The Dutch famine of 1944–1945, also known as the Hunger Winter (from Dutch Hongerwinter), was a famine that took place in the German-occupied Netherlands, especially in the densely populated western provinces north of the great rivers, during the relatively harsh winter of 1944–1945, near the end of World War II.
A German blockade cut off food and fuel shipments from farm towns. Some 4.5 million were affected and survived thanks to soup kitchens. Loe de Jong (1914–2005), author of The Kingdom of the Netherlands During World War II, estimated at least 22,000 deaths occurred due to the famine. Another author estimated 18,000 deaths from the famine. Most of the victims were reportedly elderly men.
The famine was alleviated first by "Swedish bread" flour shipped in from Sweden to Dutch harbours, and subsequently by the airlift of food by the Royal Air Force, the Royal Canadian Air Force, and the United States Army Air Forces – after an agreement with the occupying Germans that if the Germans did not shoot at the mercy flights, the Allies would not bomb the German positions. These were Operations Manna and Chowhound. Operation Faust also trucked in food to the province.
Although the humanitarian missions mitigated the emergency, the famine persisted and ended only with the liberation of the Netherlands by the Allies in May 1945.
Causes
After D-Day in the summer of 1944, the Allied forces, to their own surprise, swiftly advanced from Normandy and overran northern France and Belgium. In anticipation of a likewise imminent collapse of German defences in the Netherlands, the Dutch national railways complied with the exiled Dutch government's appeal for a nationwide railway strike starting in September 1944. This precisely coincided with the beginning of Operation Market Garden, the Allied forces' sharp thrust offensive deep into eastern Dutch territory that same month. The Allies were able to swiftly liberate southern portions of Dutch territory, but ceased their advance further into the Netherlands when Operation Market Garden failed in its attempt to seize a bridge across the Rhine at Arnhem after a German counter-offensive.
Meanwhile, after a public warning by the German administration's Reichskommissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart on September 24 that sabotage of the railways, telephone lines, or post offices would be severely and collectively punished, the Nazi military command led by Wehrmachtbefehlshaber Friedrich Christiansen began to implement the German retaliation by placing an embargo on all food transports to the western Netherlands. The food embargo started immediately as the military counter-offensive against Allied troops (Market Garden) was winding down on September 27. The embargo was partially lifted after three weeks, and fully lifted after six weeks in early November 1944, because the Germans feared chaos and disease might spread.
This lifting of the blockade, however, didn't lead to food supply resuming and reaching pre-embargo levels. The drastic food scarcity that was ignited continued to persist as a result of the increasingly harsh winter, increasing scarcity of other resources such as fuel, vehicles, the ongoing administrative and logistic inconveniences caused by the Germans, such as transport restrictions, shipment delays, and defensive flooding; as well as due to farmers and traders who had switched to supplying the black market during the embargo remaining in that parallel circuit. In the last two months of 1944 the officially distributed ration stock supply began to dwindle: first slowly, then drastically. The rations, which had been relatively stable up to around D-Day (June 1944), became progressively less and less worth in food value in the subsequent months, particularly in October and beyond.
The overall Allied advance into Germany was delayed by supply problems as the strategic port of Antwerp was not usable until the approaches had been secured and cleared in the Battle of the Scheldt. But Montgomery had given priority to "Market Garden" and to the capture of the French Channel ports like Boulogne, Calais, and Dunkirk, which were resolutely defended and had suffered demolitions by the retreating Germans. These developments led to Germans becoming more securely entrenched north of the major rivers in all of the Netherlands, which originally had been anticipated to fall into the hands of the Allies before the end of 1944.
Starvation
In the last months of 1944, in anticipation of the coming famine, tens of thousands of children were brought from the cities to rural areas where many remained until the end of the war.