The scarcity of food thus drew attention to the Ukraine’s grain production, which became one of the main targets of Barbarossa. The short-term management of Eastern agricultural output to feed Axis-held Europe through the war of attrition with the Western powers was minutely discussed in the months preceding the invasion by Backe and General Thomas, with conclusions laid out in a meeting between Thomas and State Secretaries of major ministries on the 2nd of May aswell as the OKW’s “Green Book” of guidelines on the agricultural management of conquered territory; altogether this formed the “Hunger Plan”. However, a large gap was soon found between what was planned and what could truly happen.
The army was expected to live off the land, not only conserving the food produced elsewhere but also freeing up the overloaded logistics for war materials. Yet it failed to satisfy its demand with requisitioning, particularly in Belarus, requiring large shipments of food from Germany, and even that was not enough. Army Group Center did not starve but over the winter many soldiers went for days or even weeks without rations.
Then there was the topic of shipping the Soviet Union’s agricultural output westwards. A minor note is that the highest priority items were not grain but oil cake and oil seed.
The Ukraine’s grain surplus was actually modest and could only provide a minimal improvement to Germany’s position. This was the result of lower productivity and, most importantly, industrialization, which created a Soviet urban population numbering in the tens of millions which hogged most of the output. The solution was to simply take over the entire food supply and not give any to the cities, leaving their “surplus population” to starve or emigrate. This was proposed by Backe and fully accepted by General Thomas, who had earlier opposed the regime on some points; what was at stake was not ideology but ruthless pragmatism. As the OKW’s guidelines explained, “ ‘’Efforts to save the population from death by starvation by drawing on the surplus of the black earth regions can only be at the expense of the food supply to Europe. They diminish the staying power of Germany in the war and the resistance of Germany and Europe to the blockade.’’ “ (p.480).

Though the sticking point in pre- invasion planning, this was never carried out. It was soon found that mere inaction could not stop the flow of food to the cities; that could only be done with massive security operations employing manpower that was sorely needed on the frontline. Occupation administrators also opposed this as they wanted to have a functioning society under their control.
Instead, food was distributed by authorities and the urban population did what it could to survive, resorting to the black market or moving to their relatives in the countryside.
The only groups that could be subjected to deprivation were urban Jews and POWs. Restrictions were placed on Jewish access to food markets, direct purchase from farmers and purchase of scarcer items such as dairy and meat. Jews on Minsk and other Belarusian cities received only 420 calories per day. Famine then struck over the winter.
The POWs would, given conditions on the Eastern Front -poor state upon capture followed by lengthy treks out of the frontline-, have suffered tens of thousands of casualties just from normal attrition. Their actual mortality was many times that due to systematic negligence and mistreatment.
However, several urban centers were cut off from the agricultural hinterland in an unexpected way -the frontline. The Soviet Union’s main agricultural areas were severed from Moscow, Leningrad and the rest of the unoccupied country, freeing up the output they used to absorb for Axis territory and leaving the other side of the front to fend off with what little food it produced. This was greatly worsened by Stalin’s mobilization policies, which diverted far too much manpower from the fields to Red Army, causing starvation on the Soviet side of the frontline.