Fighting Hunger, Dealing with Shortage (2 vols): Everyday Life under Occupation in World War II Europe: A Source Edition(133 History of Warfare)

Named as one of the Best Historical Materials books for 2022 by RUSA, American Library Association (ALA). See full details here. During the peak of the German expansion in World War II, more than 230 million people from Norway to Greece and from France to various regions inside the former Soviet Union lived under German occupation. This edited collection of primary sources for the first time gives an insight into the experiences of these ordinary people under German occupation, their everyday life and how this quickly became dominated by shortages (especially of food but also of other necessities such as medicine), the search for supplies and different strategies to fight scarcity. In addressing examples from all European countries under German occupation the collected sources give the first pan-European perspective on the history of shortage, malnutrition and hunger resulting from the war, occupation, and aggressive German exploitation policies.

Table of Contents:
Contents Editorial Preface  Francis Ipgrave Documents by Date Documents by Country lix Contributors lxi Volume 1 World War II: Europe under German Occupation. Struggling with Supply and Shortage  Tatjana Tönsmeyer, in cooperation with Dirk Luyten, Karl Christian Lammers and Irina Sherbakova  Documents (1–300) Volume 2  Documents (301–600) Archives Index of Places Index of Subjects

About the Author :
Project leaders and editors-in-chief: Tatjana Tönsmeyer is professor for Modern European History at the University of Wuppertal in Germany. She has published numerous articles on World War II and everyday life under German occupation, including the edited volume Coping with Hunger and Shortage Under German Occupation in World War II (Palgrave, 2018). Peter Haslinger is director of the Herder-Institute for East central European history, a member of the Leibniz Association based in Marburg, Germany, and professor for the history of Eastern and Central Europe at Justus-Liebig-University Giessen. He has published monographs and articles on nationalism, regionalism, and space, including Nation und Territorium im tschechischen politischen Diskurs (Oldenbourg, 2010).

Review :
'While the Second World War in Europe was a time of horrific bloodshed in both military and genocidal contexts, it was also a massive undertaking of resource extraction by the German occupiers. Under German rule, food, textiles, and other supplies were diverted from civilian supply chains to the Wehrmacht and the German homeland. The experience of war for most Europeans was one of constant deprivation.This collection of primary sources offers a very thorough selection of materials regarding rationing, speculation, confiscation, and the search for food and medicine substitutes. The sources are almost all from national archives, previously unpublished, and newly translated into English from dozens of languages. [...] this appears to be the first such compendium that covers the entire continent and draws from such a diverse set of archives. It is likely to be an essential source for those studying the civilian experience of foreign occupation during wartime.' Steven A. Knowlton, naming the book as one of the Best Historical Materials books for 2022 by RUSA, American Library Association (ALA). See the full review here.