The taste of war: World War II and the battle for food

War and food

Food, an engine of war

Germany's quest for empire

From wheat to meat

Defeat, hunger and the legacy of the First World War

Autarky and Lebensraum

Herbert Backe and the hunger plan

Genocide in the East

Japan's quest for empire

A radical answer to rural crisis

One million households in Manchuria

From Nanjing to Pearl Harbor

The battle for food

American boom

Feeding Britain

From meat to bread and potatoes

American dried egg and Argentinian corned beef

The battle of the Atlantic

The worst winter of the war

The American lifeline

Frozen meat versus men and arms victory in the Atlantic

Mobilizing the British Empire

The Middle East supply centre

Profiteering in East Africa

West Africa and the dollar deficit

The Bengal famine

Feeding Germany

The battle for production

The occupation of western Europe

Greek famine and Belgian resilience

Allies and Aryans

Germany exports hunger to the east

Living off the land

Implementing the hunger plan

The food crisis of 1941-42

The holocaust in Poland

Food confiscation in the Ukraine

Soviet collapse

Japan's journey towards starvation

Rice and sweet potatoes

Chaos and hunger in the empire

China divided

Nationalist collapse

Communist survival

The politics of food

Japan

Starving for the Emperor

Healthy eating as a patriotic virtue

Churchill's rations

The American blockade

Guadalcanal

New Guinea

Burma

Hunger on the home islands

Surrender

The Soviet Union

Fighting on empty

Feeding the Red Army

Feeding the cities

The American lifeline

Perseverance despite hunger

Germany and Britain

Two approaches to entitlement

1930s Britain

A nutritional divide

1930s Germany

the campaign for nutritional freedom

The politics of rationing

Feeding the British working classes

Feeding the German war machine

The black market

The German cities

Hungry but not starving

The British Empire

War as welfare

Dr. Carrot

guarding the British nation's health

Closing the nutritional gap

Health and morale

The Army Catering Corps

Fighting on bully beef and biscuits

Porridge, peas and vitamins

Nutritional reconditioning

The Indian Army

The United States

Out of depression and into abundance

The "good war"

Future hopes

Troop welfare

Australia

Food processing for victory

Feeding Pacific Islanders

The aftermath

A hungry world

A world of plenty

American plenty versus European relief

A vision for the future

The shape of the post-war food world

The rise of the new consumer

A selective chronology of the Second World War.