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Timber Famine: German Anxiety over Wood Scarcity after the First World War

Thu, March 15, 10:30am to 12:00pm, Riverside Convention Center, MR 10

Abstract

During the First World War, timber played a significant role at the battle front as well as in war industries, in Germany as elsewhere. Difficulties securing labor and transport to harvest, process, and deliver wood raised worries during the war about the sustainability of wood supply. In an effort to streamline supply, foresters abandoned their tradition of selective harvesting, instead clearcutting swathes along rail lines and roads, saving on labor and transport. This technique, however, made the war’s effects visible to all. Immediately after the war, the revival of civilian construction produced a rising demand for lumber, yet Germany’s loss of important forested territories, the deliveries of timber as part of reparations payments, and the clearcutting of forests by the occupying powers in the Rhineland, cut into domestic supplies. At the same time, the shortage of shipping tonnage and the tumultuous political situation in eastern Europe cut Germany off from its most significant prewar sources of timber imports. By 1922, rampant inflation obliterated Germany’s currency, making the import of timber prohibitively expensive; indeed, Germans turned to exporting timber to earn hard currency, exacerbating the timber shortage. All of this produced an anxiety about the future of Germany’s forests and its wood supply, and alarm about the global wood supply more generally.

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