At first, this system is marked that only a single German administrative official can be in charge of the entire system without any further German help.
A Main Food Administration was established for the whole Crimea. The native town administrations supplied the collaborators of this organization, which, in Simferopol alone, runs today 12 mess halls and 49 factory kitchens, in which you can eat lunch or take it to your home. Those working for the German Armed Forces and also some of their relatives, a total of approximately 30,000 persons of the 70,000 inhabitants of the town, are fed. There is mostly soup, vegetables, sometimes fish and meat from deceased animals.
However the distribution of the allocated bread coupons frequently runs up against difficulties, since the bread supply is especially difficult in the Crimea. On the other hand an information service of the Food Administration itself is excellently organized; it consists of native residents, who immediately report, if spoiled, but still edible food from army stores, in the case of small truck farm vegetables etc. can be procured. Furthermore each deceased horse or cow within the territory of the town or its vicinity is reported immediately and examined for suitability.
A special control section of the Food Administration inspects the mess halls, doctors make spot checks of the quality of the food offered. In this case also, native help is used. Further sections of the Main Food Administration are the mill sections, which is in charge of the processing of grain. The section for the issuing of bread and food coupons, the bread baking and trading section etc. A procurement section which has to secure the release coupons from the competent German authorities and must look further for food, and call for it with its own vehicles, is in charge of the procurement of merchandise. All big consumers, such as hospitals, schools etc., have to submit monthly reports of supply requirements. Procurement takes place according to a common plan, so that the German agricultural leadership is not hampered by numerous individual requests.
This example must be imitated in its magnitude. In the field of food, the organizing capabilities of the Eastern population must be used, thus relieving simultaneously the German administrative apparatus.
The example Simferopol proves that we have to use the Slav in the huge Eastern territories for the organization of food, since he is always in the position to discover possibilities of procurement which we cannot do because of insufficient help. Self administration, which goes as far as possible, in the field of food for the urban population is necessary.
No Schematic All-inclusive Ruling of Fundamental Directives.
On account of the gigantic delivery quota of corn, meat, poultry, eggs, oil, to the German Reich, it is obviously not possible in the near future to guarantee to the urban population in the East a 100% supply of food. In addition, as already explained, there is still a great deal of food in the hands of the farmers and of some urban residents which is beyond our control. Thus schematic ruling would therefore lead to the result that the Russian towns would receive food which could be spared in an emergency at the expense of the German and/or the Western European territories. Thus the final conclusion can only be this that at the moment, a general systematic ruling which guarantees the minimum subsistence level of the entire population cannot be carried out in the occupied Eastern territories. On the other hand, the responsible leaders of the occupied territories must immediately receive the authority through directives from competent authority, that they can take immediate measures there, where serious dangers arise in the food situation of those natives employed in the war economy with freedom of decision and responsibility to exceed the presently authorized rations, which secure the minimum subsistence level and prevent the described dangers (loss of Man Power, Anti-German, and Pro-Bolshevist attitude). This system, which gives to the responsible administrative employee freedom of action and which has primarily been developed and tried by the English administration, based on hundred years of experience must be introduced more and more in the German work in the Eastern area. Basic decisions from central authorities, which can be of unforeseen consequence, should only be decided upon then, if the measures have proved themselves by experiments in a partial sector of the area.
II. The Position Agricultural
The food political situation which may become important during the coming year, even for the Reich and the whole of Europe, is opposite to the demand to procure sufficient food for people working in town in essential industry.