doubt that many millions of people will die of starvation." This memorandum has been described as: The historian Christopher Browning writes that on 2 May 1941, the state secretaries of various ministries met with Thomas, and agreed to make it a priority to supply the army with food from Russia, and to ship other essential agricultural products, including grain, to Germany. "In doing so," Thomas's protocol laconically stated, "umpteen million people will doubtless starve to death, if we extract everything necessary for us from the country." While the memorandum did not estimate how many millions would die, Backe himself stated that the "surplus population" of the Soviet Union was 20 to 30 million. German policy for the invasion, and instructions to the troops, were deliberately calculated either to kill these 20 to 30 million through starvation, or force them to flee to Siberia. Notes References Barnett, Correlli ed. Hitler’s Generals. New York: Grove Press, 2003. Fest, Joachim. Hitler. Orlando, FL.: Mariner Books, 2002. Mitcham, Samuel W., and Gene Mueller. Hitler’s Commanders: Officers of the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe, the Kriegsmarine, and the Waffen-SS. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012. Read, Anthony. The Devil's Disciples: Hitler's Inner Circle. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003. Rothfels, Hans. The German Opposition to Hitler: An Appraisal. Hinsdale, IL: Henry Regnery Company, 1948. Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988. Speer, Albert. Inside the Third Reich. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. Tooze, Adam, The Wages of Destruction, Allen Lane 2006 ; available in as Ökonomie der Zerstörung. Die Geschichte der Wirtschaft im Nationalsozialismus. Aus dem Engl. von Yvonne Badal. Siedler, München 2007, . (Neuaufl., Schriftenreihe der Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. Bd. 663, ; Neuaufl. Pantheon, München 2008, .) Wheeler-Bennett, John W. The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics, 1918-1945. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1967. External links Georg Thomas at Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand 1890 births 1946 deaths People from Forst (Lausitz) People from the Province of Brandenburg German Army generals of World War II Generals of Infantry (Wehrmacht) Reichswehr personnel German resistance members Members of the 20 July plot Prisoners and detainees of Germany