Food Insecurity in Paris, 1940–1944: Madeleine Blaess’s Wartime Diary

This article is based on the diary of Madeleine Blaess (1918–2003), who was born in France and raised in England prior to relocating to Paris in 1939 to attend the Sorbonne and the École pratique des hautes études. She was matriculated at these schools while pursuing her doctorate during some of the darkest years in Paris, les années noires, when the Vichy regime was in power. She wrote regularly in her diary from 1940 to 1944. This study examines her many entries concerning food insecurity and its often devastating effects on her daily life, which include the constant struggle to acquire adequate food rations, her physical and mental exhaustion from malnutrition, and the possibility that she had amenorrhea from near starvation. Her entries also offer revealing glimpses of the harsh wartime tribulations faced by the Parisian populace.