1st Edition

Food and War in Twentieth Century Europe

Edited By Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Rachel Duffett Copyright 2011
    294 Pages
    by Routledge

    294 Pages
    by Routledge

    Wars cannot be fought and sustained without food and this unique collection explores the impact of war on food production, allocation and consumption in Europe in the twentieth century. A comparative perspective which incorporates belligerent, occupied and neutral countries provides new insights into the relationship between food and war. The analysis ranges from military provisioning and systems of food rationing to civilians' survival strategies and the role of war in stimulating innovation and modernization.

    Chapter 1: Introduction; Part I: Soldiers and their Food; Chapter 2: Food Provisioning in the German Army of the First World War; Chapter 3: British Army Provisioning on the Western Front, 1914–1918; Chapter 4: Fighting a Kosher War: German Jews and Kashrut in the First World War; Part II: Home Front: The Citizens Adapt; Chapter 5: Food Provisioning on the German Home Front, 1914–1918; Chapter 6: Bread from Wood: Natural Food Substitutes in the Czech Lands during the First World War; Chapter 7: Hunger and Misery: The Influence of the First World War on the Diet of Slovenian Civilians; Chapter 8: The Spanish Civil War and its Aftermath: Eating Strategies and Social Change 1; Chapter 9: Alimentary and Pellagra Psychoses in Besieged Leningrad; Part III: Home Front: The State Intervenes; Chapter 10: Fair Shares? The Limits of Food Policy in Britain during the Second World War; Chapter 11: Communal Feeding in War Time: British Restaurants, 1940–1947; Chapter 12: Rationing and Politics: The French Academy of Medicine and Food Shortages during the German Occupation and the Vichy Regime; Chapter 13: Réalités cruelles: State Controls and the Black Market for Food in Occupied France; Chapter 14: Nutrition Education in Times of Food Shortages and Hunger: War and Occupation in the Netherlands, 1939–1945; Part IV: War, Modernization and Innovation; Chapter 15: Mikkel Hindhede and the Science and Rhetoric of Food Rationing in Denmark 1917–1918 1; Chapter 16: The Modernization of the Icelandic Diet and the Impact of War, 1914–1945; Chapter 17: Horsemeat in France: A Food Item that Appeared during the War of 1870 and Disappeared after the Second World War; Chapter 18: The Innovative Power of War: The Army, Food Sciences and the Food Industry in Germany in the Twentieth Century; Chapter 19: Conclusion

    Biography

    Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, University of Illinois, Chicago, USA, Rachel Duffett, University of Essex, UK & Alain Drouard, Sorbonne, Paris, France and President of ICREFH

    'Stretching from Reykjavik to Leningrad and from Berlin to Madrid, this collection gives us for the first time a genuine trans-European picture of what food and hunger meant for soldiers and civilians in the era of the two world wars. Fascinating.' Frank Trentmann, Birkbeck College, UK, author of Free Trade Nation and (with Fleming Just) Food and Conflict. 'A menu of chapters to stimulate for all varieties of historical taste bud, from the economic, social and political, to the scientific, medical and cultural. The geographical scope is also impressive, as is the balance between the civilian and military dimensions, the major twentieth-century wars, and immediate and longer term consequences. A must-have volume for anyone interested in food history, or war, which should prove a source of inspiration for students, teachers, and researchers.' David Smith, University of Aberdeen, UK '... this book, edited by Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Duffett and Drouard, will be of much interest not only for specialists in the history of nutrition and military history, but also for those interested in the social, economic and cultural aspects of recent European social evolution. Additionally, thanks to their elaborate introduction and conclusions, Zweiniger-Bargielowska and Duffett help the reader to place each paper into a wider context that reaches beyond their specific case study.' European Review of Agricultural Economics '... Food and War in Twentieth Century Europe is a fine collection of explorations into a historically rich topic that informs on the wartime development of food policies, the emergence of investigative techniques designed to measure nutritional well-being, the impact of war on national and religious eating customs, wartime innovations in food production techniques, and the legacy of shifting consumption and production practices that endured long after the conflicts under analysis ended.' Canadian Bulletin of Medical History