This must also include members of the family, because the male Slav worker like the female Slav worker will starve or practically give up the food to which they are entitled or even the cooked food which is being furnished in the factory mess halls, in order to save their children, parents, or other relatives from starvation.
The claim, that there are not sufficient food items on hand for this subsistence is countered by the fact that by way of the nomadic movement into the rural areas and the black market in the cities, food is supplied which until now has prevented specific signs of starvation on a larger scale.
The Occupied Eastern Area no Surplus Territory.
Despite this the realization that contrary to propagandistic claims the Ukraine as well as the areas of the Caucasus and the remaining Eastern area are not yet surplus areas at present, from which Germany and the rest of Europe could already be fed tomorrow. The truth is that the additional subsistence of Western Europe today can only result in the risk that the Eastern territory will become refractory tomorrow as a result of its present delivery quota, which has been increased considerably in comparison to the Bolshevist period and that simultaneously part of the urban population, which is indispensable for the war economic tasks will approach a slow ebbing of strength, if not even death of starvation.
Ukraine Industrial Area without Agricultural Surplus
The large number of publications, which are being distributed at present in Germany about the Eastern territory, are copies of obsolete or uncontrolled figures from Tsarist or Bolshevist times, which lack any knowledge of fact. As every expert will have to realize, the truth in the Ukraine is that a situation has been created by the Bolshevist industrialization and by the accumulation of giant urban populations in the Don- and Donetz areas, which consumed the agricultural surpluses, which were at hand during the Tsarist period for the overwhelming part in their own territory.
Exchange Trade A Regulator
A part of the food of the cities is being procured through the black market, which for the most part is barter trade. First of all it is a regulating factor. In the Bolshevist era the urban population was better supplied with consumer goods because of relatively higher wages at the expense of the Sochos- and Kolchos peasants. Today these consumer goods are wandering to the country as barter goods for food.
Dangers of the Black Market Prohibition.
The black market has been completely outlawed in individual area as in the Army Area North [XVIII.AOK], in Pleskau and, as the commander of Army Area Don has informed the reporter, in Transnistria, which had been ceded by Rumania.