrender by a naval blockade. In the longer run the British Navy was more successful at this ... Germany's agony was prolonged by its (for the time) modern and sophisticated chemical industry that enabled it to produce vast quantities of articial fertilizers, which raised the yield per hectare substantially. Without the work of Fritz Haber, Germany would probably have had to surrender much earlier.

Answer 2

Yes. The word "ersatz" entered general usage to describe things which were imitation, or fake. The Germans attempted to make "ersatz" food products, which were generally horrible. Coffee was unobtainable in Germany, and the ersatz version available was a very poor substitute. The Germans used sawdust as a filler to try to make bread dough go farther.

German agriculture ran on slave labor during the war. The Germans drafted so many men into the armed forces that labor had to come from elsewhere - people taken from nations the Germans had invaded and prisoners of war. POWs did not mind so much because they generally got better access to food when working on a farm and were treated well. The slaves from the eastern European countries were not fed or treated well. Every German farmer with a farm of any size had these laborers assigned to work for him. As allied troops advanced into Germany in the first months of 1945 these workers left these farms as soon as Allied troops arrived. Thus, nobody planted crops in Germany in 1945, and widespread deaths from actual starvation resulted in 1945, after the war was over. The Germans had conducted a very successful submarine campaign during the entire war which sank thousands of ships, and what ships there were had to be used to bring the still ongoing war against Japan to a close, so there were not many ships available to carry food to Europe. What food was sent went first to feed the impoverished people in countries freed from the Germans, so there were very hard times in Germany in the immediate aftermath of the war, and for several years after. There were millions of "DPs" - "displaced persons" roaming Europe and in camps - the freed German agricultural and industrial slave laborers, many of whom did not want to be sent home, as the Russians had replaced the Germans in their homelands.

Answer 3

No, not really. The German population had fairly large food rations compared to other European countries during the war, almost up until the end of the war. Germany was mostly self-sufficient in food during the war.

After the war, food was in very short supply, and German refugees (displaced from eastern Germany by the advancing Russians) were starving.

Answer 4

It was caused because there wasn't enough people to farm and grow crops. We couldn't transfer food from place to place either because the opposition would just bomb the ship etc..

Answer 5

They didnt have the access to food which led to food shortages