From the Dust Jacket
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.
From the Introduction
In this book, I focus on how the war influenced the nutritional status of women, children, and the poor in Germany. They fell prey to hidden costs of warfare, an impact that was seldom projected by war planners, and even more rarely quantitated. Estimates of civilian casualties from misdirected armaments—today called ‘collateral damage’—can be made. But what has not been sufficiently calculated are the chronic impacts of war on civilians resulting from the destruction of food supplies, the disruption of supply chains, and the loss of agricultural capacity far from the actual fighting. I here present a new quantitative analysis to determine the extent to which the most vulnerable members in German society, particularly women and children, suffered nutritional deprivation during the First World War. I have also employed these same analytical tools rooted in the science of anthropometrics to determine how international food aid subsequently eased war-induced misery for these same children.
In the dark aftermath of one of the most bitter wars the world had ever seen, small rays of light emerged. Individuals on all sides of the conflict took personal stances against enmity and hate, reaching out with compassion to former enemies. Eglantyne Jebb, a Cambridge elite, had personally never been faced with the inability to obtain a meal but she founded an organization, Save the Children, in direct response to the physical needs of children in Germany and Austria. The American Herbert Hoover, who had been orphaned as a nine-year-old child, was an extremely wealthy, self-made man. He saw first-hand the effects of the German occupation of Belgium as he tried to relieve the hunger of civilians. Yet once the armistice began, he fought internal politics at home and critics abroad to deliver foodstuffs into Germany. The philanthropic vision of these individuals was soon joined by many, many others, from nations around the world. People as far away as Siam and Samoa contributed to the relief of German children.
In the immediate aftermath of the war, much of the western world was filled with damaged, hurting people. ‘A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many.’ Yet their countrymen sent aid to Germany while they were still caring for those injured by German violence, and while carrying the grief that comes from wartime bereavement. Their compassion for their former enemies is astonishing.