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Luke Sears
Mrs. Wertz-Orbaugh
UWRT 1102-044
2/10/2015
Starvation
I am going to be writing about starvation during the Nazi regime. I feel this topic interesting
because (while it is most defiantly not the only issue) it can be used to track the rise in power of the
Nazi party. The Nazi party rose to power due to economic hardship, and this economic hardship can
most obviously be seen through the starvation of the people. The currency was so devalued that they
had to load up a wheelbarrow with money to get a loaf of bread. Obviously this was worst case
scenario, and most places did not feel the effects of the economic collapse to this extent. I did not
originally chose this topic. Originally I was going to look into the effect of German politics on
technological development. I found this more interesting as I am a techy. I love to watch the
development of technology over time. One of the other things that interests me in how societys
develop politically. So I wanted to combine these two interests in this inquiry. However, it was not to
be. I chose starvation instead because I felt that it was a topic that effected every one in the holocaust.
Specificity, my inquiry is How did starvation affect all the strata of both Nazi and Jewish society?
This is asking if all the Jews were starving or if there was a collaborator class which could get food for
their service rendered to the Nazi party. Also where in the Nazi party did starvation become a problem,
where were they no longer cared about enough to receive enough food. I dont have any background
knowledge with this topic specificity, however it is something often mentioned by survivors in their
testimonies. There is not a testimony to be found (admittedly I have heard a very small number of
them) that does not mention hunger in some form or another. It interests me more in that all the other
topics listed did not interest me, and the topics I found that did interest me had no real information

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available on them. As I searched for the effect of Nazi politic on technological development, all I found
at all was references to the fact that in certain aria's technology advanced at an extremely fast pace due
to pressure from the upper strata of the Nazi political atmosphere. But these were just mentions, and
that was all that I got. Inferences can be made by directly comparing (for example) American tanks and
German panzers, but that is more in the nature of a research paper and to much time would be spent
dredging up obscure data. I want to know where in the strata of the Nazi society they began to feel
hunger in every day life. Two specific topics I have on the topic are; if some people in the death-camps
were not having problems with acquiring food (among the Jews), and if Hitler knew that the proletariat
of the Nazi party were starving. Two important angles for my topic are in the death-camps and in the
Nazi community. The fact I find most important is that not just the Jews were starving. Don't take this
the wrong way, I am not making an argument that the Nazi's were in any way the wronged party.
Instead I am arguing that a lot of focus is put on the starving of the Jews to the point that the starving of
the Nazi's themselves is ignored, and the fact that the reason Jews were starved in the first place os that
there was not enough food to go around.