Food shortages were endemic everywhere except Sweden and Switzerland. Only UNRRA supplies built up in the spring of 1946 kept Austrians from starving in the twelve months that followed. Caloric provision in the British Zone of Germany fell from 1,500 per day per adult in mid-1946 to 1,050 in early 1947. Italians, who suffered two consecutive years of hunger in 1945 and 1946, had the lowest average food levels of all the west European populations in the spring of 1947. In French opinion polls taken in the course of 1946 ‘food’, ‘bread’, ‘meat’ consistently outpaced everything else as the
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