Georg Thomas Georg Thomas ( 20 February 1890 — 29 December 1946 ) was a German general and a resistance fighter in the Third Reich . He was also heavily involved in the planning and carrying out of the economic exploitation of the Soviet Union , including in particular the Hunger Plan . Career summary . Thomas was born in Forst ( Lausitz ) , Brandenburg . The factory owner ' s son and later general joined Infantry Regiment 63 as an ensign and a career soldier in 1908 . From 1928 , he dealt with armament questions at the Army Weapons Office in the Reich Defence Ministry in Berlin . In 1939 , he became head of the Defence Economy and Armament Office in the " Oberkommando der Wehrmacht " . He was a member of the board of Kontinentale Öl AG ( an oil company whose purpose was to exploit petroleum resources in occupied countries ) as well as " Reichswerke Hermann Göring " , a major iron and steel company . Thomas , who since 1940 had been a General of Infantry recognized early on that Germany ' s ability to wage a lengthy war was limited by the state of its economy . Since he still had contacts with his former superior Ludwig Beck , as well as with Carl Friedrich Goerdeler and Johannes Popitz , he got to work as early as 1938 - 39 on the planning for a military coup d ' état against Adolf Hitler . In November 1942 , Thomas resigned from the Defence Economy and Armament Office . Albert Speer and his Armament Ministry , meanwhile , had taken over almost all the expertise relating to armament issues . After the failed attempt on Hitler ' s life at the Wolf ' s Lair in East Prussia on 20 July 1944 , all the old plans from 1938 - 39 were found , leading to Thomas ' s arrest on 11 October 1944 , followed by stays in the Flossenbürg and Dachau concentration camp s . In late April 1945 he was transferred to Tyrol together with about 140 other prominent inmates , where the SS left the prisoners behind . They were liberated by the Fifth U . S . Army on May 5 , 1945 . Thomas died in Allied custody in 1946 . Role in Hunger Plan . Thomas has been described as someone who at times " toyed with opposition to Hitler ' s war " but who fundamentally was a " ruthless pragmatist " whose only concern was " Germany ' s future as a great power . " As such he was deeply involved in the crafting of Nazi policy for the occupied Soviet Union , which in short was designed to exploit the entire resources of the country for the benefit of Germany and the German armed forces , at the expense of the deaths by starvation of millions of people . This became known as the Hunger Plan . Thomas worked closing with Herbert Backe , the de facto chief of Nazi agriculture , in developing this plan . In the course of this , on 2 May 1941 , Thomas held a high level meeting to review the strategy . An internal Wehrmacht memorandum prepared by his staff described this policy and acknowledged that " ' if we take what we need out of the country , there can be no doubt that many millions of people will die of starvation . ' " This memorandum has been described as : The German historian Hans - Ulrich Wehler thinks : " „ Georg Thomas [ . . . ] accepted as a consequence of this strategy of warfare that x million people will starve there . “ " While the memorandum did not estimate how many millions would die , Backe himself stated that the " surplus population " of the Soviet Union was 20 to 30 million . German policy for the invasion , and instructions to the troops , were deliberately calculated either to kill these 20 to 30 million through starvation , or force them to flee to Siberia .