Conclusion

Summary

In words both emotional and emphatic, Dutch historian Ernst Kossmann concluded the following about the Hunger Winter: ‘Never in its history did Holland have to consider the downfall of its people and the destruction of its civilization as seriously as it had during the final months before May 1945.’¹ Over the last 75 years, both popular and scholarly discourses have cultivated powerful myths about the Hunger Winter, the most important ones being the brutal policy of starvation by the German occupier and the miraculous rescue by the Allied food drops. In literature, these myths seem informed by the assumption that the Dutch Hunger Winter is comparable to other food crises and famines caused by Nazi hunger politics. At the national level, the perseverance of these misconceptions stems from a long process of delegitimisation of the German occupier on the one hand, and the internalisation of gratitude towards the Allies on the other – processes that started right after liberation and became a central foundation for nation-building in Dutch post-war society. Through mutual influences, over time these dominant narratives have become aligned with both individual and collective memories of the German occupation in an attempt to give meaning to experiences of war, occupation, and hunger.