By the time the Second World War ended in Europe in May 1945, most of the urban trees in parks and along streets had been cut down – often illegally – for firewood.

The war years were cold. Every year of rationing made civilians more malnourished and more shabbily dressed. Every winter fuel rations decreased and supplemental sources of heating and cooking fuel, such as trees, disappeared.  Each winter was more severe than the last while the people were less able to withstand the cold. But whether they had warm boots or enough food to eat, they had to stand outside in lines for their rations.

Bitter cold marked the last winter of the war, what the Dutch remember sorrowfully as The Hunger Winter for the man-made famine imposed by the Occupier.  In liberated Belgium and France the resisters of Dutch-Paris shivered along with the rest of the general population.  Except for those of them who had been arrested before the liberation and deported to concentration camps. With scarcely enough food to cling to life and dressed in rags, the Third Reich’s political prisoners labored in the elements and stood for hours in the open, freezing air. They endured beyond the limits of endurance.

But winter does not take sides. Soldiers on both sides of the battle lines froze to death. German women and children stumbled ahead of the rampaging Red Army on frostbitten feet as the Soviets moved through Prussia towards Berlin.

It was war – the product of human machinations – that caused the suffering of millions during that harsh winter of 1944/45. Without the war civilians and soldiers alike would have had the food, clothing, shelter and fuel that humans need to survive great cold. The winter would have been just as harsh, but far less deadly.  It’s the human concept of war and the actions humans take to prosecute war that is the enemy.