Map 4: Famine Stalks Europe

[Hauksbee 103]

                       A continent on the brink of famine

 

Germany was blessed with excellent military leadership that allowed the nation to hold its own against numerically superior foe. But it had a problem that couldn't be overcome with military tactics alone. Britain and France could draw on the resources of their vast overseas empires, and trade with neutral countries, to get the resources they needed to win the war. Thanks to the British blockade, the Central Powers were cut off from the rest of the world. So conditions in Germany, for soldiers and civilians alike, steadily deteriorated. This map, based on a map from a book published by the United States government in July 1918, shows the food situation in Europe as the war was drawing to a close. While the US government might have been tempted to exaggerate Germany's hardship, this map is basically accurate. By 1918, the Central Powers were facing severe food shortages, and things could have gotten a lot worse if the war had dragged into the winter of 1919. An increasingly desperate German citizenry began pressuring the German

government for peace.

 

[Olham 164]

THE "SPANISH FLU" (1918 - 1920)"

 

The bitter irony is that 25 - 50 million of European people got killed by the "Spanish Flu" between 1918 and 1920,

(which might have balanced the food supply for the others).

 

WW1 cost ca. 10 million lives among the soldiers, plus ca. 7 million casualties among the civilians.

The flu may well have charged the double number.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic

 

Edited November 19, 2014 by Olham

[Hauksbee 103]

Good article. I was about to suggest the death toll might have been less if famine conditions were less severe, but not so. It was the young and very healthy who suffered most. In addition, there's a good section that speculates on why this massive kill-off was so quickly forgotten. I first heard about it in college (mid 1950's) when a friend told me about how he'd heard about in a 20th century history class. I was amazed that it never was mentioned in any fiction, films or reminiscing of grandparents.

 

The internal bleeding and tissue breakdown makes it sound akin to Ebola. Nasty stuff.

[Olham 164]

Yes, it must have been a nasty flu.

We may be in for another terrible wave sooner rather than later - people consume so much antibiotics,

that bacteria and viruses develop more and more immunity against them.

[RAF_Louvert 101]

.

 

My home here in Minnesota is part of an old family farmstead that dates back to the late 1800s.  In one corner of the property there still resides the original family cemetery and in it there is a stone for two sisters who died of the flu in late 1918.  They passed within days of each other, one at age 2 and the other at age 9.  Makes me weepy every time I see that stone.  That hideous Spanish Flu pandemic reached nearly every corner of the globe back then and Olham I fear you may be correct about another such event coming soon.  Let's pray it does not happen.

 

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Edited November 22, 2014 by RAF_Louvert