Five Brothers and a War

Swedish Relief Efforts

Both the Germans and the Allies had come to the conclusion that if food did not reach western Holland by May, 1945, millions of people would die of starvation. Arthur Seyß Inquart recognized that the plan to punish the Dutch for their acts during Dolle Dinsdag and then as a result of the failed Allied Market Garden operation were about the reach the catastrophic stage. He recognized that the Germans were going to lose the war, and he knew that he was going to be the one who would be responsible for the starving Dutch. Obviously, caloric input per day depends on age, lifestyle and gender, but a rule of thumb would be that the average female (typically being smaller stature) requires 2,200 calories per day, while the average male needs closer to 2,500 per day. Each individual is unique, but wartime rations in Holland were based strictly on a per capita basis. By August 1944, rations were cut to 1,400 calories per day, and by November, that was further cut to 1,000. That would mean that an average person would lose about one kilogram (2 lbs) per week at the higher level, and 1.5 kg (3 ½ lbs) per week at the lower level. Taken together, the average Dutch citizen would likely have lost 46 kg (101 lbs) over that eight-month period. To make matters worse, rations in April 1945 were cut to only 500 calories per day. This shows why the clock was running out quickly to prevent a massive humanitarian crisis. It also shows why the Dutch were eating tulip bulbs, and risking being shot to travel into the country-side to obtain food from farmers and relatives who had their own gardens. The Canadian Army, following the liberation of Holland, estimated that the average person lost between 9-16 kg (20-35 lbs), further demonstrating that most people ate things other than just their rations. The knowledge among the Allied brass of that impending crisis put a great deal of pressure on the Canadian Army, which was tasked with leading the liberation of Holland. They needed to speed up the process of defeating the Germans, but they were outnumbered 2 1 in field soldiers. The Allies could only scrape together about 60,000 troops, mainly Canadian, but the Germans still had about 120,000 troops, although they were themselves not well fed nor supplied militarily. The first definite action to deal with the starvation of the people of western Holland was taken through Sweden, with the help of certain Swiss nationals and the International Red Cross. This involved two shipments destined solely for the three Dutch western provinces, whose population was 4,300,000 (of these, 3,500,000 were townspeople, 860,000 were children under 13 years). One shipment contained 2,657 tons of rye to be sent by rail from German stockpiles at Essen. Due to the transportation strike, the sealed grain cars had to be hooked up to German military trains returning to Rotterdam. The first cars left on February 12, and were ten days en route , but by March 11, some 990 tons had been delivered in this manner. The second shipment was a cargo of 5,000 tons of provisions sent from Sweden on the ship Henri Dunant (named after the founder of the International Red Cross, and the first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize). While at sea the ship was found to be too heavily laden and had to put in at Gothenburg, in southern Sweden. There it discharged about one-third of its freight, including a number of Canadian Red Cross packages which were to

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Five Brothers and a War

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