It is not often I get the chance to write a science article combined with a book review.
I have used the Dutch Famine in the winter of 1944-45 to illustrate talks on intergenerational maternal effects* for the past twenty-five years. For those unaware of this tragic ‘natural’ experiment, individuals who were in utero during the famine were found to be at increased risk of metabolic and cardiovascular disease when adult and of cognitive decline with age. The important finding was that these conditions were also more prevalent in the next generation—the children of those children who were first affected.
Inheritance other than through maternal and paternal genes is now the hot topic of epigenetics. However, there are all sorts of possible mechanisms by which these effects may work. I use epigenetic in the wide sense of any non-genetic effect of mother or father on the phenotype of their offspring. Unfortunately, the molecular geneticists have defined the term more narrowly to mean an effect on the chromosomes, i.e. by activating or deactivating the genes. Confusion therefore abounds and we can have an epigenetic effect in the widest sense that is not an epigenetic effect in the narrowest.
Research on the intergenerational effects of the Dutch Famine continues. The mechanism or mechanisms of the epigenetic, in the wide sense, effect(s) remains controversial but the important point here is that the phenomenon itself—long-term deleterious effects on the health of individuals one or more generations down the line from those originally affected, is a solid observation and one that has from tragic circumstances provided vital insights into the developmental origins of health and disease.
Given the importance of the Dutch Famine to the biological word I was surprised when I read Antony Beevor’s book, Arnhem, late last year that while he described the appalling suffering and bravery of the civilian population of the Netherlands after Operation Market Garden in September 1944, the long-term effects of the Dutch Famine only made a footnote and then only in relation to the incidence of schizophrenia in girls born to women who were pregnant during the famine, along with an inaccurate interpretation of the results of eating tulip bulbs or wheat in relation to coeliac disease.
The Famine came after the failed Arnhem Campaign and a railway strike in support of the Allied effort as a direct result of military action and deliberate retaliation by the German occupiers on the civilian population. Rations in the western region of the Netherlands, including Amsterdam, were reduced to over the months to reach a low of between less than a quarter to about one-third of the required energy intake per day. Deaths caused directly by under-nutrition were estimated as 18,000. In the late stages, a deal between the German occupiers and Allied Forces was done which allowed air drops of food by the Royal Air Force, Royal Canadian Air Force and U.S. Army Air Force in return for not bombing German positions. Proper relief and recovery only came after the Germans surrendered in the west on 4 May 1945.
I learnt a lot from Beevor’s book, the effectiveness of the Nottinghamshire Yeomanry (Sherwood Rangers) and the success of the British Firefly tank (a British 17-pounder anti-tank gun mounted in the turret of an American Sherman tank), for example. Beevor, as other have in the past, comes down heavily on the British generals and air marshals and their staffs involved in planning and executing Operation Market Garden—the daring bid to get into northern Germany by crossing the Rhine and thus bringing an early end to the War. The Americans also wanted to see their airborne forces used, almost come what may. Landing zones chosen by Royal Air Force planners were too far away from the vital bridges but the planners were not over-ruled. There was simply no slack in what was an already inadequate but ambitious plan. Every aspect had to go well and to time. But it didn’t. Beevor has nothing really new to say here but every work on Arnhem brings forth a barrage of criticism from those armchair generals who think Montgomery could do no wrong followed by a counter-blast from those who think the field-marshal could do no right.
Strategic failure though should cast no shadow over the often brilliant military tactics employed by units and individuals in the field and it is this aspect that Beevor captures in his account of Operation Market (the air-drop to take the bridges including the final one at Arnhem) and of Operation Garden (the race by land forces to reach those dropped by air). However, the book suffers from a dearth of maps. There are maps but many more are needed, containing all the place-names mentioned in the text, in order for the narrative to flow. I have noticed that professional historians seems loathe to illustrate books and talks as part of the narrative. They seem to prefer to rely on the written or spoken word with a few illustrations thrown in at the end. With complicated stories of simultaneous actions in an operation like Market Garden, the reader can easily be confused about what is happening to whom and where. This is where a good book editor, playing the part of the average reader, is essential to inject a greater degree of clarity.
*’where the mother makes a contribution to the phenotype of her progeny over and above that which results from the genes she contributes to the zygote’.
Beevor A. 2018. Arnhem. The Battle for the Bridges, 1944. Viking.
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