Fighting Hunger, Dealing With Shortage: Everyday Life Under Occupation in World War II Europe; A Source Edition

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.

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).