Digging for Victory

When war broke out in 1939, food shortages posed just as grave a threat to Britons as a German invasion. From Dig for Victory to the land girls, John Martin charts a nation’s battle with starvation

- By John Martin. Photographs by Getty Images and Alamy

On the eve of the Second World War, those charged with putting food on Britons’ dinner tables were faced with a deeply unpalatable reality: the nation could barely feed itself.

The statistics made for troubling reading. Almost 90 per cent of the wheat Britain used in its bread was sourced from overseas – chiefly from the USA, Canada and Australia. Sugar was mainly derived from imported sugar cane; more than half of all meat was shipped from Australia, New Zealand and Argentina; and around 90 per cent of the nation’s butter was produced abroad. All in all, more than 70 per cent of Britain’s food was imported – and that was a far higher proportion than any other nation about to be embroiled in the conflict.

In peacetime, this fact gave little cause for concern. Britain’s global maritime supply chains saw to that. But in wartime, with German U-boats stalking the seas and threatening to sever shipping lanes linking Britain to its allies, the nation’s reliance on imported foodstuffs was potentially catastrophic. In short, as war loomed, Britain was confronted with the prospect that it could be starved into submission.