This volume demonstrates how German expansion in the Second World War II led to shortages of
food and other necessities including medicine for the occupied populations causing many to
die from severe hunger or starvation. While the various chapters look at a range of topics the
main focus is on the experiences of ordinary people under occupation their everyday life and
how this quickly became dominated by the search for supplies and different strategies to fight
scarcity. The book discusses various such strategies for surviving increasingly catastrophic
circumstances ranging from how people dealt with rationing systems to the use of substitute
products and recycling barter black-marketeering and smuggling and even survival
prostitution. In addressing examples from Norway to Greece and from France to Russia this
volume offers the first pan-European perspective on the history of shortage malnutrition and
hunger resulting from the war occupation and aggressive German exploitation policies.
