German Food Crisis

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 25031, 13 November 1946, Page 6

German Food Crisis

What is most curious about the current food crisis in the British zone of Germany is that the news of it came without warning. There has always been too little food in the zone, but for some months at least never so little that the British Control Commission could not claim to have the situation “in “ hand ”. Indeed, official statements from August onward have reflected confidence rather than anxiety. Early in August, for example, the Minister in charge of the zone, Mr J. B. Hynd, announced in Dusseldorf, now a scene of the gravest shortage, that rations in the British zone would be brought into line with those in the better-fed American zone, and that his Government was anxious to make further increases as soon as world supplies permitted. Again, a fortnight later, Mr Hynd declared that in the next two or three months the ration to the inhabitants of the British zone would be increased from 1137 calories a day to the previous standard of 1550, and that to reach it he did not expect it would be necessary tQ ship grain from Britain. It: was not, moreover, an empty promise. In mid-September the British News Service announced from Hamburg that the bread ration for normal consumers in the British zone would be increased by 18oz a week, and that other food rations would be raised by 9oz a week, thereby increasing the daily ratio of calories in rural districts from 1137 to 1200; and a few days later a Military Government spokesman held out the promise of yet better things. It had been hoped, he said, to announce that rations in both the British and American zones would be increased from the beginning of October, but until the full effect of the maritime strike then under way in the United States could be assessed the final decision would be withheld. Even so, he went on to speak of a slight improvement in food supplies and to assure the Germans both that better organisation would regulate food and fuel in the coming winter and that their diet would be sufficient, if for some months only barely sufficient and monotonous. Finally, at the end of September, when the German harvest had been brought in, Mr Hynd proudly declared that the “ battle of the “ summer ” in Germany had been “won”. From then until last Friday, when it was announced that food stocks in general were sufficient for only two days, officials in the British zone appear to have been silent. The immediate danger of mass starvation has since been relieved by the loan of wheat from the American zone; but the critics who in the past have deplored Mr Hynd’s “ astonishing complacency ” can hardly fail to find their following strengtheped.