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Notes -
The Wikipedia article on the so-called "Hunger Plan" includes this part:
The most reliable figures for the death rate among Soviet prisoners of war in German captivity reveal that 3.3 million died of a total of 5.7 million captured between June 1941 and February 1945, most of them directly or indirectly from starvation.[20] Of these 3.3 million, 2 million had already died by the beginning of February 1942.[21] The enormous number of deaths was the result of a deliberate policy of starvation directed against Soviet POWs. The German planning staffs had reckoned on capturing and thus having to feed up to two million prisoners within the first eight weeks of the war, i.e. roughly the same number as during the Battle of France in 1940.[22] The number of French, Belgian and Dutch POWs who died in German captivity was extremely low compared with deaths among Soviet POWs.
Based on the last two sentences, it seems to be that this case of mass starvation was due to two erroneous assumptions based on faulty and insufficient military intelligence data, namely that the Red Army is much smaller than it actually was, and that it can be defeated in 8 weeks, that is, before the autumn rain season begins in 1941, rendering most roads in the Western USSR practically impassable.
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