m Russia in the terms of the treaty. Most vitally, however, Germany was growing increasingly dependent on Russian exports. Its consumption of Russian grain was fifty percent higher than its former imports from Argentina -- equivalent to the amount used to feed the entire Wehrmacht -- and Russia could simply cut Hitler off at any time that it proved convenient to do so.
In internal economic terms, German industry worked at top speed in every sector but Hitler fully understood that there was a limit to its productivity and that relief in various forms would have to be found as his plans progressed. One such form of relief was the plunder of people that began with the invasion of Poland. The population of Germany was simply insufficient to the needs of the Nazi military program and the use of prisoners of war or deportees -- a total of eight million in Germany during the war -- as forced labor was one of the principal means of coping with this problem. Aside from the fact that many of the deportees were members of inferior peoples, this plunder et
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