The Bitter Road to Freedom: The Human Cost of Allied Victory in World War II Europe by William I. Hitchcock

Author:William I. Hitchcock [Hitchcock, William I.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781439123300
Amazon: 1439123306
Publisher: Free Press
Published: 2009-10-12T16:00:00+00:00

UNRRA aircraft at the Elefsis airfield near Athens prepare to spray swamps with mosquito-killing DDT pesticide in an effort to suppress malaria. UNRRA

A malnourished Greek boy in Patras clutches an empty tin dish while waiting for the UNRRA-supplied school lunch to begin. UNRRA

The results of UNRRA’s work in Greece were mixed. The official history naturally makes significant claims: that despite the “lethargy, inefficiency, and corruption” of the Greek government, “the Greek people and the na- tion were quite literally kept alive by the contribution of UNRRA supplies and by the hard, practical work of hundreds of UNRRA employees without whom the sup- plies would never have reached the Greek people.”27 By the end of 1945, the organization had shipped 5,000 tons of clothing, shoes, and blankets into the country, opened welfare centers in every province, distributed

over 1,000 tons of raw wool to families with looms to weave their own textiles, shipped in over $3 million of medical supplies, and were delivering 8,000 vials of penicillin each month. The list of the goods offloaded each month from UNRRA ships reveals that UNRRA was doing more than merely providing a hot meal: it was repairing the basic fabric of life for millions whom the war had left destitute. By the start of 1946, UNRRA had shipped to Greece 14,000 cases of matches, 2.8 million razor blades, 6,500 pounds of candles, 96,000 rolls of toilet paper, 324,000 tubes of calcium hydrochlorite for water purification, along with hundreds of thousands of household items such as cooking utensils, cutlery, soup bowls, lamps, bathtubs, tents, tables, garden hos- es, shovels, tea towels, soap, brooms, mops, and even corkscrews. Far more important than such household items was the monthly total of grain UNRRA brought into Greece: 77,000 tons per month, about half the dai- ly ration of every person in the country. Yet there was no getting around the massive work that still lay ahead. The Germans had wrecked the country and it would take years to recover. Food stocks, transport, water and sewage systems, medical facilities—all had completely collapsed and even UNRRA’s work made only modest progress against such a massive crisis. UNRRA workers often felt the Greeks themselves were simply helpless, too corrupt or simply too ignorant to pull themselves

out of their misery. One medical officer claimed that the reason typhus and fly-borne diseases were ram- pant was that “the Greek people have a profound dis- respect for the infectious nature of fecal matter,” and left rather a lot of it piled in heaps around their homes. UNRRA’s labors could not heal Greece, nor steer it away from another cataclysm: by late 1945, tormented Greece was heading into four years of civil war that would further delay the nation’s recovery. The deputy chief of the Greek Mission summed up UNNRA’s work at the end of 1945 with a tone of resignation. “I hope the more fortunate peoples of the United Nations,” he told a press conference wearily, “will understand how deep-rooted and desperate are the needs of the Greek people and how limited must be the assistance which UNRRA can provide.

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