One might be forgiven for thinking the photo above is from a very impoverished country, but it is not. In fact, it is a photo of a family living in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Even during World War II, the Netherlands was a country of wealth—albeit not all the wealth was distributed to its citizens. This image was taken during the winter of 1944/45, known as the Hunger Winter.
The Dutch famine, also known as the Hunger Winter, was a severe food shortage that occurred in the Netherlands during the final months of World War II, from late 1944 to early 1945. The famine was a result of a combination of factors, including Nazi occupation policies, Allied blockade, harsh winter conditions, and the destruction of infrastructure during the war. The failure of Operation Market Garden also greatly contributed to the famine.
By 1944, the Netherlands had been under German occupation for nearly four years. The German occupiers implemented a policy of “Hunger Winter” in retaliation for Dutch support of the Allied forces. This policy involved cutting off food and fuel supplies to urban areas, particularly the western regions of the country. Additionally, German forces confiscated food from Dutch farms to supply their own troops, further exacerbating the shortages. As the Allied forces advanced through Europe, the Germans retaliated by imposing a blockade on food transports to the Netherlands. This blockade, combined with a harsh winter in 1944-1945, led to widespread starvation among the Dutch population. The situation was particularly dire in urban areas like Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and The Hague, where food supplies were almost completely depleted.
During the famine, people resorted to extreme measures to survive. Many ate tulip bulbs, which provided little nutritional value and caused digestive problems. Others consumed whatever they could find, including cats, dogs, and even rats. Malnutrition became rampant, leading to a range of health issues, including weakened immune systems, diseases, and increased mortality rates.
The Dutch famine had devastating consequences, particularly for vulnerable populations such as children, the elderly, and the sick. Thousands of people died from starvation or related causes during the winter of 1944-1945. Pregnant women who experienced malnutrition during this period gave birth to underweight babies, who faced long-term health problems as a result.
The famine came to an end in May 1945, following the liberation of the Netherlands by Allied forces. Relief efforts, including the airdrops of food supplies during Operations Manna and Chowhound, helped alleviate the immediate crisis. However, the effects of the famine lingered for years, with many people suffering from health problems and psychological trauma long after the war ended.
The Dutch famine remains a tragic chapter in the nation’s history, serving as a stark reminder of the human cost of war and occupation. It also highlights the resilience of the Dutch people and the importance of international solidarity in times of crisis. Today, the famine is commemorated annually in the Netherlands as a reminder of the importance of peace, cooperation, and humanitarian aid.
Audrey Hepburn spent her childhood in the Netherlands during the famine and despite her later wealth, she had lifelong negative medical repercussions. She had anemia, respiratory illnesses, and edema as a result. Subsequent academic research on the children who were affected in the second trimester of their mother’s pregnancy found an increased incidence of schizophrenia in these children. Also increased among them were the rates of schizotypal personality and neurological defects.
An estimated 20,000 died during the hunger winter.
Operation Manna
Operation Manna was a critical humanitarian effort undertaken during the final stages of World War II, aimed at providing relief to the starving population of the Netherlands. Occurring between April 29 and May 8, 1945, Operation Manna involved the dropping of food supplies by Allied aircraft to alleviate the dire conditions faced by the Dutch people, who had suffered immensely due to the Nazi occupation and the subsequent blockade of food and supplies.
The Netherlands had been under Nazi occupation since May 1940, and by the spring of 1945, the situation had reached a catastrophic level. The German forces, facing defeat, imposed a strict blockade on food transports to the western regions of the country, including major cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam. As a result, millions of Dutch civilians were on the brink of starvation.
In response to this humanitarian crisis, the Allies devised Operation Manna as a joint effort between the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF). Under the command of Air Chief Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory, RAF Bomber Command and USAAF Eighth Air Force coordinated the delivery of food supplies to the starving Dutch population. Operation Manna involved a total of 3,298 sorties flown by Allied bombers, primarily Lancaster bombers from the RAF and B-17 Flying Fortresses from the USAAF. These aircraft were stripped of their usual bomb loads and instead loaded with food parcels, including flour, potatoes, margarine, cheese, and other essential items.
Flying at low altitudes and escorted by fighter planes, the Allied bombers approached Dutch airspace and dropped the food supplies using specially designed containers. The drops were carefully coordinated to avoid endangering civilians on the ground and to ensure that the food parcels could be safely retrieved.
The impact of Operation Manna was profound. The airdrops provided a lifeline to millions of hungry Dutch citizens, many of whom had resorted to eating tulip bulbs and other desperate measures to survive. The sight of Allied aircraft dropping food from the sky brought hope and relief to the beleaguered population.
The success of Operation Manna was not just measured in terms of the physical sustenance it provided but also in the morale boost it offered to the Dutch people. It symbolized the solidarity and compassion of the Allied forces and demonstrated their commitment to alleviating the suffering of innocent civilians caught in the crossfire of war.
Operation Manna stands as a testament to the power of humanitarian intervention, even amid conflict. It remains a celebrated example of international cooperation and compassion in the face of adversity, reminding us of the importance of coming together to aid those in need, regardless of the challenges.
Operation Chowhound was a significant humanitarian operation carried out by Allied forces during the final stages of World War II to provide food relief to the starving population of the Netherlands. Similar to Operation Manna, Operation Chowhound aimed to alleviate the dire circumstances faced by millions of Dutch civilians who were suffering from severe food shortages due to the Nazi occupation and the blockade of food supplies. As the Allied forces advanced through Europe in the spring of 1945, liberating territories from Nazi control, they encountered areas where civilian populations were on the brink of starvation. The Netherlands, in particular, had been subjected to a harsh blockade by the retreating German forces, exacerbating the already dire food shortages.
Operation Chowhound
Operation Chowhound was initiated by the Allied Expeditionary Air Force (AEAF), primarily involving the Royal Air Force (RAF) Bomber Command and the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF). The operation was coordinated with Operation Manna, which involved dropping food supplies from aircraft into Dutch territory.
Beginning on April 29, 1945, Allied bombers, including Lancaster bombers from the RAF and B-17 Flying Fortresses from the USAAF, flew over the Netherlands to drop food parcels to the starving population. Unlike Operation Manna, which primarily focused on dropping food supplies, Operation Chowhound also included the distribution of other essential items such as medical supplies and clothing.
The Allied bombers flew at low altitudes, escorted by fighter planes, to ensure the safety of the airdrops and avoid endangering civilians on the ground. The food parcels were dropped using specially designed containers, and efforts were made to target areas where the need was most acute, such as major population centers and areas where resistance fighters were active.
Operation Chowhound was conducted for a period of ten days, during which thousands of tons of food and supplies were delivered to the Dutch people. The operation provided much-needed relief to millions of hungry civilians, helping to alleviate their suffering and improve their morale as the war drew to a close.
The success of Operation Chowhound, like Operation Manna, demonstrated the compassion and solidarity of the Allied forces toward the civilian populations caught during war. It underscored the importance of humanitarian intervention, even amid military operations, and highlighted the commitment of the Allies to support those in need and uphold the principles of freedom and democracy.
Operation Chowhound remains a testament to the spirit of cooperation and humanity that prevailed during World War II and serves as a reminder of the enduring bonds between nations in times of crisis.
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Operation Market Garden was a failed operation by the Allied forces, which would have dire consequences for the Netherlands in the following winter.
Irish journalist and author Cornelius Ryan wrote the book A Bridge Too Far about the operation.
Market Garden was divided into two parts. Market: Airborne forces (of Lieutenant General Lewis H. Brereton’s First Allied Airborne Army ) were to seize bridges and other terrain under tactical command of I Airborne Corps under Lieutenant-General Frederick Browning. Garden: Ground forces of the Second Army to move North spearheaded by XXX Corps under Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks.
Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery persuaded the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, to approve a two-part airborne armour assault and to divert supplies to support it. Operation Market landed three airborne divisions at separate locations to seize road bridges along a route through the Dutch towns of Eindhoven, Nijmegen, and Arnhem behind German lines. These bridges were to be held open for the British Second Army advance led by XXX Corps (Operation Garden).
Operation Market was the largest airborne operation in the history of warfare. If successful, the plan would liberate the Netherlands. However, the primary objective was to outflank Germany’s formidable frontier defences, the Siegfried Line, and make possible an armoured drive into the Ruhr, Germany’s industrial heartland, and thus end the war sooner. The airborne divisions landed on the 17th of September. Eventually, all the bridges were captured.
The plan largely failed because of the 30 Corps’ inability to reach the furthest bridge at Arnhem before German forces overwhelmed the British defenders. Allied intelligence had failed to detect the presence of German tanks, including elements of two SS Panzer divisions.
German soldiers at Arnhem
“We have had a very heavy shelling this morning, September 23rd, and now the situation is serious. The shelling is hellish. We have been holding out for a week now. The men are tired and weary and food is becoming scarce, and to make matters worse, we are having heavy rain. If we are not relieved soon, then the men will just drop from sheer exhaustion.” —Sergeant Dennis Smith, Army Film and Photographic Unit, 23 September 1944.
Signal from Major-General Roy Urquhart to Lieutenant-General Frederick Browning, 24 September 1944
The plan proved overly ambitious, which accounts for the title (of the book and movie), A Bridge Too Far. From the start, things went wrong for the Allies. Although the paratroopers seized one side of the bridge, they were pinned down by the Germans, who reacted (with swiftness) to the Allied assault. To make matters worse, XXX Corps, far to the South, was making slow progress and unable to reach the beleaguered British forces in and around Arnhem. Running out of food, water, and ammunition, they were heavily outnumbered., Frost’s paratroopers held the bridge for four days but were eventually forced to surrender.
The battle was a severe defeat for the Allies. However, the valiant British defence of Arnhem won the respect of friend and foe alike. Dutch civilians did much to aid the Allies during and after the battle, helping many men to reach their own lines.
On 24-25 September, about 2,100 troops from the 1st Airborne Division were ferried back across the Rhine. Another 7,500 were either dead or made prisoners of war.
The crossing of the Rhine and the capture of Germany’s industrial heartland were delayed for six months. Now, the Allies would have to fight their way into the Reich on a broad front. There would be no quick victory.
A costly failure, Operation Market Garden remains a remarkable feat of arms. This is not because of its strategic ambition but because of the determination and courage shown by Allied airborne troops and the units that tried to reach them.
Although it led to the liberation of a large part of the South of the Netherlands, the Northern part would not be liberated until May 1945. During the winter of 1944-45, approximately 20,000 Dutch died in the famine, called the Hungerwinter.
The consequences of that famine were still felt decades later. In 2013, according to research by L.H. Lumey, an epidemiologist at Columbia University, he and his colleagues reviewed the death records of hundreds of thousands of Dutch people born in the mid-1940s.
They found that the people who had been in utero during the famine—known as the Dutch Hunger Winter cohort—died at a higher rate than people born before or afterwards. “We found a 10 per cent increase in mortality after 68 years,” said Dr Lumey.
The patterns Dr. Lumey and his colleagues documented are not disputed—but the scientists still struggle to understand how they come about.
“How on Earth can your body remember the environment it was exposed to in the womb—and remember that decades later?,” wondered Bas Heijmans, a geneticist at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands.
Dr. Heijmans, Dr. Lumey and their colleagues published a possible answer, or part of one, on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. Their study suggests that the Dutch Hunger Winter silenced specific genes in unborn children—and that they’ve stayed quiet ever since.
Hollywood actress Audrey Hepburn barely survived the famine. She developed acute anæmia, respiratory problems and œdema due to malnutrition. This would affect her for the remainder of her life.
Aside from the famine, the failure of Market Garden prolonged the war by six months, according to some estimates. If the concentration camps could have been liberated 6 months earlier, imagine the lives that could have been saved.
Finishing up with some impressions of Operation Market Garden.
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On 5 September 1944, exiled representatives of the three countries, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg signed the London Customs Convention, the treaty that established the Benelux. A politico-economic union and formal international intergovernmental cooperation of the three neighbouring nations. However, that is not why 5 September 1944 would become known as Dolle Dinsdag or Mad Tuesday.
Many German soldiers were in a hurry to leave on Tuesday, 5 September 1944. They had heard that the Allies had crossed the Dutch border in the South and were advancing rapidly to the North of the Netherlands. Within a few days, the troops that had stayed back had destroyed the ports of Amsterdam and Rotterdam with explosives. For fear of retaliation, many collaborators were afraid to stay in the Netherlands as well. They left on the same day, heading for the East of the Netherlands or Germany.
On 4 September 1944, the Allies conquered Antwerp, and it was thought that they already advanced into the Netherlands. Radio Oranje broadcasts, one by the Prime Minister-in-exile Pieter Sjoerds Gerbrandy, increased the confusion; twice, in just over twelve hours (at 23.45 on 4 September and again in the morning of the 5th), they announced that Breda, 8 kilometres from the border with Belgium, had been liberated. The BBC had picked up the announcement too.
The news spread rapidly, with underground newspapers preparing headlines announcing “The Fall of Breda.”
Further fueling speculation, German occupation officials Arthur Seyss-Inquart (appointed Reichskommissar for the Occupied Netherlands in May 1940) and Hanns Albin Rauter, SS and police leader announced a “State of Siege” for the Netherlands to the 300,000 cable radio listeners and in the newspapers of the following day:
Further fueling speculation, German occupation officials Arthur Seyss-Inquart (appointed Reichskommissar for the Occupied Netherlands in May 1940) and Hanns Albin Rauter, SS and police leader announced a “State of Siege” for the Netherlands to the 300,000 cable radio listeners and in the newspapers of the following day:
Despite the threats, many Dutch celebrated on the streets while preparing to receive and cheer on the Allied liberators. Dutch and Orange flags and pennants were prepared, and many workers left their workplaces to wait for the Allies to arrive.
The Nazis decided to evacuate the Vught concentration camp and deported 2,800 men to Sachsenhausen and 650 women to Ravensbrück, in Germany. About half of them were eventually murdered there.
Luckily there were no fatal casualties as a result of this, among the general Dutch population, although a few celebrants were shot and others were arrested.
The day after however, on September 6 a train carrying wives and children of members of the NSB headed for Germany. The train was attacked by allied planes and about 30 passengers were killed. I do feel sorry for the wives and especially the children for they were innocent bystanders but I do also believe this was karma, and the irony is not lost on me for the NSB had helped to put so many Jews and others on trains to their final destinations.
The name Dolle Dinsdag was coined by Willem van den Hout, alias Willem W. Waterman, who first used it in the Dutch Nazi propaganda newspaper Yel) which was funded by the German propaganda department.
It would take another nine days before Maastricht would be liberated, which was the first major Dutch city to be liberated by Allied troops. The north of the Netherlands still had to wait for its liberation, and the western part of the Netherlands, where the big cities are, had to endure a Hunger Winter before it was liberated on 5 May 1945. Approximately 20,000 died during the famine caused by the Hunger Winter.
Gerard Martens was an eyewitness to the events of Dolle Dinsdag below is the account of his experiences of that day.
“One morning, it was Tuesday, September 5, and the phone rang early. Check? No, my brother Aad, who lived in Willebrordusstraat, stood at the door and shouted: Come on Gerard. It’s time! The Canadians will be here in a few hours. I reacted as if I had to feel his head, but he was absolutely sure. I heard it myself about the B.B.C. They are already near Breda.
Well, I improved the dressing record in passing and off we went onto the street. It was busier than usual and yet people walked around a bit dazed. Would it be true after all? Via Willebrordusplein we arrived at the Bergwegziekenhuis, where we immediately had to join a group of nurses who were hustling in front of the door. There were even flags hanging out. I started to believe more and more that it wasn’t all a dream.
At one point, carts even passed by with household goods and fleeing N.S.B members. They passed amid loud boos. Very small and very timid. Some German soldiers were also seen heading towards Hillegersberg. With grim faces and still armed. An older man next to me commented. This is not possible. The Germans may be what they are, but withdraw without a fight? I do not believe it. And to be honest, that’s when the first doubts crept into my mind. Breda was only 50 km from Rotterdam, so the liberators should have at least passed Dordrecht.
My brother just responded with Oh, there’s Gé again. Come on. We walked through Benthuizerstraat and saw a big commotion at Peletier’s bakery. The owner of the bakery had also fled and many customers suddenly had to get bread somewhere else and many people discussing. We were not there when this photo was taken.
Now that I look at him more closely, I suddenly see that The tallest man with glasses was the later chairman of the Archery club the Romans. William of Hattum. And now I am 99.99% sure that I can just see my future wife’s hairstyle. She sometimes told me that she had gone to the bakery that morning for nothing. At her home, they were customers of Peletier, also because they sometimes bought a loaf of bread or something, which only had to be paid for at the end of the week. Just look at the front right there.
We continued through the Zwart Janstraat to the Willebrordusstraat, to find out at Aad’s house whether there was any news via the B.B.C. To our disappointment, there was no news at all and therefore no message at all that the Allies were approaching South Rotterdam.
After eating something we went to have a look again and we soon noticed that the jubilant mood was over. There were even people who said that the Germans were back on the streets and shooting every now and then. And we heard later that they were shooting. In the afternoon there was a shooting in Agniesestraat of people who were on the street and during that shooting, the Germans shot dead an old woman for no reason who was standing in front of the door talking. A cowardly murder of a dear wife and mother. It was the mother of my friend Kees de Jong, who was in Berlin. I was devastated by that for a moment. A daughter of hers worked at Stadler and Sauerbier, and I can tell you that it was the end of a very strange day for me.
Mad Tuesday! No one knows yet why that day was called that because he was not that mad. According to some, the Germans came up with that name and it is not surprising if you think of Ein toller Dienstag, for example.
It remains a sad day for me. A day of unfounded optimism, and a lot of miscommunication, ending with cowardly action by the Germans. I had to return to the life of being forced to be ill and trying to get a permanent exemption to work in Germany. I almost succeeded, but the raid threw a spanner in the works.”
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
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During the winter of 1944/45 approximately 20,000 citizens died in the so-called Hunger Winter, the Dutch famine. A German blockade cut off food and fuel shipments from farm towns. Some 4.5 million were affected and survived thanks to soup kitchens.
As the war was wrapping up in April of 1945, in an effort to alleviate the suffering of the Dutch, the Allies devised a plan to deliver much-needed food via airlift. In a pre-cursor to the famous Berlin Airlift of 1948-49, the plan was complicated for several reasons, one of the biggest being the fact that the Germans had their anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) positioned to shoot flak up at the Allied bomber formations on the way to their raids over Nazi Germany. Another was that the Allies and Germans were still at war and the British advance was still pushing forward in the area where many of the rations would need to be dropped. Lastly was the ever-present concern that Josef Stalin would be suspicious of any negotiations between the Western allies and Germans, fearing that it would lead to a double-cross and secret and separate peace without the Soviet Union.
By early 1945, the situation was growing desperate for the three million or more Dutch still under German control. Prince Bernhard appealed directly to Allied Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower, but Eisenhower did not have the authority to negotiate a truce with the Germans. While the prince got permission from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eisenhower had Air Commodore Andrew Geddes begin planning immediately. On 23 April, authorisation was given by the Chief of Staff, George Marshall.
Allied agents negotiated with Reichskommissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart and a team of German officers. Among the participants were the Canadian future writer Farley Mowat and the German commander-in-chief, General Johannes Blaskowitz. It was agreed that the participating aircraft would not be fired upon within specified air corridors.
The operations were going to be named Manna and Chowhound
Manna (29 April – 7 May 1945), which dropped 7000 tonnes of food into the still Nazi-Occupied western part of the Netherlands, was carried out by British RAF units, as well as squadrons from the Australian, Canadian, New Zealand and Polish air forces. Chowhound (1–8 May 1945), which dropped 4000 tonnes, was undertaken by the United States Army Air Forces, for a total of over 11,000 tonnes[of food.
Below are some impressions of those operations.
The missions went off practically without a hitch. The Germans honoured their word, almost entirely, that no coordinated anti-aircraft would fire upon the planes, and countless Dutch civilians benefited from this “manna from heaven.” From April 29 through VE-Day, May 8, 1945, the combined efforts saw over 5,500 sorties b an estimated 10,000 tons of food on the starving and grateful Dutch. One of those who had survived the Hunger Winter and benefited from /Manna-Chowhound/ was the malnourished granddaughter of the former mayor of Arnhem—a teenaged Audrey Hepburn at the site of the infamous Bridge Too Far.
Audrey Hepburn 1941
“I went as long as three days without food,” Audrey Hepburn recalled of the early months of 1945, “and most of the time we existed on starvation rations. For months, breakfast was hot water and one slice of bread, made from brown beans. Broth for lunch was made from one potato and there was no milk, sugar, cereals of any kind.”
The Holodomor comes from the term moryty holodom which translates as “death inflicted by starvation.” A man-made famine that convulsed the Soviet Republic of Ukraine from 1932 to 1933, peaking in the late spring of 1933.
Millions of Ukrainians were killed in the Holodomor, engineered by the Soviet government of Joseph Stalin. The primary victims of the Holodomor were rural farmers and villagers, who made up roughly 80 per cent of Ukraine’s population in the 1930s.
The first journalist to write about it was Gareth Jones. He went to the USSR, to investigate and witnessed the horrors with his own eyes.
On 29 March, he issued his first press release, which was published by many newspapers, including The Manchester Guardian and the New York Evening Post:
“I walked along through villages and twelve collective farms. Everywhere was the cry, ‘There is no bread. We are dying.’ This cry came from every part of Russia, from the Volga, Siberia, White Russia, the North Caucasus, and Central Asia. I tramped through the black earth region because that was once the richest farmland in Russia and because the correspondents have been forbidden to go there to see for themselves what is happening.
On the train, a Communist denied there was a famine. I flung a crust of bread which I had been eating from my own supply into a spittoon. A fellow passenger, a peasant fished it out and ravenously ate it. I threw an orange peel into the spittoon and the peasant again grabbed it and devoured it. The Communist denier subsided. I stayed overnight in a village where there used to be two hundred oxen and where there now are six. The peasants were eating the cattle fodder and had only a month’s supply left. They told me that many had already died of hunger. Two soldiers came to arrest a thief. They warned me against travelling by night, as there were too many starving desperate men.
‘We are waiting for death’ was my welcome, but see, we still, have our cattle fodder. Go farther south. There they have nothing. Many houses are empty of people already dead,’ they cried.”
This report was denounced by several Moscow-resident American journalists such as Walter Duranty and Eugene Lyons, who had been obscuring the truth to please the dictatorial Soviet regime.[3] On 31 March, The New York Times published a denial of Jones’s statement by Duranty under the headline, Russians Hungry, But Not Starving. Duranty called Jones’ report “a big scare story.”
On 11 April 1933, Jones published a detailed analysis of the famine in the Financial News, pointing out its main causes: forced collectivisation of private farms, removal of 6–7 million of “best workers” (the Kulaks) from their land, forced requisitions of grain and farm animals and increased “export of foodstuffs” from USSR.
Below is the full of the April 11 and the follow-up report.
BALANCE SHEET OF THE FIVE-YEAR PLAN
1-INDUSTRIALISATION
By Gareth Jones
It is difficult to gauge the industrial achievements of the Five-Year Plan. It is true that on paper formidable results can be produced, such as the increase of coal production from 35 million tons in 1927-28 to 62 million tons in 1932, the increase of iron production from 3,283,000 tons to 6,206,000 tons, and the increase of oil from 11 million tons to 21 million tons in the same period. Official statistics also show great achievements in the building of tractors, the annual production of which rose from 1,27 five years ago to 50,000 last year, and in the building of motor lorries, the production of which increased from 677 in 1927-28 to 24,000 in 1932. In light industry, gigantic figures are also produced. On the other hand, in 1932 less rolled steel was made than two years previously, and the production of steel has remained almost stationary since 1929-30. One is justified, however, in having very little confidence in Soviet statistics.
White Elephants The giants of Soviet industry, Dnieperstroy, Magritogorsk, the Nijni-Novgorod factory, and the Kharkoff Tractor Works, can also be regarded as great achievements, but achievements of the order of Wembley or the Crystal Palace rather than well-functioning organisations. Difficulties of production are so great that they will long continue to be white elephants.
Through the Five-Year Plan, the Soviet Government succeeded in creating many factories for the construction of machines, which were never been made before in Russia. This was part of the autarchic aim of the Five-Year Plan, namely, to make the Soviet Union independent of the rest of the world. This aim has not been reached. In spite of all the various objects, which can now be made in the Soviet Union, such as motorcars, aluminium, and hydraulic turbines, which were formerly imported, their quality is so bad, and the lack of specialists is so great, that the Soviet Union can never be regarded as independent of the capitalist countries. Autarchy has not been achieved in so brief a span as five years. The shortage of foreign currency will render the render import of machinery difficult, and the recent cutting down of orders from abroad points to a slowing down of Soviet industry. The number of foreign specialists in Russia grows less month by month and when most of them have gone, the plight of the machinery will be grave.
According to experts, the Five-Year Plan has succeeded in its munitions side, and, from the point of view of ammunition, large gun, rifle and tank factories, there is reason to believe that it was a great success, for it was first and foremost a military and not an economic plan. Its primary aim was to render the Soviet Union powerful in defence against capitalist aggressors.
Another achievement is the great increase in the production of cotton in Central Asia.
In spite of colossal achievements, however, on paper, the difficulties facing the Soviet industry are greater than ever and are likely to increase in the future. They are mainly hungry, lack skill and fear responsibility, transport and finance.
In some factories, especially in the big Moscow factories, the first difficulty, hunger, does not yet exist, for there solid meals with meat are still given each day. But in the majority of factories, especially in the provinces, there is undernourishment. In a Kharkoff factory, the male worker received the following rations: 600 grams (about 1.3/4 lb.) of black bread per day, a pound of sugar per month, a quarter-litre of sunflower oil per month, and 800 grams (about 1.3/4 pounds) per month of fish, which was usually bad. In Moscow, the worker receives 800 grams (about 1.3/4 lb.) of bread per day, together with a meal at the factory. If he is a skilled worker, he will have sufficient to eat. There is every prospect of food conditions worsening, which will lessen the productivity of the workers.
Disastrous Negligence
Lack of skill and fear of responsibility are other great enemies of industrialisation. The damage done to good machinery through clumsy handling and negligence is disastrous. Much of the skill and brains of Russia have disappeared through shooting or imprisonment, while the successive trials have led to a condition of fear among many engineers, which is not conducive to good work and responsibility.
Transport difficulties are still unconquered and are responsible for most of the bad distribution in Russia. Last summer, according to “Pravda,” perishable goods had from 30% to 95%, losses en route; potatoes sometimes took sixty days to come to Moscow from a village about forty miles away. The result of these difficulties has been rapidly growing unemployment, which is a striking contrast to the shortage of labour one year ago. There have already been many dismissals throughout the country. In Kharkoff, for example, 20,000 men have been recently dismissed. Unemployment is a problem, which will attack the Soviet Union more and more and led to increasing dissatisfaction, for there is no unemployment insurance, and the unemployed man is deprived of his bread card.
What are the causes of unemployment in the Soviet Union?
The first is technological. A director of the Kharkoff Tractor Factory explained why his factory had dismissed many workers: “We dismissed them because we had improved our technical knowledge, and thus do not need so many workers!” an admission that technological unemployment is not confined to capitalist countries.
Lack of Raw Material
The second cause of unemployment is the lack of raw materials. A factory has to lie idle because the supply of coal or of oil has failed. Such is the synchronisation in the Plan that when one supply fails there are delays in many branches of industry. “Pravda” of March 10 contained the following item, which throws a light upon this cause of delay: “In the storehouses of Almaznyanski Metal Factory 13,000 tons of metal are lying idle, intended mainly for the agricultural machine factories; 550 tons are waiting to be sent to the Rostoff Agricultural Machine Factory, 1,500 tons to the Kharkoff Factory, 2,000 tons to Stalingrad Tractor Factory. The Southern Railway is only sending 12-15 wagons of iron per day, instead of 35. On some days absolutely no wagons are despatched.”
The third cause of unemployment in the Soviet Union is the food shortage. The factory is now made responsible for the feeding of its workers, a given a certain agricultural district or certain State or collective farms from which to draw supplies. A director is made responsible for the supply department. When the food supply is not sufficient for the total number of workers, the surplus men are dismissed. Some experts consider this the chief cause of unemployment.
The final cause of unemployment is financial. This will be dealt with in my next article, which will appear in tomorrow’s issue of the Financial News.
The Financial News, Tuesday, April 11th, 1933.
BALANCE-SHEET OF THE FIVE-YEAR PLAN
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II-FINANCIAL IMPRESSIONS
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By GARETH JONES
A drastic economy drive is now in progress in the Soviet Union. The control over expenses in the factory is new exceedingly strict. The factories no longer have financial autonomy and a heavy responsibility is placed upon the administration of the factories to balance their budget. Last year the expenses of the factories exceeded the estimates. To counteract the deficits, which were caused by over spending the planned figures imposed from above on the factory administrations are now to be absolutely obligatory, and the financial work of each factory is to be controlled each month by the bank, which gives it credit.
When a factory or a trust has a deficit, sanctions are applied. In some cases, where the deficit is attributed to bad organisation a trial of the director is held and he is condemned and thrown out of the Communist. Part. Other sanctions in cases of deficit are: Non-payment of salaries and the obligation for the factory administration to dismiss a part of the staff. The rigid economy drive has thus been responsible for a part of the growing unemployment. In some offices and factories 20 per cent, 30 per cent., and even 40 per cent of the staff have been dismissed on financial grounds.
No Figures
The absence of statistics upon the most vital sections of financial life makes it difficult to form a judgment concerning the currency. Gold reserve figures are no longer published. Gold production figures are hard to obtain, but in one official organisation the figure given for 1932 was 84,000,100 roubles. No figures are published on the amount of gold obtained from the Torgsin Stores, where customers have been able to buy with gold, silver, or with foreign currency. Even on the issue of roubles there have been no statistics published since September 5th, 1932. Some reliable observers state that they have seen at least l00 one-rouble notes with the same number printed upon them. The impression one obtains, is that those in charge of Soviet finances are bewildered.
There is only one certainly about. Soviet finances, and that is that there is a large-scale inflation, however loudly it may be denied by the Soviet Government, and however much members of the Communist Party may boast that “the chervonetz is the only stable currency in the world.” Some data on prices form sufficient proof of this. The Government has opened the so-called commercial shops for those who earn good salaries, where the following prices are now normal:
Butter: From 62 roubles to 75 roubles a kilo. (rouble at par equals 3s.).
Meat: 15 roubles a kilo.
Sugar: 15 roubles a kilo., but difficult to obtain.
Bread (black): 3 roubles a kilo.
(white): 4 roubles 50 kopeks a kilo.
In the open market the prices are as follows:-
Meat: About 20 roubles a kilo.
Tea: 25 roubles a pound.
Butter (when obtainable): 65 roubles a kilo.
In the Ukraine, where the food shortage is greater, the prices are higher.
In the co-operatives bread may be obtained cheaply for breadcards at the price of 7 kopeks a pound for black bread and 12 kopeks a pound for so-called white bread.
The gold prices in the Soviet Union provide interesting data for the economist:-
Flour (25 per cent.): 47 kopeks a kilo.
Sugar (refined): 50 kopeks a kilo.
Potato flour: 40 kopeks a kilo.
Flour (85 per cent.): 24 kopeks a kilo.
Butter in Torgsin (gold or foreign currency) costs from 1 r. 40k. to 1 r. 90k.
Rising Prices
The rapid rise in prices has been a source of disorder for the Plan, for long-term planning ahead is disarranged when the currency loses its value, in the same way as in the capitalist world falling prices disorganise trade. The high prices in the Soviet Union must, however, be studied in connection with the wages which are paid. An unskilled labourer receives about 120 roubles a month; a skilled worker may receive anything from 200 to 600 roubles. Engineers are well paid, and usually receive monthly from about 500 to 1,500 roubles, and even 2,000 roubles. A young train conductor receives about 67 roubles a month.
A part of the wages goes, however, to the loans and lotteries, which play an important part in financing the Plan. In 1932 15.9 per cent. of the budgetary receipts came from loans. In 1933 it is planned to raise 2,800,000,000 roubles through internal loans. Lotteries, while providing a negligible part of the State funds compared with the loans, are used to finance such undertakings as the Soviet Mercantile Marine, the Society for Aviation and Chemical Defence, and the Motorisation of the Soviet Union. Prizes, such as motor-cars, which may be owned as private property by one man, and even money prizes, are offered as incentives to invest in these lotteries.
In internal finances one obtains impression of disorder. The rouble seems to have run away from the Plan. On the Black Market 50 to 70 roubles can be obtained for a dollar, instead of the legal 1 rouble 94 kopeks. Any suggestion of devaluation, however, is immediately refuted with indignation.
Obligations Abroad
The external financial situation also arouses no confidence. It is estimated that the Soviet Union’s obligations abroad total £120,000,000. Recently the adverse balance has mounted up with the declining prices of the goods exported by Russia. In 1929 the Soviet Union exported 923,700,000 gold roubles’ worth of goods, whereas in 1932 her exports amounted to 563,900,000 gold roubles. Her imports have not declined so rapidly, having fallen from 880,600,000 gold roubles in 1929 to 698,700,000 gold roubles in 1932.
World prices have declined so much and Russia’s agriculture has received such a blow from the Five-Year Plan, that it is doubtful whether the Soviet Union will long be able to maintain her payments abroad, however meticulous she may have been in meeting payments up to now. If an embargo is placed upon Soviet imports by the British Government, the difficulties of payment will become still greater, for normally nearly 30 per cent. of Soviet Russia’s exports are destined for Great Britain, and a blow will be dealt to the creditors of the Soviet Union in Britain, and especially in Germany, where the Government has guaranteed German ex-ports to Russia to a considerable degree.
The concluding article of this series, dealing with agriculture, will appear to-morrow. The first, on unemployment, appeared in our issue of yesterday.
The Financial News, Tuesday, April 13th, 1933
BALANCE-SHEET OF THE FIVE-YEAR PLAN
III-RUIN OF RUSSIAN AGRICULTURE
–
By GARETH JONES
THE main result of the Five-Year Plan has been the ruin of Russian agriculture, a fact which completely outbalances the achievements of Soviet industry and is already gravely affecting the industrialisation of the country. In the eyes of responsible foreign observers and of peasants, the famine
in Russia to-day is far worse than that of 1921. In 1921 the famine was spread over wide areas, it is true, but, in comparison with the general famine throughout the country which exists to-day, it might be considered localised. In 1921 the towns were short of food, but in most parts of the Ukraine and elsewhere there was enough bread, and the peasants were able to live. To-day there is food in the towns although in the provinces not enough whereas the countryside has been stripped of bread.
Symptomatic of the collapse of Russian agriculture is the shooting of thirty-five prominent workers in the Commissariat of Agriculture and in the Commissariat of State Farms, including the Vice-Commissar of Agriculture himself, and Mr. Wolff, whose name is well known to foreign agricultural experts. They were accused of smashing tractors, of burning tractor stations and flax factories, of stealing grain reserves, of disorganising the sowing campaign and of destroying cattle. “Pravda ” (March 5) stated that “the activities of the arrested men had as their aim the ruining of agriculture and the creation of famine in the country.” Surely a formidable task for thirty-five men in a country which stretches 6,000 miles!
Sign of Panic
The shooting of thirty-five is a sign of the panic which has come over the Soviet regime on account of the failure of collectivisation. The writer has visited villages in the Moscow district, in the Black Earth district, and in North Ukraine, parts, which are far from being the most badly hit in Russia. He has collected evidence from peasants and foreign observers and residents concerning the Ukraine, Crimea, North Caucasia, Nijni-Novgorod district, West Siberia, Kazakstan, Tashkent area, the German Volga and Ukrainian colonists, and all the evidence proves that there is a general famine threatening the lives of millions of people. The Soviet Government tries its best to conceal the situation, but the grim facts will out. Under the conditions of censorship existing in Moscow, foreign journalists have to tone down their messages and have become masters at the art of understatement. The existence of the general famine is none the less true, in spite of the fact that Moscow still has bread.
What are the causes of the famine? The main reason for the catastrophe in Russian agriculture is the Soviet policy of collectivisation. The prophecy of Paul Scheffer in 1920-30 that collectivisation of agriculture would be the nemesis of Communism has come absolutely true. Except for drought in certain areas, climatic conditions have blessed the Soviet Government in the last few years. Then why the catastrophe?
Passive Resistance
In the first place, the policy of creating large collective farms, where the land was to be owned and cultivated in common, led to the land being taken away from more than two-thirds of the peasantry, and incentive to work disappeared. Moreover, last year nearly all the crops were violently seized, and the peasant was left almost nothing for himself. The passive resistance of the peasant has been a far more important factor in Russian development than the ability to cook statistics.
In the second place, the massacre of cattle by peasants not wishing to sacrifice their property for nothing to the collective farm, the perishing of horses through lack of fodder, the death of innumerable livestock through exposure, epidemics and hunger on those mad ventures, the cattle factories, have so depleted the livestock of the Soviet Union that not until 1945 could that livestock reach the level of 1928. And that is, provided that all the plans for import of cattle succeed, provided there is no disease, and provided there is fodder. That date 1945 is given by one of the most reliable foreign agricultural experts in Moscow. In all villages visited by the writer most of the cattle and of the horses bad been slaughtered or died of lack of fodder, while the remaining horses were scraggy and diseased.
In the third place, six or seven millions of the best workers (the Kulaks) have been uprooted and deprived of their land. Apart from all consideration of human feelings, the existence of many millions of good producers is an immense capital value to any country, and to have destroyed such capital value means an inestimable loss to the national wealth of Russia. Although two years ago the Soviet authorities stated that they had liquidated the Kulak as a class, the drive against the better peasants was carried on with renewed violence last winter.
The final reason for the famine in the Soviet Union has been the export of foodstuffs. For this it is not so much the Soviet Government as the world crisis, which is to blame. The crash in world prices has been an important factor in creating the grave situation in Russia. Prices have dropped most in precisely those products, wheat, timber, oil, butter, &c., which the Soviet Union exports, and least in those products, such as machinery, which the Soviet Union imports. The result has been that Russia has had to export increased quantities at lower value.
What of the Future?
What of the future? In order to try and gauge the prospects for the next harvest, the writer asked in March the following questions in each village:-
(1) Have you seed?
(2) What will the spring sowing be like?
(3) What were the winter sowing and the winter ploughing like?
(4) What do you think of the new tax?
On the question of seed, several villages were provided with seed, but many lacked seed. Experts are confident that the Government has far greater reserves of grain than in 1921, but evidence points to a lack of seed in certain areas.
Peasants were emphatic in stating that the spring sowing would be bad. They stated that they were too weak and swollen to sow, that there would be little cattle fodder left for them to eat in a month’s time, that there were few horses left to plough, that the remaining horses were weak, that the tractors, when they had any, stopped all the time, and, finally, that weeds might destroy the crops.
Information received concerning the winter sowing and the winter ploughing was black. There had been little winter sowing, which accounts for about one-third of the total crops, and winter ploughing had been bad. The winter sowing had been very late.
On the question of the Soviet Government’s new agricultural policy, peasants were also doubtful. The new tax, by which the collective farms will pay so much grain (usually about 2 and half centners) per hectare and be free to sell, the rest on the open market, is not likely to make much difference to the situation, for the peasants have completely lost faith in the Government.
The outlook for the next harvest is, therefore, black. It is dangerous to make any prophecy, for the miracle of perfect climatic conditions can always make good a part of the ‘unfavourable factors.
The chief fact remains, however, that in building up industry the Soviet Government has destroyed its greatest source of wealth – its agriculture.
This is the concluding article of a series of three; the first appeared in our Issue of Tuesday and the second yesterday.”
On May 13th the New York Times published a stinging reply from Jones which reiterated that he stood by every word he had said:
…” I stand by my statement that Soviet Russia is suffering from a severe famine. It would be foolish to draw this conclusion from my tramp through a small part of vast Russia, although I must remind Mr. Duranty that it was my third visit to Russia, that I devoted four years of university life to the study of the Russian language and history and that on this occasion alone I visited in all twenty villages, not only in the Ukraine, but also in the black earth district, and in the Moscow region, and that I slept in peasants’ cottages, and did not immediately leave for the next village.
My first evidence was gathered from foreign observers. Since Mr. Duranty introduces consuls into the discussion, a thing I am loath to do, for they are official representatives of their countries and should not be quoted, may I say that I discussed the Russian situation with between twenty and thirty consuls and diplomatic representatives of various nations and that their evidence supported my point of view. But they are not allowed to express their views in the press, and therefore remain silent.
Journalists, on the other hand, are allowed to write, but the censorship has turned them into masters of euphemism and understatement. Hence they give “famine” the polite name of “food shortage” and “starving to death” is softened down to read as “widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition.” Consuls are not so reticent in private conversation.
My second evidence was based on conversations with peasants who had migrated into the towns from various parts of Russia. Peasants from the richest parts of Russia coming into the towns for bread. Their story of the deaths in their villages from starvation and of the death of the greater part of their cattle and horses was tragic, and each conversation corroborated the previous one.
Third, my evidence was based upon letters written by German colonists in Russia, appealing for help to their compatriots in Germany. “My brother’s four children have died of hunger.” “We have had no bread for six months.” “If we do not get help from abroad, there is nothing left but to die of hunger.” Those are typical passages from these letters.
Fourth, I gathered evidence from journalists and technical experts who had been in the countryside. In The Manchester Guardian, which has been exceedingly sympathetic toward the Soviet régime, there appeared on March 25, 27 and 28 an excellent series of articles on “The Soviet and the Peasantry” (which had not been submitted to the censor). The correspondent, who had visited North Caucasus and the Ukraine, states: “To say that there is famine in some of the’ most fertile parts of Russia is to say much less than the truth: there is not only famine, but – in the case of the North Caucasus at least – a state of war, a military occupation.” Of the Ukraine, he writes: “The population is starving.”
My final evidence is based on my talks with hundreds of peasants. They were not the “kulaks”- those mythical scapegoats for the hunger in Russia-but ordinary peasants. I talked with them alone in Russian and jotted down their conversations, which are an unanswerable indictment of Soviet agricultural policy. ‘The peasants said emphatically that the famine was worse than in 1921 and that fellow-villagers had died or were dying.
Mr. Duranty says that I saw in the villages no dead human beings nor animals. That is true, but one does not need a particularly nimble brain to grasp that even in the Russian famine districts the dead are buried and that there the dead animals are devoured.
May I in conclusion congratulate the Soviet Foreign Office on its skill in concealing the true situation in the U.S.S.R.? Moscow is not Russia, and the sight of well fed people there tends to hide the real Russia.”
Banned from the Soviet Union, Jones turned his attention to the Far East and in late 1934 he left Britain on a “Round-the-World Fact-Finding Tour”. He spent about six weeks in Japan, interviewing important generals and politicians, and he eventually reached Beijing. From here he traveled to Inner Mongolia in newly Japanese-occupied Manchukuo in the company of a German journalist, Herbert Müller. Detained by Japanese forces, the pair were told that there were three routes back to the Chinese town of Kalgan, only one of which was safe.
Jones and Müller were subsequently captured by bandits who demanded a ransom of 200 Mauser firearms and 100,000 Chinese dollars (according to The Times, equivalent to about £8,000). Müller was released after two days to arrange for the ransom to be paid. On 1 August, Jones’s father received a telegram: “Well treated. Expect release soon.” On 5 August, The Times reported that the kidnappers had moved Jones to an area 10 miles (16 kilometres) southeast of Kuyuan and were now asking for 10,000 Chinese dollars (about £800), and two days later that he had again been moved, this time to Jehol. On 8 August the news came that the first group of kidnappers had handed him over to a second group, and the ransom had increased to 100,000 Chinese dollars again. The Chinese and Japanese governments both made an effort to contact the kidnappers.
On 17 August 1935, The Times reported that the Chinese authorities had found Jones’s body the previous day with three bullet wounds. The authorities believed that he had been killed on 12 August, the day before his 30th birthday. There was a suspicion that his murder had been engineered by the Soviet NKVD, as revenge for the embarrassment he had caused the Soviet regime. Former UK prime minister Lloyd George is reported to have said:
“That part of the world is a cauldron of conflicting intrigue and one or other interests concerned probably knew that Mr Gareth Jones knew too much of what was going on. He had a passion for finding out what was happening in foreign lands wherever there was trouble, and in pursuit of his investigations he shrank from no risk. I had always been afraid that he would take one risk too many. Nothing escaped his observation, and he allowed no obstacle to turn from his course when he thought that there was some fact, which he could obtain. He had the almost unfailing knack of getting at things that mattered”
Amazingly 90 years on Russia is still using the same tactics ‘allegedly’.
Before you ask, I know absolutely nothing about fashion. Then why do a piece on fashion in World War II? I hear you say.
There is no particular reason, but after all the heavy subjects I usually explore, I decided to go with a more lighthearted one for a change, while still staying on the subject of World War II.
The picture above: Bath and beach fashion. Swimwear from Germany. One-piece swimsuit in a fabric with a herringbone pattern. The low back is closed with a cord. 28 April 1942.
Shoe fashion. Women’s high-heeled shoes in black patent leather and side closure with buckle. Black suede trim. The shiny stockings are made of fil d’écosse (shiny cotton yarn). The Netherlands, 14 March 1941.
A Japanese department store where every sort of Japanese-designed goods were sold.
France. Hair fashion 1940. The blond hair is undulated with strokes on the sides. Coiffure Jean Pierre.
Germany. Hair fashion 1941. The blond hair is undulated and fastened at the back with a decorative pin. 28 November 1941.
Shop window clothing repair Hollandia. With examples of how broken you can bring the underwear and how you can get it back repaired. The Maastricht skyline is visible in the shop window, including the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk from the apse to the west work. From this, it can be concluded that this shop was located on the east bank, in Wyck. Location possible at Cortenplein.
Girls of the fashion studio Gomperts en Lezer at the Oudezijds Voorburgwal 127-129 in Amsterdam, 1942-1943. I believe this was a Jewish fashion studio.
This photo is part of the collection of Emmy Andriesse (1914-1953), one of the most renowned photographers in the Netherlands. After completing her studies, she moved to Amsterdam, where she started working as a photographer. Andriesse supplied many photos to newspapers and magazines that were characterized by the use of surprising camera angles and a preference for diagonal image construction. The subjects were crafts, landscapes and the lives of adults and children in towns and villages. She was able to do this until the so-called “Journalists’ Decree” of the German occupier in 1941. As a Jewish woman, she could not work or publish and had to go into hiding. At the end of 1944, an anthropologist friend Arie de Froe arranged a forged Aryan declaration for her and she was able to participate in public life again. She joined the illegal photographers collective “De Ondergedoken Camera.” The photos Andriesse took of the Hunger Winter in Amsterdam under difficult circumstances are among the most disturbing in her portfolio. Ending this piece with one of those pictures by Emmy.
One could be forgiven to think that the photos in this blog are photos of a famine in a 3rd world country, as we have seen so often before. However, these photos are from one of the richest countries in the world, the Netherlands.
Towards 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 became increasingly worse in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. The Allies were able to liberate the southern part of the country but ceased their advance into the Netherlands when Operation Market Garden, the attempt to seize a bridge across the Rhine at Arnhem, failed.
The obvious and literal cause of the famine was a German blockade enacted in retaliation to a Dutch railway strike that aimed to help the Allied invasion of the country. The German army blocked water and road routes into the Netherlands and only lifted the water blockade when temperatures had already fallen too low to allow boats to operate in the icy water.
Most of the south of the country had been liberated by the end of September 1944.
The Allied campaign failed, and the Nazis punished the Netherlands by blocking food supplies, plunging the Northern half of the country, above the great rivers, into famine. By the time all of the Netherlands was liberated in May 1945, more than 20,000 people had died of starvation.
The starvation was particularly intense in cities — after all, in the countryside, most people lived around farms. That didn’t mean that they didn’t experience food shortages, but the survival rates were much higher outside of urban areas. For the Netherlands’ mostly city-living population, times were hard.
Rations decreased in calorie content over the long winter. In big cities like Amsterdam, adults had to contend with only 1000 calories of food by the end of November 1944 — but that dropped to 580 calories a day by February 1945. Even the black market was empty of food.
People walked long distances to farms to trade anything they had for extra calories. As the winter wore on, tens of thousands of children were sent from cities to the countryside so that they, at least, would get some food. When it came to heating, people desperately burned furniture and dismantled whole houses to get fuel for their fires.
The Dutch Hunger Winter has proved unique in unexpected ways. Because it started and ended so abruptly, it has served as an unplanned experiment in human health. Pregnant women, it turns out, were uniquely vulnerable, and the children they gave birth to have been influenced by famine throughout their lives.
The effects of the 1944/45 famine are still felt to this day.
When they became adults, they ended up a few pounds heavier than average. In middle age, they had higher levels of triglycerides and LDL cholesterol. They also experienced higher rates of such conditions as obesity, diabetes and schizophrenia.
By the time they reached old age, those risks had taken a measurable toll, according to the research of L.H. Lumey, an epidemiologist at Columbia University. In 2013, he and his colleagues reviewed the death records of hundreds of thousands of Dutch people born in the mid-1940s.
They found that the people who had been in utero during the famine — known as the Dutch Hunger Winter cohort — died at a higher rate than people born before or afterwards. “We found a 10 per cent increase in mortality after 68 years,” said Dr Lumey.
The title of this blog does not refer to the verse in the bible in the book of Exodus chapter 16 verse 15, “And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, It is manna: for they wist not what it was. And Moses said unto them, This is the bread which the LORD hath given you to eat.”
But I do think it must have been the inspiration for the allied forces in April 1945.
In September 1944, trains in the Netherlands ground to a halt. Dutch railway workers were hoping that a strike could stop the transport of Nazi troops, helping the advancing Allied forces.
But the Allied campaign named ‘Market Garden’ had failed, and the Nazis punished the Netherlands by blocking food supplies, plunging the northern part of the country into famine. By the time the Netherlands was liberated in May 1945, more than 20,000 people had died of starvation.
77 years ago, on April 29.1945, one of the first major humanitarian operations carried out by air forces took place over the Netherlands. Following the failed attempt to secure the vital bridge over the River Rhine at Arnhem in September 1944, the portion of the Netherlands north of the river remained firmly in German hands. With resources stripped by the occupying forces and one of the harshest winters on record, Dutch civilians faced starvation as 1945 dawned. The Dutch Government in exile pleaded with the Allies to help and by April 1945, a plan was in place.
Air Commodore Andrew Geddes, whose job was Operations and Plans at 2nd Tactical Air Force, was summoned to Eisenhower’s Headquarters on 17th April to be told that he must plan for feeding 3,500,000 Dutch souls from the air, commencing in 10 days’ time. There were no parachutes available for dropping supplies, therefore Geddes should plan for low-level free drops and assume that the German troops on the ground would grant safe conduct for the flights. The operation was to be called ‘Operation Manna’
The RAF carried out over 3,000 sorties, dropping the supplies at low levels without parachutes. The Americans carried out around 2,000. In all around 11,000 tonnes of food were dropped by the Allies over Holland, for the loss of three aircraft (two in a collision, one with engine trouble). While some German soldiers fired on them, fortunately, none were shot down.
The first of the two RAF Avro Lancasters chosen for the test flight, the morning of 29 April 1945, was nicknamed Bad Penny, as in the expression: “a bad penny always turns up”. This bomber, with a crew of seven young men (five from Ontario, Canada, including pilot Robert Upcott of Windsor, Ontario), took off in bad weather despite the fact that the Germans had not yet agreed to a ceasefire. (Seyss-Inquart would do so the next day.) Bad Penny had to fly low, down to 50 feet (15 m), over German guns but succeeded in dropping her cargo and returning to her airfield.
Pathfinder Lancaster pilot Richard Bolt later recalled in an interview:
“Like other pathfinders, I led a heap of Lancasters into Holland to drop food in Operation ‘Manna’. The Dutch were starving and the war hadn’t quite finished. The Germans weren’t fussed about us feeding the Dutch so there was no opposition. I had a simple task – I just had to put a big red marker in the middle of Valkenburg airfield outside The Hague and 100 Lancasters came in and dropped potatoes and food of all kinds to the starving Dutch. So that was satisfying. There were lots of us doing the same thing.”
Food packs included tinned items, dried food, tea and coffee and chocolate. After much testing of different packaging, hessian sacks were used, some of which were sourced from the US Army.
The ceasefire was signed on the 30th of April. Operation Chowhound, the US Army Air Forces aid drop, started on the 1st of May and delivered a further 4,000 tons of food. This was followed, on the 2nd of May, with a ground-based relief mission, Operation Faust. It is estimated that these drops saved nearly a million Dutch people from starvation.
Although it saved many from starvation, the Dutch famine had effects long after the war.
The Dutch Hunger Winter has proved unique in unexpected ways. Due to its sudden start and abrupt end, it became an unplanned experiment in human health. Pregnant women, it was discovered, were uniquely vulnerable, and the children they gave birth to have been influenced by famine throughout their lives.
When they became adults, they ended up a few pounds heavier than average. In middle age, they had higher levels of triglycerides and LDL cholesterol. They also experienced higher rates of such conditions as obesity, diabetes and schizophrenia.
By the time they reached old age, those risks had taken a measurable toll, according to the research of L.H. Lumey, an epidemiologist at Columbia University. In 2013, he and his colleagues reviewed the death records of hundreds of thousands of Dutch people born in the mid-1940s.
They found that the people who had been in utero during the famine — known as the Dutch Hunger Winter cohort, died at a higher rate than people born before or afterwards.
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There is one myth about Audrey Hepburn I have to dispel, she was not British-Belgian. In Belgium as in many other European countries you don’t automatically obtain citizenship just because you’re born there. You get the nationality of your parents, usually the nationality of the Father or sometimes the Mother.
Audrey was born on May 4,1929 in Brussels to a British father and Dutch mother.Therefore she was half British and half Dutch.
She was born Audrey Kathleen Ruston or Edda Kathleen Hepburn-Ruston.Her father, Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston , was a British subject born in Auschitz, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary. Her Mother was Baroness Ella van Heemstra, a Dutch noblewoman. Her parents got married in Indonesia which was a Dutch colony at the time.Shortly after they married they moved to Europe, initially London but then later to Brussels.
Audrey’s grandfather Aarnoud van Heemstra, was the governor of the Dutch colony of Suriname.
She had 2 half siblings from an earlier marriage of her Mother.
The WWII years of Audrey Hepburn do proof that it didn’t matter how well connected you were, survival was not a certainty for anyone.
In the mid-1930s, Hepburn’s parents recruited and collected donations for the British Union of Fascists, and allegedly were great admirers of Adolf Hitler. In 1935 Audrey’s Father abandoned the family. Following that mother moved with Hepburn to her family’s estate in Arnhem. Audrey and her mother did briefly live in Kent in 1937 but moved back to the Netherlands after Britain had declared war to Germany, The Netherlands were a neutral country and had remained neutral during WWI. Audrey’ mother hoped this would be the case again this time.
After the Germans invaded the Netherlands in 1940, Audrey changed her name to Edda van Heemstra, because an “English-sounding” name could be potentially dangerous.
Her mother had already introduced Audrey to ballet lessons while they were still in England. The German occupation took a hard toll on the young Audrey Hepburn, who used ballet as a form of escapism from the harsh reality of war. She trained at the Arnhem conservatory with ballet professor Winja Marova and became her star pupil.
The reality of war hit even harder when her uncle, Otto van Limburg Stirum(the husband of her Mother’s sister Miesje) was killed by the Nazis as reprisal for an act of sabotage by the resistance movement;on August 15 1942, while he had not been involved in the act, he was targeted due to his family’s prominence in Dutch society.
Stirum’s murder turned Audrey’s Mother away from Nazi ideology, to become an avid member of the Dutch Resistance.
Audrey once said in an interview after the war.
“We saw young men put against the wall and shot, and they’d close the street and then open it and you could pass by again… Don’t discount anything awful you hear or read about the Nazis. It’s worse than you could ever imagine”
In 1944, Hepburn met with Dr. Hendrik Visser ’t Hooft, a local physician, and Dutch Resistance leader. She became a volunteer for the Dutch Resistance, using her passion for dancing and talents for ballet by having secret shows to fund resistance groups.
She also worked as a courier.Many Dutch children were couriers because they were less likely to raise the suspicions of the Nazis.
Hepburn also witnessed the transportation of Dutch Jews to concentration camps, of which she later said:
“More than once I was at the station seeing trainloads of Jews being transported, seeing all these faces over the top of the wagon. I remember, very sharply, one little boy standing with his parents on the platform, very pale, very blond, wearing a coat that was much too big for him, and he stepped on the train. I was a child observing a child”
The situation turned dire for Audrey Hepburn. Living conditions grew very bad and Arnhem was subsequently heavily damaged during Operation Market Garden. During the Dutch famine that followed in the winter of 1944, the Germans blocked the resupply routes of the Dutch people’s already-limited food and fuel supplies as retaliation for railway strikes that were held to hinder.
Hepburn’s family had to do with flour out of tulip bulbs to bake cakes and biscuit as food. Audrey developed acute anæmia, respiratory problems and œdema due to malnutrition.This would affect her for the remainder of her life.
After the war, she read Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank and felt greatly impacted by the book. Luca Dotti, Audrey Hepburn’s son, talked about his memories of her in an interview with People Magazine.
“My mother never accepted the simple fact that she got luckier than Anne, She possibly hated herself for that twist of fate.”
Maybe that’s why she turned down the chance to play the part of Anne Frank.
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In September 1944, most of the southern part of the Netherlands had been liberated. Unfortunately, the rest of the country faced a very harsh winter. Extreme cold combined with a lack of food resulted in a famine, causing the death of about 20,000 citizens.
Dutch railway workers had gone on strike with the hope of helping the Allied forces to advance. Alas, the British-led allied campaign called Operation Market Garden failed. The Nazis retaliated by blocking food supplies.
The effects of the famine are still felt more than seven decades after it ended. One famous example of someone who suffered from the famine during the Hunger Winter for the rest of her life is Audrey Hepburn. She spent her childhood in the Netherlands during the Hunger Winter. She would become a successful actress who accumulated wealth in her later years. However, she had lifelong medical conditions as a result of the famine. She suffered from anemia, respiratory illnesses, and edema.
Babies born from women who were pregnant during the famine would often be a few pounds heavier than the average. Their death rate would also be higher than those who had been in utero before or after the famine.
Below the photographs are visual impressions of the Hunger Winter of 1944/45.
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I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
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History of Sorts 
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