The hunger winter : occupied Holland 1944–5

"Everyone has heard of the Battle of Arnhem, the disastrous Operation 'Market Garden,' but few people know of the extraordinary period of the war in Europe which was to follow. When the Allies pressed eastward into Germany they left, to the north of them, a pocket of Occupied Europe—Northern and Eastern Holland. The population, and their Nazi overlords, were cut off and despairing, short of the basic necessities of life and living in a kind of limbo. Their sufferings were increased by the appalling weather conditions during the winter of 1944–5—the Hunger Winter. Henri van der Zee was ten when the Hunger Winter started and found himself involved in the daily grind of finding fuel, food to eke out the starvation rations of sugarbeet and coarse bread, and protecting relatives and friends from the labour-hungry German press gangs... his personal story is interwoven with... [an] account of the politiking that went on between the Dutch Government-in-exile and the Allies in an attempt to save the Dutch people from starvation." —Book jacket