As we
move along in the centennial of the World War I, we come to some strange
centennials. The year 1915 brought poison gas, the great shell crises which heightened the "crisis" process of war centralization so much, and the spectacular failure of the Entente powers at
Gallipoli. In thinking of the 1915, so much of the war fed directly into the
collectivist war-and-welfare state of modern times, it is hard to single out the
most significant “crisis.” But I have a nomination for the weirdest.
It is
a spectacular case illustrating both the complexities and the cost of central
planning.
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| Pigs in Germany (German Federal Archives via Wikimedia) |
I am
thinking of the Pig Slaughter (Schweinmord) in Germany. Beginning in November
1914, the government had put in place price ceilings on potatoes, which made it
more profitable for farmers to feed their potatoes to their hogs than to sell
them, though the government—naturally--also
rapidly outlawed the foddering of potatoes. The inevitable potato shortages
were immediate and severe. In the cities, outcries were raised, but against the
farmers rather than the government.
Soon,
journalists and politicians were claiming that people and pigs were in a
competition for the potatoes, and that some portion of Germany’s twenty-seven
million pigs must go. Beginning in March, the government therefore signed the
death warrant of nine million of the ravenous swine. It is hardly surprising
that in this welter of planning and intervention, neither potatoes nor pork
became more plentiful.
For
more on the economics of World War I, see “The Hindenburg Program of 1916: A
Central Experiment in Wartime Planning:
