Food Rationing and the Black Market in France (1940-1944)

Contents: Preface, Alain Drouard Introduction, Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska Part I Soldiers and Their Food: Food provisioning in the German army of the First World War, Peter Lummel British army provisioning on the Western Front, 1914a 1918, Rachel Duffett Fighting a Kosher war: German Jews and Kashrut in the First World War, Steven Schouten. Part II Home Front: the Citizens Adapt: Food provisioning on the German home front, 1914a 1918, Hans-JA rgen Teuteberg Bread from wood: natural food substitutes in the Czech lands during the First World War, Martin Franc Hunger and misery: the influence of the First World War on the diet of Slovenian civilians, Maja Godina Golija The Spanish Civil War and its aftermath: eating strategies and social change, Alicia Guidonet Riera Alimentary and pellagra psychoses in besieged Leningrad, Pavel Vasilyev. Part III Home Front: the State Intervenes: Fair shares? The limits of food policy in Britain during the Second World War, Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska Communal feeding in wartime: British restaurants, 1940a 1947, Peter J. Atkins Rationing and politics: the French Academy of Medicine and food shortages during the German occupation and the Vichy regime, Isabelle von Bueltzingsloewen RA(c)alitA(c)s cruelles: state controls and the black market for food in occupied France, Kenneth MourA(c) Nutrition education in times of food shortages and hunger: war and occupation in the Netherlands, 1939a 1945, Adel P. den Hartog. Part IV War, Modernization and Innovation: Mikkel Hindhede and the science and rhetoric of food rationing in Denmark, 1917a 1918, Svend Skafte Overgaard The modernization of the Icelandic diet and the impact of war, 1914a 1945, Gudmundur JA^3nsson and A-rn D. JA^3nsson Horsemeat in France: a food item that appeared during the War of 1870 and disappeared after the Second World War, Alain Drouard The innovative power of war: the army, food sciences and the food industry in Germany in the 20th century, Ulrike Thoms Conclusion, Rachel Duffett Index.

Laura J. Hilton’s chapter examines the perceptions and reality of German wartime and postwar hunger and food scarcity. Hilton’s chapter demonstrates the centrality of food in the postwar rumor culture, as Germans questioned its origins, purity, costs, the rationing system and the black market. Rumors revealed how Germans re-remembered their past. They downplayed wartime food shortages and magnified the postwar scarcities, while displacing responsibility for them onto outsiders. They then linked post-1948 food stability with the resumption of control over their own economy. By constructing narratives that re-centered the responsibility for food shortages to non-Germans and created alternative explanations for deprivations, Germans sought to re-establish both their sense of self and control over their country, cementing their victimhood in the wake of the Second World War.

Peter Jackson Beyond Balance of Power: France and Politics of National Security in Era of First World War Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 559 pp., $110 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-107-03994-0Peter Jackson opens his new book with juxtaposition of Theodore Ruyssen, president of Association de la paix par le droit and Edouard Herriot, Radical party politician, Third and Fourth Republic stalwart, and three times premier of France. The two men, speaking respectively in 1911 and 1924, echoed similar themes. Both stressed need to construct an international order based on rule of law. As Herriot put it, arbitration, security, and disarmament would ensure peaceable international relations and so constitute best means to guarantee French security. Jackson argues such words were not idle, for Herriot's ministry of 1924-1925 embedded what he calls at heart of French security policy (5).Juridical internationalism insisted that France's security was best obtained through exercise of international law and adherence to accepted norms of international behaviour. Juridical internationalism was one of two principal ways of thinking about France's relations with world. For bulk of period that Jackson analyzes, it was, as he admits, lesser. The greater-what Jackson labels traditional view-was bred in bone of French policymakers. This was a preoccupation with realities of power based on French experience in centuries before 1914. French security rested on a combination of alliances, military force, and economic might. What mattered was strategic preponderance (78). For traditionalists, balance of power was at core of French security policy.The central argument of Jackson's book is that scholars, fixated on traditional view, have failed to appreciate existence of internationalist thinking in France during era of First World War. For too long analysis has stopped at acceptance of notion of balance of power as determinant. Consequently, historians have misunderstood not just nature of French security policy but also contributions of French thinking to evolving notions of internationalist thought globally. According to Jackson, appreciating existence of both strands within French thinking recasts scholarly narrative that has dominated assessments of French policy-making. France, having won First World War, was a state that moved steadily toward an exposition of internationalist notions as hope for international relations generally.How is this argument made? Jackson begins with a survey of groups within France that made security policy, namely political elites, foreign policy fonctionnaires, and military. Their collective adherence to traditional view was, if not axiomatic, nearly so, at least before 1914. One of virtues of this work lies in its demonstration that while military remained faithful to traditional view, attitudes of political elites and foreign policy fonctionnaires shifted in favour of internationalist thinking. The latter's influence in France dated to nineteenth century, as Jackson demonstrates in his second chapter, where he traces influence of extra-parliamentary pressure movements, growing links to likeminded associations abroad, and key role of men such as parliamentarian Leon Bourgeois, described as the most influential voice of French juridical for nearly 30 years (65).Although Bourgeois was an apostle of internationalism, it was grim reality of First World War that prompted rethinking. Thus part II of book considers French state at war. In wartime jockeying that existed among politicians, foreign ministry, and military, conflict bestowed loudest voice on military. Yet, as Jackson observes, more far-sighted observers appreciated that world was changing, a point driven home by 1917, when Russian exit from war, coming to power of Bolsheviks, and entrance of United States trumpeted an explicitly internationalist clarion. …

Reviews and Short Notices

French policy in Africa is at a crossroads. Forced to consider among choices that appeared entrenched in the past, France now hesitates to implement essential reforms. The reluctance to carve out a new conception of French-African relations is in part tied to the magnitude of the changes which have affected African states south of the Sahara since 1989, but it is also tied to the generalized failure of French aid policies since the Second World War. The result has been a conceptual vacuum in French policy towards Africa, reflected in the oscillation between the old practices, including very controversial ones, and the structural adjustments in which France is little more than an interested observer.

Sets French black-market experience in the context of recent research on black markets and economic controls in belligerent powers during the Second World War. It provides analysis of why the French case is so important and interesting, including conclusions on why black market was so extensive in France, how French policies and their enforcement alienated popular support for measures that claimed to ‘equalize sacrifice’ (and failed to do so), and the essential need for government regulation to protect property and market access to essential goods (Vichy controls failed on both counts).

This essay provides a sociological perspective of the role of sport as a potential factor in French foreign policy after the Second World War. It notes that while sportspersons and events can serve important political functions, their actual diplomatic value is not self-evident. Granting that sport is an ‘autonomous social field’, we nevertheless maintain that, at least until the end of the Cold War, it became subservient to politics where and whenever the political ‘field’ saw fit to utilize sport as a means to further ‘higher’ diplomatic interests. In other words, the sporting realm was only independent inasmuch as it had no significant bearing on political affairs. When sport became useful, it was co-opted by politics. In contemporary France, however, the dynamics of that relationship appear to be changing. Using the 2012 Paris Olympic bid to illustrate our argument, we suggest that the organs of the French state are perhaps weakening relative to the organs of sport; and concomitantly, that both a ‘sportization’ of politics, and a politicization of sports, is now underway. This is not to say that any sort of parity between the two fields has been achieved; rather, that they increasingly co-constitute one another, with no inevitable dominance on one side. That the terms and timing of the Paris bid were controlled more by the IOC than by the French state, is indicative of this new reality.

British Food Journal Volume 45 Issue 2 1943

A RATIONING system manifests the typical characteristics of a social invention. While food rationing did not originate in the last war, the most definite development in modern times occurred then in European nations. In the United States we are now putting together a rationing system out of elements indigenous to our own culture and on the basis of European models. The inventive process is tentative, and we are not wholly conscious of what the ramifications may be. When rationing spreads throughout a society, a new stateway is emerging. Fundamental cultural attitudes regarding the appropriate methods of distributing goods are being revised. New modes of cooperation, voluntary or enforced, and new techniques of social control are being tested. The foundations of group morale during crises are laid bare. Rationing is urgent in its motivation and widely ramifying in its effects; it deserves to be called a major social invention. In both structure and functioning a rationing system has its sociological no less than its economic elements. The operation of a rationing system provides crucial ex-

French policy in Africa is at a crossroads. Forced to consider among choices that appeared entrenched in the past, France now hesitates to implement essential reforms. The reluctance to carve out a new conception of French-African relations is in part tied to the magnitude of the changes which have affected African states south of the Sahara since 1989, but it is also tied to the generalized failure of French aid policies since the Second World War. The result has been a conceptual vacuum in French policy towards Africa, reflected in the oscillation between the old practices, including very controversial ones, and the structural adjustments in which France is little more than an interested observer.

REVIEWS 971 a lackof people to unload the trainsthat did arriveat theirurbandestinations, a shortageof horsesto transferthe grainfrom the railwaystationsto the mills, and a lack of capacity in the mills themselves. And at every stage on the way there were many opportunitiesfor those in charge of the grain to steal it for their own consumption or to divert it to the black market. As a result, the provisioning authorities often had insufficient food to distribute to the population. These deficiencies made it necessary for Muscovites to take it upon themselves to travel to the countryside to purchase food and bring it backto the cityto feed themselvesand theirfamilies.Such tripswere, strictly speaking,illegalbecause they infringedthe state'smonopoly of trade,but they were to some extent tolerated by the authoritiesbecause they alleviated the food supplyproblem in the towns. A particularly useful section in Borrero's book is that dealing with the rationing system and the way it evolved. Rationing had been inherited from the Provisional Government, but under pressure of ever more serious food shortages, the Bolsheviks had developed class-based rationing systems that divided the urban populations into three or four categories. Over time as more and more people were successfulin theirbid to be included in the more privileged categories, the system was undermined, and in I920 rations came to be allocated on the basis of work performed in the previous weeks. As the author emphasizes, ration cards only gave the holder an entitlement to food, not food itself, since none might be available. Shortagesmade it necessaryfor the Moscow population to resort fairly regularlyto the black market, which flourished during the Civil War years with the connivance of the municipal authorities. From Borrero's account it is clear how corruption and privilege should emerge so earlyin the historyof the Soviet regime. In this book, which makes wide use of archival sources, the author has tackled an important subject, and has elucidated it in a clear and balanced way. It allows the reader to appreciate both the desperation of the Moscow consumers and the frustrationsof the supply authorities. The study is well integrated,so that the topics investigatedshedlight on each other. It is a work that can be recommended unreservedlyto anyone who wishes to understand the Russian Civil War period and the politics and economics of 'War Communism'. Department ofCentral andEastEuropean Studies J. D. WHITE University ofGlasgow Donskis, Leonidas. Identity andFreedom: Mapping NJationalism andSocialCriticism in Twentieth-Centugy Lithuania. Routledge Studiesof Societiesin Transition, i8. Routledge, London and New York, 2002. xiv + I78 pp. Notes. Bibliography.Index. C8o.oo. LITHUANIA's restorationof independence and democratictransitionhasforced the country to redefine the nation. This self-analysishas led many in Europe and the emigre community abroad to seek conservativedefinitions.In Identity andFreedom, Leonidas Donskis approaches the notion of nationalism in general , and Lithuanian nationalism specifically, with an opposing view of the 972 SEER, 82, 4, 2004 nation. Relying on the worksand lives of three prominent Lithuanianemigre intellectuals,Donskisdrawsattentionto the concept of liberalnationalismand its application to Central and Eastern Europe. They are Vytautis Kavolis, AleksandrasShtromas and Tomas Venclova. Donskis relies on these intellectuals to press his own agenda of a liberal definition of the Lithuanianstate to great effect.As proponents of liberal nationalism, they put a differentface on nation-building in the region. Donskis maps the discourse of Lithuanian identityand freedom based on theirworks.Overall, Donskisputs the 'culture' back into the study of nationalism within a liberal framework. Lithuanian nationalismhas historicallytreatednational cultureas a collective individual, or the group above the individual.At the same time, Lithuaniannationalism has inherited a notion of messianism,whereby it standsas a 'bridge'between Eastand West. The book workswithin thisparallelframeworkwhile analysingthe worksof three intellectuals. First, the book looks at Kavolis, perhaps the most well known. Kavolis wanted to correct the pathological tendencies of Lithuanian culture that he and others saw most visibly in Lithuania's part in the Holocaust. Through the Santara-Sviesafederation of immigrant Lithuanian liberals in the US, Kavolis was able to push forward his idea of a new Lithuaniannation. Workingagainstwhat Kavolis called moralprovincialism, he constructed the concept of cultural liberalism where the individual is prioritizedover collective oppressivenessand a group-convergencementality. Overall, the bridging between the nationalist and liberal moral cultures is perhapshis...

970 SEER, 82, 4, 2004 readingof When RussiaLearned toRead,it stillseems thatVasiliiChurkin,Anton Krechet and Nat Pinkerton are among the best guides we have to popular beliefs and values in late imperialRussia. Department ofHistory STEPHEN LOVELL King'sCollege London Borrero,Mauricio. HungyMoscow:Scarcity andSociety in theRussianCivilWar, I9I7-I92I. Studies in Modern European History, 4I. Peter Lang, New Yorkand Oxford, 2003. Xi+ 228 pp. Tables.Notes. Bibliography.Index. ?45.00? IN this well-researched monograph, the author aims to provide a better understandingof the impact on the residentsof Moscow of the chronic food shortageswhich afflictedRussianurbansocietyduringthe revolutionsof 19I7 and the subsequent civil war. Much of the author's success in achieving this aim is due to the approachhe takesto the topic. Leavingaside the question of the ideology behind the Bolshevikgovernment'sfood provisioningpolicies, he confines himself to examining the survival strategies devised by individuals and organizationsin Moscow to overcome the food supplyproblem, and how these strategies affected the implementation of government policies. The elimination of ideology makes for a much clearer and more convincing exposition of the processes at work in the food supplyproblem, and suggests stronglythat in theseprocessesideology was not an influentialfactor. Mauricio Borrerofollows previous writerson the subjectlike LarsLih and Vladimir Mau in stressing that the problems of food supply which the Bolsheviks faced were inherited from the tsarist regime and from the Provisional Government, and that the means the Bolsheviks employed to tackle them were ones which had been implemented by the previous Russian governments. The difference was that by the time the Bolsheviks came to power, the situation had deterioratedfurtherand requiredthe application of more determinedmethods. An added complication for the Soviet government was that it had come to power at a time when power in the countrywas becoming decentralized and institutions were proliferating, so that in the area of food supply different organizations and agencies competed with one another in the attempt to obtain stocks of food and distributethem in the urban areas. This disrupted the smooth performanceof Russia'sfood supplynetwork.Eventuallythe Food Supply Commissariat (Narkomprod)would emerge victorious as the agency in overall control of food provisioning. But rivalries between Narkomprod and local food supply agencies were never fully eliminated, and in Moscow the municipal provisioning organization continued to snipe at Narkomprod's perceived shortcomingsin the area of food distributionthroughout the Civil Warperiod. Step by step the author takes the reader along the route by which grain came from the countryside to the urban consumer and shows at each stage how bottlenecks,wastage and pilferingcould occur and how this exacerbated food shortages.There were insufficienttrainsto transportgrain to the towns, REVIEWS 971 a lackof people to unload the trainsthat did arriveat theirurbandestinations, a shortageof horsesto transferthe grainfrom the railwaystationsto the mills, and a lack of capacity in the mills themselves. And at every stage on the way there were many opportunitiesfor those in charge of the grain to steal it for their own consumption or to divert it to the black market. As a result, the provisioning authorities often had insufficient food to distribute to the population. These deficiencies made it necessary for Muscovites to take it upon themselves to travel to the countryside to purchase food and bring it backto the cityto feed themselvesand theirfamilies.Such tripswere, strictly speaking,illegalbecause they infringedthe state'smonopoly of trade,but they were to some extent tolerated by the authoritiesbecause they alleviated the food supplyproblem in the towns. A particularly useful section in Borrero's book is that dealing with the rationing system and the way it evolved. Rationing had been inherited from the Provisional Government, but under pressure of ever more serious food shortages, the Bolsheviks had developed class-based rationing systems that divided the urban populations into three or four categories. Over time as more and more people were successfulin theirbid to be included in the more privileged categories, the system was undermined, and in I920 rations came to be allocated on the basis of work performed in the previous weeks. As the author emphasizes, ration cards only gave the holder an entitlement to food, not food itself, since none might be available. Shortagesmade it necessaryfor the Moscow population to resort fairly regularlyto the black market, which flourished during the Civil...

During the Second World War, the black market was an integral part of daily life in all parts of wartime Europe – occupied, collaborationist, neutral – and beyond, in the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States and elsewhere. Wherever nations had shifted to a controlled economy, in which supply and distribution were regulated by the government through rationing and quota systems and demand exceeded the regulated supply, the black market flourished. It was the free market at its most brutal. Prices were determined by the laws of supply and demand, adjusted to recognise and reward the enormous risks taken by suppliers in trading on the black market. It was no different in northern France.

Set against the background of France's cultural history during the Second World War, this biographical study concerns Alfred Nakache, a swimming champion of Jewish origin. Through his conditions of existence, the study amply demonstrates the exclusion, followed by the extermination, of Jews in France. At a time when the ‘Révolution Nationale’ (National Revolution) had been established as political dogma, it also demonstrates the bipolarity of the swimmer's identity, as both an emblem standing for the ‘New Man’ in the eyes of the ‘Commissariat Général à l'Education Générale et aux Sports (CGEGS)’ (commission for general education and sport) and a member of an inferior race for the Nazi occupiers and the ‘Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives (CGQJ)’ (administrative body concerned with French policy towards Jews). Although temporarily protected by his rank as an athlete and his network of contacts, the hardening of German policies, together with widespread collaboration during 1943, led the leading actors of the sport world to curtail his sport achievements, thus marking the beginning of progressive anonymization which, in turn, finally ended in his deportation in January 1944.

Food insecurity remains a thorn in the flesh of most rural communities of Nigeria. Very few government efforts have succeeded in solving the problem of food shortages in rural Nigeria. Most of the previous food insecurity studies focused on rural farming communities without regard to gender. Focus on gender differentials in the knowledge of technologies for coping with food shortages has not yet been properly addressed. The need for a continued search for sustainable strategies to solve this food insecurity situation in rural Nigeria necessitated this study. Data were collected with structured questionnaire and observation technique from 180 stratified randomly selected rural farm household heads and analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results showed that most of the rural farm households have experienced food shortages and food shortage in the state is often the result of a complex interaction of more than one cause. Seeking employment of any kind, sales of livestock, rationing of food, borrowing from friends and relations, engaging in other income generating activities, and consumption of neglected cheap indigenous food products are the coping strategies mentioned by the respondents, and there are no significant sex differentials in the use of strategies to cope with food shortage in the state, but men have more control of the use of productive resources. There is need for appropriate food production and preservation technologies, equitable resource allocation, provision of irrigation farming and cottage industries so as to adequately address the food insecurity situation in Imo State, Nigeria.Keywords: gender, household, food securityNigerian Journal of Technology and Education in Nigeria Vol. 9(1) 2004: 11-18