John Martin (De Montfort University, Leicester, UK)
Ernst Langthaler (Institute of Rural History, St. Pölten, Austria)
Paths to Productivism: Agricultural Regulation in the
Second World War and its Post-War Legacy in Great Britain
and German-Annexed Austria
I. Introduction
The transition from low input low output farming to an agrosystem characterised by high
levels of upstream and downstream flows of resources on both national and international
scales has been a marked feature of the development of European agriculture since the Second
World War (Federico 2005: 196 ff.; Lains/Pinilla 2009). For this emerging agrosystem we
have applied the term productivism. According to the literature (Ilbery/Bowler 1998; Le
Heron 1993; Atkins/Bowler 2001; Friedmann/McMichael 1989), productivism can be
identified by a number of features: the substitution of capital, above all biological and
mechanical technology, for land and labour; the growth of land and labour productivity and
production; the close linkage of food production to factor and product markets (agribusiness);
the ‘optimisation’ of farm organisation according to economic efficiency goals, leading to
intensification, specialisation and concentration; the application of expert knowledge via
agricultural education and extension; the internalisation of a ‘productivist’ ethic by the
farming population; the shift from use to exchange value production as the primary basis of
the reproduction of the farming community; and – last but not least – the regulation of all
these agrosystemic features by the state which has directed, cajoled and encouraged the
development of an ‘intensive food regime’. Agricultural productivism has also enabled the
release of scarce resources such as labour from the agrarian sector. This release was
particularly significant during the 1950s and 1960s when the rapid expansion of the industrial
and service sectors led to full employment and labour scarcity for many European countries
including Britain and Austria. Therefore, agricultural productivism played a key role in the
development of Western European societies in the second half of the twentieth century.
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While the overall aims of achieving a productivist agriculture were very similar in the
cases of Britain and German annexed Austria, there were significant differences in the
regulatory framework which was established during and immediately after the Second World
War to achieve this objective. These differences were in part explicable in terms of the
historical approach to state involvement in agriculture. Prior to the Second World War the
overwhelming characteristic of the British state’s attitude to agriculture was that of free trade.
Following the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, Britain had embarked on a free trade system
whereby imports of food were allowed to enter the country without protective tariffs. The
food production campaign in the First World War was regarded as a temporary aberration
from normal. It was not until 1931, at the nadir of the Great Depression, that the British
government finally abandoned its commitment to free trade. This though was primarily a
pragmatic response to the fact that by this time, Britain had become the world’s largest free
trade area for agricultural produce. This situation, if left unchecked, would have ensured the
indiscriminate dumping of surplus agricultural commodities on the already glutted home
market. Government attempts to regulate food imports in the 1930s were patchy and of
limited success. By the outbreak of the Second World War, Britain was considerably more
dependent on imported food than it had been at the outbreak of military hostilities in 1914.
This was an invidious position given the threat to food supplies which had been posed by the
previous military confrontation (Milward 1977: 244-8; Martin 2007: 229).
Austria took a different route to state regulation of agriculture prior to the Second
World War. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Austria became embedded in the
interregional division of labour which emerged in the Habsburg Monarchy. Compared to the
Hungarian part of the monarchy where intensive arable farming and cattle breeding was
boosted by the expanding food markets of the urban centres of Budapest and Vienna, in the
Austrian part rather extensive and self-sufficient forms of agriculture prevailed. In the light of
the agricultural crisis of the 1870s, the state promoted a ‘conservative modernisation’
involving protective tariffs against imported food and the spread of agricultural associations
and cooperatives driven by an anti-liberal and anti-socialist agrarian ideology. While state
intervention in agriculture in the First World War was episodic, from 1931 onwards the
Austrian state strongly responded to the Great Depression by market intervention. These
regulations aimed at reducing agricultural ‘over-production’ – which were in fact a
consequence of the ‘under-consumption’ of the industrial population hit by mass
unemployment – in order to stabilise food prices. After the annexation to the German Reich in
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1938, Austrian agriculture was involved in the state-led production campaign aiming at
intensifying the relatively extensive mode of farming (Bruckmüller 1979).
This paper aims at challenging the conventional wisdom concerning agricultural
policy in the Second World War. The British food production campaign of the Second World
War has traditionally been hailed as an ‘unqualified success story’. Despite the country’s pre-
war dependence on imported food, the efforts of the farming community ensured that the
population was neither starved into submission, nor forced to endure the food shortages and
malnutrition that helped to undermine the morale of many other combatants engulfed in the
world’s greatest ever military conflict (Milward 1977: 246). In Austria the historical narrative
was the other way round: According to the official image of Austria as ‘Hitler’s first victim’,
the German ‘battle for production’ (Erzeugungsschlacht) was evaluated a complete failure
given the fact that outputs of most agricultural commodities steadily decreased during the war.
Thus the massive growth of agricultural productivity and production from the 1950s onwards
appeared to be solely the success of the ‘reconstruction’ (Wiederaufbau) after 1945
(Langthaler 2008: 687 ff.). As this paper shows the wartime transformation of agriculture
guided by the state was not quite as successful in the British case and not quite as
unsuccessful in the Austrian case as the prevailing wisdom has indicated.
II. Wartime regulation of farm inputs
1. Land
a) Britain
In theory, prior to the war, Britain had a free market in land in that it could be sold freehold
without any restrictions on who could purchase it. Indeed what had distinguished Britain from
most other European countries was the unprecedented sale of estates which had occurred
during the First World War and the 1920s. According to F. M. L. Thompson (1980: 332),
nearly one quarter of the land of England and Wales was sold between 1914 and 1927. It is
evident that the vast majority of the land was acquired by farmers who had previously
occupied the land as tenants, nevertheless the landlord tenant relationship remained an
important feature of the countryside and facilitated agrarian change in a number of important
ways.
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Although the outbreak of the Second World War did not lead directly to extensive
state control of the land market, intervention did take place; for instance the state
requisitioned land for military purposes such as the construction of airfields and army camps.
Indirectly there were restrictions on uses, with the state directing a food production campaign
which required farmers and landlords to use the land for the war effort. Under the 1939
Defence of the Realm Act, the Ministry of Agriculture was empowered ‘to preserve and
maintain agricultural land solely for the production of food’, to ‘control by order the
cultivation, management and use of the land in order to secure maximum production from the
farms’ and to ‘terminate any tenancy of agricultural land where it is considered the land is
being neglected or badly cultivated’ (Cantwell 1992: 29 f.). On 1 September 1939 the
Minister of Agriculture, Sir Reginald Dorman Smith, delegated these powers to the county
based War Agricultural Executive Committees (WAECs). The apex of this decentralised
system of control was the Executive Committee which consisted of between 8 and 12
members in addition to a full time paid executive officer for each county in England and
Wales. Their task was to translate Whitehall’s plans into policies which could be implemented
at the parish level by sub-committees consisting of local farmers. Such a system of direction
was deemed essential because of what the Ministry of Agriculture perceived as the ‘innate
conservatism of the British farmer’ (Murray 1954: 237).
The overwhelming need to maximise food production during the Second World War
led to the state directing farmers to increase their area of arable land via a wartime ploughing
up campaign, and to increase production of essential crops such as wheat and potatoes. In the
1930s more than 50 per cent of the land was still devoted to some form of game preservation,
with estate records revealing that several million pheasants and partridges were released each
year to complement indigenous stocks. With the exception of a small number of game farmers
who were granted licences, the artificial rearing of game birds was formally prohibited,
leading to an estimated 90 per reduction in the number of game birds reared. This new ethos
of agricultural productivism forced a radical rethink of the state’s approach to game shooting,
which was now regarded as a threat to the success of the wartime food production campaign
(TNA MAF 97/7 RFS 375).
b) Austria
Already before the outbreak of the war, in German occupied Austria the Nazi regime had
appropriated a bundle of property rights over agricultural land. According to the ideology of
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‘blood and soil’ (Blut und Boden), the 1933 Reich Hereditary Farm Law (Reichserbhofgesetz,
REG) declared medium sized farmland (c. 7.5 to 125 hectares) not to be sold, partitioned or
mortgaged. A Hereditary Farm (Erbhof) had to be passed down along the bloodline via –
primarily male – single heirs. The holder, the ‘peasant’ (Bauer), was obliged to behave
‘honourably’ and to manage the farm properly. The transfer of the farmland not concerned by
the REG, managed by ‘farmers’ (Landwirte), was put under state control by the 1937 Land
Transfer Declaration (Grundstückverkehrsbekanntmachung, GVB) (Farquharson 1976: 107 ff.;
Grundmann 1979; Corni 1990). According to the REG and GVB, all transactions concerning
land ownership and land use were controlled by public courts which handled them rather
flexibly (Münkel 1996: 193 ff.). In addition to this, Jewish owners of large estates were
expropriated in the course of a state-directed proceeding, the so-called ‘aryanisation’
(Arisierung), from 1938 onwards for the benefit of the state and ‘Aryan’ settlers (Eminger
2005; Langthaler 2009). At the outbreak of war the relatively free exchange of land had been
replaced by the state-controlled land market as well as the redistribution of land according to
racist criteria by the state. By means of this regulatory framework the Nazi regime aimed at
restructuring the distribution of farmland linked to the ideal of the medium peasant farm (Mai
2002).
During the war the inherent contradiction of state control over land became obvious.
On the one hand, state control was reinforced due to the state-led production campaign: Lease
contracts were safeguarded against termination; farm holders who were not able to manage
their farms ‘intensively’ enough were put under supervision or even dispossessed; finally, all
land transfers were postponed until the end of war (Corni/Gies 1997: 469 ff.). On the other
hand inefficient regulations were complemented by more flexible ones: The jurisdiction
concerning the REG regularly made exceptions to the ban on partitions, sales and mortgages
according to economic criteria; the consolidation of fragmented farmland was decentralised in
favour of local arrangements; the farm holder’s female offspring were upgraded in the REG’s
order of succession (Langthaler 2009). In sum, the ideological impetus of Nazi land policy
lost weight in favour of economic efficiency goals (Corni/Gies 1997: 416 ff.). Due to inherent
contradictions, the large-scale plan for the redistribution of land in the Reich in combination
with the German colonisation of the conquered areas in East Europe – which would have
caused some more millions of victims among the native population – largely failed (Mai 2002:
289 ff.).
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2. Labour
a) Britain
In the case of labour, one of the main factors differentiating Britain from other countries in the
Second World War was in terms of the direction of labour. Virtually from the onset of the war
the British state embarked on an extensive and systematic programme of mobilising labour for
the war effort in order to place the economy and society on a total war footing. One of the
iconic images of the British war effort was provided by the Women’s Land Army (WLA),
whose posters depicted the vitally important role they were playing in the battle for the
harvest. Other important sources of additional agricultural labour were school children,
prisoners of war (POWs) and soldiers. Conventional accounts have tended to gloss over the
way the existing labour force was affected by these changes.
Unlike most other countries the pre-war labour force consisted not only of farmers but
also agricultural workers. While on many of the smaller holdings the distinction between the
two groups was blurred by the fact that farmers also carried out a considerable amount of
manual work, the wartime experiences of the two groups was significantly different. In the
case of the agricultural workforce, prior to the war their numbers had been declining as the
ongoing agricultural depression undermined employment opportunities, and there was a drift
to better paid work. The outbreak of the Second World War exacerbated this trend with the
movement of workers into much better paid construction work and enlistment into the Armed
Forces. In order to address this issue the state increased agricultural wage rates, although
levels remained well below those achieved in other forms of war work. In order to protect the
labour force from military conscription, agriculture along with a number of other industries
was exempt from military service. Initially this applied to workers aged 25 years and older but
was later reduced to 21 years and older. A proposal to reduce this to 21 years was, however,
rejected by the government. Instead arrangement were made to postpone the calling up of
individual workers who were either deemed essential for the food production campaign or
where a suitable replacement could not be found (Martin 1992: 47). Restrictions were also
imposed on those employed in agriculture from voluntarily moving to other types of better
paid work. Such a system enhanced the power of the WAECs by allowing them to participate
in the decision making process about the wartime direction of labour.
While these same restrictions applied to farmers, their position was significantly
different from their workforce. During the pre-war agricultural depression, many farmers
7
including their relatives had been forced to seek supplementary forms of employment which
were often allied to agriculture. Once there was an upturn in the fortunes of agriculture, as
with the outbreak of military hostilities in 1939, there was an inevitable drift of such
individuals into farming. Being a reserved occupation this exempted them from conscription
into the Armed Services. However individuals with multiple occupations or specialist pig and
poultry producers could be forced to sign up (Martin 1992: 198).
The best documented wartime increase in labour supply is that of the WLA. Britain’s
pioneering role in mobilising women for the war effort, in particular for agriculture, was
without doubt a remarkable achievement. However, it is tempting to exaggerate the
significance of this development. By 1944, the WLA had recruited more than 80,000 girls, but
the numbers involved were only a small proportion of the total agricultural workforce. More
importantly recruitment then ceased as it became clear to wartime planners that women could
be more productively employed in other less glamorous sectors of the economy such as
munitions production. Consequently new sources of labour such as POWs, soldiers and
school children were recruited. With the exception of women employed by the WLA, these
other sources had a much lower opportunity cost, in that if they were not used in agriculture
there was little else they could be used effectively for. This was particularly true for POWs,
where working on the land provided one of the few sources of suitable employment. The
extent of POWs’ mobilisation was limited initially by the inability of the British government
to provide secure, localised and adequate accommodation (Hansard Parliamentary Debate
Papers, House of Commons, vol. 376, 17 December 1941, col. 932). However, once these
difficulties had been overcome, the numbers of POWs employed in agriculture rapidly began
to dwarf the size of the WLA.
While measuring the productivity of the enhanced agricultural labour force in the war
is problematic, it is possible to make a number of points about the overall policy.
Contemporary accounts which have shaped the conventional wisdom about the ploughing up
campaign have stressed the wartime battle for the harvest and how this was secured by
mobilising new sources of labour. Since the 1990s a raft of articles has appeared, eulogising
the achievements of one or other sources of labour. While not trying to decry the contribution
of any particular group in raising food production under what were often very difficult
personal circumstances, it is important to recognise that there was a significant redirection of
available labour in favour of agriculture, and that the cost effectiveness of utilising this
particular resource has not been subject to econometric analysis. A prima facie case exists for
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suggesting that agriculture in general did not suffer the extent of labour shortages recorded in
contemporary accounts (The Farmer and Stockbreeder 1947: 1549; Martin 1992: 153-160).
b) Austria
After Austria’s annexation by the German Reich in 1938, the administration of labour
assignment faced two huge problems: firstly, the massive exodus of rural labourers from
agriculture to the booming construction and armaments industry; secondly, the recruitment of
parts of the male workforce to the German army (though initially farm holders were exempted
from conscription). As a reaction to the first problem, prohibitions of occupational changes
between agriculture and other sectors were introduced in 1938/39; however, rural labourers
often ignored these official restrictions in the search for better working and living conditions.
As an initial reaction to the second problem, German citizens, especially women and youths
from urban areas, were obliged to work in agriculture – but with limited effects. After the
outbreak of war in 1939 a political compromise between ideological concerns and economic
interests in the massive assignment of foreign labourers in German agriculture was negotiated
(Langthaler 2005: 139 ff.). Accordingly, POWs and civil workers from German occupied
Europe were more or less forced to work on the farms; for instance, in the province of
Niederdonau the numbers of POWs engaged in agriculture peaked at 30.000 in 1942 (3.9
percent of agricultural labourers in 1939), the number of foreign civil workers reached the
maximum of 70.000 in 1944 (10.3 percent of agricultural labourers in 1939). Their
assignment was regulated by a discriminating law according to national and ‘racial’ criteria.
The regulatory framework of ‘labour assignment’ (Arbeitseinsatz) was related to the regional
and local conditions in different ways. The inherent contradiction between the foreigner’s
inclusion as part of the farm labour force and their exclusion from family life led to various
arrangements between the system’s imperatives and the life-world’s priorities, which were
experienced within the spectrum between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ treatment. Whereas this
contradiction did not lead to overt conflict in respect of working-crews and camps on large
farms and estates, it manifested itself on small and medium sized peasant farms. For instance,
the tradition of a communal meal for the workforce which was an integral part of the family
economy was prohibited between Germans and foreigners. It was up to intermediary agencies
to negotiate everyday compromises between antagonistic forces. In practice, the primacy of
pragmatism over ideology shaped the assignment of foreign labourers until the end of war
(Hornung et al. 2004: 107 ff.).
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3. Capital
a) Britain
Prior to the outbreak of the Second World War British farmers had suffered from a shortage
of capital as a result of low prices for agricultural commodities. For many farmers economic
survival was an objective which took priority over plans to invest in more productive method,
or infrastructure improvements such as building or drainage schemes. Farmers had been
forced to survive by undertaking a series of cost-cutting exercises designed to minimise
purchases of all kinds. Expenditure on inputs such as fertilisers and infrastructure
improvements were reduced to a bare minimum. There was little sense in making attempts to
raise agricultural output if the additional produce had to be sold at less than the cost of
production. In government circles this lack of investment was often interpreted as
symptomatic not only of capital shortages but also entrepreneurial failure on the part of
farmers.
In order to stimulate production during the war the Government, in conjunction with
the Ministry of Food and the Ministry of Agriculture, implemented high guaranteed prices for
most agricultural commodities at the farm gate. In effect this wartime system was the
forerunner of a guaranteed price system which was later enshrined in the 1947 Agriculture
Act. This wartime system, implemented as a pragmatic response, became the basis of the
post-war system of agricultural support. A number of grants and subsidies were introduced
including the payment of a £2 per acre ploughing up grant for converting pasture to tillage in
order to restructure agricultural output.
The Ministry of Agriculture implemented an ambitious plan to reduce livestock
numbers and, in particular, poultry which, in comparison with cattle and sheep, consumed
considerably more cereals in relation to the amount of food for human consumption they
produced. In 1939 Britain was much more dependent on imported feeding stuffs than any
other European country. Therefore the anticipated reduction in imports resulting from the
outbreak of military hostilities could literally have starved Britain into submission.
The outbreak of the Second World War led to unprecedented controls over the
allocation of imported feeding stuffs, which declined from 22 million tons in 1938 to 11
million tons by 1944. Under the jurisdiction of the WAECs, a complex rationing system was
introduced whereby animal feeding stuffs were allocated according to the type of livestock,
10
previous stock levels on holdings and their productivity. While dairy production was given
priority in the allocation process, milk producers were still affected by the enforced ploughing
up of grassland and reductions in the supply of purchased feeding stuffs. The aim of wartime
controls was to encourage dairy farmers to maintain production as far as possible by the
increased use of home produced feeding stuffs.
Cattle and sheep production, which were regarded as not so essential for the war effort,
contracted under the new restrictions. Likewise pig and poultry production, which were
heavily dependent on concentrated feeding stuffs, declined by about 60 per cent during the
war, and a number of intensive livestock producers were forced to give up production and
conscripted into the Armed Forces (Martin 1992: 198).
Machinery was another vital input for the agricultural sector. Prior to the Second
World War there were about 60,000 tractors on British farms. Horses remained the main form
of motive power on the land accounting for about two thirds of the total power used. By 1945
there had been a three-fold increase in the number of tractors, and similar increases in other
machinery. The replacement of horses by more productive tractors helped to ensure that
arable cultivations could be completed more quickly and economically, and that crops could
be planted and harvested at the most opportune time.
The increased use of tractors had a significant effect on the amount of food available
for human consumption by reducing the amount of food and fodder required to maintain the
working horse population. However the production of agricultural machinery was regulated
during the war, with munitions and armaments production taking priority. Machinery imports,
most of which originated from the United States, were also restricted. The allocation of new
machinery to farmers was controlled by the WAECs . The increasing demand for second hand
machinery led to unprecedented price rises for such items (Martin 1992: 132).
The war led to huge increases in fertiliser use. In the case of potash, for example, the
quantity used increased from 75,000 tons in 1938-9 to 115,000 tons by 1944-5, whilst
phosphate increased from170, 000 tons to 346,000 tons over the same period. The increase in
the use of nitrogen, which was the most cost effective fertiliser input, rose from 60,000 tons to
172,000 tons. In spite of the unprecedented increases in the supply of artificial fertilisers, it
was necessary for the WAECs to prioritise their allocation to arable crops such as wheat and
potatoes, which were most important for the wartime food production campaign.
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b) Austria
Nazi ideology was obsessed with the fear of a ‘soulless technocracy’ (Herf 1984); however,
the agrarian apparatus promoted technical progress suited to the demands of peasant farming.
The application of land-saving technology (e.g. mineral fertilizer) was driven by the political
aim of raising German self-sufficiency in food and feeding stuffs. Additionally, the out-
migration of agricultural labourers to industry and, since the outbreak of war, the recruitment
of parts of the male rural population to the army were driving forces for applying labour-
saving technology (e.g. mowing machines). Due to the fall in prices of mineral fertilizer and
machinery after Austria’s annexation to Germany as well as state subsidies for investments in
farm infrastructure, a ‘technological boom’ until the beginning of the ‘total war’ in 1942/43
can be observed. However, there was a strong bias towards larger farms in favoured areas;
smaller farms in less favoured areas were hardly able to acquire additional money for
technical investments on the credit market due to high levels of indebtedness caused by the
crisis of the 1930s (Langthaler 2000: 357 ff., 2009).
In order to solve this structural problem, the Nazi administration launched a large-
scale action for ‘debt relief and construction’ (Entschuldung und Aufbau) converting short-
term into long-term debts as well as providing credits and subsidies for technical investment.
As a result, farms participating in this action became financially subordinated to the state as a
‘super-creditor’ (Langthaler 2000 357 ff., 2009). However, the attempts to make a ‘great leap’
in the application of modern technology in German agriculture failed due to warfare priorities;
the technological vision of the ‘armament of the village’ (Aufrüstung des Dorfes) was
postponed to the time after the ‘final victory’ (Endsieg) (Corni/Gies 1997: 407). In order to
prepare for the ‘great leap’ by ‘small steps’, pilot projects for the improvement of the
technical infrastructure in a few mountainous areas were implemented with great enthusiasm,
but limited effects (Siegl 2005; Langthaler 2009). Though an effective ‘technological
revolution’ of Austrian agriculture did not take place before the 1950s, one should not
underestimate the ‘technological boom’ in the Nazi era. Compared to Britain where
technological investment was stimulated by indirect state intervention via high prices for
agricultural produce, in German-annexed Austria it was rather the direct state intervention
which promoted the adoption of technological innovations.
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4. Knowledge
a) Britain
Prior to the war, according to the conventional wisdom, one of the main factors inhibiting the
adoption of more productive methods of production was the farmer’s attitude. Farmers were
constrained by geographical and occupational immobility, usually originated from a farming
family and shared ‘its limited perspectives and its distrust of education, and had tended to
ignore the startling advances in agricultural science which were taking place’ (Calder 1971:
483). Farmers often pursued extensive, low input low output systems of mixed farming,
dominated increasingly by milk production. This was the mainstay of their activities as it
provided a monthly income from the newly established Milk Marketing Board; however,
throughout the 1930s the average herd size was little more the twenty cows (Martin 1992: 216
ff.). As Calder (1971: 483) had noted, farmers adversely affected by the ongoing depression
had developed ‘persecution mania’. As such, economic survival rather than innovation was
their overriding ambition.
Greater production through the adoption of new, more scientific methods was
encouraged by the state prior to the Second World War via the research activities of the
Institute of Agricultural Economies at Oxford University and by agricultural advisors
employed by County Councils. The overall effects of these institutions were quite limited in
terms of raising agricultural output. Instead the main drivers of change were pioneering
farmers who sought to exploit changing market opportunities. Faced with the low prices for
British agricultural produce which prevailed in the 1930s their main focus was on reducing
production costs to enable them to compete (Bridges/Jones 1933: 11).
The decentralised system of wartime control was designed to provide an effective and
low-cost way of modernising the agricultural sector, ensuring that progressive methods of
high input farming were widely adopted. This transformation according to Murray was ‘the
greatest triumph ... the success of the local organisation’ exhibiting ‘a crusading enthusiasm to
bring about a renaissance in British farming’, and noting that the key figures in this process
were the ‘progressive tenant farmers and farming landowners on the committees’ (Murray
1954: 340). In a similar way, Edith Whetham eulogised the ‘missionary zeal’ of the WAECs
in disseminating more productive methods (Whetham 1952: 130). When evaluating these
claims, however, it must be borne in mind that the WAECs consisted primarily of farmers
with the technical and administrative skills necessary to work on a committee, and who had
13
sufficiently large farms and labour force to enable them to be away from their holdings. More
recent research has cast serious doubts on how effective the WAECs actually were (Short
2007). In particular the wartime fate of a number of farmers reveals the seedier and vindictive
approaches pursued by the WAECs (Martin 2000: 242 -250; Short 2007; Rawding 2007).
b) Austria
In 1935 the multitude of agricultural research units in Germany were unified under the
umbrella of an all-encompassing organisation, the Research Service (Forschungsdienst),
under the direction of Konrad Meyer. Agricultural sciences were redirected from basic to
applied research according to the expansionist 1936 Four Years Plan (Vierjahresplan) (Heim
2003: 15 ff.). After Austria’s annexation, a few research units for the development of Austrian
agriculture – which was officially regarded as a ‘laggard’ – were founded. Driven by the
imagination of the ‘productivist countryside’, plans for the intensification of the variety of
regional farming systems were developed. Thereby, the regional differentiation between
arable farming on the plains and dairy farming in the mountains was reinforced. Agricultural
extension via mass media and the dense network of regional agencies (Wirtschaftsberatungs-
stellen) was expected to transfer experts’ knowledge into farmers’ minds. Via face-to-face
extension by local ‘farm advisers’ (Hofberater) the gap between expert knowledge and
everyday experience should be bridged. Several forms of communication in the press can be
identified: instruction, discussion, education and appeals. However, the limits of state-led
knowledge transfer soon became obvious. An instrument for the extension staff was provided
by the ‘farm record’ (Hofkarte) which annually registered a multitude of farm-level data. Like
the panopticon (Foucault 1994: 251 ff.), it allowed the agricultural apparatus to monitor all
farms without being noticed by their holders; moreover, it allowed farm holders to ‘observe’
themselves in that it provided a means for reflecting alternative farming strategies. Thus, the
farm record enabled state control of the national farm as well as farmers’ self-control,
therefore complementing the state power by the ‘microphysics of power’. In the course of the
war, collective and individual agricultural extension was more and more confined to measures
which promised short-term effects (Langthaler 2009).
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III. Wartime regulation of farm outputs
1. Productivity and production
a) Britain
The most obvious yardstick used to measure the success, or otherwise, of the food production
campaign is the amount of food made available for human consumption. Despite Britain’s
pre-war dependence on imported food and the enforced contraction in levels of imports, the
British people were not starved into submission. Anecdotal evidence implies that there was, in
fact, for some a significant increase in their dietary standards. Nor were they subject to
disrupted food supplies which, in the latter stages of the Second World War, began to paralyse
the war effort in other countries. The wartime increases in domestic food production enabled
Britain to cope successfully with the diminution in food imports caused by the German U-
Boat campaign and allowed shipping to be switched to the importation of military resources
for the war effort (Milward 1977: 246).
Given this achievement it may appear rather pedantic or even heretical to question the
conventional wisdom about the success of the British food production campaign (Martin 2000:
46-58; Brassley 2007). Any evaluation must differentiate between the achievements of the
Ministry of Agriculture in increasing food production, and those of the newly reconvened
Ministry of Food in ensuring the more equitable distribution of available food and in
enhancing the nutritional understanding of a balanced diet including the value of vitamins.
One also needs to differentiate between the statistical analysis and contemporary or official
evidence shaped by the need to maintain civilian morale. The wartime rationing system
administered by the Ministry of Food ensured that the population had an adequate diet in
terms of calorific intake; but this was achieved at the expense of radical changes in the
composition of the diet, in particular in the amount of meat which was consumed. The
wartime success of the British food production campaign was to a significant extent a
reflection of the Ministry of Food’s improvements in the distribution of food coupled with its
propagandist appeals to persuade consumers to accept the wartime diets (Martin 1992: 96).
In terms of gross physical output, the increase in the production of specific crops was
particularly impressive. As the official history acclaims, ‘by 1944, there had been compared
with pre-war production, a 90 per cent increase in wheat, 87 per cent in potatoes, 45 per cent
in vegetables and 19 per cent in sugar beet.’ (Ministry of Information 1946: 5). But such a
15
computation is not as persuasive as it might at first appear. These remarkable increases were
primarily the result of growing larger areas of specific crops rather than indicative of
sustained increases in levels of output per acre. During the war crops yields were only
marginally greater that those prevailing fifty years earlier. In contrast to the suggestions made
by classical economists, that as more marginal land was brought into cultivation, crops would
invariably have declined, this tendency was more than offset by changes that would have
increased productivity per acre. All in all, revisionist British critiques have shown that the
wartime increases in agricultural output were considerably less impressive than contemporary
accounts indicated (Martin 2000: 47-58; Brassley 2007).
A crucial but neglected explanation for the wartime increase in arable, and even
grassland production, was the reduction in the level of the rabbit population and the amount of
damage they caused. This decline reflected not only the activities of the state in directing a
pest control campaign but also peoples’ valuation of rabbits as a food source (The Farmer and
Stockbreeder 1941: 893).
In an industry such as agriculture, characterised by a wide diversity of farming
systems and a multitude of producers with individualistic approaches, wartime directions
were not always endorsed in an harmonious way. Measuring the magnitude of wartime
opposition to state directives has historically concentrated on the small number of farmers
who were dispossessed as a result of failing to carry out directives. Analysing the number of
dispossessions suggests that they were very much the exception to the norm (Martin 2000: 60-
63; Short 2007). Making an example of a small number of farmers ensured that a much
greater number were unwilling to question the wartime directives. Coupled with the financial
incentives the wartime control of agriculture popularised a ‘new morality’ of economic
consideration amongst a large swath of the farming community. Traditional yeomen farmers
were transformed into the yesmen of Britain having little option but to implement the
committees directives.
b) Austria
One of the big challenges of Nazi agricultural policy was to increase domestic production –
especially to close the ‘protein and fat gap’ (Eiweiß- und Fettlücke) – in order to become
independent from imports of food and feeding stuffs as much as possible. Thus, from 1934
onwards production campaigns, so-called ‘battles for production’ (Erzeugungsschlachten),
were announced. At the outbreak of war, Herbert Backe, the deputy of the Minister of Food
16
and Agriculture, Richard W. Darré, had become the central coordinator of German food
production. He called for the increase of overall production in general, of root crop, fodder,
oil plant, fibre plant and vegetable production in particular. Furthermore, improving the
performance of the cattle stock, especially raising milk output, was demanded (Farquharson
1976: 161 ff.; Corni 1990; Corni/Gies 1997: 469 ff.).
The state-led production campaign involved three instruments: propagandistic appeals,
price regulations and farm control. Soon after the outbreak of the war, appeals shifted from
the demand for increasing production to the demand for stabilisation. They aimed at
implementing a ‘productivist’ production ethic in the minds of the farmers. Due to the
collective fear of hunger revolts, the Nazi administration stabilised producer prices at a
medium level in order not to overburden the consumer. While official prices for field crops
and milk were relatively stable 1938 to 1944, prices for meat showed a considerable increase.
However, prices were complemented by grants for products in great demand by the war
economy, e.g. for oil and fibre plants. Farm control encompassed a broad spectrum of
measures of surveillance and punishment: statistical registration, confiscation of all produce
beyond the household’s subsistence needs from 1939 onwards, commissions for farm
inspection as well as supervision, removal and even expropriation of failing farmers
(Langthaler 2009).
The effects of the production campaign with regard to output were rather limited in
German-annexed Austria. However, the annual total output was quite stable from 1940
onwards (Langthaler 2000: 348 ff.). In the province of Niederdonau in 1939-44 a variable
harvest can be observed: The area of arable land declined; the proportion of cereals and root
crops decreased in favour of vegetables, forage crops and oil and fibre plants; the area of
fallow land which increased until 1941 declined afterwards; a continuous, but limited
extensification of land use was registered; the annual yields per hectare varied mainly
according to climatic influences; overall production was partly stable (food grain, rye, fodder
beet etc.) and partly declined (feed grain, potatoes, sugar beet etc.); the livestock population
was quite stable during wartime; decreasing numbers of pigs were compensated by cattle; the
official numbers of slaughtered animals declined due to the expansion of the unofficial
‘shadow economy’; the annual milk yields per cow declined due to the scarcity of feeding
stuffs. While one might argue that the ‘battle for production’ was lost (Degler/Streb 2008), in
a number of instances it was possible for victories to be celebrated (Langthaler 2009).
17
2. Self-supply, marketing and income
a) Britain
Prior to the war farming incomes remained dismally low. According to the National Farm
Management Survey, those with holdings of between 200 and 250 acres were making about
£250 a year, while the average small farmer with between 50 and 100 acres was earning on
average about £150 per year. Out of these earnings the farmer had to pay his living expenses,
taxation, interest on borrowed money, and put aside interest on capital investment. There were
wide variations in profitability between one holding and another, depending not only on size
but also on the type of activities pursued and the managerial ability of the family concerned. It
is not surprising, therefore, given the economic conditions of the 1930s, that the prevailing
philosophy of the farming community was economic survival rather than maximising
production, measured in terms of either gross output per holding or output per acre. As Ashby
and Evans noted, ‘resources were largely concentrated on activities which would bring
immediate returns and the future was sacrificed to the present’ (Ashby/Evans 1944: 172).
The Ministry of Food was responsible for the distribution of food from the farm gate,
while the Ministry of Agriculture coordinated and controlled the production of food literally
up to the farm gate. However there was considerable inter-departmental rivalry between the
two organisations. In Britain food distribution was addressed by the development of an
extensive rationing system, although basic foods such as bread and potatoes were not rationed.
Most animal products were rationed in terms of the quantity which could be purchased by
individuals or families. The wide range of foods available meant that it was not possible for
the Ministry of Food to allocate a basic ration of every conceivable food. Consequently a
rationing system was introduced whereby each consumer could use their allocated points to
acquire specific items. The value of this system was that it provided a means of ensuring a
degree of choice in the selection of foods. A number of commodities such as poultry were not
rationed but subject to maximum price controls. Fixing controls in this way was intended to
discourage production of these items while at the same time preventing profiteering. The
success of these measures was very mixed (Martin, 2009, 214-5).
Consensus has suggested that farmers derived substantial financial benefits from the
wartime period of control. J. K. Bowers and P. Cheshire acknowledged that ‘by any standards
farmers had a good war’ and, in light of his calculations, net farm income at constant
purchasing power tripled during this period (Bowers/Cheshire, 1983: 61). Even allowing for
18
the fact that this relative increase was inflated by abnormally low levels of income prevailing
prior to 1938, the wartime increase was very substantial, being significantly greater than that
accruing to most groups of entrepreneurs or managers in other industries during the war.
Wartime income gains were not equally distributed across the farming community.
Identifying precisely how each group of farmers was affected is rather problematic, given that
the majority were not in the habit of compiling detailed financial accounts about their
activities, nor were they willing to subject their activities to financial scrutiny by outsiders.
An insight can be gleaned from the analysis of farm accounts undertaken by provincial
agricultural economists, in particular those at the Institute of Agricultural Economics,
University of Oxford. These studies reveal that larger farmers fared considerably better than
their smaller counterparts. This was particularly true for farmers in the southern counties who
were already geared to the large scale production of arable crops. Conversely smaller farmers
in traditional pastoral areas derived substantially fewer financial benefits (The Farmer and
Stockbreeder 1942: 456).
b) Austria
One of the dogmas of Nazi agricultural policy was to replace the ‘chaos’ of free markets by
‘market order’. It was the task of the Reich Food Estate (Reichsnährstand), the obligatory
corporation of producers, manufacturers and distributors of food, to administer the flow of
goods in the channels of the official market and to regulate prices and trade margins. At the
national level the Reich Food Estate was led by the Minister of Food and Agriculture, Richard
W. Darré. It was vertically organised at the levels of provinces (Landesbauernschaften),
districts (Kreisbauernschaften) and communes (Ortsbauernschaften); horizontally, at the
national, provincial and district levels three divisions – the first for the mobilisation of the
farming community (Der Mensch), the second for farm infrastructure (Der Hof) and the third
for marketing (Der Markt) – were installed. At the outbreak of war, the Reich Food Estate,
initially founded as a self-governing corporation, was incorporated into the state
administration as a food agency (Corni/Gies 1997: 101 ff.).
Farmers, their families and permanent labourers were not included in the rationing of
food which was implemented at the outbreak of war; they were permitted to fulfil their
subsistence needs on an official per capita consumption basis. However, all goods beyond the
household’s subsistence needs were confiscated by the state. Each farm, commune, region and
province of the German Reich was required to provide a quota of agricultural produce
19
annually. Domestic production fell short of the food requirements of the military and civil
population and foreign labourers; only through the exploitation of German occupied areas in
East Europe could the provision of German consumers – and, hence, the loyalty of the masses
– be ensured until 1944 (Langthaler 2000: 348 ff.).
Offences against the ‘market order’ were sanctioned by fines, imprisonment and, in
serious cases, capital punishment. However, a substantial number of farm holders participated
in the ‘shadow economy’. Special Courts (Sondergerichte) were established in order to cope
with the masses of defendants. The judges differentiated between several delicts: Farm
holders who misappropriated food, e.g. by slaughtering a pig, in order to supply their family
members and labourers were imprisoned from several months up to two years. Farm holders
who sold products on the ‘black market’ at excessive prices got between one and six years of
close confinement. Farmers were very rarely sentenced to death; capital punishment was
rather imposed on craftsmen who misappropriated large amounts of food (butchers, millers,
merchants etc.). It is striking that farmers convicted to imprisonment were frequently granted
an amnesty after a few months; in favour of the state-led food economy they were allow to
remain working on the farm rather than devoting scarce resources to imprisonment, an action
which would have also have adversely affected civilian morale (Langthaler 2009).
How the state regulation of marketing affected farmers’ income is hard to estimate.
Official calculations for the Austrian farms in 1939 indicated a substantial decline in income:
Though prices for machinery and mineral fertiliser abruptly declined after the annexation in
1938, labour costs rose considerably. Thus an official debate about the ‘undervaluation of
agricultural labour’ (Unterbewertung der Landarbeit) emerged in the press. A detailed
scrutiny of farm accounts indicates that there were significant variations in farm income
depending on region and farm size. Larger farms and farms in advantaged areas could profit
more from stable product prices than smaller farms and farms in mountainous and remote
areas (Langthaler 2009).
IV. The post-war legacy of wartime regulation
1. Britain
Wartime control heralded the establishment of a guaranteed price system for the main
agricultural commodities in which the prices received by the farmer were subsidised by the
consumer. It also resulted in a productivist regime where financial support was linked to
20
productivity. The 1947 Agriculture Act was intended to promote stability and efficiency for
the agricultural sector, insulating producers from the vagaries of volatile overseas markets,
which were characterised by depressed prices during periods of abundance and high prices
during periods of poor harvests.
The explicit aim of the legislation was to raise farm incomes in order to stimulate
further increases in agricultural output. But this strategy was not completely successful. In the
short term it often resulted in farmers spending a greater amount of their extra income on non-
productive items of conspicuous consumption such as motor cars. The Agriculture Act
directing County Councils to provide smallholdings of a minimum of 50 acres requiring a full
time worker was specifically intended ‘for the purpose of affording persons with agricultural
experience an opportunity of becoming farmers on their own account.’ This policy differed
from the previous outlook, where smallholdings were seen as an outlet for persons not wanted
in other industries. However, this part of the legislation was permissive, and only a relatively
small number of authorities actively embraced these developments. Moreover, smallholdings
provided only limited opportunities for farmers to progress up the farming ladder as, once
ensconced in a holding, they tended to remain as tenants until they retired (Martin 2000: 84).
The Agriculture Act established a favourable climate for the expansion of the
agricultural sector, a position which was to endure well after 1955. As Figure 1 shows, the
wartime increase in the area of arable land not only dwarfed the rise which had taken place in
the First World War but it the extent of arable farming was also sustained during the post-war
period. The post-war emphasis on arable farming resulted from government policies and
international conditions. World agriculture, with the exception of North America, had been
acutely disrupted by the conflict, and food shortages prevailed across Europe and Asia, a
situation which was not immediately resolved. Even in 1947-8, for example, world food
production was still 7 per cent below levels which had prevailed prior to the outbreak of the
Second World War. By 1955 world food shortages were gradually being replaced by food
surpluses, a position that was eventually to transform the government’s approach to the
agricultural sector. Agriculture had become apolitical, with the two main political parties
being committed to the carrot and stick approach (Self/Storing 1971: 193).
21
Figure 1: Agricultural land use change in England and Wales in the twentieth century
Source: Short et al. 2007: 3.
One of the downsides of the post-war system of agricultural support was that in order to
survive in the more competitive, financially orientated post-war period, farmers had little
22
option but to continue to expand their activities and to intensify production through the use of
inputs including machinery derived from outside the sector. It encouraged the use of artificial
fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides, the removal of hedgerows and ditches, the drainage and
reclamation of scrub and woodland, and the ploughing of indigenous grassland which was
considerable more valuable in terms of its biodiversity than the crops and leys that it replaced.
Change was achieved only at the expense of long term environmental and social
consequences. Industrial farming ultimately led to a depopulated and less aesthetically
pleasing countryside. The wartime concentration on maximising the production of specific
crops and livestock had significant, long term effects on the farming community. A new
morality based on economic criteria emerged, transforming the yeoman of Britain into what
were essentially the yesmen of Britain, endorsing without question the official orthodoxy
about high input farming. An important but isolated exception to this general trend was
promulgated by Eve Balfour, whose seminal work The Living Soil subsequently came to be
regarded as the classic contemporary text of the organic movement. However, the war in
general was a major setback to organic farming (Conford 2007: 67-77).
2. Austria
In the Austrian case, the post-war legacy of wartime regulation can be identified at material,
social and symbolic levels. At the material level, farms and household had become more
dependent on monetary redistribution by the state and incomes on the state-regulated markets
in general, on investments in technical equipment in particular. In the Nazi era the first step of
the long-term substitution of technical capital for land and labour was made, as is shown by
Figure 2. Whereas the social position of the peasantry had mainly depended on landed
property until the 1930s, state transfers and market incomes became more and more
determining. Technical ‘modernisation’ became a crucial question for decision-making at the
farm level in the post-war era. Farmers were therefore forced to concentrate their efforts on
maximising profits in order to generate sufficient income to keep pace with the accelerated
technical change. From the 1950s onwards this culminated in the vicious cycle of the
‘agricultural treadmill’ (Cochrane 1993) which squeezed out smallholdings and small peasant
farms unable to sustain a sufficient level of profitability (Langthaler 2009).
23
Figure 2: The substitution of technical capital for land and labour in Austrian agriculture in
the twentieth century
0
1
10
100
1000
1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
index (loga
rithm
ic scale)
tractors (index 1993=100)
mineral fertiliser (index 1965/69=100)
agricultural labourers (index 1923=100)
agricultural area (index 1923=100)
Note: The dashed lines indicate the Nazi era 1938-45.
Source: Langthaler 2009.
At the social level, the agrarian apparatus had ‘colonised’ rural life-worlds by loosening
regionally and locally embedded social relations and establishing a strong axis with state
agencies and state-regulated markets, e.g. via forced commercialisation by the ‘market order’.
After seven years of state regulation the farming population became accustomed to role of the
state as the leader of the ‘national farm’; thus, the state was accepted as the central actor of the
food regime at the national level. Under these circumstances the crucial question of the
agricultural-political debate after the war was not, if the state might play this role, but how this
should be done. The post-war regulation of agriculture could directly tie in with the state-
farm-axis established in the Nazi era (Langthaler 2009). This pathway culminated in the 1958
Market Order Act (Marktordnungsgesetz) and the 1960 Agricultural Act
(Landwirtschaftsgesetz) which codified the state-led ‘national farm’ as an aggregation of
medium sized and technically upgraded family farms. This framework provided the legal
basis of Austrian agricultural development until the entry in the EU in 1995 (Kröger 2006).
At the symbolic level, the orientation of agricultural experts and also the farming
community to past experiences tended to be weakened in favour of future expectations.
Agriculture became increasingly ‘virtual’, i.e. the farming system was conceived as a ‘project’
which ought to be reconfigured according to an ‘ideal farm’ prescribed by agronomic experts
24
(van der Ploeg 2003: 3 ff.). This norm was associated with intensification, technical progress,
specialisation, commercialisation, productivity and production growth; in short, it promoted a
productivist style of farming. Via the multitude of regulations, driven by political, economic
and symbolic forces, this norm directly or indirectly affected the practice of farming. While
we shall not overestimate the transformation towards a ‘productivist ethic’ in the Nazi era,
evidence suggests that the reproduction of traditional farming styles was considerably eroded
(Stocker 1990; Langthaler 2009).
V. Conclusion
When evaluating the impact of the Second World War on the development of British and
Austrian agricultural development (Langthaler 2010) it is tempting to conclude that not only
was the transition to productivism considerably more evident in Britain than in Austria but
also that it was the direct result of the wartime system of state control of agriculture. In spite
of Britain’s abnormal pre-war dependence on imported food, the country emerged from the
war with significantly enhanced production levels of staple foods, in particularly wheat and
potatoes, and with an industry which had been more structurally transformed than that of
Austria. Though in German-annexed Austria productivity and production numbers rather
stagnated or declined for most crops, the agricultural sector experienced a considerable shift
in the application of biological and mechanical technology, therefore initiating the long-term
substitution of capital for land and labour. Furthermore, a regulatory framework directed by
the state was institutionalised, ranging from formal market orders to informal styles of
‘productive’ farming, upon which the ‘take off’ of agricultural growth in post-war Austria
could build.
In Britain, the main force for this change has been traditionally attributed to the
regulatory framework of price controls and the direction of production undertaken by the state
but coordinated at the local level by the WAECs. Certainly the wartime development of
guaranteed prices became an important feature of the post-war period and contributed
significantly to the ensuing expansion of production. However a number of important
questions remain about the local direction of agriculture. Questions have been raised about
whether they treated farmers in an objective and dispassionate way or not and about the extent
to which they were responsible for disseminating more productive methods of farming. With
the benefit of hindsight it is evident that the story of agriculture in the Second World War was
not the remarkable success story hailed by contemporaries. In the case of labour the system of
25
wartime controls focused on reversing the historical process of decasualisation by directing
new sources of labour to the agricultural sector. Some progress was made in the dissemination
of more productive methods of farming but it would be easy to exaggerate the role played by
state agencies during the war. It is important to remember that the highly acclaimed WAECs
were eventually disbanded and that one of their legacies was that elderly farmers often
equated their adverse experiences of wartime direction to the efforts made by the state to
promote modernisation in the 1950s and 1960s.
While the impact of the state-led ‘revolution’ of British agriculture should not be
overestimated, one should not underestimate the effects of wartime regulation on Austrian
agriculture. Although technical change was far from being a ‘revolution’, institutional
changes had a ‘revolutionary’ impact on post-war agricultural development. They promoted
the spatial and temporal re-ordering of agricultural regulation towards a state-centred and
progressive mode of farming. Of course, this regulatory framework was negotiated by diverse
forms of everyday resistance by the rural population during the war (Münkel 1996; Bauer
1996; Herlemann 1993). However, the institutional innovations in the Nazi era had a
considerable impact on Austrian post-war agricultural development. Though the so-called
‘total re-ordering’ of agriculture by the Nazi regime failed, evidence suggests that the years
1938 to 1945 were an era of partial modernisation. In short, the Nazi era was no ‚great
leap‘ at all, but an irreversible step – a kind of Sattelzeit (Koselleck 1979: 349 ff.) – along the
pathway to agricultural productivism in post-war Austria. The characterisation of the Nazi era
as a transitional period between the ‘conservative modernisation’ of Austrian agriculture until
the 1930s (Bruckmüller 1979) and the enforced modernisation from the 1950s onwards
challenges the conventional wisdom that the years 1938 to 1945 were a downturn or even a
backlash of agricultural development in the twentieth century.
This comparative study shows that productivism in both Britain and Austria was
primarily the result of the post-war decades rather than being induced by the war, and that the
pathway to this regime was considerably more rocky in the British case and less circuitous in
the Austrian case than rural historians have so far been willing to endorse. Though this study
has revealed a number of important issues which challenge our conventional wisdom, it also
illustrates the need to intensify research on the transition to the ‘productivist food regime’
(Friedmann/McMichael 1989) in twentieth century Europe.
26
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