Dutch famine of 1944–1945

The Dutch famine of 1944 (known as hongerwinter ("Hunger winter") in Dutch) was a famine that took place in the Netherlands during the winter of 1944-1945, near the end of World War II. Over 20,000 people died during the famine.

Causes and history

Near the end of World War II, food supplies became increasingly scarce in the Netherlands. After the landing of the Allied Forces on D-Day, conditions grew worse in the Nazi occupied Netherlands. The Allies were able to liberate the southern part of the country, but their liberation efforts came to a halt when Operation Market Garden, the attempt to gain control of the bridge across the Rhine at Arnhem, failed. After the national railways complied with the exiled Dutch government's appeal for a railway strike starting September 1944, to further the Allied liberation efforts, the German administration retaliated by putting an embargo on all food transports to the western Netherlands.

By the time the embargo was partially lifted in early November 1944, allowing restricted food transports over water, the unusually early and harsh winter had already set in. The canals froze over and became impassable for barges. Food stocks in the cities in the western Netherlands rapidly ran out. The adult rations in cities such as Amsterdam had dropped to below 1000 kilocalories (4,200 kilojoules) a day by the end of November 1944 and to 580 kilocalories in the West by the end of February 1945. Over this winter, later infamously known as the Hongerwinter ("Hunger winter"), a number of factors caused starvation of the Dutch people: the winter itself was unusually harsh and the retreating German army destroyed locks and bridges to flood the country and impede the Allied advance. As the Netherlands became one of the main western battlefields, the widespread dislocation and destruction of the war ruined much of the agricultural land and made the transport of existing food stocks difficult.

In search of food people would walk for tens of kilometers to trade valuables for food at farms. Tulip bulbs and sugarbeets were commonly consumed. Furniture and houses were dismantled to provide fuel for heating. From September 1944 until early 1945 approximately the deaths of 10,000 Dutch people were attributed to malnutrition as the primary cause, many more as a contributing factor. The Dutch Famine ended with the liberation of the western Netherlands in May 1945. Shortly before that, some relief had come from the 'Swedish bread', which was actually baked in the Netherlands but made from flour shipped in from Sweden. Shortly after these droppings, the German occupiers allowed coordinated air droppings of food by the Royal Air Force over German-occupied Dutch territory in Operation Manna. The two events are often confused, even resulting in the commemoration of bread being dropped from airplanes, something that never happened.

Scientific legacy

This famine was unique as it took place in a modern, developed and literate country, albeit suffering under the privations of occupation and war. The well documented experience has allowed scientists to measure the effects of famine on human health. The Dutch Famine Birth Cohort Study, carried out by the departments of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Gynecology and Obstetrics and Internal Medicine of the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam, the Netherlands in collaboration with the MRC Environmental Epidemiology Unit of the University of Southampton in Britain, has found that pregnant women exposed to famine produced offspring who were more susceptible to diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, microalbuminuria and other health problems.

Audrey Hepburn spent her childhood in the Netherlands during the famine. She suffered anemia, respiratory illnesses and edema as a result, and her clinical depression later in life has been attributed to malnutrition.

External links

• http://www.dutchfamine.nl The Dutch Famine Birth Cohort Study

Multimedia

• CBC Archives - CBC Radio (April 22, 1945) Reporting on the famine in Apeldoorn and the inflation of food prices.
• CBC Archives - CBC Radio (April 30, 1945) reporting on the agreement to provide food to the Dutch.