Chapter 48 : Hunger, Hardship and the Marshall Plan In this journey, we cross the Alps and discover both the horrors of post-war hardship and the extent of human generosity and friendship. MAY 2006: WIEN WESTBAHNHOF We’ve never eaten from Subway before. Based on our experience at Vienna’s Westbahnhof, I doubt we will again. In general, when travelling, we like to eat the authentic local cuisine. Let’s be honest: in 21st-century Vienna, the authentic local cuisine probably is Subway. But we don’t have much choice – we’re in a rush for the night sleeper to Venice and are going to be on the train for the next 11 hours. So, Subway it is. Have you had a Subway? It’s remarkable. Why’s the bread sweet? Not in a delicious brioche-y way. In a weird ‘my sandwich tastes of sugar’ way. The sun is setting over the Vienna suburbs as we pull out of the station. We lie in the middle bunks of our couchette compartment and munch on our sweet Subway sandwiches and reflect just how lucky we are to have the luxury of being disappointed by a sandwich. For we are travelling between Austria and northern Italy, two of the places hardest hit by the post-war hunger crisis. The Second World War was humanity’s first experiment with ‘total war’, where everything - food, labour, land - was subordinated to victory. As the Red Army from the East and the Allies from the West had fought their way to Berlin, farms were destroyed, livestock slaughtered, people displaced and rail lines ripped up. If you’re not already a subscriber, please sign up. This is the 10th journey so there are 65 more to come - one a month. In Poland, by 1945, one in six farms was out of operation, three-quarters of railway track unusable and Warsaw had been totally destroyed. The situation was similar across Europe: not enough food was being grown and the food that was available could not be transported. Of 12,000 railway locomotives in France at the start of the war, just 2,800 remained at the end. Millions of head of cattle had been destroyed in the fighting: milk and meat were unobtainable luxuries. In the middle of the night, we will pass through Villach; the railway junction connecting Italy and Austria. This crucial connection, upon which the civilian populations of both countries depended, was bombed dozens of times in 1945. When there was a war to win, the future need for tracks to carry crops to feed civilians was not - could not be? - a consideration. By 1945, the population of Vienna that had survived the war was subsisting on rations of 800 calories per day; about a third of what is needed. In Budapest, the official ration was just 556 calories per day. We’re probably getting about that from our Subway sandwiches and we’ve already had two (better) meals today and hadn’t been starving to start with. During the Dutch ‘hunger winter’ of 1944 to 1945, the weekly calorie ration fell to the same level as the occupying military were recommending for their soldiers per day. 16,000 Dutch citizens died. As we finish our sickly Subways, our train is passing through the old 1945 Soviet zone. Vienna was also carved into four sectors like Berlin, with the Red Army holding the east of the city and much of the country around it. The problem of insufficient food was compounded by insufficient homes. 25 million Germans were homeless. France lost 500,000 homes in just the last few months of the war: 75% of homes in Berlin were uninhabitable in 1945. And this still wasn’t the worst of it. 87,000 women in Vienna reported to clinics having been raped in the three weeks following the Red Army’s arrival. And, of course, this will be a huge underestimate. Life in occupied Europe did not leave time to visit the doctor: the economy had collapsed. Currency was no longer available. Avoiding starvation was the priority. Infant mortality in Vienna quadrupled. Even the undernourished homeless were the lucky ones - if they knew where their home was meant to be. In 1945, Europe was a continent of ghosts: starving men and women with nowhere to return to. Surviving Jews could not return to homes which had been reallocated to their neighbours. Polish Jews returned to pogroms and had to flee again. Millions of Poles were evicted from the East of the country, which became part of Ukraine. They crossed to what had been the East of Germany, where millions of Germans were forced to move to make way for them: one set of ghosts evicted to make way for another set of ghosts. 13 million Germans were forced from parts of Poland, Czechoslovakia and what became Russian Kaliningrad. They joined prisoners of war, slave labourers, concentration camp victims and the ‘flotsam and jetsam’ of conflict on the move: underfed and frequently moving towards no known destination. The words ‘flotsam and jetsam’ were used by William Byford-Jones, a British Army officer, who described the endless convoys of civilians who’d lost their families, families who’d lost their homes, children who had lost everyone and mothers dying by the wayside as they walked. Millions more would have starved had the Allies not mounted the largest humanitarian aid programme of all time. When we watch bags of food aid being distributed in war zones, few remember that this was Europe in our grandparents’ lifetime. By late 1945, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) was operating 227 displaced persons’ camps in Germany, 25 in Austria and others throughout Europe. By 1947, the number of camps reached 762. At its peak in September 1945, UNRRA was feeding seven million displaced Allied citizens. The Soviet Union had its own scheme feeding a further seven million. German citizens were counted separately, but millions more were dependent on aid. It took until 1957 for the last displaced persons’ camp to be closed. The Marshall Plan did not emerge from American generosity, though it was generous. It emerged from American realisation that Europe would not survive without drastic action. The continent was in a doom loop: barely able to feed itself, no food meant no economy and no economy meant no food. In Germany, money had ceased to exist in any meaningful way. People lived on aid, or they bartered. The only usable currency was cigarettes. If you’re not already a subscriber, please sign up. This is the 10th journey so there are 65 more to come - one a month. By 1947, America had already transferred over $6 billion to Europe in emergency grants and loans, and the continent was still on its knees. Carrying on as they were felt like attempting to fill a leaky bucket with American cash. Stopping the cash would condemn Europe to starvation, civil war, fascism and communism. So felt American Secretary of State George Marshall and, based on the condition of Europe in 1947, it’s hard to believe he was wrong. Given that two world wars had started in Europe so far in the first half of the twentieth century, and both had involved the US, it was not an act of altruism to try to find a way of preventing a third. The key, Marshall realised, was to get Europe beyond hand-to-mouth starvation prevention and back towards a functioning economy. His European Recovery Programme, announced at Harvard on the 5th June 1947, involved a vast transfer of resources to Europe. Between 1948 and 1951, the USA spent 0.5-1% of its GDP on the Marshall Plan. This is – as a share of GDP - more than all US aid to every country on earth combined in recent years. The strength of the plan was that the USA would not provide cash but goods. These would be provided to Europe on a phased programme over multiple years, to a plan devised by the Europeans themselves. The goods could then be traded or sold, thus kick-starting a functioning economy. The Marshall Plan was a triumph. By 1950, every European recipient country – even West Germany – was exceeding its 1938 industrial production. The Marshall Plan paved the way for the economic miracle of the 1950s. As Tony Judt put it, “Without Marshall Aid, it is not clear how the fuel shortages, food shortages, cotton shortages and other commodity scarcities could have been overcome at a politically acceptable price”. But if the Marshall Plan was an act of self-interest, there certainly were acts of pure generosity. Who knows how many lives were saved by the American Friendship Train? This was a train that travelled across the US from west to east, collecting donations of food from ordinary Americans. By the time it reached New York, hundreds of box cars contained thousands of tons of food. The train was shipped across the Atlantic, and the food was distributed to communities across France and our destination of Italy. Each parcel contained the same label: ”All races and creeds make up the vast melting pot of America, and in the spirit of goodwill we, the American people, have worked together to bring this food to your doorsteps, hoping it will tide you over until your fields are once again rich and abundant with crops.” And, thankfully, such a moment did come. At which point, the gesture was reciprocated, thanks to the initiative of French railway worker André Picard. He arranged for a train of 49 box cars to travel through France, collecting thank-you gifts. Some were valuable but most were not. Europe was struggling, so the gifts were family heirlooms, prized mementoes, war medals or crafts. Each came with a handwritten gift tag from the donor. When the train arrived in America, it travelled the entire country. In each state, a box car was uncoupled and the gifts distributed to people from that state. As it didn’t reach Hawaii, they got to share Washington DC’s. Alaska was not yet a state. Recipients of gifts would then sometimes send a further thank you back to the donor in France. Transatlantic friendships were formed. Such is the power of the railway. Our train is neither a friendship train, nor a gratitude train. But, as we cross
