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In times of hunger and war, children form a notoriously vulnerable group. During World War II children throughout occupied Europe suffered severely from Nazi Germany’s exploitation policies and hunger politics, especially in those areas where the circumstances eventually produced famine. 1 Yet during the ‘Hunger Winter’ of 1944/1945, children in the occupied Western Netherlands proved remarkably resilient to famine conditions. This was noted by health authorities at the time, but is also reflected in the relatively low rates of child mortality. 2 Studies on the Dutch Hunger Winter have generally focussed on the role of the state (e.g. official rations, soup kitchens, state relief) and the grassroots (e.g. black markets, crime, food expeditions) when investigating responses to the famine. 3 Paying little attention to civil society, this orthodox view on food provisioning fails to explain children’s resilience to the deplorable food situation. This chapter innovatively investigates the role of civil society during the Dutch Hunger Winter, showing that community efforts devoted to child nutrition likely mitigated the famine’s detrimental effects on this particular group.

By examining child-feeding initiatives in the large conurbations, this chapter argues that civil society networks operating between state and household levels effectively took over food provisioning from official authorities during the crisis. These civil society efforts also comprised of the evacuation of 40,000 malnourished children out of the famine-affected areas, a topic about which I have written elsewhere. 4 For the urban children who remained, it will be demonstrated that non-governmental emergency food assistance was key to survival during the final months of war and occupation. In order to reveal the non-market mechanisms that ensured food relief to children, I draw on a wide variety of official and personal source materials from international, national and local archives. The aim is to advance a deeper understanding of how civil society during the famine in the occupied Western Netherlands functioned as a third distribution system in addition to those governed by the state and those operating at a grassroots level.

The chapter begins by examining the broader political contexts that provided the conditions under which child-feeding initiatives could emerge. This first section includes a brief outline of the food supply in the German-occupied Netherlands, the causes of the famine that lasted from late November 1944 until mid-May 1945 and the principal state responses to the crisis situation. The chapter then moves to the emergence of local self-help entities in the food-deprived Western Netherlands, followed by the constitution of the main NGO that began to serve as an umbrella institute for local relief efforts, the Interdenominational Bureau for Emergency Nutrition. The final section considers the overall results and impact of the child-feeding efforts, concluding with a discussion about the interaction between social processes, physiological vulnerability and resilience to famine.

Famine Between Occupation and Liberation

Although the general attitude of Nazi Germany towards occupied countries was to treat them as a source of pillage, the Netherlands managed to maintain a relatively privileged position with regard to food when compared to other European countries. This position had already been attained at the beginning of the German occupation. After the invasion in May 1940, Hitler appointed a German civil administration in the occupied Netherlands, led by Reichskommissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart. In addition to the implementation of racial politics, Hitler’s main priority in the occupied Netherlands was to exploit the country’s economy, technology and colonies. 5 Starving the Dutch, however, was never part of these plans. Seyss-Inquart received two specific instructions: to not let the standard of living in the Netherlands drop below German levels, and to merge Dutch industry with the German war economy. According to Hitler, the Dutch needed to be won over by National Socialism and voluntarily restructure society along ideological lines, which is illustrative of the relatively ‘privileged’ position the ‘Aryan’ Dutch were given among the occupied people of Europe. 6

As part of these more sophisticated exploitation strategies, it was in Nazi Germany’s economic interests to retain those Dutch experts who knew how to maximise agricultural production and set up an efficient wartime rationing system. It was for this reason that throughout the occupation responsibility for the food supply remained in the hands of two Dutch senior bureaucrats who had been playing a leading role in the country’s agricultural affairs since the 1930s—Secretary-General of Economic Affairs Hans Max Hirschfeld and Director-General of Food Supply Stephanus Louwe Louwes. The new rationing apparatus in the occupied Netherlands was largely a continuation of pre-war organisations, with the main exception that all regulations became subordinate to the German Hauptabteilung Ernährung und Landwirtschaft (Department of Food and Agriculture). 7

Adequate pre-war preparations ensured that the transition in the Netherlands to agricultural self-sufficiency was achieved in a relatively orderly manner after the country became occupied. By working closely with agricultural producers, the Dutch food administration’s policies and expertise contributed to developing advanced rationing institutions, limiting black market trade and negotiating low export demands with Berlin. Most importantly, food governance during the occupation prevented a serious shortage of food in the Netherlands until September 1944, with official rations only slightly lower than those in Germany. 8 By then the Allied advance had seriously begun to affect the Dutch food system. In the first half of 1944, in response to Allied military progress, the German Wehrmacht had inundated considerable areas of cultivated land and confiscated transportation means, fuel and foodstuffs to prepare for the decisive battle. Combined with the adverse consequences of the Arbeitseinsatz (‘work effort’), the central rationing system was thus already severely disrupted before the Allies set foot on Dutch soil.

After Operation Market Garden (17–25 September 1944), threats to the food supply evolved into severe damage. Led by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, Market Garden intended a quick liberation of the Netherlands while simultaneously establishing a bridgehead into the industrial heart of Germany, the Ruhr. At first, all worked according to plan, as the Allies managed to secure Dutch bridges across the rivers Waal and Maas. But, the offensive over the Rhine, near the city of Arnhem, proved to be the proverbial ‘bridge too far’. A German counterattack forced the last Allied troops to retreat from Arnhem by 25 September 1944. 9 Operation Market Garden had failed, and the Northern provinces would remain occupied until the spring of 1945. In the months following the operation, inhabitants of the still occupied part of the country not only experienced intensifying German repression, but also suffered the consequences of losing three major food-producing provinces as well as the only domestic mining area.

Similar to Dutch popular belief, international studies still commonly assume that the German occupying forces played a malevolent role in creating and maintaining famine in the occupied Western Netherlands. 10 However, the famine actually resulted from the culmination of several transportation and allocation problems—both intentional and unintentional. In support of the Allied advance, on 17 September 1944 the Dutch government-in-exile instigated a national railway strike that resulted in cessation of all food transports by train until May 1945. After Dutch authorities refused to call off the strike, Reichskommissar Seyss-Inquart retaliated by cutting off all shipping transports from the agricultural northeast to the western provinces, which were inhabited by 4.3 million people, with 2.6 million residing in conurbations. Realising that deprivation of all basic necessities would lead to social chaos the German occupier soon yielded its extreme retaliation measures. More specifically, it was Wehrmachtbefehlshaber Friedrich Christiansen who anticipated that widespread hunger in the urbanised west would lead to disorder and riots, which the German army dreaded while fighting the Allies in the south. 11 When German civil authorities first partially lifted the shipping embargo after three weeks and fully lifted it mid-November 1944, the circumstances had not yet produced full-blown famine.

Whereas from December 1944 onwards the German civil authorities for military and political reasons began actively collaborating with the Dutch food administration to avoid the worst, 12 other factors further exacerbated the food situation. The most important was the fuel shortage that followed after the liberation of coal-producing Limburg, preventing people from heating their houses and cooking food, but also restraining transportation possibilities. Another contributing issue was that a growing lack of trust in the food system contributed to considerable growth in clandestine production and trade, reaching over 40% of total production. 13 Weather conditions further aggravated the situation, with a period of heavy frosts lasting from 23 December 1944 until 30 January 1945 that prohibited water transportation. Combined with the fuel shortages, German requisitioning of transportation and the railway strike, the period of frosts accelerated famine conditions in the west. At the international level the postponement of emergency food aid played a crucial role. Throughout the war the British government’s approach to relief was characterized by its determination to stick to the blockade policy (‘economic warfare’), deferring all relief to civil populations until after the ultimate defeat of Nazi Germany. 14 After three precious months of negotiating the Allies and the Germans agreed to allow limited relief supplies from neutral sources. But the severe restrictions imposed on these Red Cross shipments in the months February–April 1945 ultimately prevented a regular relief scheme. 15 Allied food relief would not reach the starving Dutch in large quantities until ten days after German surrender. 16

The Dutch food authorities responded to this crisis situation from the autumn of 1944 onward along two distinct lines. On the one hand, they aimed at regaining centralised control of food production and transportation in order to raise official rations. The most successful example of this strategy was the establishment of the Central Shipping Company in early December 1944. 17 But these centralising measures could not prevent official rations from dwindling fast. After 26 November 1944, rations dropped below a mere 750 kcal for adults as well as children over four years of age and the period of winter frost caused a first low point at 500 kcal in January 1945. The absolute low point was reached in May, just before German surrender, when rations reached 364 kcal. 18 The desperate situation caused Dutch and German authorities to act antagonistically to their regular policies by decentralising and delegating responsibilities to local levels. Full use of local transportation and supplies had to ensure maximum consumption levels, which, in light of the crisis, was favoured over maximum official rations. Subsidiarity was an important principle in these decentralisation measures. The food authorities allowed local relief entities to emerge as part of a ‘secondary rationing system’, which developed from farmers’ surpluses in addition to their mandatory supply to the central rationing system. The food authorities’ emergency policies were mainly determined by their inability to identify at individual levels those in need of extra rations and emergency relief. 19

Individual Versus Collective Coping Strategies

The severe food and fuel deprivation during the final months of the war prompted urban dwellers in the occupied west to take matters into their own hands. As living solely off official rations had become impossible, people needed to obtain food supplies from extra-legal sources in order to survive. This caused black market prices to skyrocket, which only the wealthiest could afford. For example, during the winter of 1944/1945 products that determined the quantity of a meal such as bread, wheat and potatoes sold for up to 200 times the retail price. 20 Since most families did not have the means to purchase or barter on the black market regularly, anyone capable ventured out into the countryside to obtain foodstuffs at lower prices. More than half of urban households participated in these hongertochten (‘food expeditions’), especially working-class and lower middle-class families. 21 As such, these food expeditions were an indispensable factor in mitigating famine conditions at household levels. Yet, they also left a particularly vulnerable group behind that was unable to embark on food expeditions or buy regularly on the black market: the poor, the sick and elderly, people in hiding and housebound single parents with young children.

Fortunately for these people, the food crisis did not solely produce self-serving, individual and household responses to the food shortage. The state’s shrinking role in providing food was replaced by expanded public participation and communal efforts to relieve the famine. Local self-help entities and relief committees emerged in all towns in the Western Netherlands, mostly comprising of people living in the same street or neighbourhood or belonging to the same religious denomination. According to Air Raid Protection, communal relief was much better organised within working-class neighbourhoods than in upper-class areas due to the former’s larger involvement in the black market, more awareness of the situation of neighbours, as well as less self-centredness and more willingness to help one another. 22

The examples of successful relief efforts in working-class quarters are plentiful. For example, one neighbourhood committee in Amsterdam arranged the distribution of 55,385 litres of cooked food, for an equal number of meals, between early January and mid-May 1945. Under the guidance of a local physician, 500 of the 6200 neighbours volunteered in the quarter’s private food supply, emergency hospital, technical service team, security system and even a veterinarian service. Their initial focus was feeding all children between the ages of 6 and 16, but they soon extended this to 19 years, in order to prevent adolescents from working for the Germans in return for extra rations. Eventually, children between the ages of 4 and 6 were included as well. The committee also managed to occasionally intercept food that was intended for the black market with the help of local Resistance groups and policemen, after which it was equally divided among all neighbours, thereby creating new networks of trust and food coalitions at the local level. 23

Churches played an important role in organising relief as well, albeit mostly for their own religious communities. An example of this is the Reformed Relief Committee Hulp voor ons Allen (‘Help for Us All’) established in Rotterdam in December 1944. Despite what its name suggests, the committee only aided the Reformed community in the city centre of Rotterdam. From its creation until liberation, the all-male board of Help for Us All provided relief to all 2061 families in its parish with the help of about 100 volunteers and support from a local abattoir. The foodstuffs they reallocated came from sister communities in the rural northeast of the country, as was usually the case with denominational relief committees. In total, Help for Us All distributed over 40,000 meals, placed 36 of their children in host families to share home-cooked meals and evacuated another 200 children to the countryside. 24

The common denominator of all communal relief efforts in the Western Netherlands was their aim to aid children first. The focus on school age children can be explained by the fact that this vulnerable group was allocated the same meagre rations as adults, while infants and toddlers were entitled to higher rations and occasionally obtained extra meals from state soup kitchens. 25 When in September 1944 the Directorate of Food Supply decided that all coupon-free meals had to be stopped in favour of equal rationing, this included school meals. The Dutch food authorities officially argued that school kitchens had to close in favour of central control, but sources reveal that the main reason was to exclude National Socialist involvement from the rationing system. 26 When state relief to school children was de facto terminated, the Dutch authorities knew very well that this left a vulnerable group exposed to food deprivation—and it was for this reason that they allowed and encouraged grassroots initiatives to fill this gap.

The Interdenominational Bureau for Emergency Nutrition

While local authorities had allowed the emergence of relief entities, the Dutch and German national authorities grew concerned about the wide variety of these organisations. As Director of Food Supply, Louwes aspired to coordinate local efforts in order to retain some level of control, but also to receive official approval from Seyss-Inquart for non-governmental emergency aid. In early December 1944, meetings were held between Louwes and representatives of the Inter Kerkelijk Overleg (IKO: ‘Interdenominational Counsel of the Churches’). Louwes acknowledged that the IKO was in a strong position to take on relief responsibilities, as city-dwellers trusted the churches because of their critical stance towards the occupier and the organisation also provided a link to food-producing communities in the northeast of the country. Moreover, the IKO could embody the ‘apolitical’ organisation the occupier would require for this job. Louwes arranged a meeting between an IKO representative and Seyss-Inquart, who agreed with the initiative on the condition that there would be just one body for both emergency relief and the evacuation of children. His approval led to the establishment of the Inter Kerkelijk Bureau voor Noodvoedselvoorziening (IKB: ‘Interdenominational Bureau for Emergency Nutrition’), which became the only official organisation allowed to gather food alongside the rationing system. 27

On 14 December 1944 the IKB put together a board with representatives from the Reformed and Roman Catholic denominations as well as from the public school system in order ‘to serve the emergency nourishment of ALL sections of society—even the non-religious ones [sic]’. 28 Officials from the public sector and industrial leaders joined the IKB in a special advisory committee. The Central IKB was established in The Hague, where an earlier interdenominational relief committee had already taken on child-feeding tasks. The Central IKB’s main task was to establish local departments throughout the occupied areas and to divide foodstuffs accordingly. 29 The churches raised the required funds while families would pay for individual nourishment. In December 1944 and January 1945, two representatives of the IKO made trips to the northeastern provinces to talk about these plans with religious leaders, local relief committees and Seyss-Inquart’s provincial representatives. According to a post-war report by the IKB, it was ‘due to the spontaneous collaboration of many good citizens among the authorities and private individuals that a smooth-running operation was launched’. 30 All large towns established district offices and hundreds of distribution points were opened. The IKB even set up a separate postal service for internal correspondence. Within a month the IKB had managed to achieve the full and active cooperation of both German and Dutch officials and attracted thousands of volunteers. 31

The basic principle of the IKB was ‘By the churches, for all’, which meant that the allocation of supplies was determined by medical or social priority, and not according to religious or political affiliation as before. In addition to organising emergency nutrition, its second task was to evacuate malnourished children from the urban west to rural areas. 32 For both tasks, it was imperative that the IKB established its own medical department to screen all those eligible for emergency feeding or evacuation, for which it cooperated with local general practitioners, paediatricians, internists, Municipal Health Services and the Public Health Inspection. To ensure that the selection would be as fair as possible the IKB even wrote down and distributed guidelines in which the Chief of the Medical Department had meticulously explained the proper procedures and weight-for-height requirements that determined to which urgency class the examined patient belonged. 33

The IKB emergency nutrition department focussed on three vulnerable groups that showed physical signs of malnourishment: toddlers (3–5 years), children (6–15 years) and adults, of which children formed the largest group. As the number of needy children increased so quickly, it was not possible to accept them into the feeding programmes based on doctors’ notes alone. Independent medical screening ultimately determined whether children could participate in meals six times a week (more than 20% below average weight for sex, height and age) or three times a week (15–20% underweight). In The Hague, where the Central IKB was located, almost thirty per cent of examined children fell into the highest ‘urgently necessary’ category. 34 Similar criteria were applied to the other two groups, with the one for adults being particularly strict. The IKB only distributed food to people over 16 years old whose lives were directly at stake due to malnourishment, such as patients suffering from oedema, cachexia (>30% underweight), TB, or those who had already become bedridden. In addition to these official categories, the IKB clandestinely cooked and delivered food to local hospitals, elderly homes, staff members of municipal emergency homes, political prisoners and even people in hiding. 35 In total approximately half a million people—out of an urban population of 2.6 million—received IKB food relief for short or prolonged periods of time. 36

Feeding the Future

Since the IKB was essentially an overarching institution for already existing efforts, the nature and modus operandi of child-feeding programmes differed in each region. For instance, in Amsterdam a child-feeding organisation called Onderlinge Hulp Noodtoestand Schooljeugd (OHNS: ‘Mutual Aid Emergency Situation Schoolchildren’) was established by the former head of the Municipal Department of Child Clothing and Feeding to aid Protestant and public schoolchildren, while Catholics retained their own organisation. These relief committees coexisted until the extreme fuel shortage around mid-February 1945 forced them to merge, with the local IKB only supplying the OHNS soup kitchens and not interfering in the allocation of meals. 37 In Rotterdam, many child-feeding initiatives declined to merge or cooperate with the IKB, and a citywide relief committee such as in Amsterdam or The Hague was never achieved. Their local IKB focussed on feeding children from the poorest quarters. 38 In Utrecht, a local department of the Dutch Red Cross started child feeding in early October 1944, which was later taken over by the cooperating churches, even though they never formally operated under the name of the IKB. 39 Similar developments took place in smaller towns throughout the occupied west, which confirms that these were indeed uncoordinated bottom-up initiatives. 40

The results of the child-feeding programmes were nothing short of impressive. The OHNS in Amsterdam grew enormously after its mandatory merger. Whereas during its start-up week in mid-February 1945 it could only provide 6000 extra meals per day for a total of 120,000 school children, by March this number had grown to 38,000—feeding nearly a third of all school children. 41 When on 10 January 1945 the Central IKB in The Hague took over from the cooperating churches, these had already been feeding some 6000 children. Two weeks later, this number had risen to 12,000, and between February and April 1945 it was fixed around 28,000, more than half of the children in the city. 42 In Utrecht the Committee for Child Nutrition rejected the general stance that only children who were diagnosed with malnourishment should benefit from the meals. Instead, all school children aged 6–14 years became entitled to one meal a week and those diagnosed with malnourishment could have multiple meals a week. 43 In all towns, relief efforts resulted in the extra feeding of approximately a third to half of the neediest urban children. The meals typically consisted of half a litre of a nutritional, yet watery mix of potatoes, vegetables, sugar beets and sometimes even tulip bulbs. The IKB Rotterdam calculated that the average meal comprised of 200 kcal, which was not much but still an indispensable supplement to the famine rations. 44

An additional reason why local relief efforts prioritised school age children specifically was that younger children could not easily be fed in a school setting. But when relief organisations discovered that toddlers were suffering from malnourishment just as severely, by the end of February 1945 most began to include young children aged 4–5, followed by the age group of 1–3 years shortly after. 45 Although most child-feeding initiatives also made efforts to place children in better situated host families for home-cooked meals, communal eating was generally a precondition for relief provisioning. The food was always consumed collectively, mostly in classrooms, but certainly never in a household setting, which was to ensure that the extra rations would not be redistributed to other household members or, specifically, would not be eaten by the male head of the household. 46

By feeding the children, civil society organisations took over care responsibilities from households in order to protect the future of Dutch society. But in doing so, they usually established boundaries of who did or did not belong, as is exemplified by the exclusiveness of the independently operating neighbourhood and denominational committees. The Nutrition Council in Leiden considered this shift in responsibility necessary for the future of society: ‘The Committee is deeply convinced that, if this plan succeeds, it will prevent a catastrophic breakdown of the health of Leiden’s youth as well as a limitless demoralisation’. 47 This demoralisation was especially an issue when it came to religious beliefs. In Utrecht, school children were divided into three separate religious groups, ensuring that ‘the children were situated in the spiritual sphere that they belonged to’. For toddlers, separate eating was considered less important, as they were supposedly too young to be influenced by alternative religious persuasions. 48 The rigid Catholic relief politics in Amsterdam even resulted in all Catholic school children receiving extra meals, against only 20% of Protestant and public school children. 49 Child relief during the Dutch famine thus had its limits when it came to solidarity and community.

Because the problems with food supply were by no means solved by the time of liberation in May 1945, many relief committees remained active until the summer of 1945. In most towns, between May and June the number of children participating in IKB relief grew larger as they enjoyed more opportunities of supply and transport. 50 In mid-June 1945, municipalities took over school feeding once again and participation rapidly declined, which can be explained both by official rations increasing to pre-war levels and the desire to normalise family life as quickly as possible. Following declining trust in the household’s authority over children’s health during the famine period, collective feeding had taken away responsibility from the parents and placed it at community levels. After the food crisis parents reclaimed their traditional role as caregivers, making municipal school feeding just as unpopular as it had been before the war.

Vulnerability and Resilience

The importance of the child-feeding programs during the famine was recognised early on by post-war relief organisations as well as military authorities. In July 1945, Major Miller from the Allied Relief Department in Utrecht wrote a letter stating that it had been anticipated that there would be little or no relief organisation available for children, but that they found an excellent organisation, the Committee for Child Nutrition, that was already operating and capable of immediate expansion. 51 In the summer of 1945 a child-feeding committee in Gouda even concluded that, because of local efforts in their town, no single child had died from starvation. The municipality of Amsterdam similarly concluded that ‘experts have assured that the distribution of food by the OHNS had saved hundreds of children from starving to death. It is due to the OHNS that the Amsterdam schoolchildren have surmounted the hunger period without major drawbacks’. 52

Qualitative evidence on the impact of the child-feeding initiatives upon children’s health seems supported by mortality data. During the Dutch famine the overall lowest death rates were seen among children and young adults, especially within the age group of 1–14 years. At the height of the famine in March 1945, death rates reached 0.7 per population of 1000 boys and 0.6 for girls, compared to roughly 0.4 in normal times. 53 The pattern is even more distinct in the age group 5–14 years. New research shows that mortality patterns of school age children in the urban west were hardly affected during the famine, and even remained below those in non-affected parts of the country. 54 In Amsterdam, for example, school age children were the only age group to show a mortality peak in the summer of 1943, instead of during the famine in 1944/1945. 55 These patterns contradict findings on other modern famines, including those that occurred during World War II, in which school age children often suffered a large proportionate rise in deaths. 56

The Dutch case suggests that, while children may be physically vulnerable to food deprivation and infectious diseases, their strong social position in Dutch mid-twentieth-century society may also have made them particularly resilient to famine conditions. 57 Increased death rates are only famine traits insofar as families or society is not able to sustain a child at the expense of others. In other words, physiological vulnerability to malnutrition can be modified by social factors and processes that minimise the expected effects. 58 In addition to the evacuation of 40,000 malnourished children, extensive food provisioning to Dutch children certainly positively affected their survival chances. 59 Most importantly, by targetting those children who suffered most from malnutrition during the Dutch famine, non-governmental relief entities were able to compensate when the state and the family could no longer protect their children.

Conclusion

For the occupied Western Netherlands the final months of war presented a period of declining state food provision to children, which led to the rise of a new type of relief organisation: local child relief entities. Emerging from existing networks and traditional Dutch practices, these civil society organisations occupied a central position between the household and state levels and, as such, effectively took over care and relief responsibilities. The collective decision to help school age children first was supported by both the German and the Dutch authorities, and resulted in the extra feeding of approximately a third to half of the children in famine-affected areas. As supported by qualitative and quantitative evidence on child health and mortality, the impact of these child-feeding efforts should not be underestimated. Therefore, this chapter has argued for a better understanding of the relationship between physiological vulnerability to food deprivation and social processes fostering resilience—an understanding that entails abandoning the dualistic focus on the state and the individual with regard to food distributions systems, and instead including the civil society networks operating between these levels.

Notes

  1. 1.

    Violetta Hionidou, Famine and Death in Occupied Greece , 1941–1944 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 68–172; Nadezhda Cherepenina, “Assessing the Scale of Famine and Death in Besieged Leningrad,” in Life and Death in Besieged Leningrad, 1941–1944, ed. John Barber and Andrei Dzeniskevich (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 60–61.

  2. 2.

    Cornelis Banning, “De Gezondheidstoestand in Nederland: De Algemeene Sterfte en Sterfte door Verhongering,” Nederlandsch Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde XXVII (1945): 311–315; Peter Ekamper et al., “War-Related Excess Mortality in The Netherlands, 1944–45: New Estimates of Famine- and Non-Famine-Related Deaths from National Death Records,” Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History (2017): 1–16.

  3. 3.

    See, e.g., Gerardus J. Kruijer, Sociale Desorganisatie. Amsterdam tijdens de Hongerwinter (Meppel: J.A. Boom & Zoon, 1951); Gerard M.T. Trienekens, Tussen ons Volk en de Honger: De Voedselvoorziening, 1940–1945 (Utrecht: Stichting Matrijs, 1985); Hein A.M. Klemann, Nederland 1938–1948: Economie en Samenleving in Jaren van Oorlog en Bezetting (Amsterdam: Boom, 2002); Ralf D. Futselaar, Lard, Lice and Longevity: A Comparative Study on the Standard of Living in Occupied Denmark and the Netherlands , 1940–1945 (Amsterdam: NIOD, 2008).

  4. 4.

    Ingrid J.J. Zwarte, “Coordinating Hunger: Child Evacuations During the Dutch Food Crisis, 1945,” War & Society 35, no. 2 (2016): 132–149.

  5. 5.

    Johan C.H. Blom, “Nazificatie en Exploitatie,” in De Organisatie van de Bezetting, ed. Henk Flap and Wil Arts (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1997), 17–30.

  6. 6.

    Loe de Jong, Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog 4 (The Hague: Staatsuitgeverij, 1972), 46–64; Johannes Kroll, Arthur Seyss-Inquart und die deutsche Besatzungspolitiek in den Niederlanden 1940–1945 (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2015).

  7. 7.

    Trienekens, Tussen ons Volk en de Honger, 43–44.

  8. 8.

    John Lindberg, Food, Famine and Relief 1940–1946 (Genève: United Nations, 1946), 21.

  9. 9.

    J.J. Gulmans, “Operatie Market Garden,” in De Bevrijding van Nederland, 1944–1945: Oorlog op de Flank, ed. Christ Klep and Ben Schoenmaker (The Hague: Sdu Koninginnegracht Publishers, 1995), 118–124, 137–149.

  10. 10.

    See, e.g., Stephen Devereux, Theories of Famine (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993), 160; Polymeris Voglis, “Surviving Hunger: Life in the Cities and Countryside During the Occupation,” in Surviving Hitler and Mussolini: Daily Life in Occupied Europe, ed. Robert Gildea, Olivier Wieviorka, and Annette Warring (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2006), 22; Lizzie Collingham, The Taste of War: World War Two and the Battle for Food (London: Allen Lane, 2011), 176; Ian Buruma, Year Zero: A History of 1945 (New York: Penguin Press, 2013), 54.

  11. 11.

    “Final Report of the Central IKB, 1945,” Transcript: P.V.J. van Rossem, Het Ontstaan van het Inter Kerkelijk Bureau en zijn Organisatie (Amsterdam: n.p., 1984), 52–61; secret telegram to C.L.W. Fock in London, 17 November 194: Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, 23 April 1955; Transcript: ibid., 2; J. Ravesloot, De Houding van de Kerk in de Bezettingstijd, 1940–1945 (n.p.: n.p., 1946), 30.

  12. 12.

    NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies [NIOD], 212a, inv. no. 167, diary of H.M. Hirschfeld, 15 December 1944; NIOD, 458, inv. no. 27, hearing Hirschfeld at Nuremburg Trial of Seyss-Inquart, 14 June 1946, 11686, 11696; De Zwarte, “Coordinating Hunger”.

  13. 13.

    Klemann, Nederland 1938–1948, 212; Klemann, “Die Koren Onthoudt, Wordt Gevloekt Onder het Volk: De Zwarte Markt in Voedingswaren 1940–1948,” BMGN—Low Countries Historical Review 115 (2000): 546–549.

  14. 14.

    Joan Beaumont, “Starving for Democracy: Britain’s Blockade of and Relief for Occupied Europe, 1939–1945,” War & Society 8, no. 2 (1990): 57–82.

  15. 15.

    National Archives and Records Administration Washington [NARA], 331, Entry 2, Box 117, 118; Public Record Office Kew [PRO], PREM 3/221/11, PREM 3/221/12, WO 219/1325, WO 220/668, FO 238/303, CAB 119/140, CAB 122/993. See also: Bob Moore, “The Western Allies and Food Relief to the Occupied Netherlands, 1944–1945,” War & Society 10, no. 2 (1992): 91–118.

  16. 16.

    NARA, 331, Entry 2, Box 118; Frank S.V. Donnison, Civil Affairs and Military Government North-West Europe 1944–1946 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1961), 148–149.

  17. 17.

    NIOD, 212a, inv. no. 114, 118, 167; ibid., 216 h, inv. no. 77, 89, 98, 100, 284, 312, 313, 325; Hans M. Hirschfeld, “De Centrale Reederij voor de Voedselvoorziening,” Maandschrift Economie 10 (1946).

  18. 18.

    Directorate of Food Supply, overview of weekly rations in Western Netherlands, 1 October 1944–45, January 1946.

  19. 19.

    National Archives, The Hague [NA], 2.11.30.05, inv. no. 68, meeting between Louwes and Von der Wense, 22 March 1945.

  20. 20.

    NA, 2.06.082, inv. no. 2, report November–December 1944; NIOD, 932a Zwarte handel; Klemann, “Die Koren”.

  21. 21.

    NIOD, 0332, File C, D; inv. no. 44, 45; Kruijer, Sociale Desorganisatie, passim.

  22. 22.

    NIOD, 249-0332, inv. no. E, letter from H.C. Determeijer (Air Protection) to RvO, 18 July 1946.

  23. 23.

    J.H. Wagenaar, Een Jaar Noodcomité (Amsterdam: n.p., 1946), 4–6; De Zwarte, “Save the Children: Social Self-Organisation and Relief in Amsterdam During the Dutch Hunger Winter,” Food & History 14, no. 2–3 (2016): 83–108. See also NIOD, 249-0332, inv. no. B1, J.L.H. van de Griek, “De Voedselhulp aan de Amsterdamse Schooljeugd in de Hongerwinter van 1944–45”; Stadsarchief Rotterdam [SR], 728, inv. no. 104, circular letters ‘Comité Het Kralingsche Kind 1945’, December 1944–February 1945; ibid., weekly report IKB, 29 January 1945; Haags Gemeente Archief [HGA], 0610-01, inv. no. 999, letter from Municipal Services to Mayor, 15 January 1945.

  24. 24.

    W.A. van Dongen, Oorlogswinter 1944–1945: Commissie van de Gereformeerde Kerk van Rotterdam-C, ‘Hulp voor ons Allen’ (Rotterdam: Meinema, 1945).

  25. 25.

    NA, 2.11.30.06, inv. no. 148, documentation on food distribution to infants, 1944–1945.

  26. 26.

    Ibid., inv. no. 3, report October 1943–July 1946. See also NA, 2.19.070.01, inv. no. 199, report NVD office Utrecht on September 1944–February 1945.

  27. 27.

    NIOD, 249-1076, inv. no. 23, report on meeting between IKO and Louwes, n.p.; Ravesloot, De Houding van de Kerk; Van Rossem, Inter Kerkelijk Bureau, 10.

  28. 28.

    Charity in Wartime: Final Report of the Local Interclerical Office: The Hague and Its Environments (The Hague: Interkerkelijk Bureau, 1946), 5.

  29. 29.

    NIOD, 182F, inv. no.144, report of the local IKB in The Hague ‘How it all started’, April 1945.

  30. 30.

    Charity, 6; NIOD, 249-1076, inv. no. 22, report on journeys to northern provinces, n.p.

  31. 31.

    Seyss-Inquart and other high German officials did raise objections to the IKB’s position later on in the crisis. NIOD, 212a, inv. no. 106, letter from Wimmer and Schwebel to Hirschfeld, 12 February 1945; NA, 2.11.30.05, inv. no. 68, meeting between Louwes and Von der Wense, 22 March 1945.

  32. 32.

    De Zwarte, “Coordinating Hunger”.

  33. 33.

    Herman J. Köster, Inter Kerkelijk Bureau voor Noodvoedselvoorziening’s-Gravenhage en Omstreken: Toelichting der Verstrekkingen op Medische Basis (The Hague: IKB, 1945).

  34. 34.

    NIOD, 182F, inv. no. 132, overview of IKB work by Dr Berkhout, 1 October 1945; Köster, Inter Kerkelijk Bureau, 7–8.

  35. 35.

    Charity.

  36. 36.

    Van Rossem, Inter Kerkelijk Bureau, 60

  37. 37.

    NIOD, 249-0332, inv. no. B1: Van de Griek, ‘De Voedselhulp…’; Jaarverslag van Amsterdam 1945: Het Jaar der Bevrijding II (Amsterdam: Stadsdrukkerij, 1946), 2–3.

  38. 38.

    GAR, 728, inv. no. 104, weekly reports and minutes of IKB, January–April 1945.

  39. 39.

    Henri W. Julius, Kinderen in Nood: De Kindervoeding in de Stad Utrecht in de Nood-Winter 1944–1945 (Utrecht: Commissie Kindervoeding voor de Stad Utrecht, 1946).

  40. 40.

    See, e.g., NIOD, 249-0332, inv. no. C3; Archief Delft [AD], 8, inv. no. 17; Erfgoed Leiden en Omstreken [ELO], 0257, inv. no. 1, 8; D.P. Kalkman, Een Lichtpunt in een Donkeren Tijd: De Geschiedenis van het Noodcomité Moordrecht (Moordrecht: Noodcomité Moordrecht, 1945).

  41. 41.

    NIOD, 249-0332, inv. no. B1: Van de Griek, ‘De Voedselhulp…’.

  42. 42.

    Charity, 22.

  43. 43.

    Julius, Kinderen.

  44. 44.

    GAR, 728, inv. no. 104, report IKB, 28 March 1945.

  45. 45.

    NIOD, 182F, inv. no. 132, minutes of meeting between IKB and paediatricians, 18 April 1945; Julius, Kinderen, 17–18.

  46. 46.

    NIOD, 249-0332, inv. no. B1, Van de Griek, ‘De Voedselhulp…’.

  47. 47.

    ELO, 0257, inv. no. 27, report of Committee School Feeding, 1944.

  48. 48.

    Julius, Kinderen, 44.

  49. 49.

    NIOD, 249-0332, inv. no. B1, Van de Griek, ‘De Voedselhulp…’.

  50. 50.

    Charity, 22.

  51. 51.

    Letter of Major Millen, Allied Relief Province of Utrecht, 3 July 1945, in Julius, Kinderen, 18.

  52. 52.

    Jaarverslag Amsterdam 1945, 4.

  53. 53.

    Ekamper et al., “War-Related Excess Mortality”.

  54. 54.

    Calculations by NIDI using non-public microdata from Statistics Netherlands: De Zwarte, “The Hunger Winter” (unpublished PhD thesis).

  55. 55.

    Maandberichten van het Bureau van Statistiek der Gemeente Amsterdam, 1944–1945; De Zwarte, “Save the Children”.

  56. 56.

    See, e.g., Cormac Ó Gradá, Famine : A Short History (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 101–102; Alex de Waal, “Famine Mortality: A Case Study of Darfur, Sudan, in 1984–1985,” Population Studies 43 (1989): 5–24; Serguei Adamets, “Famine in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Russia: Mortality by Age, Cause, and Gender,” in Famine Demography: Perspectives from the Past and Present, ed. Tim Dyson and Ó Gráda, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 158–180; Hionidou, Occupied Greece , 168–172; Cherepenina, “Besieged Leningrad,” 60–61.

  57. 57.

    This not only applies to the Netherlands. After the Great War the conviction grew that children had a key role to play in protecting the modern post-war society and preventing new social catastrophes. Twentieth-century relief practices consequently began focussing on children more than on any other group. Dominique Marshall, “Humanitarian Sympathy for Children in Times of War and the History of Children’s Rights, 1919–1959,” in Children and War: An Historical Anthology, ed. James Marten (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 184–186.

  58. 58.

    Joan P.W. Rivers, “The Nutritional Biology of Famine,” in Famine , ed. G. Ainsworth Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 92–93; George Kent, The Politics of Children ’s Survival (New York: Praeger, 1991), 2–3.

  59. 59.

    The same has been argued by Robert W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft, The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, rev. ed. 2009), 221–222, 418–419, 425; Hionidou, Occupied Greece , 169.