As Hoover toured the devastated lands of Europe and Asia, Truman described the steps that America was taking to address the crisis, sending one million tons of wheat each month to Europe and Asia. It was drawing down its reserves of wheat still further. He urged every American to reduce their own consumption of food, particularly bread, fats, and oils, as these were essential to the effort. He asserted that we would all be better off, not just physically, but spiritually as well, if we ate less. And in a show of solidarity with the suffering peoples around the world, he asked Americans for just two days a week to reduce their consumption to the level of the average person in the famine-stricken lands. Chapter 13 recounts America’s initial measures to sacrifice on behalf of strangers overseas.

Three leading Americans, each officially out of power, spent 1948 grappling with the coming Cold War. Henry Wallace sought accommodation with the Soviets. Eleanor Roosevelt still viewed Germany as the greater threat and pressed for conciliation with the Russians. Herbert Hoover saw no alternative to confrontation. This chapter tells the story of each person’s efforts to shape both the public discourse and the official policy at the dawn of a cold peace.

If WWII had brought death and destruction to civilians on a previously unimaginable scale, the postwar peace was seeming scarcely better. Hunger quickly beset Europe, most acutely in the defeated nations. Years of combat had shattered most countries’ ability to produce and transport food. A global food shortage ensued. More than half a billion people in the world were at risk of death by starvation. The challenge was great; the need was immense. Thanks to Stimson’s interventions, America turned for help to Herbert Hoover. Chapter 12 begins an examination of Hoover’s postwar food relief campaign and how average Americans joined in to feed their former foes.

Hoover’s famine relief mission had helped to stave off starvation for millions in Europe and Asia, but Germany posed a special problem. The world food crisis hit Germany especially hard, not simply because the war’s destruction had shattered its ability to produce and transport food to cities. Germany’s situation was compounded by JCS 1067, the directive governing American occupation. Because of Morgenthau’s insistence, the directive prevented American occupiers from revitalizing German industry, which greatly exacerbated already grim conditions. Caloric intake plummeted from an average of 2,445 calories per day to a paltry 860. It was becoming painfully apparent to American policy makers that if something did not change soon, the death toll would be unconscionable. This chapter probes the ways in which Americans came to undo the harshest aspects of German occupation policy and lay the groundwork for the Marshall Plan.

The final chapter asks what became of the men and women who played vital parts in America’s struggles between vengeance and virtue. It asks whether any of these leaders regretted their actions, which actions, and why.