The shortage of food, fuel and clothing was enormous in the cities of the western Netherlands. But despite the scarcity, citizens organized themselves to care for the weaker among them. As a result, the death rate among urban children appears to be the lowest of all age groups during the Hunger Winter.
The arrival of the Allied troops in the autumn of 1944 did not go as smoothly as hoped. The Dutch government in London had called for a general railway strike on 17 September to thwart the German war apparatus during the liberation operation Market Garden. Despite this, the German occupier managed to stop the Allies at Arnhem, so that only the south of the Netherlands was liberated at the end of the autumn.
The winter that followed was very severe and the cities in the west faced severe shortages. Not because there was no food, but because the cities were cut off from fuel and transportation to get that food from the agricultural areas to the east and north. The Germans have long been blamed for this:they are said to have withheld the food as a reprisal and thereby deliberately let the Dutch population starve during the last months of occupation.
Allies influenced strike
That's not the whole story, says Ingrid de Zwarte. This historian (NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Oxford University) recently published her book The Hunger Winter. “A famine and thus social unrest was not at all in favor of the occupying forces. Reichskommissar Seyss-Inquart partially lifted the embargo on shipping after three weeks and completely after six weeks. This allowed the potato harvest to be shipped from the northeast of the Netherlands to the Randstad before it rotted away.”
De Zwarte says that the Allies were behind the call via Radio Oranje to keep up the railway strike. They needed the strike of the railway workers east of Apeldoorn for the battle in occupied territory. Subsequently, the Dutch government decided at the beginning of October 1944 to call on the whole country to continue on strike, because otherwise it considered the chance of German reprisals too great. This strike lasted until the liberation in May and prevented trains with food from traveling west during the Hunger Winter.
Citizens helped each other
Besides the striking trains, there was not enough fuel for trucks and ships and it was also very dangerous to drive and sail, because of the many bombings. We are all familiar with the consequences of food and fuel shortages (including for cooking and keeping the house warm) in the Randstad. The images of emaciated children licking large pans from the soup kitchen are very moving. The situation of the children in the cities was also deplorable, but it could have been much worse, De Zwarte discovered. Recently published figures on the number of victims of the Hunger Winter showed that the percentage of school-age children who died of hunger in the occupied cities was no higher than in rural areas and even lower than in some parts outside the Randstad conurbation. How did that happen?
Food had been rationed by the government, and that ration was ultimately not enough to live on. People made up all kinds of things to supplement this:the rich bought food on the black market at extortionate prices and the less fortunate went on a hunger:they went to the countryside to buy food from the farmers or to trade for the last possessions they had left. However, De Zwarte is the first researcher who also looked for actions by citizens to obtain food collectively. For this she delved into unknown local archives and church minutes.
She compared these initiatives to the death rates and guess what? “Civil organizations started filling this gap with lower government rations. This started on a small scale, such as actions by neighbors, local businesses or the local church, and grew into large aid organizations. The effect of this was so great that it helped the city children get through the winter relatively well," says De Zwarte.
Consent of the occupier
When local initiatives merged, decisiveness grew enormously. In Amsterdam, for example, the Roman Catholic aid organization merged with the Protestant and non-Christian commission. The collaborating churches further united to form a national umbrella body, the Interdenominational Emergency Food Supply Agency (IKB). The IKB received permission from the Dutch and German authorities to collect food for the starving Dutch and to evacuate malnourished children. Many of these initiatives targeted children precisely because they were seen as the future of the nation.
De Zwarte:“In Europe, children have been the main target of rescue efforts since the First World War. The Netherlands was unique in how the partnerships came about and in the collaboration with the German occupier. This did not happen in other European countries, such as Greece, where malnourished children were not allowed to recover elsewhere. The Germans stopped it there, while in the Netherlands Seyss-Inquart gave his consent. This is because moving children did not endanger warfare.”
This conclusion of the historian about cooperation is an unknown aspect in the story of the well-known pale noses:malnourished city children who were allowed to recover temporarily in the countryside. Until now, the story was that the organizations were able to achieve this despite an opposing occupier. “The National Socialist organizations that wanted children to strengthen themselves were much less successful than the collaborating churches. Host families didn't trust them, but the churches did. The occupier did little to hinder the private aid organizations.”
The network of churches was large. Many farmers preferred to sell their goods on the black market, because they did not trust the food collections in National Socialist hands. But many farmers do listen to their church's call to donate food to the starving people of the Randstad. This also applied, for example, to companies with connections in more nutrient-rich areas, which could thus arrange goods for their employees.
Men more often victims
Despite these food supplements, tens of thousands of townspeople have died of starvation, especially men over the age of 70. Reports from just after the war show that the elderly, the poorest and people in institutions such as shelters had suffered the most during the famine. “The reason that many starvation deaths occur in this group is because they could only count on the official rations and that was too little. The same was true for another vulnerable group of older men, such as widowers and boarders, who had no social safety net.”
The IKB decided how much supplementary food you received by looking at the degree of malnutrition. However, the aid workers did not reach everyone:people had to be identified as malnourished, for example by local doctors, who then had to send them to the IKB. So the doctor had to know his patients and know who was starving. This sometimes went wrong, especially with lonely people without social contacts.
Social cohesion
In the Hunger Winter, everyone from the age of four received the same ration, while men need more calories than women. “Earlier during the occupation, the government did look at labor intensity. With intensive work you got more and men performed that more often than women.” But rations were cut and in the working-class neighborhoods there were far more victims than in the richer neighbourhoods, because the workers usually had too little financial means to supplement their rations.
According to De Zwarte, this difference in mortality would have been much greater without the neighborhood initiatives and the higher degree of solidarity in the working-class neighbourhoods. “Citizens in working-class neighborhoods organized themselves more often and that help reached more people because social cohesion was greater there. As a result, fewer people were left out.”
The image that hunger turns people into egoists who only think about their own skin is too short-sighted in the Hunger Winter, according to De Zwarte. “Of course there were also malpractices, such as farmers selling their products to poor people for much too high prices. But the starving Dutch also helped each other by organizing themselves.”
Featured by the editors
MedicineWhat are the microplastics doing in my sunscreen?!
AstronomySun, sea and science
BiologyExpedition to melting land
Ultimately, the initiatives of citizens, companies and churches would have a major impact on the reduction of mortality – especially among children – in the Randstad. This conclusion by De Zwarte paints a different picture of the Hunger Winter in the western Netherlands:it was not a period of social disintegration. Nor did the German occupier deliberately starve the Dutch for eight months. This national passion, which originated in historiography and collective memory immediately after the Second World War, is too one-sided.