Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food (82 page)

Over the years middle-class discontent translated into dissatisfaction with the Labour Party. The British Housewives’ League organized
protests against bread rationing and in 1951 Labour was defeated in the general election by the Conservatives, who had campaigned on the platform that they would bring an end to austerity.
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The United States was the only combatant nation to end the war in a healthy economic state. Indeed its economic expansion during the war had transformed it into ‘a giant on the world scene’.
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Almost two-thirds of the world’s industrial production now took place in the United States. The American gross national product had doubled and incomes had risen. Its workers were the most productive in the world; its farmers produced the highest yields per acre of any country.
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Amid the destruction and shabbiness of post-war Europe and Japan, US military bases stood out as islands of affluence. The economic resources of the United States, which had been so powerfully demonstrated by the firepower at the disposal of its soldiers, were now made manifest to the defeated civilian populations by their bountiful supplies of food. In Germany, children would beg outside the US army camps and the troops would pass out the remains of their amazing meals of soup, vegetables, steak and salad.
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One of the commonest memories of liberation is that of American soldiers doling out sweets and chewing gum to children as they drove through the towns and villages. In Japan children greeted American servicemen with the salutation, ‘Give me chocolate.’
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European children were also eager to gain access to the Coca-Cola sold in the PX stores on the bases, and in Austria children could be lured to attend youth activities by the promise of free Coca-Cola. Although the company was not supposed to use its monopoly as a supplier of sodas to the troops as a marketing scheme, the sale of the drink to American soldiers acted as ‘the greatest sampling program in the history of the world’.
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By 1950 when the GI Coke bottling programme came to an end Coca-Cola had established itself as a preferred drink among veterans returning to the United States as well as among the youth of Europe, who saw anything enjoyed by American soldiers as desirable.
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The physique of the Americans in comparison to the thin, grubby, malnourished bodies of the Europeans and the Japanese made an enormous impression.
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Miura Akira recalled how ‘well-fed and well-dressed [the Americans were], so healthy. In contrast to us, who were all emaciated. That was the first thing that hit us so hard. We said to ourselves,
Why did we fight these people? We couldn’t have won. (Laughs.)’ Even their food was outsized. ‘We sometimes received American potatoes and we couldn’t believe how huge they were. (Laughs.) Japanese potatoes are much, much smaller. These were two, three times as large. The canned goods may not have been great by American standards, but to us everything tasted great.’
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The contents of CARE packages, arriving in Europe from America, were marvelled at by their recipients. Over 100 million of these packages were sent to Europe (and from 1948 to Japan). As Reinhold Wagenleitner put it, the ‘relief packages in a starving Europe became equated with an overflowing shop window, which displayed the overwhelming achievements of the American economic system’.
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19

A World of Plenty

Food will win the war and write the peace.

(Slogan of the US Department of Agriculture)
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Disaster struck the hungry post-war world in 1946 in the form of a drought which affected Europe, the Soviet Union, Australia, parts of South America, parts of Africa, India, China and the rest of Asia.
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The run-down state of global agriculture meant that the world supply of meat, milk and fats was already inadequate. Now the harvest of staple foods (wheat and rice) was jeopardized. ‘The realisation of staggering shortages in the very cereals which had been expected to ensure an ample filler for deficit diets … transformed what had been contemplated with comparative equanimity as a shortage of preferred but not absolutely necessary foodstuffs into the threat of widespread and desperate suffering.’
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It was estimated that one-third of the world’s population, around 800 million people, were facing starvation.
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The only country in the world which had a bumper harvest in 1945 was the United States. The rest of the world looked to America to provide the food supplies to alleviate its misery. It was in the crucial years from 1944 to 1946 that Roosevelt’s stirring pronouncement that Americans were fighting for ‘freedom from want’, not just for America but for the whole world, was tested.
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In these initial post-war years the United States was caught in an internal conflict between self-interest and altruism. The government and its people were torn between the desire to at last reap the benefits of the wealth generated by the war or to continue to make sacrifices in the name of freedom and international co-operation, and thus take an honourable lead in shaping post-war policies. The
United States’ Food Administration strongly favoured the course of self-interest and determinedly worked to ensure plenty for American citizens.

AMERICAN PLENTY VERSUS EUROPEAN RELIEF

American agronomists had been anxious since the beginning of hostilities that the end of the conflict would bring about a sudden drop in demand for food, which, with America’s food production at unprecedented levels, would trigger a return to the economic depression, unemployment and food surpluses of the 1930s. Throughout 1944 the War Food Administration was dominated by officials drawn from the food industry for whom this was a particular concern. The pessimistic predictions of European analysts, who warned that liberated Europe would be faced with an immense food shortage, made little impression on them.
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As the Allies drove the Wehrmacht out of Europe, the military were allocated the initial task of distributing food to the liberated populations. Behind them came the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), which had been set up in November 1943 to assist the people of the Allied countries.
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Brigadier-General William O’Dwyer, Chief of the Economic Section of the Allied Control Commission for Italy, was shocked by the utter deprivation the US army found in Italy. The basic ration in Rome provided only 665 calories and the infant mortality rate had risen to 438 per 1,000 live births. As the Allies moved through France, Belgium and Greece they were in the distressing position of distributing less food to the people than the people had been receiving under the German occupation.
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Based on this experience, UNRRA and the US military called for America to increase food production and begin stockpiling in preparation for victory. Instead, the United States Department of Agriculture concentrated on decreasing surpluses and cut harvest targets for 1945. They stockpiled only 280 million bushels of wheat, compared with 630 million in 1942. This so-called ‘bare shelves policy’ aimed to have disposed of every
surplus ‘GI’ potato, pat of butter and slice of bread exactly as the war came to an end.
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The actions of the Department of Agriculture in 1944 ensured that America would have difficulty meeting the needs of UNRRA in 1945. But it was the Food Administration’s response to a pork shortage in American cities at the beginning of the year that ensured that wheat, supposedly earmarked for liberated Europeans, ended up in the stomachs of America’s pigs and chickens. Sequestered from the realities of starvation and food shortages in the rest of the world, the American public particularly disliked meat rationing. They had more money in their pay packets than ever before and now that the war was drawing to a close they wanted to buy choice cuts of meat. Complaints about the pork shortages were vociferous and in response Harry Truman
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appointed Clinton P. Anderson, the leading critic of the government’s management of food supplies, to the position of Food Administrator. Anderson’s main interest was the defence of the American consumer. He immediately set about revitalizing American meat production, in particular he promised to keep feed-corn prices low and hog prices high in order to encourage farmers to produce more pork.
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Throughout 1945 the Under-Secretary of State, the American Federation of Labor and President Truman himself made various statements to the effect that Americans were willing and
must
share their food in order to avert misery and politically undesirable unrest in newly liberated Europe. A public opinion survey found that 70 per cent of Americans claimed they would be prepared to put up with food cuts in order to help the starving in Europe, including their former enemies the Germans. Their sincerity was indicated by the millions of CARE packages sent to Europe.
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But the government implemented no policies to ensure that there would be sufficient food to spare. The day after the Japanese surrender rationing was lifted and in 1945, even though food production fell, civilian consumption rose. The Americans were eating more meat, butter and milk than ever before in the twentieth century. Average daily calorie consumption rose to 3,300.
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The amount of food allocated to commercial shipments, government-financed aid and, crucially, the armed forces who were responsible for the initial task of feeding liberated
civilians, all fell. In September Truman explained the problem in terms of the need to work out financial credit schemes with European governments and UNRRA.
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But the real problem was that American pigs, chicken and cattle were devouring grain at an unprecedented rate.

That year a shortage of good-quality corn had meant that those poultry and dairy farmers who did not grow their own fodder had bought in wheat to feed their livestock. In addition, farmers with surplus grain were keeping it back on their farms, waiting for prices to rise. The consequence of all this was that the amount of wheat available for relief shipments was below expectations and the quantities kept on falling throughout the winter of 1945–46. It was then that the repercussions of the poor worldwide harvest began to show among the cold and hungry Europeans. Grace Miller, from Montana, was posted to Belgium in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC). She described the horror felt by the US army cooks when they had to take ‘a truckload of kitchen garbage to the dumps … [there] a crowd of people always waited to grab anything remotely edible. People with their cups and pans, people who had once been well off, fought to get right under the garbage being spilled out so they could be sure to get something to eat. Every little bone or wilted vegetable was treasured. A mouldy loaf of bread could cause a vicious, clawing fight … “Those people are really desperate,” one cook told me, trying to hide his emotion. “Makes you want to cry,” he added softly, looking away.’
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In January 1946 the US Department of Agriculture discovered that in the last quarter of 1945 a record quantity of wheat had been consumed in America, mainly by livestock. Thus, they entered the year with a much smaller surplus than usual and higher commitments than ever to export wheat to needy countries. The Truman administration dithered. The longer it prevaricated the more farmers held back their wheat.
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In the end, wheat-saving measures were imposed on industry. The extraction rate of flour was raised to 80 per cent which resulted, to the bakers’ irritation, in a dirty grey loaf. Limits were imposed on the use of wheat to make alcohol, and as feed.
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But Truman and Clinton Anderson, his Food Administrator, decided that rationing should not be re-introduced. Despite public opinion surveys to the contrary, Anderson judged the American public were in no mood to embrace austerity measures with enthusiasm. He was probably right in thinking
that this would have made the administration unpopular. Instead, heart-rending appeals were made to the American public to voluntarily restrict their consumption. In a radio broadcast Truman declared, ‘we will not turn our backs on the millions of human beings begging for just a crust of bread. The warm heart of America will respond to the greatest threat of mass starvation in the history of mankind.’
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In the spring of 1946 Herbert Hoover was sent on a whistle-stop Famine Survey, visiting thirty countries in fifty-seven days.
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From Cairo he sent a broadcast to the States in which he compared the generous amounts of food eaten by Americans to the devastating hunger of millions. He urged the American public to give the gift of food and ‘return the lamp of compassion to the world’.
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Appeals of this nature made no impact on American eating habits and by March the United States was 10 per cent down on its agreed food aid targets.
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Hoover used his world tour to increase pressure on Britain, the Soviet Union and Latin America to provide more food. In March 1945 General Eisenhower had already had to request extra supplies from Britain for Belgium, owing to deficits in the American cargoes.
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During 1945 Britain had released over 1 million tons of its carefully husbanded food reserves for relief for Europe.
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Rationing was extended to bread in order to enable the government to meet Britain’s aid commitments. Canada, struggling with the effects of a poor grain crop, a shortage of fruit and vegetables and a sharp decline in hog production, also demonstrated the political will to ensure that its relief commitments were met, and re-introduced meat rationing in September 1945. Throughout 1946 and 1947 Canadian meat processors produced canned meats, meat pastes, spreads and blood sausage for Europe. The mechanization of the prairie provinces also freed up 40,000 draught horses which were sent to farmers in Poland, Czechoslovakia and France.
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In contrast, throughout the entire period of crisis the United States government proved itself unwilling to act in any way that would disadvantage American agribusiness and the American consumer. On 2 May 1946 Truman pronounced that ‘the heart of the American people will have to solve the world food crisis without resort to compulsion’.
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That year the United States fell short of the grain they had agreed to provide for relief by over 27 million bushels. Between mid-1942 and mid-1946 two-thirds of surplus wheat went to feed livestock. Only one-third was
used to provide food relief. If the use of wheat as feed had been maintained at pre-war levels then enough wheat could have been released to export three times as much for food aid. Meanwhile, the increase in civilian food consumption since 1943 accounted for more than the total amount of food sent to UNRRA.
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