'they were a [Douglas] Heck of a lot hungrier in early 1945 than they were in early 1946.'
Probably to an extent yes, but not that much, i think ... there were transport problems, shortage of petrol, no vehicles anyway, railways and bridges bombed out and left unrepaired for longer than you'd think [there were security concerns among allied brass, who saw rebuilding of transport as reconstruction of german military capacity, also the french and russians still wanted to repeat Versailles, even harder, reduce the german people to serfs in little bantustans, this was the Morgenthau plan, beaten out luckily by Marshall's] ..... there was not a lot of food in Europe period, as V-E day and ensuing confusion had not resolved early enough to facilitate planting, the french and russians were taking all the food they could, the men were still in prison camps ... there wasn't much food, for a long time, well into 1947, and the effects were felt into the fifties [for many years canadian grain farmers got good prices, for wheat and for their horses, which they were selling to the dutch for meat as they converted over to tractors] .... actually, there is data on this - the dutch kept good records of infant mortality, prenatal problems, and ration estimates all through the Hungerwinter, these form still the widest study on the effects of hunger on pregnancy, just put "hunger winter" into google and you'll find some ..... the germans also kept full records, among others still reviewed are charts of births per 100k women, which went way down for years .... women tend not to conceive until they have seventeen per cent body fat by weight ... probably it's hard to conceive when the males are all either dead or locked up, too, so there is that, but it gets discussed in medical papers as effect of hunger, i don't know how to google this though
Maybe i just missed the books from the marxist period of dos Passos or something, read 1919 and Three Soldiers, another from a much later period [not the other two from the U.S.A. trilogy] .... but there is just nothing about his writing that i recall as advocating anything, he was certainly pointing out problems, but they come across as human qualities in the context of events, not as faults in ideology ..... in 1919 i think it is, he savages some demagogue of a union organiser, just as much as the situation that made necessary the union ..... his gift is that he places you right there at the scene, and you remain yourself, you're an observer, close observer but you're not identifying with the characters .... he was a great writer, definitely, doesn't speak to me quite directly as he is focussed almost entirely on city life, and its characters, no matter where they go, and i've never been a fan of cities
Here is the 1946 article - #reply-19413277 .... nothing of any particular ideology there, it's a travelogue by an able writer, he's telling you what he's seen ... really only the title of it is useful to the neocon agenda, rest is just human stuff and mostly quite predictable at the end of brutal wars .... also he makes no mention of violent resistance by the natives either, of course, which bears out your Heck [lol] of a point .... cheers |
