Similarly, Hitler’s obsessive preoccupation with food was rooted in contemporary reality. Though famine had been banished from Western Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century, in large part due to Europe’s ability to tap huge new sources of overseas supply, World War I had forced the question of food supply back onto the agenda of European politics.9 The British and French blockade, though it failed to produce outright famine, did succeed in producing an epidemic of chronic malnutrition in Germany and Austria that was widely blamed for killing at least 600,000 people.
