The Master Race

Hunger walked into Greece and planted a plague of typhus. Hunger appeared in French schoolrooms and the children fainted. Hunger rubbed its hands over the faces of Polish peasants and left cadavers. Then hunger appeared at the boundaries of Germany.

Nazi ministers, ranting against "the worst winter in 150 years," issuing new decrees and rushing in thousands of farm laborers from conquered countries, showed that Germany well remembered when hunger struck behind the lines in 1918. That one ghastly year of starvation and the following years of inflation left German streets haunted for years afterward by teen-age children selling their bodies for the price of bread.

With typical thoroughness, the New Order's statisticians announced that the winter's frost had penetrated 115 centimeters (45 inches) into the earth, stayed an almost disastrous 85 days. Winter grain crops were partially destroyed, spring planting delayed, so many fruits and vegetables lost that a 90% reduction in next winter's canned goods was predicted. Willing to blame everyone but themselves for their own difficulties, the Herrenvolk looked to the rest of Europe for foodstuffs, found that in two years the New Order had pillaged virtually everything in sight.

To The Fields. Expecting increased crops from the Balkans, the Germans learned that peasant stubbornness and guerrilla warfare had cut production by at least one-third. Without fertilizer or tools, with 1,500,000 soldiers still interned in Germany, agricultural France was lying fallow. The winter frost, the scorched-earth policy and lack of tractors had withered the lush wheat crop in the Ukraine.

At home, German women, whom Adolf Hitler called "the fighting soul of the fighting front," marched dutifully into the fields. With them went their children and their grandparents. From France came trainloads of workmen urged on by Pierre Laval who last week offered to trade tens of thousands of workmen for 5,000 interned French soldiers. To keep 2,500,000 alien laborers from grumbling, the Germans put out special language newspapers.

To The Baltics. In countries outside the Reich the Germans were not so subtle. They ran into a wall of stolidity trying to convince Dutch burghers that a new Netherlands Empire awaited them in the scrawny Baltic lands of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Even the so far comparatively well-behaved Danes began "accidentally" pushing German officers into Copenhagen's canals. So bitterly were the Poles still resisting that, despite fresh slaughters each week, the occupying authorities had tried to set up a Polish puppet government to keep order. When no puppets could be found, the Germans released their rage in the volleys of firing squads. In Norway the invaders confiscated 80% of the herring catch. Living now on herring and seed potatoes, the Norwegians were told by Vidkun Quisling that next winter they will eat only bread made of fine sawdust and "peat flour."

To The Dogs. From such reports seeping out of Europe, it was plain that Germany was planning to eat this winter, whether or not the rest of Europe starved. Not so plain, however, was the order that all pet dogs in The Netherlands, if they are 18 inches or more in height, must be turned over to German occupying authorities. No doubt it also had something to do with the master-race theory.

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