Thirdly, Allied bombing made it extremely difficult to transport food in bulk, since Allied bombers could not distinguish German military and civilian shipments. Also, the German army destroyed docks and bridges to flood the country and impede the Allied advance.
The winter in the month of January 1945 itself was unusually harsh prohibiting transport by boat for roughly a month between early January 1945 and early February 1945. Over this Hongerwinter ("Hunger winter"), a number of factors combined to cause starvation in especially the large cities in the West of the Netherlands.
The adult rations in cities such as Amsterdam dropped to below 1000 calories (4,200 kilojoules) a day by the end of November 1944 and to 580 calories in the west by the end of February 1945. The food embargo was partially lifted in early November 1944.įood stocks in the cities in the western Netherlands rapidly ran out. Īfter the national railways complied with the exiled Dutch government's appeal for a railway strike starting September 1944 to further the Allied liberation efforts, the German administration (under Wehrmachtbefehlshaber Friedrich Christiansen) retaliated by placing an embargo on all food transports to the western Netherlands. 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, see Operation Market Garden. The Allied advance into Germany was delayed by supply problems as the port of Antwerp was not usable until the approaches had been cleared in the Battle of the Scheldt. The Allies were able to liberate the southern part of the country, but ceased their advance into the Netherlands when Operation Market Garden, the attempt to seize a bridge across the Rhine at Arnhem, failed. After the landing of the Allied Forces on D-Day, conditions became increasingly bad in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. Towards the end of World War II, food supplies became increasingly scarce in the Netherlands. Operation Manna – "Many Thanks" written in tulips, Holland, May 1945. Operation Faust also trucked in food to the province. These were Operations Manna and Chowhound. Prior to that, bread baked from flour shipped in from Sweden, and the airlift of food by the Royal Air Force, the Royal Canadian Air Force, and the United States Army Air Forces – under an agreement with the Germans that if the Germans did not shoot at the mercy flights, the Allies would not bomb the German positions – helped to mitigate the famine. The famine was alleviated by the liberation of the provinces by the Allies in May 1945. Most of the victims were reportedly elderly men. Another author estimated 18,000 deaths from the famine.
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. Some 4.5 million were affected and survived thanks to soup kitchens. The Dutch famine of 1944–1945, known in the Netherlands as the Hongerwinter (literal translation: hunger winter), 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 winter of 1944–1945, near the end of World War II.Ī German blockade cut off food and fuel shipments from farm towns. Two Dutch women transporting food during the famine period