Lecture Series Lecture: “The Americans Smell of White Bread”
Press Release No. 64/2025
18 June 2025
In the Ruperto Carola Lecture Series Elisabeth Piller will speak on humanitarian aid from the United States at the end of the Second World War
“American Humanitarian Aid and the Long End of the War in Europa” is the topic of a lecture by Junior Professor Dr Elisabeth Piller, historian at the University of Freiburg. Her presentation, entitled “The Americans Smell of White Bread” is part of the Ruperto Carola Lecture Series “1945: Epochal Threshold and Experiential Space”, with which Heidelberg University wants to remember the end of the war in Europe 80 years ago – the historical turning-point being 8 May 1945. The event with Prof. Piller is taking place on Monday 23 June 2025 in the Great Hall of the Old University, beginning at 6.15 p.m.
In the first post-war years, CARE parcels in Europe came to symbolize the affluence and generosity of the United States. Yet, Prof. Piller emphasizes, they were only one example of the extensive American aid deliveries with which the U.S. in 1944/1945 endeavored to feed a hungry continent and so create the preconditions for a lasting peace. In her lecture she will talk about the aid from the United States and its foreign policy goals, as well as the expectations and experiences of the western European population. The speaker also probes America’s rise to become a humanitarian superpower, the long end of the war in 1944/1945 and Europe’s difficult return to the longed-for prewar normality. In her research at the University of Freiburg’s Department of History, Elisabeth Piller specializes in American foreign policy and transatlantic relations since the late 19th century.
The Ruperto Carola Lecture Series is part of an approach to focal themes. With it, Heidelberg University seeks to take socially relevant research questions to a broad public twice a year in differing formats. Under the heading “1945: Epochal Threshold and Experiential Space” the present series on the focal theme BACK & FORTH opens up two complementary perspectives – “a retrospective interpretation, which situates the Second World War in the fractures and continuities of 20th century history, and a reconstruction of direct human experience and suffering,” explains historian Prof. Dr Manfred Berg, who designed the current lecture series.
Prof. Piller’s lecture on the topic “‘The Americans Smell of White Bread’: American Humanitarian Aid and the Long End of the War in Europa” will be followed by two more events in the Ruperto Carola Lecture Series, which will take place on Mondays in the Great Hall of the Old University; they begin at 6.15 pm. Recordings will subsequently be accessible on heiONLINE, the central portal of Heidelberg University with lectures, panels and events in digital formats.