German Memoirs in Asia - US President Herbert Hoover in the Post-World Wars Era Europe

Philipp Staebler, a first year student of business economics was narrating the difficulties in the reunification of the separated Germanys.

He said after a brief pause "Well, it is difficult for sometime for some people in West Germany, but East Germany is also part of our nation and somehow or other way we will have to bear the burden".

Philip elaborated some stories of the Second World War era, which separated Germany, and many yet unresolved chaos. When our discussion turned on the rehabilitation of post-war Europe, a German university student referred to one person who left a lasting legacy. It was none other than Herbert Hoover, an American of German ancestry and was the 31st President of the United States of America (1929-1933). He had taken bold initiatives which saved the lives of millions of Germans and other Europeans in the Second World War that ravaged Europe.

Hoover was born into a Quaker family of distant German and Swiss descent, in Iowa. He helped millions of starving people by his charismatic negotiations between the opposing parties on relief assistance in post-war Europe. He exemplified the Efficiency Movement component of the Progressive Era, arguing there were technical solutions to all social and economic problems - a position that was challenged by the Great Depression that began while he was President.

When Belgium faced a food crisis after being invaded by Germany in the fall of 1914, Hoover undertook an unprecedented relief effort as head of the Commission for the Relief of Belgium (CRB). The CRB became, in effect, an independent republic of relief, with its own flag, navy, factories, mills and railroads. Its $12-million-a-month budget was supplied by voluntary donations and government grants.

In an early form of shuttle diplomacy, he crossed the North Sea forty times seeking to persuade the Germans in Berlin to allow food to reach war victims.

After the United States entered the war in April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Hoover as head of the American Food Administration, with headquarters in Washington, D.C. He succeeded in cutting consumption of food needed overseas and avoided rationing at home. After the end of the war, Hoover, a member of the Supreme Economic Council and head of the American Relief Administration, organized shipments of food for millions of starving people in Central Europe. To this end, he employed a newly formed Quaker organization, the American Friends Service Committee to carry out much of the logistical work in Europe.

He extended aid to famine-stricken Bolshevist Russia in 1921. When a critic inquired why he should help Bolshevist Russia, Hoover retorted, "Twenty million people are starving. Whatever their politics, they shall be fed!"

In June 1931, Hoover issued the Hoover Moratorium that called for a one-year halt in reparations payments by Germany to France and in the payment of Allied war debts to the United States to deal with a very serious banking collapse in Central Europe that threatened to cause a worldwide financial meltdown. The Hoover Moratorium had the effect of temporarily stopping the banking collapse in Europe.

Based on Hoover's previous experience with Germany at the end of World War I, in the winter of 1946 - 47 President Harry S. Truman selected Hoover to do a tour of Germany in order to ascertain the food status of the occupied nation. Hoover toured what was to become West Germany in Field Marshall Herman Goering's old train and produced a number of reports sharply critical of U.S. occupation policy. The economy of Germany had "sunk to the lowest level in a hundred years".

As the Cold War deepened, Hoover expressed reservations about some of the activities of the American Friends Service Committee, which he had previously strongly supported.

He impartially helped not only his distant German relatives of the German Nation but the Russians, and other Europeans as well and showed great human kindness.

Europeans who survived in the Second World War used to praise him that they were still alive because of Hoover's meals. The Belgian city of Leuven named a prominent square after him. In addition, the Finns coined a new word hoover, meaning "to help," to their language in honor of his humanitarian work.