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Digging for survival - Paris, 1943/'44

Unknown author.

The "Dig for Victory" phenomenon - officially-promoted campaigns encouraging civilians to grow food in their gardens, allotments, "victory gardens" or whatever - was common in combatant nations during WW2. This, of course, was largely an urban phenomenon, as all usable land outside urban areas (even a great deal of land hitherto regarded as unworkable) was applied to general (if intensified and centrally directed) agriculture and animal husbandry). The intensity and originality of the British "Dig for Victory" campaign - a result of a combination of severe constraint on food supply and the need to persuade individuals to comply "democratically" - has drawn particular historical attention to it. This has - at least in the English-speaking world - tended to draw attention away from other cases where the former condition (of food shortage) applied, but where the need for "democratic" persuasion applied to a lesser extent. An example is the cities of German-occupied France. This remarkable photo shows French civilians tending vegetables ... in a courtyard of the Palais du Louvre, by the banks of the Seine in central Paris. Since the Palace was in German/official hands, this was, presumably, part of an officially-sponsored (or ordered) allotment or "victory garden" system. I would be interested to know more about the "victory garden" phenomenon in urban Germany and occupied Europe - I have little doubt that there was one. Was there a French equivalent of Britain's heroic "Dr Carrot"? Was there a Pomme-de-Terre Pierre ? At this stage, I could not say ... Best regards, JR.