World War II is often described as a clash of civilizations, but like all international
conflicts, it was also a war of resources. Combatants competed to sustain soldiers
overseas and across borders and to maintain morale and train troops at home. Attitudes
toward the enemy differed among the major players in the war. While the Allies mostly
provided prisoners of war with decent, if second-class, fare, starvation was used
as a military tactic by the Axis. Civilians and POWs suffered the consequences.
This exhibition explores the effect the war had on individuals relationships with
the production and distribution of food. It touches on topics such as the role of
propaganda on the home front in conserving resources for those on the war front, the
ingeniuty of individuals who came up with recipes and grew Victory Gardens in an attempt
to offset this lack of resources, and how talking about recipes and food in the concentration
camps helped to sustain victims of the Holocaust.
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