The Hunger Winter… The images are on our retinas. The city dwellers in the occupied western part of the Netherlands had a harrowing shortage of food, clothing, soap and fuel. Almost the same threatened in the autumn of 1944 in the liberated south. How did this underexposed crisis arise and why were the Allies unable to intervene in time?
On November 21, 1944, more than a hundred men, women and children gathered for a demonstration on the Frederik van Eedenplein in Eindhoven. Their goal:higher rations. Like most cities in the south of the Netherlands, Eindhoven had been struggling with serious food shortages since the liberation on September 18. That afternoon, all Philips employees also stopped working. Mayor Verdijk and the military commissioner for Eindhoven, Major Verhoeff, invited a delegation for an emergency meeting at Philips headquarters.
Three hours later, the delegates were able to return with the good news that additional coupons for fat, sugar, milk, meat, and chocolate would be provided. It later turned out that these extra food provisions had already been made available before the demonstration. In order to give the masses an outlet, the local authorities and the management of Philips had allowed the demonstration to continue unmolested.
800 kcal per day
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The food crisis that took place in the autumn of 1944 in the southern Netherlands was neglected due to the Hunger Winter in the western Netherlands. Yet the southern provinces were the first to come into contact with large-scale food shortages. Before the liberation, the official daily ration counted 1630 kcal, in mid-November 1944 this was only 800 kcal.
There was also a great lack of clothing, footwear, soap and fuel. Many companies were silent. The youth hung out in the streets and begged the allied camps for chewing gum, chocolate or cigarettes, much to the chagrin of the elderly. Meat was only available at slaughterhouses, where hundreds of people queued for a piece of horses and cows killed in battle. During the low point, at the end of November, most stores were empty. Food vouchers were not exchangeable.
Against the famine
The short-lived food crisis was an unintended consequence of the liberation of the southern Netherlands. The military fighting, bombing and inundations had largely destroyed the infrastructure and made food transport almost impossible. In addition, many houses had been destroyed and civilians who still had a roof over their heads had to take in evacuees and soldiers.
The latter were often welcome guests, precisely because of the scarcity:at least they got their rations. For example, a retired chief engineer of the Dutch Railways wrote in November 1944:'We are approaching the famine. A happiness for many families are now the billeted and soldiers, who, given how we stand, sometimes give something for us.'
Hunger tours in North Brabant
Nevertheless, the scenes from the crisis months in the southern Netherlands are reminiscent of the well-known image of the Hunger Winter. For example, the Military Authority received a burning letter about hunger raids in North Brabant:'If you are on the country roads, you see columns of house fathers and house mothers as well as children, who try to solve their potato problem individually.'
Black trade was rampant. In addition to food, this mainly concerned cigarettes and drink, which the Allies had brought with them in large quantities. In addition, the lack of fuel led to large-scale illegal logging. The Eindhoven Vensedijk, formerly a beautiful avenue with heavy trees, was completely bare by February 1945 and the woods next to it had half disappeared.
During the occupation, food, although meager and frugal, had never been a major problem. The London government had also assured several times via Radio Oranje that large food supplies were ready for the liberated Netherlands. So people expected rapid improvement, but things turned out differently.
The Militair Gezag (MG) wrote on 15 November 1944 about the mood among the citizens of Eindhoven:'The food problem has now, and this applies to all circles of our city, become so acute that it not only dominates all other problems, but even completely controlled and makes these problems come to the fore more sharply than would be the case if there were no food problem.” The disappointment about the liberation was great.
Allies responsible
Responsibility for food aid to liberated Europe lay with the military authorities, that is to say for the Netherlands with the MG under the command of Major General Hendrik J. Kruls. The MG, in turn, was subordinate to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) of Commander-in-Chief Dwight D. Eisenhower and was additionally placed at the disposal of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery's 21st Army Group to help carry out the civilian responsibilities of this army group.
Prime Minister Pieter Sjoerds Gerbrandy repeatedly questioned SHAEF's position and attitude. In a letter to General Eisenhower dated November 3, 1944, he wrote that all reports from the liberated area concluded that the food position of the civilian population was appalling and that 'the Netherlands Government must regretfully come to the conclusion that SHAEF has not been able to fulfill their assurances. '.
Gerbrandy's criticism was understandable, but not entirely justified. SHAEF had prepared the food aid, but had not taken into account a phased liberation. As a result, the essential supply of food from the agrarian northeast was blocked. In addition, the Allies were dealing with an area that had suffered extensive damage and had no supplies or means of transport.
Because a considerable part of the food supply went to the troops, aid to civilians was forced to be limited to emergency relief in the front lines. Life in the liberated areas had to be maintained with minimal means until the situation at the front stabilised.
The Dutch government in London felt responsible and insisted on being allowed to send food to the liberated area itself. In October 1944, for example, she proposed to have food parcels dropped from airplanes. The Allies did not allow this, because the final victory over Nazi Germany took precedence. The Gerbrandy government's proposal for food aid via the Red Cross also sparked heated and lengthy discussions. During these negotiations, the front stabilized and the south slowly emerged from the worst distress.
Worse in the south
At the end of November 1944, the first of the three hundred lorries with foodstuffs that the MG headquarters in Brussels had arranged for the southern Netherlands arrived. A week later, on November 28, the first convoy of Liberty cargo ships arrived in the port of Antwerp, bringing the food supply in the unoccupied south back to pre-liberation levels by the end of 1944.
This does not mean that there was soon enough to eat again. On March 17, 1945, the average adult ration was 1,801 kcal; the number was slightly higher for children and young adults. It would take until September 1945 before official rations were above 2000 kcal again. This means that the food situation in the south after May 1945 was worse than in the western Netherlands, where the population had just passed the Hunger Winter.
South helps North
While the south bounced back, the situation in the western Netherlands became extremely dire. The people in the south were therefore concerned and annoyed by the lack of information and what they perceived as the poor preparation and laxity of the Military Authority regarding the food situation. The idea arose:if the government does not help, then the private initiative should intervene.
This is how the 'South helps North' campaign got off the ground:the southern population prepared emergency packages to be sent to the west after the liberation. According to newspapers, the famine there had 'become an obsession for the whole of the Netherlands' and hearts were filled with bitter thoughts, not only about the disappointment of the liberation, but above all 'the breath-holding concern for millions of compatriots in the still occupied territories'.
Since the individual aid plans for the West Netherlands lacked coordination, the MG delegated this task in February 1945 to the Red Cross Relief Action (HARK), which was installed in Tilburg on 24 January. The organization did not actually belong to the Red Cross, but was an association of all aid committees and charitable institutions in the south. The addition of the Red Cross was because of the international name recognition, which accelerated contact with the Allies. De HARK provided food parcels and distributed clothing, footwear and household goods.
"It could be seen that the public gives much more generously to the north than to those who have already been liberated and are equally in need," the MG reported. It asked the local authorities to give as little publicity as possible to the fund-raising campaigns. The Dutch authorities did not want to give the impression that food was plentiful and risk that the Allies would withdraw their food aid.
Lessons from the south
The food crisis in the south of the Netherlands still had a tail. The experiences of the autumn of 1944 served as the main argument for immediate food aid to the western Netherlands in the negotiations between the Gerbrandy government and the Allies. The Dutch government no longer wanted to wait for this part of the country to be liberated, but wanted to demand permission for emergency aid from the Germans and allies.
Gerbrandy deplored the dependence on the Allies, firstly because SHAEF had not yet proven its ability to care for the liberated area and secondly because 'there will always be a tendency at SHAEF to invoke operational needs as a basis for hiding civilian needs. set'. On December 16, 1944, he wrote to General Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower's chief of staff, that the Dutch were a lot worse off after the liberation than under the German regime.
The Allies decided in early 1945 for various considerations that it was indeed wiser to shift the focus of aid to civilians:instead of starting after the liberation, they now opted on reflection for immediate emergency aid for the still occupied West. In January the first shipments of the International Red Cross arrived, which the Gerbrandy government had already requested for the south in autumn 1944. From February to April 1945, they were now distributed among the starving population in the west.
The Germans gave permission for this emergency aid, because they wanted to prevent unrest in the cities and to secure their own position in the new world order. At the end of April, the legendary food drops over the western Netherlands followed, which were originally devised by the Dutch government for the starving liberated south.