Hunger in War and Peace: Women and Children in Germany, 1914-1924 (Oxford Historical Monographs)

What is the impact of war on non-combatants, particularly women and children? In this innovative analysis of nutritional deprivation among ordinary German citizens during the First World War, Mary Elisabeth Cox finds that the effects of the war and the Allied interdiction of food supplies—which became known in Germany as the ‘Hungerblockade’—resulted in diminished heights and weights of children far from the battlefield. During the war, Germany defiantly proclaimed that their country could not be starved out. In a military sense, this was likely to be the case, and many modern historians argue persuasively that Germany lost on the battlefield. Yet modern analyses of height and weight records for hundreds of thousands of school children reveal a grim truth: even if Germany did not lose the war because of food insecurity, the war blockade resulted in hunger for millions of German infants. Desperately struggling to feed their families under the growing spectre of starvation, many mothers chose to sacrifice their own well-being for the benefit of their families. National and local policies within Germany often exasperated food insecurity. Modern analysis of anthropometric data now brings into question both long-held assumptions about the divide between rural and urban health, and legal and moral arguments in support of the blockade. Combined with contemporary letters, diaries, and news reports, these data provide an expanded picture of the levels of health and nutritional deprivation across society. This story of one of the most vicious wars in history is not devoid of compassion. Following the eventual lifting of the British blockade, the victorious powers and nations throughout the world sent millions of tons of food into Germany, relief which is mirrored in drawings and letters of gratitude from hundreds of German school children, and which can be seen as a surge of growth in height and weight measurements. At the outbreak of the First World War, Great Britain quickly took steps to initiate a naval blockade against Germany. In addition to military goods and other contraband, foodstuffs and fertilizer were also added to the list of forbidden exports to Germany. As the grip of the Blockade strengthened, Germans complained that civilians-particularly women and children-were going hungry because of it. The impact of the blockade on non-combatants was especially fraught during the eight month period of the Armistice when the blockade remained in force. Even though fighting had stopped, German civilians wondered how they would go through another winter of hunger. The issue became internationalised as civic leaders across the country wrote books, pamphlets, and articles about their distress, and begged for someone to step in and relieve German women and children with food aid. Their pleas were answered with an outpouring of generosity from across the world. Some have argued, then and since, that these outcries were based on gross exaggerations based more on political need rather than actual want. This book examines what the actual nutritional statuses of women and children in Germany were during and following the War. Mary Cox uses detailed height and weight data for over 600,000 German children to show the true measure of overall deprivation, and to gauge infant recovery. During and after World War One, Britain's blockade of Germany prevented foodstuffs from being exported to Germany, leading to outcries from German civic leaders and an outpouring of generosity from across the world. This study examines the detailed height and weight data of children in this period to show the measures of deprivation and recovery.