Dutch famine of 1944–1945
The Dutch famine of 1944–1945, also known as the Hunger Winter, was a famine in the German-occupied Netherlands during World War II. The famine impacted the people in the densely populated and urbanized western provinces north of the great rivers during and after the harsh winter of 1944–1945. It began after the failure of Operation Market Garden, the Allied military offensive against the German occupiers of the Netherlands in September 1944. It persisted until after the German surrender in May 1945.
A German embargo and a Dutch railway strike resulted in food and fuel shipments from rural areas to the cities being halted or much diminished. The Dutch government rationed food, but the ration decreased to starvation levels in late 1944 and early 1945. Government-run soup kitchens, community organizations, and individual "food trekkers" who journeyed from the cities to the countryside to buy or barter for food relieved some of the hardships. Some 4.3 million people in the urbanized western region of the country were impacted. About 20,000 deaths are attributed to the famine. Most of the victims were elderly, especially men. The worst month for deaths was March 1945.
German intransigence and the Allied reluctance to send aid into the German-controlled Netherlands slowed the provision of foreign aid. Swedish, Swiss, and Red Cross food began to arrive in February 1945 and from 29 April to 8 May 1945 British and American air forces, with concurrence from the German occupiers, dropped food into the country. From 2 to 9 May in a Canadian army operation, food was brought into the Netherlands by truck. After the surrender of Germany on May 8, large quantities of aid by the allies alleviated the famine.
The impact of the famine on survivors has been extensively studied by Dutch and foreign medical scholars.
Causes
Prior to late 1944, the people of the Netherlands suffered few shortages of food as a consequence of the occupation of their country by Nazi Germany. Food available per person per day amounted to about 3,000 calories. After the Normandy landings in France on 6 June 1944, the Allied forces overran most of France and Belgium. Allied forces first entered the Netherlands at Mesch on 12 September Some Allied generals anticipated that Germany would be defeated before the end of 1944. Operation Market Garden was launched on 17 September with that thought in mind.The Allied advance toward Germany and the liberation of the Netherlands was delayed by supply problems as the strategic port of Antwerp, Belgium was not usable until the approaches had been secured and cleared in the Battle of the Scheldt in the Netherlands. The port was not fully operational until mid-December 1944. British commander Montgomery had prioritized "Market Garden" and the capture of the French Channel ports like Boulogne, Calais, and Dunkirk, which were resolutely defended and had suffered demolitions by the retreating Germans. These factors led to the Germans becoming more securely entrenched north of the major rivers in the Netherlands and postponing the liberation until the end of World War II.
Market Garden was one of two precursor events leading to the hunger winter. The objective of Market Garden was for Allied forces to cross and gain control of bridges across several large rivers in the Netherlands thus removing obstacles to the invasion of the industrial Ruhr region of Germany. If successful, Market Garden would have liberated most or all of the Netherlands. The operation failed to achieve its main objective, control of the lower Rhine, but did capture about one-fourth of the Netherlands. The Germans retained control of the north and west and most of the population of the country. The regions captured by the Allies contained food- producing areas and country's only coal mines. Simultaneously, on 17 September, the Netherlands government-in-exile in the United Kingdom declared a national railway strike to support the Allied liberation effort. Anticipating that the Germans would soon be expelled from the Netherlands, the national railways complied. Thirty thousand railway workers stayed home and most transportation of food and other commodities in the Netherlands came to a halt. The strike coincided with the beginning of the potato harvest and the transport of potatoes from farms to the cities also halted.
On 24 September the German administration's Reichskommissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart issued a public warning that sabotage of railways, telephone lines, or post offices would be severely and collectively punished. On 25 September, the failure of Operation Market Garden had left the Germans in full control of northern and western Netherlands. On 27 September, the Nazi military command led by Wehrmachtbefehlshaber Friedrich Christiansen announced German retaliation on the Dutch by placing an embargo on all food transport from the eastern to the western Netherlands. Western Netherlands is where the large cities of the country are located. The embargo was lifted for potatoes on 16 October, and fully lifted to permit the transport of all food on 8 November. The Germans feared that food shortages might cause chaos and resistance if the embargo on food transportation continued. However, the Dutch railways did not resume service until the end of the war in May 1945.
The Germans had confiscated sizeable quantities of Dutch farmland for military uses and flooded even more for defense against an Allied invasion by sea. Thus, agriculture production and food stocks were reduced throughout the Netherlands during the war. The Germans impressed at least 120,000 Dutch men for labor projects from September to December 1944 reducing the agricultural and transport workforce. The Germans also contributed to the famine by shipping 78,000 tons of potatoes from the Netherlands to Germany between October 1944 and February 1945.
Shortages of fuel resulted in the Dutch government disconnecting electricity and gas service to households, the black market for food expanded as farmers and speculators withheld food from the government's food rationing system. Colder than average weather in January and February 1945 put more stress on people, now without electricity in their homes, and the transportation system. This stress was particularly evident in the large cities of the western Netherlands. The population in this region numbered 4.3 million of which 2.6 million lived in cities. There, the famine struck hardest. American and British bombing raids on German troops and bases in the Netherlands disrupted the transport of food and killed many Dutch civilians.
Author Banning summed up conditions in the Netherlands in the winter of 1944–1945:
The liberated south
Conditions in the three provinces in southern Netherlands deteriorated rather than improved after their liberation in September 1944 by the Allied armies. From 1,600 calories daily as the adult ration before the failure of Market Garden, the ration in mid-November 1944 had decreased to 1,000 calories daily. Moreover the Dutch and Dutch leaders were incensed that captured German soldiers received the same ration as that of Allied soldiers, more than 3,000 calories per day. Allied food aid relieved the hunger problem in late November.Dutch response
In the words of a historian, "Never in its history did Holland have to consider the downfall of its people and the destruction of its civilization as seriously as it had during the final months before May 1945." The Dutch government in the three-fourths of the country occupied by Germany, faced the arithmetic of starvation. The average adult male needs to eat 2,500 calories of food per day and the average adult female needs 2,000 calories per day. An average of 1,200 calories consumed per day over an extended period is often regarded as the minimum needed to maintain normal bodily functions.At the beginning of World War II, the Dutch government had anticipated that the war would result in shortages of food and had created a nation-wide food rationing system and stockpiled food. The stockpiled food stocks became dangerously low as the war rolled on into 1944. Additional food was available in the more rural and agricultural provinces of northern Netherlands, but it was difficult to move the food from those areas to the affected cities in western Netherlands. Likewise, food from the southern Netherlands, under Allied control after Market Garden, was unavailable to the western cities. One measure implemented to reduce famine in the cities was the evacuation of about 40,000 children from the cities to the countryside where more food was available.
The Dutch government's rationing system distributed basic foods to all citizens. In September 1944, rationed food in the 4.3 million people living in the urbanized western Netherlands provided about 1,400 calories per day to every resident. Supplemental rations were given manual laborers, young children, and pregnant women. With Market Garden and its aftermath, food stocks rapidly decreased and by 26 November 1944, the rationing system provided only 750 calories per day to each person. The ration stayed in the range of 500 to 900 calories daily from then until 25 April 1945 when it reached a low of 400 calories per day. It rebounded from that low to more than 2,000 calories per person per day on 27 May. The quick recovery was due to the surrender of German military forces in the Netherlands on 5 May 1945 and food assistance from Sweden, Switzerland, the United States, Britain, and Canada.
In addition to the rationing system, the government provided food through soup kitchens in the cities. As the intensity of the famine increased, the reliance on soup kitchens increased. In April 1945, 1.8 million people in the cities were served daily. One pint of soup per person was the normal ration. The quality of the soup deteriorated over time and some people considered it inedible. The caloric content of a soup ration diminished from 483 calories to 268 calories. The soup served was often made from sugar beets, tulip bulbs, and potato peels. Pet dogs and cats were sometimes eaten.
Church and community based activities to fight the famine were also important. Membership in a church, a non-government organization, or a community sometimes resulted in better access to food – at the expense of others who had no such links.In 1945, women's protests demanding more food for their children were frequent. The Germans on at least one occasion ordered the Dutch authorities to shoot protesting women, but the Dutch police did not comply.
Prior to Operation Market Garden, an estimated 20 percent of Dutch food production reached the consumer through the illegal, but tolerated black market. After Market Garden, that percentage reached about 40 percent. Many thousands of city residents, including future actress Audrey Hepburn, undertook "food treks" to the countryside to trade with farmers. Black market prices rose to incredible levels. For example, the black market price for potatoes rose by 7,000 percent above the official price during the war, although most transactions with farmers were probably barter rather than cash. Many stories also tell of farmers dealing fairly with the trekkers.
The food situation in the Netherlands never resulted in the anarchy associated with many famines. The government continued to function and collect and distribute food, communities did not fall into chaos, and the black market supplemented official and community efforts to feed the populace.
By 1945, funeral homes could no longer cope with the increasing numbers of the deceased. Frost and the lack of wood for coffins made burials difficult or impossible. The government established the Municipal Bureau for Burial in January 1945 to help with the crisis. In Amsterdam, the Zuiderkerk was used as an emergency mortuary.