The liberation of the south of the Netherlands in the autumn of 1944 affected the occupied west of the Netherlands in a bad way.
The Dutch government in London called for a major strike in railway transport to support Operation Market Garden on 17 September 1944. 30,000 railway workers went on strike. The trains stopped running until the end of the war. But as a punitive measure, the Nazis blocked food transports to the provinces of North and South Holland for six weeks. Using their own trains, the Germans had no trouble taking care of their own supplies.
The supply of coal from the province of Limburg had become impossible, because Limburg was behind the front line between Germany and the Allies.
Moreover, in December 1944, the rivers and IJsselmeer, the largest lake of the Netherlands, froze over. So, nothing could be transported by water either.
The west of the Netherlands suffered from shortages of fuel and food. In order to heat their houses, the population tried to find firewood wherever they could. They illegally cut down trees, burned old furniture and stole the wooden blocks from between the tram rails. They took all the wood from the abandoned houses of deported Jews, which sometimes caused the houses to collapse.
The food shortage caused severe hunger. People ate everything they could get their hands on: tulip bulbs and sugar beets, but also dogs and cats. There was still some food in the countryside, so people walked or cycled dozens of kilometres to buy food from farmers. Some of these farmers took advantage of the famine and only exchanged food for jewellery or piles of money. Others did their best to help, but the food shortage persisted. About 20,000 people died because of the hunger winter.