Calculating war, calculating peace: the Rockefeller Foundation and science research in Britain

Abstract

ABSTRACT The history of reconstruction and philanthropic aid efforts in Western Europe after the Second World War ended cannot be fully understood without examining the wartime networks, scientific projects and miscalculations of Allied planners. This case study of a Rockefeller Foundation project in Second World War Britain shows that the war gave scientists studying human nutrition an opportunity to conduct research on an unprecedented scale, with an unprecedented level of government support. The war thus paradoxically extended the vitality of certain international health projects at a time when support for many public health institutions and personnel was suspended. Nutrition research projects in Britain made considerable gains in refining the measurement and definition of malnutrition during the war, yet had little access to information about the fallout from food shortages operating across the Channel in occupied territory. Planning a rational, efficient system for dealing with hunger in liberated post-war territories proved to be an elusive goal. Only with the end of war in Europe could Allied scientists begin to witness the full force and extent of starvation policies imposed on civilians and prisoners by the Nazi regime and its allies. After assessing full-fledged starvation cases in the spring of 1945, a number of researchers who had worked in wartime Britain turned to assessing nutritional deficiencies in wider populations in Western Europe. The reconstruction period in Allied-occupied Germany provided a new set of opportunities for testing the effects of civilian rationing policies.