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“For the Hungry Have No Past nor Do They Belong to a Political Party”: Debates over German Hunger after World War II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2012

Alice Weinreb
Affiliation:
Northwestern University

Extract

When World War II finally came to an end, the Allied forces were primed to face a world of hunger. Since the earliest days of the conflict, experts throughout Europe and Asia had been predicting that the unfathomable scale of the war would result in a massive and permanent restructuring of the global food economy. Military victory itself was cast as inextricably intertwined with control over foodstuffs. In 1940, the British nutritionist and future Director-General of the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization, Sir John Boyd-Orr, had warned that “we are only at the beginning of what looks like a long grim struggle, in which food may be, as it was in the last war, the decisive factor for victory.” Even more ominously, such experts foresaw the end of the war as ushering in a world defined less by peace and more by hunger. Australian economist and humanitarian Frank Lidgett McDougall axiomatically declared that “the exigencies of war and of the relief period will in the next few years render almost all men everywhere in the world highly food-conscious.” The recognition of the global ramifications of hunger meant that, as Nick Cullather put it in his recent article on the history of the calorie, “the construction of a postwar international order began with food.”

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 2012

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References

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11 France was little involved in the waves of international aid directed at hungry postwar Germans, while the Soviets developed different symbolic and economic meanings for the category of German hunger. The French zone, the most historically understudied of the zones, was more similar in popular perception and policy to the Soviet zone than the other western zones. Quality of life here was the worst and rations the lowest of the four zones, and mutual distrust and animosity marked local governance. Wolfrum, Edgar, Französische Besatzungspolitik und deutsche Sozialdemokratie. Politische Neuansätze in der “Vergessenen Zone” bis zur Bildung des Südweststaates 1945–1952 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1991)Google Scholar. The Soviet government was tremendously concerned about the political consequences of widespread hunger and the global food shortage, but these concerns were framed within a larger Soviet history of frequent and devastating famines and food scarcity. Immediately after the war, the hunger that Stalin initially chose to emphasize was that of starving eastern Europeans rather than of Germans. When the Soviet military leadership finally turned to the problem of German hunger, it was couched in pragmatic rather than moralistic terms: Germans must be better fed to improve their productivity, as well as to ensure their allegiance to socialism. In fact, the Soviet zone (SBZ) recognized even earlier than the American zone the political importance of rations for winning German support. The SBZ especially prioritized food distribution to schoolchildren and worker canteens. The Soviet Zone never recognized a unique quality or moral significance to German hunger, however, nor was it embraced as the main priority of reconstruction as it was in the west.

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15 One of the earliest postwar studies of German civilians, sociologist Hilde Thurnwald's 1948 study of around 500 families living in occupied Berlin, focused on the struggles of women to acquire food for themselves, their husbands, and especially their children. Thurnwald, Hilde, Gegenwartsprobleme Berliner Familien. Eine soziologische Untersuchung an 498 Familien (Berlin: Weidmann, 1948)Google Scholar. The emergence of feminist and women's history in the FRG in the 1970s and 1980s led to the discovery of the cultural and social importance of the occupation years for the history of West Germany specifically in terms of women's experience and everyday life. Keller-Teske, Christa, Mangeljahre. Lebensverhältnisse und Lebensgefühl im Landkreis Stade, 1945–1949: Eine Dokumentation (Stade: Verlag Stadt Stade, 1989)Google Scholar; Kuhn, Annette, Frauen in der deutschen Nachkriegszeit. Frauenarbeit 1945–1949 (Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1984)Google Scholar; Meyer, Sibylle and Schulze, Eva, Von Liebe sprach damals keiner. Familienalltag in der Nachkriegszeit (Munich: Beck, 1985)Google Scholar; Meyer, Sibylle and Schulze, Eva, Wie wir das alles geschafft haben. Alleinstehende Frauen berichten über das Leben nach 1945 (Munich: Beck, 1988)Google Scholar.

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17 For example, Donna Harsch illustrates that German communists in the Soviet zone believed that women's everyday concerns, primarily over food shortages, explained their striking lack of success in gaining women's support for the party. Indeed, communists interpreted this perceived-as-female obsession with getting enough to eat as antithetical to an appropriate political awareness. Harsch, Donna, “Approach/Avoidance: Communists and Women in East Germany, 1945-9,” Social History 25, no. 2 (2000): 156182CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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31 Baade, Amerika und der deutsche Hunger, 5.

32 Grossmann, Jews, Germans, and Allies, 175.

33 In 1946, the 266,000 DPs in the British zone received the same rations as German civilians. Former concentration camp inmates and victims of Nazi persecution received an extra 400 calories a day. In the American zone, DPs who were living in camps received food from American stocks, and therefore it was of a higher quality than typical German rations, which made up 2,000-2,400 calories a day; those who could prove their status as “persecuted” were granted a daily supplement. U.S.-British Bipartite Food and Agriculture Panel, Food and Agriculture, 62. In the Soviet zone, “victims of fascism” were also allotted more generous rations, but these were usually provided from German supplies. Landesarchiv Berlin B Rep 209 #1551.

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38 While nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German nutritionists relied upon anthropological studies done in Africa to establish theories of diet and human evolution, during the Third Reich, research turned to the various “races” of central and eastern Europe, with special attention paid to the dietary habits of the Slavs. During the war, as food supplies became increasingly restricted, German nutritionists often advocated a more “Russian” diet for the populace, which was described as one of extremely low caloric value and cost that nonetheless maintained a relatively high level of productivity.

39 Cited in Weißbecker, “Wenn hier Deutsche wohnen,” 26.

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41 See Gerlach, Christian, Krieg, Ernährung, Völkermord. Deutsche Vernichtungspolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Zurich: Pendo-Verlag, 2001)Google Scholar.

42 Postwar German nutritionists continued to analyze traditional Russian dietary habits, in particular the purported heavy consumption of sunflower seeds, when looking for ways to stretch rations and stave off starvation among the civilian population. Saller, Kurt, Kampf dem Hunger. Eine Aussprache (Stuttgart: Hippokrates, 1948), 1617Google Scholar.

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46 Since its founding in 1947, the West German news magazine Der Spiegel had run extensive coverage of the so-called “Famine-Land” of the U.S.S.R., reporting on cannibalism and mass starvation due to land reform paired with a specifically communist disregard for life.” Der Spiegel 20 (May 1947)Google Scholar.

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48 Ibid., 88.

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53 Orlopp, Josef, Im Kampf gegen den Hunger (Berlin: SED Landesverb. Gross-Berlin, 1947), 3Google Scholar. Communists were not the only ones who were shocked by the German insistence that things had been “better under Hitler,” particularly in regard to food supplies. The occupying forces as well repeatedly expressed their frustration over this seemingly constant refrain. Photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White, in her dramatic record of her travels through defeated Germany in 1945, recorded such sentiments frequently. Bourke-White, Margaret, “Dear Fatherland, Rest Quietly”: A Report on the Collapse of Hitler's “Thousand Years” (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1946)Google Scholar.

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72 Gillmann, Helmut, “Über die Schwierigkeit der vollständigen Erfassung der Unterernährungsschäden,” Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift 9 (March 1949)Google Scholar. See also “Betrifft: Hungerödeme,” Historisches Archiv der Stadt Köln, 646 #6.

73 Düssseldorf Stadtarchiv NW 45 #807.

74 For example, mortality for many common diseases decreased during the Hunger Years, including deaths due to heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. “Betrifft: Hungerödeme,” Historisches Archiv der Stadt Köln, 646 #6.

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77 “Resolution der deutschen Ärzte zur deutschen Ernährungslage,” Landesarchiv Berlin B Rep 012 #131.

78 Cited in Gerst, Thomas, Ärztliche Standesorganisation und Standespolitik in Deutschland 1945–1955 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2004), 135Google Scholar.

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82 Cited in Trittel, Hunger und Politik, 110.

83 Cited in Gries, Die Rationen-Gesellschaft, 11.

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85 Cited in Rothenberger, Die Hungerjahre, 196.

86 See Grossmann, “Grams, Calories, and Food,” for a closely related discussion of the human-rights claims made by displaced persons, particularly non-German Jews, during the Hunger Years.

87 “Denkschrift für die deutsche Wirtschaftskommission f.d. sowj. Besatzungszone zu Ernährungsfragen und zum Kartensystem,” Stadtarchiv Dresden 11393 #321.

88 “Resolution der deutschen Ärzte zur deutschen Ernährungslage,” Landesarchiv Berlin B Rep 012 #131; and Trittel, Hunger und Politik, 156.

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92 “Resolution der deutschen Ärzte zur deutschen Ernährungslage,” Landesarchiv Berlin B Rep 012 #131.

93 Schulten, Die Hungerkrankheit, 43.

94 Saller, Kampf dem Hunger, 12.

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98 Cited in Hans Erich Volkmann, “Landwirtschaft und Ernährung in Hitlers Europa, 1939–45,” in Das Russlandbild, ed. Volkmann, 9.

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102 “Starving German Nation,” Friends' War Victims' Relief Committee Records, Box no. 2, Hoover Institution Archives.

103 “Fragen an den Reichspräsidenten,” BArch R 43I/1270.

104 “Synopsis of Pros and Cons,” National Committee on Food for the Small Democracies Records, Box no. 27, Hoover Institution Archives.

105 Ibid.

106 Cited in Trittel, Hunger und Politik, 49.

107 Cited in Steinert, Johannes-Dieter, Nach Holocaust und Zwangsarbeit. Britische humanitäre Hilfe in Deutschland: Die Helfer, die Befreiten und die Deutschen (Osnabrück: Secolo, 2007), 152Google Scholar.

108 Langer, William, The Famine in Germany (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946), 23Google Scholar.

109 Ibid., 9.

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111 “Die Brücke der Menschlichkeit. Ausländische Liebesgabensendungen für US-Zone,” BArch R 86/3585.

112 Sommer, Humanitäre Auslandshilfe.

113 Steinert, Nach Holocaust und Zwangsarbeit, 148.

114 Geikie-Cobb, Ivo, Germany: Disease and Treatment (London: Hutchinson, 1945), 132Google Scholar.