Commission for Polish Relief
Encyclopedia
The Commission for Polish Relief (CPR), also known unofficially as Comporel or Hoover Commission, was initiated in late 1939 by former US President Herbert Hoover
, following the German
and Soviet
occupation of Poland
. The Commission provided relief to Nazi occupied territories of Poland until December 1941.
in October 1939. The remaining area of German-occupied Poland (the General Government
) did not produce enough food to feed its population. National Socialist People's Welfare
, Nazi Germany relief service, was not providing adequate service and very soon started to exclude Jews from its aid programmes. Herbert Hoover
testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs that around 400 to 500 million US dollars would be needed to feed approximately 7 million of destitute people in Poland, and argued that at least a quarter of that should be provided by the USA.
Both Polish and Jewish population in areas of Nazi Germany occupied was considered by German authorities to be "sub-human" (Untermensch
) and as such targeted for extermination and slavery. Under Nazi plans, deliberate starvation of what were considered "sub-humans" was considered. From the beginning of Nazi occupation of Poland food was forcefully confiscated from Polish population by Nazi authorities to be used for benefit of Nazi Germany By mid 1941, the German minority in Poland received 2613 calories per day while Poles received 699 and Jews in the ghetto 184. The Jewish ration fulfilled 7.5 percent of their daily needs; Polish rations only 26 percent. Only the ration allocated to Germans fulfilled the full needs of their daily calorie intake.
The Nazis based food rations on racist basis with Germans considered "ubermenschen" receiving biggest food rations in Nazi occupied territories of Poland, with little spared for Polish and Jewish population:
Prior to the war the General Government
was not self sufficient in agricultural production and was a net importer of food from other regions of Poland. Despite this food deficit the German occupiers confiscated 27% of the agricultural output in the General Government, thus reducing the food available for the civilian population. This Nazi policy caused a humanitarian crisis in Poland’s urban areas. In 1940 20 to 25% of the population the Government General depended on outside relief aid. This crisis was made worse by the German expulsion of 923,000 Polish citizens from Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany
into the General Government
. The Germans “showed no concern for the destination of the dislocated families” who depended on the local Polish welfare services.Richard C. Lukas
points out “To be sure, the Poles would have starved to death if they had to depend on the food rationed to them To supplement the meager rations allocated by the Germans ( see table above) Poles depended on the black market in order to survive. During the war 80% of the population’s needs were met by the black market Poles involved in the black market “risked arrest, deportation to a concentration camp, and even death” The German occupiers maintained a large police force to eliminate the black market. During the war there was an increase in infectious diseases caused by the general malnutrition among the Polish population. In 1940 the tuberculosis rate among Poles, not including Jews,was 420 per 100,000 compared to 136 per 100,000 prior to the war. Also Poles were pressured to sign up for work in Germany hoping to improve their living standards, but most were disappointed when they found low wages and humiliating treatment in Germany.
The brutal occupation policy of Germany resulted in a huge death toll. Prior to the establishment of the death camps in mid 1942 one-fifth (500-600,000) of Polish Jews perished in ghettos and labor camps. Apart from 2.3 million non-Jewish Poles killed directly during the course of the war an additional 473,000 perished due to the harsh conditions of the occupation,
Additionally the Generalplan Ost
plan of Nazis which envisioned elimination of Slavic population in occupied territories, and artificial famines - as proposed in Hunger Plan
- were to be used.
.
The Commission was led by Maurice Pate
and Chauncey McCormick
with Herbert Hoover
as (Honorary) Chairman. Funding came from from governments and private charities as well as the American Red Cross
. Polish-American organizations in the United States donated $400,000; the Polish Government in Exile, $186,225. The Commission eventually collected $6,000,000, including $3,060,704 in Polish gold deposited in the National Bank of Romania (which proved more difficult to obtain).
The Commission provided food (such as evaporated milk
, rye
flour
, vegetable fats, sugar
and hominy grits) and clothing to Polish refugees throughout Europe, such as the 50,000 Polish refugees in France
, and to 200,000 malnourished children, women and elderly inside occupied Poland that were fed daily from canteens. The Commission is said to have delivered 150 tonnes of supplies within a few months, and in early 1940 CPR organized kitchens served 200,000 meals a day.
The shipments were sent using from the United States to Sweden
and then to German ports like Hamburg
or Danzig. After the German invasion of Norway the route was changed to Genoa
or Lisbon
, from where the food was shipped by rail to occupied Poland. After Italy entered the war on the German side, Italian railroads no longer carried aid, and the shipments were rerouted to Vilnius
.
The Nazi government provided guarantees that ships from neutral countries
that transported the relief would not not be targeted by Kriegsmarine
submarines and CPR was allowed to operate in occupied Poland (for example, in July 1941, two depots existed in Kraków
and Warsaw
). At the same time, Nazis were opposed to CPR requests that American nationals are allowed to distribute the supplies, or that they aid is extended to the Jews. It was only around summer 1940 that the Germans agreed to allow American nationals to accompany the shipments to Poland, but German Red Cross
(which at the time was under Nazi control, headed by Reichsartz of SS Ernst Grawitz) was to act as a liaison between them and the local groups.
The matters were further complicated as the UK had a naval blockade in place against delivery of food to territory controlled by Nazi Germany. At first it was possible to get exceptions to the blockade from the British, and this was regularly the case while Neville Chamberlain
was Prime Minister
. The US government and the American Red Cross
(ARC) spoke in favor of the blockade, which played a role in diverting donations from the CPR to the ARC. The Roosevelt Administration
attempted to minimize aid to Poland as it preferred to focus on aiding the UK and France and wanted to avoid being drawn into the war.
In May 1940, Winston Churchill
replaced Chamberlain as the UK Prime Minister, and his policy made it much more difficult to ship food to continental Europe. In August 1940, the British Government decided to not permit any further aid shipments to areas in Europe under occupation by Nazi Germany. This decision was motivated by the Nazi conquest of Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries and France, the growing importance of economic warfare
and difficulties experienced by the Americans in adequately supervising the distribution of supplies in Poland. The British government believed that the Nazi German government could not be trusted to allow aid to be delivered to its intended recipients and that there was no way of supervising how it was actually used. Given the large population in the German-occupied countries, the British were also concerned that the amount of goods which would be delivered through an aid program would free up considerable reserves of Nazi Germany manpower. On 7 June, the British Foreign Office
also learned that the German government had withdrawn all offers to facilitate American relief aid to Polish territories under Nazi occupation and interpreted this as meaning that the Commission for Polish Relief and a Red Cross aid program to the country had broken down. As a result, and after extensive discussions by the British cabinet and between government departments, Churchill announced on 20 August that Britain would maintain a strict blockade of Nazi Germany and countries it occupied. He also stated that while Nazi Germany must be responsible for feeding its occupied countries, Britain would make preparations to rapidly provide aid to any territories which were liberated from Nazi control. This policy was supported by the European governments in exile which were based in London, though the promise of aid once territories were liberated was made in response to concerns they raised about the blockade potentially encouraging people in occupied countries to cooperate with the Nazi German forces.
At the time of its announcement, the British government had no evidence that there was any actual or impending starvation in Europe and believed that food supplies would be adequate to prevent significant shortages until the spring of 1941. Nazi German propaganda statements made at this time also claimed that no part of Nazi-occupied Europe would go short of food, and on 26 June the Deutschlandsender
radio station had broadcast a statement explicitly rejecting aid from Herbert Hoover's organisation to feed the populations of Belgium, France and the Netherlands.
The British Government was concerned about the reaction in the United States to its decision to cut off aid to Nazi occupied Europe. The United States government supported the blockade, with Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles
telling the British ambassador Lord Lothian
on 13 July, more than a month before the blockade was announced, that President Roosevelt, the US State Department and American public opinion all were opposed to "any action which would relieve pressure on Germany by feeding the distressed people of Europe". Secretary of State Cordell Hull
later told Lord Lothian that an argument in favour of the blockade was that experience had shown that it was impossible to arrange any system of providing relief that did not, directly or indirectly, increase the food available to the German government.
Hoover campaigned against the British blockade. He was critical of Churchill, and later wrote that for Churchill, civilian starvation, if speeding up the end of the war, was justified. On 11 August 1940, Hoover issued a statement arguing that there was no reason why aid could not be sent to Europe through a neutral non-government organisation. This statement specified that such a scheme should go ahead only if the German government agreed to not take food from the occupied countries—which the Nazis were doing in Poland from the start of the occupation. Other demands by Hoover included permitting imports from the USSR and Balkan countries, granting unimpeded passage to aid ships and allowing the non-government organisation to control the distribution of aid to the degree necessary for it to be confident that these guarantees were being met. Hoover also requested that the British allow aid shipments as long as the German Government met the conditions he had specified and asked that the governments in exile provide funding for aid supplies. He also argued that "the obvious truth is that there will be wholesale starvation, death and disease in these little countries unless something is done about it". The US Government did not support Hoover's statement and it also failed to win public support. An opinion poll conducted on 1 September 1940 found that only 38 percent of Americans believed that the country should send food aid if famine broke out in Nazi-occupied European countries of Belgium, France and the Netherlands. Nevertheless, a campaign to provide food relief to Europe continued in the US until the end of the war, though it attracted little attention after the attack on Pearl Harbor
in December 1941.
In response to the British blockade, the Commission for Polish Relief attempted to purchase food from the Soviet Union
and the Baltic states
, but the results were meager. The Commission was able to continue to provide a very limited amount of relief to Poland until December 1941, when Nazi Germany declared war on the United States. The Commission operated for several more years, providing aid to Poles outside German occupied territories. Hoover Institution Archives list the Commission documents from up to 1949.
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was originally a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business...
, following the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
occupation of Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
. The Commission provided relief to Nazi occupied territories of Poland until December 1941.
Background
Following the conquest of Poland by Nazi Germany and the USSR, the country's most fertile agricultural land was annexed to GermanyPolish areas annexed by Nazi Germany
At the beginning of World War II, nearly a quarter of the pre-war Polish areas were annexed by Nazi Germany and placed directly under German civil administration, while the rest of Nazi occupied Poland was named as General Government...
in October 1939. The remaining area of German-occupied Poland (the General Government
General Government
The General Government was an area of Second Republic of Poland under Nazi German rule during World War II; designated as a separate region of the Third Reich between 1939–1945...
) did not produce enough food to feed its population. National Socialist People's Welfare
National Socialist People's Welfare
The Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt , meaning "National Socialist People's Welfare" was a social welfare organization during the Third Reich. The NSV was established in 1933, shortly after the NSDAP took power in Germany...
, Nazi Germany relief service, was not providing adequate service and very soon started to exclude Jews from its aid programmes. Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was originally a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business...
testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs that around 400 to 500 million US dollars would be needed to feed approximately 7 million of destitute people in Poland, and argued that at least a quarter of that should be provided by the USA.
Both Polish and Jewish population in areas of Nazi Germany occupied was considered by German authorities to be "sub-human" (Untermensch
Untermensch
Untermensch is a term that became infamous when the Nazi racial ideology used it to describe "inferior people", especially "the masses from the East," that is Jews, Gypsies, Poles along with other Slavic people like the Russians, Serbs, Belarussians and Ukrainians...
) and as such targeted for extermination and slavery. Under Nazi plans, deliberate starvation of what were considered "sub-humans" was considered. From the beginning of Nazi occupation of Poland food was forcefully confiscated from Polish population by Nazi authorities to be used for benefit of Nazi Germany By mid 1941, the German minority in Poland received 2613 calories per day while Poles received 699 and Jews in the ghetto 184. The Jewish ration fulfilled 7.5 percent of their daily needs; Polish rations only 26 percent. Only the ration allocated to Germans fulfilled the full needs of their daily calorie intake.
The Nazis based food rations on racist basis with Germans considered "ubermenschen" receiving biggest food rations in Nazi occupied territories of Poland, with little spared for Polish and Jewish population:
| Nationality | Daily calorie intake |
|---|---|
| Germans | 2310 |
| Foreigners | 1790 |
| Ukrainians | 930 |
| Poles | 654 |
| Jews | 184 |
Prior to the war the General Government
General Government
The General Government was an area of Second Republic of Poland under Nazi German rule during World War II; designated as a separate region of the Third Reich between 1939–1945...
was not self sufficient in agricultural production and was a net importer of food from other regions of Poland. Despite this food deficit the German occupiers confiscated 27% of the agricultural output in the General Government, thus reducing the food available for the civilian population. This Nazi policy caused a humanitarian crisis in Poland’s urban areas. In 1940 20 to 25% of the population the Government General depended on outside relief aid. This crisis was made worse by the German expulsion of 923,000 Polish citizens from Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany
Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany
At the beginning of World War II, nearly a quarter of the pre-war Polish areas were annexed by Nazi Germany and placed directly under German civil administration, while the rest of Nazi occupied Poland was named as General Government...
into the General Government
General Government
The General Government was an area of Second Republic of Poland under Nazi German rule during World War II; designated as a separate region of the Third Reich between 1939–1945...
. The Germans “showed no concern for the destination of the dislocated families” who depended on the local Polish welfare services.Richard C. Lukas
Richard C. Lukas
Richard C. Lukas is an American historian and author of numerous books and articles on Polish history and Polish-Jewish relations. He is recognized as a leading authority on Poland during World War II....
points out “To be sure, the Poles would have starved to death if they had to depend on the food rationed to them To supplement the meager rations allocated by the Germans ( see table above) Poles depended on the black market in order to survive. During the war 80% of the population’s needs were met by the black market Poles involved in the black market “risked arrest, deportation to a concentration camp, and even death” The German occupiers maintained a large police force to eliminate the black market. During the war there was an increase in infectious diseases caused by the general malnutrition among the Polish population. In 1940 the tuberculosis rate among Poles, not including Jews,was 420 per 100,000 compared to 136 per 100,000 prior to the war. Also Poles were pressured to sign up for work in Germany hoping to improve their living standards, but most were disappointed when they found low wages and humiliating treatment in Germany.
The brutal occupation policy of Germany resulted in a huge death toll. Prior to the establishment of the death camps in mid 1942 one-fifth (500-600,000) of Polish Jews perished in ghettos and labor camps. Apart from 2.3 million non-Jewish Poles killed directly during the course of the war an additional 473,000 perished due to the harsh conditions of the occupation,
Additionally the Generalplan Ost
Generalplan Ost
Generalplan Ost was a secret Nazi German plan for the colonization of Eastern Europe. Implementing it would have necessitated genocide and ethnic cleansing to be undertaken in the Eastern European territories occupied by Germany during World War II...
plan of Nazis which envisioned elimination of Slavic population in occupied territories, and artificial famines - as proposed in Hunger Plan
Hunger Plan
The Hunger Plan was an economic management scheme that was put in place to ensure that Germans were given priority over food supplies, at the expense of everyone else. This plan was featured as part of the planning phase of the Wehrmacht invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941...
- were to be used.
Organisation and operations of the Commission for Polish Relief
The Commission was organized on September 25, 1939, following an appeal by the Polish Government in ExilePolish government in Exile
The Polish government-in-exile, formally known as the Government of the Republic of Poland in Exile , was the government in exile of Poland formed in the aftermath of the Invasion of Poland of September 1939, and the subsequent occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, which...
.
The Commission was led by Maurice Pate
Maurice Pate
Maurice Pate was an American humanitarian and businessman. With Herbert Hoover, Pate co-founded the United Nations Children's Fund in 1947 and served as its first executive director from 1947 until his death in 1965.Talking about the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjöld, its second Secretary-General,...
and Chauncey McCormick
Chauncey McCormick
Chauncey Brooks McCormick was an American businessman and art collector in the McCormick family.-Life:His mother was Eleanor Brooks, daughter of Walter Brooks of Baltimore....
with Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was originally a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business...
as (Honorary) Chairman. Funding came from from governments and private charities as well as the American Red Cross
American Red Cross
The American Red Cross , also known as the American National Red Cross, is a volunteer-led, humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief and education inside the United States. It is the designated U.S...
. Polish-American organizations in the United States donated $400,000; the Polish Government in Exile, $186,225. The Commission eventually collected $6,000,000, including $3,060,704 in Polish gold deposited in the National Bank of Romania (which proved more difficult to obtain).
The Commission provided food (such as evaporated milk
Evaporated milk
Evaporated milk, also known as dehydrated milk, is a shelf-stable canned milk product with about 60% of the water removed from fresh milk. It differs from sweetened condensed milk, which contains added sugar. Sweetened condensed milk requires less processing since the added sugar inhibits ...
, rye
Rye
Rye is a grass grown extensively as a grain and as a forage crop. It is a member of the wheat tribe and is closely related to barley and wheat. Rye grain is used for flour, rye bread, rye beer, some whiskeys, some vodkas, and animal fodder...
flour
Flour
Flour is a powder which is made by grinding cereal grains, other seeds or roots . It is the main ingredient of bread, which is a staple food for many cultures, making the availability of adequate supplies of flour a major economic and political issue at various times throughout history...
, vegetable fats, sugar
Sugar
Sugar is a class of edible crystalline carbohydrates, mainly sucrose, lactose, and fructose, characterized by a sweet flavor.Sucrose in its refined form primarily comes from sugar cane and sugar beet...
and hominy grits) and clothing to Polish refugees throughout Europe, such as the 50,000 Polish refugees in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, and to 200,000 malnourished children, women and elderly inside occupied Poland that were fed daily from canteens. The Commission is said to have delivered 150 tonnes of supplies within a few months, and in early 1940 CPR organized kitchens served 200,000 meals a day.
The shipments were sent using from the United States to Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
and then to German ports like Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
or Danzig. After the German invasion of Norway the route was changed to Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
or Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
, from where the food was shipped by rail to occupied Poland. After Italy entered the war on the German side, Italian railroads no longer carried aid, and the shipments were rerouted to Vilnius
Vilnius
Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...
.
The Nazi government provided guarantees that ships from neutral countries
Neutral Powers
Neutral Powers refers to those countries which remained neutral during World War II. During World War II, these nations were Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland...
that transported the relief would not not be targeted by Kriegsmarine
Kriegsmarine
The Kriegsmarine was the name of the German Navy during the Nazi regime . It superseded the Kaiserliche Marine of World War I and the post-war Reichsmarine. The Kriegsmarine was one of three official branches of the Wehrmacht, the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany.The Kriegsmarine grew rapidly...
submarines and CPR was allowed to operate in occupied Poland (for example, in July 1941, two depots existed in Kraków
Kraków
Kraków also Krakow, or Cracow , is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life...
and Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
). At the same time, Nazis were opposed to CPR requests that American nationals are allowed to distribute the supplies, or that they aid is extended to the Jews. It was only around summer 1940 that the Germans agreed to allow American nationals to accompany the shipments to Poland, but German Red Cross
German Red Cross
The German Red Cross , or the DRK, is the national Red Cross Society in Germany.With over 4.5 million members, it is the third largest Red Cross society in the world. The German Red Cross offers a wide range of services within and outside Germany...
(which at the time was under Nazi control, headed by Reichsartz of SS Ernst Grawitz) was to act as a liaison between them and the local groups.
Reduction and ending of relief
Soon after Poland's defeat in October 1939, controversies arose on whether the Nazis could be trusted to distribute the food properly. Contributions from the Polish-American community dropped, as the community became split over that issue. By early spring 1940, CPR efforts were much reduced in effectiveness as a result of the drop in donations and Nazi government opposition.The matters were further complicated as the UK had a naval blockade in place against delivery of food to territory controlled by Nazi Germany. At first it was possible to get exceptions to the blockade from the British, and this was regularly the case while Neville Chamberlain
Neville Chamberlain
Arthur Neville Chamberlain FRS was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940. Chamberlain is best known for his appeasement foreign policy, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding the...
was Prime Minister
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...
. The US government and the American Red Cross
American Red Cross
The American Red Cross , also known as the American National Red Cross, is a volunteer-led, humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief and education inside the United States. It is the designated U.S...
(ARC) spoke in favor of the blockade, which played a role in diverting donations from the CPR to the ARC. The Roosevelt Administration
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
attempted to minimize aid to Poland as it preferred to focus on aiding the UK and France and wanted to avoid being drawn into the war.
In May 1940, Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
replaced Chamberlain as the UK Prime Minister, and his policy made it much more difficult to ship food to continental Europe. In August 1940, the British Government decided to not permit any further aid shipments to areas in Europe under occupation by Nazi Germany. This decision was motivated by the Nazi conquest of Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries and France, the growing importance of economic warfare
Economic warfare
Economic warfare is the term for economic policies followed as a part of military operations during wartime.The purpose of economic warfare is to capture critical economic resources so that the military can operate at full efficiency and/or deprive the enemy forces of those resources so that they...
and difficulties experienced by the Americans in adequately supervising the distribution of supplies in Poland. The British government believed that the Nazi German government could not be trusted to allow aid to be delivered to its intended recipients and that there was no way of supervising how it was actually used. Given the large population in the German-occupied countries, the British were also concerned that the amount of goods which would be delivered through an aid program would free up considerable reserves of Nazi Germany manpower. On 7 June, the British Foreign Office
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, commonly called the Foreign Office or the FCO is a British government department responsible for promoting the interests of the United Kingdom overseas, created in 1968 by merging the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Office.The head of the FCO is the...
also learned that the German government had withdrawn all offers to facilitate American relief aid to Polish territories under Nazi occupation and interpreted this as meaning that the Commission for Polish Relief and a Red Cross aid program to the country had broken down. As a result, and after extensive discussions by the British cabinet and between government departments, Churchill announced on 20 August that Britain would maintain a strict blockade of Nazi Germany and countries it occupied. He also stated that while Nazi Germany must be responsible for feeding its occupied countries, Britain would make preparations to rapidly provide aid to any territories which were liberated from Nazi control. This policy was supported by the European governments in exile which were based in London, though the promise of aid once territories were liberated was made in response to concerns they raised about the blockade potentially encouraging people in occupied countries to cooperate with the Nazi German forces.
At the time of its announcement, the British government had no evidence that there was any actual or impending starvation in Europe and believed that food supplies would be adequate to prevent significant shortages until the spring of 1941. Nazi German propaganda statements made at this time also claimed that no part of Nazi-occupied Europe would go short of food, and on 26 June the Deutschlandsender
Deutschlandsender
Deutschlandsender is one of the longest-established radio station names in German. It was used between 1926 and the end of 1993 to denote a number of powerful stations designed to achieve all-Germany coverage .-1926—1945:The first Deutschlandsender, broadcasting from a powerful transmitter...
radio station had broadcast a statement explicitly rejecting aid from Herbert Hoover's organisation to feed the populations of Belgium, France and the Netherlands.
The British Government was concerned about the reaction in the United States to its decision to cut off aid to Nazi occupied Europe. The United States government supported the blockade, with Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles
Sumner Welles
Benjamin Sumner Welles was an American government official and diplomat in the Foreign Service. He was a major foreign policy adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and served as Under Secretary of State from 1937 to 1943, during FDR's presidency.-Early life:Benjamin Sumner Welles was born in...
telling the British ambassador Lord Lothian
Philip Kerr, 11th Marquess of Lothian
Philip Henry Kerr, 11th Marquess of Lothian KT CH PC was a British politician and diplomat.Philip Kerr was the son of Lord Ralph Drury Kerr, the third son of John Kerr, 7th Marquess of Lothian...
on 13 July, more than a month before the blockade was announced, that President Roosevelt, the US State Department and American public opinion all were opposed to "any action which would relieve pressure on Germany by feeding the distressed people of Europe". Secretary of State Cordell Hull
Cordell Hull
Cordell Hull was an American politician from the U.S. state of Tennessee. He is best known as the longest-serving Secretary of State, holding the position for 11 years in the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during much of World War II...
later told Lord Lothian that an argument in favour of the blockade was that experience had shown that it was impossible to arrange any system of providing relief that did not, directly or indirectly, increase the food available to the German government.
Hoover campaigned against the British blockade. He was critical of Churchill, and later wrote that for Churchill, civilian starvation, if speeding up the end of the war, was justified. On 11 August 1940, Hoover issued a statement arguing that there was no reason why aid could not be sent to Europe through a neutral non-government organisation. This statement specified that such a scheme should go ahead only if the German government agreed to not take food from the occupied countries—which the Nazis were doing in Poland from the start of the occupation. Other demands by Hoover included permitting imports from the USSR and Balkan countries, granting unimpeded passage to aid ships and allowing the non-government organisation to control the distribution of aid to the degree necessary for it to be confident that these guarantees were being met. Hoover also requested that the British allow aid shipments as long as the German Government met the conditions he had specified and asked that the governments in exile provide funding for aid supplies. He also argued that "the obvious truth is that there will be wholesale starvation, death and disease in these little countries unless something is done about it". The US Government did not support Hoover's statement and it also failed to win public support. An opinion poll conducted on 1 September 1940 found that only 38 percent of Americans believed that the country should send food aid if famine broke out in Nazi-occupied European countries of Belgium, France and the Netherlands. Nevertheless, a campaign to provide food relief to Europe continued in the US until the end of the war, though it attracted little attention after the attack on Pearl Harbor
Attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941...
in December 1941.
In response to the British blockade, the Commission for Polish Relief attempted to purchase food from the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
and the Baltic states
Baltic states
The term Baltic states refers to the Baltic territories which gained independence from the Russian Empire in the wake of World War I: primarily the contiguous trio of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania ; Finland also fell within the scope of the term after initially gaining independence in the 1920s.The...
, but the results were meager. The Commission was able to continue to provide a very limited amount of relief to Poland until December 1941, when Nazi Germany declared war on the United States. The Commission operated for several more years, providing aid to Poles outside German occupied territories. Hoover Institution Archives list the Commission documents from up to 1949.
See also
- Finnish Relief Fund (World War II, another of Hoover's initiatives)
- Committee for Relief in BelgiumCommittee for Relief in BelgiumThe Commission for Relief in Belgium or C.R.B. − known also as just Belgian Relief − was an international organization that arranged for the supply of food to German-occupied Belgium and northern France during the First World War.Its leading figure was chairman Herbert Hoover .- Origins :When the...
(World War I) - American Relief AdministrationAmerican Relief AdministrationAmerican Relief Administration was an American relief mission to Europe and later Soviet Russia after World War I. Herbert Hoover, future president of the United States, was the program director....
(post World War I) - SS KurtuluşSS KurtulusSS Kurtuluş was a Turkish cargo ship which became famous for her humanitarian role in carrying food aid during the Great Famine Greece suffered under the Occupation of Greece by Nazi Germany in World War II...
(World War II, Greece) - Operations Manna and Chowhound (World War II, Netherlands)
- German domestic food policy during WW2
- American Jewish Joint Distribution CommitteeAmerican Jewish Joint Distribution CommitteeThe American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee is a worldwide Jewish relief organization headquartered in New York. It was established in 1914 and is active in more than 70 countries....
Provided Relief for Polish Jews prior to Dec. 1941
External links
- Commission for Polish Relief. AACR2 Extract from the finding aid for Commission for Polish Relief Records, 1939-1949 (Hoover Institution Archives)
- Register of the Commission for Polish Relief Records, 1939-1949