Herbert Backe

Herbert Backe
Reich Minister of Food
In office 1942–1945
Chancellor	Adolf Hitler
Preceded by	Richard Walther Darré
Succeeded by	none
Personal details
Born	1 May 1896(1896-05-01) Batumi, Georgia, Russian Empire
Died	6 April 1947(1947-04-06) (aged 50) Nuremberg, West Germany
Nationality	German
Political party	NSDAP
Spouse(s)	Ursula Backe
Alma mater	University of Gottingen
Cabinet	Hitler

Herbert Backe (1 May 1896 – 6 April 1947) was a German Nazi politician and Obergruppenführer in the SS.

Backe was born in Batumi, Georgia, the son of a trader. He studied at the Tbilisi Gymnasium (grammar school) from 1905 and was interned on the outbreak of World War I as an enemy alien. He moved to Germany during the Russian Civil War with the help of the Swedish Red Cross and studied at the University of Göttingen. Backe was an SA member from 1922. He joined the Nazi Party in February 1925.

He performed a variety of duties in the Third Reich, the most notable of which was succeeding Richard Walther Darré as Minister of Food in May 1942 and as Minister of Agriculture in April 1944, and, during the war, was proposed by Alfred Rosenberg as administrator of Ukraine. Backe was one of the orchestrators of the Hunger Plan, the plan to starve millions of Slavs in order to ensure steady food supplies for the German people and troops. According to the historian Timothy Snyder Backe’s plan caused that “4,2 million Soviet citizens (largely Russians, Belarusians, an Ukrainians) starved by the German occupiers in 1941-1944.”

Backe was a prominent member of the younger generation of Nazi intellectuals who occupied second tier positions in the Hitlerian system, such as Reinhard Heydrich, Werner Best, and Wilhelm Stuckart. Like Stuckart, who held most effective power in the Interior Ministry (officially led by Wilhelm Frick) or Wilhelm Ohnesorge in the Reichspostministry (officially led by the conservative Paul Freiherr von Eltz-Rübenach), Backe was the de facto Minister of Agriculture, under Richard Walther Darré, even before Hitler appointed him as such.

He continued to hold his Ministerial positions in the ephemeral government led by Admiral Karl Dönitz in the last days of World War II, from late April to May 1945, as according to Hitler's political will. After the war officially ended, he was captured by the Allies together with the rest of the government, and was to face the Ministries Trial. However, he hanged himself in his cell on 6 April 1947.

References

• Gesine Gerhard: Food and Genocide. Nazi Agrarian Politics in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union. In: Contemporary European History Volume 18, Issue 1 (2009), P. 45–65. PDF (Abstract)
• Timothy Snyder: Bloodlands. Europe between Hitler and Stalin. The Bodley Head, London 2010, ISBN 978-0-224-08141-2
• Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, Viking, 2007, ISBN 0670038261
• Christian Zentner, Friedemann Bedürftig (1991). The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. Macmillan, New York. ISBN 0028975022

External links

• Photo & Brief Bio