What is the impact of war on non-combatants, particularly women and children? In this innovative analysis of nutritional deprivation among ordinary German citizens during the First World War, Mary Elisabeth Cox finds that the effects of the war and the Allied interdiction of food supplies—which became known in Germany as the ‘Hungerblockade’—resulted in diminished heights and weights of children far from the battlefield. During the war, Germany defiantly proclaimed that their country could not be starved out. In a military sense, this was likely to be the case, and many modern historians argue persuasively that Germany lost on the battlefield. Yet modern analyses of height and weight records for hundreds of thousands of school children reveal a grim truth: even if Germany did not lose the war because of food insecurity, the war blockade resulted in hunger for millions of German infants. Desperately struggling to feed their families under the growing spectre of starvation, many mothers chose to sacrifice their own well-being for the benefit of their families. National and local policies within Germany often exasperated food insecurity. Modern analysis of anthropometric data now brings into question both long-held assumptions about the divide between rural and urban health, and legal and moral arguments in support of the blockade. Combined with contemporary letters, diaries, and news reports, these data provide an expanded picture of the levels of health and nutritional deprivation across society. This story of one of the most vicious wars in history is not devoid of compassion. Following the eventual lifting of the British blockade, the victorious powers and nations throughout the world sent millions of tons of food into Germany, relief which is mirrored in drawings and letters of gratitude from hundreds of German school children, and which can be seen as a surge of growth in height and weight measurements.