Overview
- Provides the first Europe-wide, comparative bottom-up approach to the history of occupied societies during the Second World War
- Examines individual and group strategies for overcoming drastic shortages
- Analyses the makeshift economies which emerged under occupation including black markets, bartering, smuggling and prostitution
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About this book
This volume demonstrates how German expansion in the Second World War II led to shortages, of food and other necessities including medicine, for the occupied populations, causing many to die from severe hunger or starvation. While the various chapters look at a range of topics, the main focus is on the experiences of ordinary people under occupation; their everyday life, and how this quickly became dominated by the search for supplies and different strategies to fight scarcity. The book discusses various such strategies for surviving increasingly catastrophic circumstances, ranging from how people dealt with rationing systems, to the use of substitute products and recycling, barter, black-marketeering and smuggling, and even survival prostitution. In addressing examples from Norway to Greece and from France to Russia, this volume offers the first pan-European perspective on the history of shortage, malnutrition and hunger resulting from the war, occupation, and aggressive German exploitation policies.
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Keywords
Table of contents (15 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Economies of Scarcity and “Ersatz” Sites
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Front Matter
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Coping Strategies and Creating Privileges
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Front Matter
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Vulnerabilities: At the Bottom of the Supply Pyramid
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Front Matter
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Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Tatjana Tönsmeyer is Chair of Modern History at the University of Wuppertal, Germany. From 2012-2016 she was Head of the 'Europe' Research Area at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities. She co-edits the international research and editorial project 'Societies under German Occupation: Experiences and Everyday Life in World War II'.
Peter Haslinger is Director of the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe in Marburg, Germany. He is Chair in East Central European History at Justus-Liebig-University Giessen and the Giessen Centre for Eastern European Studies. He is also co-editor of 'Societies under German Occupation: Experiences and Everyday Life in World War II'.
Agnes Laba is Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Department of Modern History of the University of Wuppertal. She received her PhD in contemporary history at the University of Giessen for her research on the discourse about the Eastern border of the Weimar Republic.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Coping with Hunger and Shortage under German Occupation in World War II
Editors: Tatjana Tönsmeyer, Peter Haslinger, Agnes Laba
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77467-1
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-77466-4Published: 11 July 2018
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-08462-2Published: 30 January 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-77467-1Published: 22 June 2018
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIX, 319
Number of Illustrations: 4 b/w illustrations
Topics: History of World War II and the Holocaust, History of Modern Europe, History of Germany and Central Europe, History of Military, Social History