Estimating that the meat ration had dropped by up to 80% in five months of fighting in Russia, and citing many other sudden changes in living conditions, Smith wrote that by the time he left Germany in late 1941, "for the first time ... the German people are undernourished".[94] The system gave extra rations for men involved in heavy industry, and extremely low starvation rations for Jews and Poles in the areas occupied by Germany, but not to the Poles inside Germany, many of whom had been brought in to perform heavy labor in German war industries.