A Duty to Starve: The Minnesota Starvation Experiment
  • Thesis
  • Stand
  • Serve
  • Starve
  • Solve
  • Significance
    • Shift
    • Support
    • Save
  • Resources
    • Personal Interviews
    • Bibliography and Process Paper
  • Thesis
  • Stand
  • Serve
  • Starve
  • Solve
  • Significance
    • Shift
    • Support
    • Save
  • Resources
    • Personal Interviews
    • Bibliography and Process Paper
Search by typing & pressing enter

YOUR CART

A Duty to Support

Is it ethical for a government to use food aid as a means of spreading political ideology?
 "Starved people cannot be taught democracy. To talk about the will of the people when you aren't feeding them is perfect hogwash."
- Ancel Keys, 1945
As the US entered the Cold War, spreading democracy became a priority. The finding of the MNSE that starving people cannot be taught democracy, led to a shift in US famine response through the Marshall Plan in 1946, and the establishment of Food for Peace in 1954.
Picture
Marshall Plan Food Aid, Getty Images, 1947.
The Marshall Plan and Food for Peace provided food and other humanitarian aid to foreign countries. In addition to famine prevention, these programs had more strategic motives: to strengthen alliances with democratic countries and prevent the spread of communism.
"The US is not morally required to give food aid to everyone who's starving. You might think it shows a deep seeded problem with the moral character of our country that we think we shouldn’t give food aid to communists, but we're not morally required to do it."
- 
Samuel Asarnow, Personal Interview, 2018
Picture
Doctor US Congress, Minneapolis Star, 1947.
"The President shall exercise the authority contained  herein (1) to assist friendly nations independent of trade with the U. S. S. R. or nations dominated or controlled by the U. S. S. R. for food, raw materials and markets, and (2) to assure that agricultural commodities sold or transferred here under do not result in increased availability of those or like commodities to unfriendly
nations
."
- Food for Peace Act (PL 83-480), 1954
Picture
Food for Peace 5c U.S. Stamp, 1963.

Conflicting Motives​

"European recovery... is essential to the maintenance of the civilization in which the American way of life is rooted. If Europe fails to recover, the people might be driven to surrender their basic rights to totalitarian control."
- Harry S. Truman, "​Special Message to the Congress on the Marshall Plan," 1947
"Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos."
- George C. Marshall, "The Marshall Plan Speech," 1947
"Our food has perhaps done more than any word or deed to demonstrate the superiority of the free-enterprise system over Communist dictatorship." 
- John F. Kennedy, "Letter Accepting Resignation of George McGovern as Director of the Food for Peace Program," 1962
"[Food for Peace] proclaims our commitment to a better world society-where every person can hope for life's essentials-and be able to find them in peace." ​
​- Lyndon B. Johnson, "Special Message to the Congress: Food for Peace," 1966

​As the Cold War de-escalated and American policy shifted away from the containment of communism, US humanitarian aid plummeted, raising ethical questions regarding the use of starvation as an opportunity to spread influence.

Through the Participants' Eyes
(Hover to read quotes)

"My preference was not to call myself an "anti-Communist", but a "pro-democrat"... I think my lasting philosophy has to be a positive one, for human dignity and democracy and freedom and human rights"
"Feed them! If someone is hungry put food in their belly!"
              Max Kampleman                           Samuel Legg
< Back
Picture
Congressional Research Program, 2016
Next >
"Why do people who were drafted go to fight wars, without escaping? Because there's a duty. It's the same kind of a thing, just a different battlefield. And from our point of view at the time, it was a battlefield consistent with what our conscience would tell us. But it was a battlefield. And battlefields are not supposed to be easy."
​- Max Kampleman, Minnesota Starvation Experiment participant, 1993

Ella Hoch Robinson
A Duty to Starve: The Minnesota Starvation Experiment
First Place National History Day 2018
Junior Individual Website

Word Count: 1200
​Media Time: 3:57
Process Paper: 499
Proudly powered by Weebly