Frank Trentmann and Flemming Just, eds. Food and Conflict in the Age of the Two World Wars. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. 296 pp. Anmeldt på H-German af Mark Finlay, Department of History, Armstrong Atlantic State University. (www.h-net.org).
Queuing for Food in an Age of Hunger: Europe in the Twentieth Century This engaging volume offers valuable analytical and methodological insights into the history of consumerism. Supported by a dozen interesting and well-researched contributions that explore case studies across much of Europe, "Food and Conflict in Europe in the Age of Two World Wars" is considerably more significant than many works in this genre. By examining food politics as an integral part of domestic and international conflicts, the editors and contributors make important strides in building bridges among social, cultural, and political history. In their introductory essay, Frank Trentmann and Flemming Just call upon scholars to shift their approach to the history of consumption in three important ways. First, they argue that historians have placed too much emphasis on the governmental, economic, and agricultural policies that influenced food production and supply. They call instead for a closer look at the demand side of the equation, focusing on modern consumer agency and ability to shape the food marketplace. Second, they suggest that scholars of consumption have placed too much emphasis on bourgeois tastes, status symbols, and luxury goods while overlooking the importance of food and other basic commodities in daily purchases. Third, they ask historians to recall the significance of shortage, rather than abundance, as a common concern for much of European civil society in the first half of the twentieth century. Frank Trentmann develops these themes in the first chapter, a masterful analysis of global food chains and their implications for several twentieth-century European conflicts. In World War I Germany, for instance, citizens who becam convinced that Jewish merchants were profiteers fueled the fire of antisemitism. In Russia, Bolsheviks effectively used wartime shortages and food politics to aid their seizure and consolidation of power. A different kind of revolution occurred in Britain after World War I, as policymakers abandoned traditional commitments to free trade by arguing that commodity controls could help stabilize civil society. And among the World War II allies, "Freedom from Want" became a rallying cry as part of a cultural shift that embraced effective food distribution as a global and multinational responsibility. The essays that follow support the editors' framework and are consistently strong in quality. Thierry Bonzon's study of Paris during World War I addresses the implications of German occupation of major food-producing regions in northwest France. The French government implemented new regulations of food prices and formerly chaotic marketplaces, actions that amounted to a renegotiation of the social contract and a growing acceptance of the state's increasing role in consumer society. Thimo de Nijs traces similar circumstances in the neutral Netherlands, where consumers also endured wartime food rationing and price control policies. Most food control vanished after the armistice, yet some lasting changes remained, such as investment in new canals that helped bring food from the hinterlands to urban consumers. Turning to World War II, Alexander NC<tzenadel elucidates the role of food policy in the rise and fall of Italian fascism. In contrast to standard assumptions that Italy's "battle for wheat" was intended to appease the landowning elite, NC<tzenadel stresses the program's modernist rhetoric and productive successes. Agricultural and food policy thus contributed to fascism's appeal, and the regime successfully generated a civic commitment to its autarkic regulation of the food economy. The program could not be sustained, however, following Italy's invasion of Ethiopia and its ever-increasing commitment of resources to Nazi Germany. So food policy also played an important role in the regime's collapse in 1943. In a similar analysis of the role of food policy in the Soviet case, Mark Tauger, author of other important studies of the famine of 1931-33, challenges historians who claim that Stalin truly hated the peasantry and caused the famine to exploit them or even commit genocide. Tauger makes the provocative case that Stalin's priority was to modernize his nation's agricultural productivity aggressively and that this approach may even have helped the nation pull out of the famine relatively quickly. Mark Roodhouse's study of the British black market in World War II is especially strong. The author analyzes the everyday ethical dilemmas British citizens faced in a regulated food market and frequent opportunities to bend or break its rules. From postwar questionnaires on citizens' reactions to the black market, Roodhouse traces the rhetoric of "fair shares" and how it shaped willingness to make exchanges that could be labeled off-white, gray, or black. Although Britain's black market was comparatively small, many citizens justified their participation in it as an exchange for other wartime sacrifices. Paul Brassley and Angela Potter contribute to this discussion in their essay, a study of the private correspondence of an elite British family that faced its own dilemmas over food consumption. Despite their downward social mobility, members of this family pooled resources and explicitly eschewed contact with the gray or black markets. Backed by extensive of analysis of wartime mortality rates in Denmark and the Netherlands, Ralf Futselaar makes a strong case that deficiencies of micronutrients (such as vitamins A, B6, and B12, and the minerals iron, zinc, and selenium) explain the considerably higher death rates among the Dutch. Only three essays address German history directly. Uwe Spiekermann focuses on political, scientific, and cultural debates over that most fundamental consumer staple, bread. While some German scientists endorsed white bread, others insisted that domestically produced wholegrain bread offered both nutritional and economic advantages. During the Third Reich, officials supplemented the autarky argument with the claim that wholegrain bread strengthened the health and productivity of the German race. Government policies forced small millers and bakers to comply with new policies that pushed wholegrain bread; by 1939, a bureaucracy of ninety-six people worked on various efforts to promote the cause. Although many citizens challenged these efforts, Spiekermann convincingly shows that wholegrain bread played an integral role in Nazi ideology. Mogens R. Nissen highlights the importance of food policy in the Third Reich's relationship with Denmark. Germans and Danes began to collaborate on food policies in the 1930s; they agreed on prices, export policies, and production goals even if they disagreed on ideology. Following the occupation of Denmark in May 1940, these same officials soon established systems of production goals, export targets, and consumption limitations that, with some alterations, worked well enough throughout the war to satisfy both parties. German officials tapped into Danish farmers' desire and ability to produce food efficiently, and Nissen suggests that it is somewhat unjust to raise moral objections to Danish collaboration some sixty years after the events. Finally, Johannes-Dieter Steinert addresses the ways in which British government policy and non-governmental organizations addressed postwar food shortages. Following a comparison of British relief planning and policies in the aftermath of both world wars, Steinert shows that Germany presented unanticipated problems after May 1945. Postwar shortages overwhelmed relief agencies' abilities to respond, and British citizens had to accept continued food restrictions at home, so that some food resources could reach Germans living in the British zone of occupation. Even so, as Steinert shows, many Germans became frustrated with their own shortages, an opening round of debates about German victimization that continue to this day. A collection of this sort cannot hope to cover its topic in all possible ways. Only a few essays compare developments in one country with another, so that it is difficult to draw conclusions about national and cross-national consumer cultures. Nor could the authors fully examine the advertisers, shopkeepers, marketing associations, cookbook authors, tax code authors, and countless others whose actions affected consumers of food. Such unmentioned topics should stimulate further research. In sum, many readers will profit from paying close attention to this volume. In many cases, the study of the relationship between food and conflict can shed light on the German past. To that end, the contributors to this volume have presented useful models and provided an important frame upon which future scholars may attach their own work.