Food and War in Twentieth Century Europe

Rachel Duffett, Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317134404
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Studi sullo sviluppo globale

Wars cannot be fought and sustained without food and this unique collection explores the impact of war on food production, allocation and consumption in Europe in the twentieth century. A comparative perspective which incorporates belligerent, occupied and neutral countries provides new insights into the relationship between food and war. The analysis ranges from military provisioning and systems of food rationing to civilians' survival strategies and the role of war in stimulating innovation and modernization.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska

Why Food and War

Wars cannot be fought without food and this book explores the impact of war on food production, allocation and consumption in Europe in the twentieth century. An adequate diet is of course necessary to sustain armies, but it is equally imperative to maintain civilian health and morale in the era of total war. The analysis ranges from military provisioning and systems of food rationing to civilians’ survival strategies and the role of war in stimulating innovation and modernization. These issues are approached from a comparative perspective. Food and War in Twentieth Century Europe brings together 18 scholars from many European countries. By incorporating this wide range of research into a single volume, this book shows how the competing claims of military and civilian provisioning were dealt with in different countries and conflicts.

Food and War examines the challenges involved in feeding huge armies as well as the difficulties of administering food controls and rationing schemes on the home front. Official distribution channels were frequently bypassed in black markets and there were important differences between social groups as well as urban and rural populations in terms of access to food supplies. Food should not be understood as a static resource and this book demonstrates how new and alternative foods were developed and utilized in times of scarcity. This included technological innovation in food processing, a shift from meat to grain in the diet and the emergence of new foods such as horsemeat. Food and War incorporates belligerent, occupied and neutral countries. The focus is on the impact of the two world wars in Germany, France and the United Kingdom, but this is supplemented with case studies from several other countries including Denmark and Iceland and conflicts such as the Spanish Civil War.

Europe in the Era of Total War: The Importance of Food

The literature on war in Europe during the twentieth century and particularly the two world wars is enormous, but the central role of food in modern warfare has not received the attention it deserves. There are several monographs and shorter contributions, but the topic has not generally been approached from a comparative perspective. One important exception is a collection edited by Frank Trentmann and Flemming Just, Food and Conflict in Europe in the Age of the Two World Wars.1 Trentmann and Just define conflict in a broad sense as competition over food allocation rather than focusing specifically on war and they approach this topic within a wider context of food scarcity between the 1890s and the 1950s. Another is The Taste of War: World War Two and the Battle for Food by Lizzie Collingham, which is framed within a global perspective. This book is aimed at a general readership and it draws on an impressive range of secondary literature, but there is little primary research.2

There are a number of studies which explore the specific problems of urban food supplies during the First World War. This includes work on Berlin, Paris and The Hague, which provides an interesting example of the impact of war on a city in a neutral country.3 Other studies of the home front and the politics of food include Lars Lih, Bread and Authority in Russia, 1914–21, Margaret Barnett, British Food Policy during the First World War, William Moskoff, The Bread of Affliction: The Food Supply in the USSR During World War II and Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Austerity in Britain: Rationing, Controls and Consumption, 1939–55.4 Food and War helps to contextualize scholarship on particular cities, countries and wars by bringing together research on both world wars and other conflicts and by incorporating belligerents, occupied territories and neutral countries whose agricultural sectors and trade patterns were profoundly disrupted by war.

The role of food in wartime can be approached from a variety of perspectives. Mancur Olson’s classic economic analysis of wartime shortages explores the history of British food supplies from the Napoleonic War until the Second World War.5 Olson draws attention to the UK’s exceptional dependency on food imports, which superficially left the country extremely vulnerable in contrast with self-sufficient nations or food exporters such as Russia. In reference to the First World War, Avner Offer has argued that the UK benefited from long-established trading relationships and a sophisticated distribution system, strengthened by imperial ties and military alliances, which made it possible to maintain sufficient imports in the face of blockade and submarine attacks on merchant shipping.6 By contrast, as Paul Vincent has demonstrated Germany suffered severely as a result of the Allied blockade during the First World War.7 Britain’s imperial ties and advantageous position in the global food trading system yet again secured vital imports in the Second World War, when the UK further benefited from Lend-Lease supplies from the USA. An effectively administered policy of food controls, rationing and the expansion of communal feeding, including so-called British Restaurants, further ensured that resources, which were more plentiful than elsewhere, were distributed relatively equitably.8 Thus, the British experience was in many ways exceptional.

By contrast, hunger and starvation were rife on the European continent during both world wars. In the Second World War, the German occupation authorities steered food supplies towards the German war machine and German civilian consumption. Food functioned as a weapon and rations in occupied Europe frequently did not take nutritional requirements into account resulting in severe undernutrition and mass starvation. French and Dutch administrators aimed to prevent deterioration in public health standards, for example by means of nutrition education. The success of this endeavour was limited as demonstrated by excess mortality among vulnerable groups in occupied France and the Dutch hunger winter of 1944–45.9 The German military cut off the food supplies to Russian cities, a million people died in the siege of Leningrad alone, and similar numbers of Soviet prisoners of war were deliberately starved to death. Another group of ‘useless eaters’ were Jews, millions of whom were starved or executed.10 Occupied Greece provides another example of wartime famine in this period.11 By contrast, the occupation of Denmark was relatively lenient and civilian food supplies were maintained despite substantial food exports to Germany.12 The example of Iceland, where the war resulted in unprecedented economic growth as a result of high demand for Icelandic fish and other resources, provides an important counterpoint to the dominant pattern in continental Europe.

Nutrition scientists subscribed to different theories about protein requirements around the turn of the century and the question as to what an adequate diet actually consisted of was hotly debated in the wake of the discovery of vitamins.13 British and German nutrition scientists differed in their understanding of dietary requirements during the First World War and Mikulas Teich has argued that the former had a greater influence on policy whereas David Smith has warned that this should not be exaggerated.14 The commitment to a high protein diet and priority attached to military provisioning in Germany contributed to defeat and revolution. By contrast, the Danish rationing system based on nutritionist Mikkel Hindhede’s low protein diet helped this neutral country not only to avoid starvation despite the blockade but, arguably, contributed to improvements in public health standards. Scientists played a much larger role in the Second World War, although David Smith has stressed that ‘scientists’ should not be seen as a monolithic group and highlighted that the relationship between scientific findings and policy decisions in Britain were complex.15 Nazi Germany styled itself as a modern, scientific nation and the regime invested heavily in food science and technology.

Wars are agents for change, but it is important to distinguish between short-term adaptation and longer-term transformations with regard to government policy, food production and individual habits. The imperative of feeding armies and civilians in the context of wartime shortage resulted in significant technological progress for example with regard to dehydration and freezing techniques in Nazi Germany. This technology, which was developed in collaboration between the military and major industrial firms, provided West-German industry with a technological advantage during the period of postwar reconstruction. Many other substitutes and experimental foods, ranging from dried egg to ground wood in bread flour did not acquire lasting significance. While dried egg was popular in Britain during the period of rationing in the 1940s, experiments with unusual ingredients in bread flour, which included tree bark, straw and lichen in Czech lands functioned more as a rhetorical device to ridicule allegedly mad German scientists than as a genuine addition to food resources during the First World War. By contrast, a longer-term change in France was the adoption of horsemeat, first popularized during the Franco-Prussian war, which became an important source of cheap meat until the 1960s.

Finally, it is necessary to take into account cultural preferences and culinary traditions. Horsemeat was not generally adopted throughout Europe, although horses and also dogs and cats were consumed in emergencies, for example in Slovenia in later stages of the First World War or during the siege of Leningrad in 1941–44. Survival strategies extended beyond eating taboo foods and city dwellers took up small-scale home production along with foraging and purchase of food from peasants in the nearby countryside. Thus, one innovative strategy of coping with scarcity was effectively a return to former or traditional foodways. Another important strategy was barter and sharing within networks such as extended families, neighbourhoods or particular communities. Food shortages gave rise to extensive black markets which not only heightened inequalities in food consumption between different social groups, but also eroded conventional moral and ethical standards.16

Food and eating should not be understood as simply ingesting calories and nutrients, but rather as wider cultural and religious practices. German Jews were confronted with the challenge to uphold their dietary laws in wartime during the First World War and entitlements to food and eating were understood within the context of reciprocal relationships during the Spanish Civil War. Another problem was monotony which became a major grievance among British soldiers in the First World War and the difficulties in obtaining high-prized foods such as meat led to extensive discontent in Britain during the Second World War, although the country escaped the severe shortages and starvation common on the European continent.

Thematic Structure of the Book

This book is divided into four parts, which examine the relationship between food and war in twentieth century Europe from a range of perspectives.

Part I: Soldiers and their Food

Part I explores the challenges involved in feeding the German and British armies during the First World War. Drawing on previously unused sources, these chapters enhance our understanding of army provisioning in the Great War. Lack of prewar planning precipitated experimentation and soldiers were forced to adapt to new eating patterns and unfamiliar foods, which raised particular problems for Jewish soldiers serving in the German army. Despite plentiful rations, soldiers’ diets in Britain fell short of nutritional requirements and there is evidence of dietary deficiencies.

Chapter 2 by Peter Lummel examines wartime innovations in feeding the German Army. The country’s internal struggle over supplies drove the quest for substitutes and innovative solutions to prevent hunger. Many ‘civilian’ soldiers found themselves eating previously untried foods such as factory-produced jam and tinned meat. The importance of vegetables in German Army rations provides a counterpoint to the British experience of army provisioning. This topic is discussed in Chapter 3 by Rachel Duffett, which challenges the dominant narrative that British Army provisioning on the Western Front was an unmitigated success. In reality, soldiers’ rations, particularly those in the exposed areas of the frontline, were often deficient in quantity. The ration, which frequently consisted of tinned bully beef and hardtack biscuit, also lacked variety. This resulted in widespread health problems such as the gastric disorders, boils and bleeding gums. The final chapter in this part by Steven Schouten analyses the impact of the First World War on the kosher foodways of German Jews. Jewish soldiers were expected to adapt to a gentile diet and the majority ate pork, which was the meat commonly supplied to soldiers. This was perceived as an unavoidable aspect of a military existence, but Jewish soldiers also found ways to uphold their foodways, for example during holidays. Jewish women’s attachment to kosher eating actually deepened despite food scarcity experienced on the home front. Food shortages, thus, had the effect of renewing a Jewish sense of identity.

Part II: Home Front: The Citizens Adapt

Given the priority generally attached to military requirements, the second part focuses on the difficulties experienced by civilians to secure adequate food supplies. These chapters draw attention to the role of women as food providers. Case studies of Germany and parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the First World War examine the em...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Preface, Alain Drouard
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• PART I: SOLDIERS AND THEIR FOOD
• PART II: HOME FRONT: THE CITIZENS ADAPT
• PART III: HOME FRONT: THE STATE INTERVENES
• PART IV: WAR, MODERNIZATION AND INNOVATION
• Index