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Government Aid and Relief in Occupied Areas (GARIOA) was a program under which the United States after the 1945 end of
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
from 1946 onwards provided emergency aid to the occupied nations of
Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...
,
Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
, and
Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...
. The aid was predominantly in the form of food to alleviate starvation in the occupied areas.


Germany

Germany received GARIOA help between July 1946 and March 1950. In 1946, the
US Congress The United States Congress is the legislature, legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a Bicameralism, bicameral legislature, including a Lower house, lower body, the United States House of Representatives, ...
had voted GARIOA funds to prevent "such disease and unrest as would endanger the forces of occupation" in occupied Germany. Congress stipulated that the funds were only to be used to import food, petroleum and fertilizers. Use of GARIOA funds to import raw materials of vital importance to the German industry was explicitly forbidden. At the time the US still operated under the occupation directive
JCS 1067 The Morgenthau Plan was a proposal to weaken Germany following World War II by eliminating its arms industry and removing or destroying other key industries basic to military strength. This included the removal or destruction of all industrial ...
which directed US forces to "take no steps looking toward the economic rehabilitation of Germany rdesigned to maintain or strengthen the German economy". (see Industrial plans for Germany after World War II) In 1948 the combined US, UK and France expenditure on relief food in Germany stood at a total of close to $1.5 billion. Still, German food rations were deficient in composition and remained far below recommended minimum nutrition levels. Officials in authority admitted that the distributed rations "represented a fairly rapid starvation level". The aid received by Germany through GARIOA was, just as the later
Marshall Plan The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative enacted in 1948 to provide foreign aid to Western Europe. The United States transferred $13.3 billion (equivalent to $ in ) in economic recovery pr ...
aid (starting 1948), charged to the Germans. By 1953
West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...
's combined GARIOA and Marshall Plan debt was over $3.3 billion. It was however decided in 1953 that West Germany only had to repay $1.1 billion. The amount was repaid by 1971. During 1945 private organizations such as the
International Red Cross The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is a aid agency, humanitarian organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, and is a three-time Nobel Prize laureate. The organization has played an instrumental role in the development of Law of ...
had been prohibited by the Allies from assisting ethnic Germans with food supplies, but in early 1946 this prohibition was rescinded (see CRALOG). In the spring of 1946, the International Red Cross was also finally allowed to visit and provide limited amounts of food aid to prisoners of war in the US occupation zone. (see
Disarmed Enemy Forces Disarmed Enemy Forces (DEF, less commonly, Surrendered Enemy Forces) is a US designation for soldiers who surrender to an adversary after hostilities end, and for those POWs who had already surrendered and were held in camps in occupied German ...
)....


Japan

The first point in the US directive for the supply of food for civilian relief in Japan as adopted in the fall of 1945 and reconfirmed in 1946 read as follows: ''"a. The objectives of the relief policy of the United States are to prevent such starvation and widespread disease and civil unrest as would (1) clearly endanger the occupying forces, and (2) permanently obstruct the ultimate objectives of the occupation."'' To prevent "hunger and social unrest"; in fiscal year 1946 GARIOA grants to Japan were $92.63 million, in 1947 $287.33 million, in 1948 $351.40 million. In Western Europe the Marshall plan from 1948 onwards contributed to a reconstruction of the economies. In order to further remove Japan as a potential future military threat after
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
the Far Eastern Commission had decided that Japan was to be partly de-industrialized. The necessary dismantling of Japanese industry was foreseen to have been achieved when Japanese standards of living had been reduced to those existing in Japan the period 1930–1934. In the end the adopted program of de-industrialisation in Japan was implemented to a lesser degree than the similar US "industrial disarmament" program in Germany.Frederick H. Gareau "Morgenthau's Plan for Industrial Disarmament in Germany" The Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Jun., 1961), pp. 531 In view of the cost to American taxpayers for the emergency aid, in April 1948 the Johnston Committee Report recommended that the economy of Japan should be reconstructed. The report included suggestions for reductions in war reparations, and a relaxation of the "economic deconcentration" policy. For the fiscal year of 1949 funds were moved from the GARIOA budget into an Economic Rehabilitation in Occupied Areas (EROA) programme, to be used for the import of materials needed for
economic reconstruction Economic reconstruction is a process for creating a proactive vision of economic change. The most basic idea is that problems in the economy, such as deindustrialization, environmental decay, outsourcing, industrial incompetence, poverty and a ...
. Volunteer organizations created Licensed Agencies for Relief in Asia (LARA) to coordinate their efforts and have a single point of contact with the military authorities which had refused to deal with them on a one-to-one basis. LARA was operational 1946–1952 and sent many tonnes of food and clothing to Japan.


See also

* American food policy in occupied Germany *
United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA, pronounced ) was an international relief agency founded in November 1943 on the joint initiative of the United States, United Kingdom, USSR, and the Republic of China. Its purpose ...
*
CARE Care may refer to: Organizations and projects * CARE (New Zealand), Citizens Association for Racial Equality, a former New Zealand organisation * CARE (England) West Midlands, Central Accident Resuscitation Emergency team, a team of doctors & ...


Notes


External links


Richard Dominic Wiggers, ''The United States and the Refusal to Feed German Civilians after World War II''
{dead link, date=January 2017 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes

May 2003, Peaceworks No. 49,
United States Institute of Peace The United States Institute of Peace (USIP) is an American independent, nonprofit, national institute funded by the U.S. Congress and tasked with promoting conflict resolution and prevention worldwide. See alsPDF on USIP website. It provides rese ...

''U.S. Occupation Assistance: Iraq, Germany and Japan Compared''
CRS Report for Congress, Order Code RL33331
''America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq''
By: James Dobbins, John G. McGinn, Keith Crane, Seth G. Jones, Rollie Lal, Andrew Rathmell, Rachel M. Swanger, Anga Timilsina (RAND corporation)

Secretary of the Treasury in the Truman Administration, 1946–53.
"Germany and the Political Economy of the Marshall Plan, 1947–52: A Re-Revisionist View" (with Albrecht Ritschl)
in: Barry Eichengreen (ed.), Europe's Post-War Recovery, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 199–245. Aftermath of World War II in the United States Economic history of Austria Economic history of Japan Economy of West Germany Food policy in Germany Occupied Japan Allied occupation of Germany Allied occupation of Austria Humanitarian crises in the aftermath of World War II