As the winter of 1947 approached, millions of Europeans faced mass starvation. A combination of wartime destruction, postwar drought, and the coldest winter in memory was damaging production. By the close of September 1947, the U.S. State Department was reporting that Italy and France were in danger of total collapse, which would trigger a cascade of calamities across the continent. The next three months would be critical. The United States had already sent as much surplus grain as it had available, but Europe needed an additional roughly 100 million bushels before Christmas to avoid apocalypse. There was simply no more grain to send—at least, not yet.
Then-U.S. President Harry Truman could not stomach the idea of allowing millions of people to starve if he could possibly prevent it. So much had been sacrificed throughout the war, so many lives had been shattered and lost, and now starvation threatened to destroy the hard-won peace. Mass death, malnutrition, and especially the spread of disease that accompanied the crisis would leave Europe prey to anarchy and communism. Hunger, he knew, drove people to despair. Somehow, that extra 100 million bushels would have to be found. And Americans would need to find it in less than 100 days.
It would be a strategic disaster as well as a moral one: The United States was already embarking on a global contest with the Soviet Union, and Europe was the first battleground where prosperity was the key to people’s hearts and minds. Truman had to persuade the nation to sacrifice on behalf of total strangers overseas. And he was counting on the American people’s sensibleness, goodness, and basic sense of decency. Truman was not wrong to expect support, but his idealized image of America crashed headfirst into the reality of a divided nation.
Unlike his Soviet counterparts, the president had no legal authority to seize grain from farmers. Any additional grain would have to be secured voluntarily by changing existing patterns of usage. So, Truman made an unusual move. He recruited the nation’s top salesman, Charles Luckman, to head an emergency food committee. Time magazine had dubbed Luckman the “boy wonder” of business when he was 27, a few years before catapulted to the head of Pepsodent at 27. Instead of selling toothpaste, his job would now be to convince Americans to eat less to free up grain for shipment abroad. Luckman immediately turned to the country’s top seven advertising agencies to create their most compelling campaigns, and he gave them only a weekend to work on it. Luckman had thrown down a challenge, and the so-called Mad Men of Madison Avenue responded. The slogan they selected was simple: “Save Wheat. Save Meat. Save the Peace.”