Chapter 2 The UNRRA–Brethren Service Committee Partnership

Dan West

By the mid-twentieth century, the peace churches were no strangers to relief work. During the immediate post–World War I period, from 1919 to 1922, the Brethren had already contributed almost $300,000 in humanitarian aid, with most of this amount going to Armenia. In addition, in 1921 the Brethren General Mission Board reported that the Brethren gave $130,000 to famine relief in China. The Brethren entrenched service work as part of their religious devotion and “washed the feet of the world” just as they washed each other’s feet during special Communion services. The goal of Brethren relief work was also to soften the immediate effects of the state’s choices on individuals.⁹ They did this in a context where hunger was increasingly interpreted not as a personal moral failing but as the consequence, either direct or indirect, of specific government decisions and policies that led to the availability of too little food or food that lacked nutritional substance.

The most formative experience for the Brethren in terms of relief provision was in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. It was in Spain that the stage was set for the Heifer Project and, in general, for the Brethren’s expanded engagement in world affairs through humanitarian aid projects. In 1937 the Church of the Brethren received an invitation from the American Friends Service Committee to help organize a relief program in Spain. The American Friends Service Committee had been established years earlier, in 1917, as a relief-providing arm of the Quakers (though by this time the Quakers had been providing humanitarian assistance for decades already, starting in the Crimean War).¹⁰ In September 1937, Dan West—a strong pacifist, onetime teacher, and very active Church of the Brethren lay member with a special interest in projects that involved youth—took up the Quakers’ invitation and traveled to Spain on behalf of the Brethren in the role of “Peace Representative.”¹¹ Over the course of a few months in Spain, from the fall of 1937 into the early winter of 1938, it became clear to West that Spaniards, both the Nationalists and the Republicans, were hungry. And though the volunteers with the Quaker-led project distributed what food was available, there simply was not enough to satisfy the need. The shortage of milk was felt most acutely and poignantly: those distributing the milk had the impossible task of deciding which child should receive some and which should not; children who looked like they had a better chance of surviving were generally prioritized.¹²

It was in this context that Dan West conceived of the Heifer Project. The humanitarian conversion narrative best associated with West is in a sense quite typical: stirred by his personal witnessing of human suffering, he was compelled to act.¹³ West had heard what some of his coreligionists refer to as “the voice of God.”¹⁴ As the mythology goes—and this next part of the story is indeed a myth—it happened one day when West took a short break from his work in Spain and sat down under an almond tree. As he rested in the tree’s shade, West reflected on the agony that war caused and on the limits of the existing structures of aid programming. His imagination turned to thoughts of home. West regretted that the milk of America—the cows of America—could not nourish the children of Spain. Or could they? What if living female cattle, raised by his people on those verdant fields of the American Midwest and elsewhere across the United States, could be shipped to families in need? What if the whole animal were to be provided as aid? This thinking represented a radical revision of existing humanitarian practices that usually focused on provisioning finished food products and thus on the temporary relief of hunger. West reasoned instead that sending the whole milk producer would be more useful than sending just her milk. The quantity of milk given as aid by a single cow over a lifetime of pregnancies would be far greater than any quantity of milk that relief staff could collect, ship, and distribute in the moment. An average cow in the United States in the mid-1940s, according to West, produced approximately ten quarts of milk a day.¹⁵

There is no evidence in West’s personal papers that he was sitting under an almond tree when the idea for the Heifer Project first took shape, despite the recurrence of this anecdote in published histories of West’s life, the Church of the Brethren, and the Heifer Project.¹⁶ Moreover, and perhaps like most good ideas, this one did not emerge all at once. Instead, what became the Heifer Project developed slowly during the few months that West was in Spain. West had first considered the possibility of sending cows to Spain while he was working with the Quakers in Nationalist territory. But it was West’s visit to a hospital in Murcia in January 1938 that cemented his determination to send American cows as humanitarian aid to suffering people in Spain. In Murcia, then in Republican territory, West met a girl very ill with tuberculosis. The nurse told West that the girl would likely die and that only ample supplies of milk—which were not available—might yet save her and others like her. Upon hearing this West became determined to find a way to help.¹⁷

It would take a while for this determination to develop into a concrete plan, and the end result would ultimately be the product of many people’s efforts. The compressed narrative that features a single decisive moment of inspiration in a bucolic setting under an almond tree nevertheless best accentuates West’s central role in imagining what became the Heifer Project while it also reflects West’s status as a larger-than-life figure in Brethren circles. Indeed, West’s name remains a monumentally important one among Brethren today, and his volunteerism stands as a powerful expression of the service ethic that continues to animate the church and its congregants. In the existing literature on Brethren history, West is often described as “visionary.”¹⁸ Kermit Eby, who was a friend of Dan West, a minister in the Church of the Brethren, and a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago from 1948, called him a “so-called great of the earth,” a “Brethren prophet,” and a “modern mystic.”¹⁹

The Church of the Brethren continued to work with the Quakers on relief provision in Spain even after West’s departure from the country in early 1938. Once he was back to his regular life in the US, West started advocating for his plan. The original proposal to send milk-producing cattle to Spain specifically soon expanded with the advent of the Second World War and mounting evidence of critical food shortages in a number of countries; West’s ideas developed along with the context. But even as he pressed ahead with the cattle plan, West also worked on a number of additional projects with the Church of the Brethren. Once the draft was announced in 1940, for example, West coordinated with other church leaders and the government on developing alternatives to military service for men who, for religious reasons, refused to participate in the war.²⁰

In 1942 the Brethren approved in principle West’s plan to ship relief cattle abroad, but it was not until early 1943 that the BSC, as the outreach wing of the Church of the Brethren, formally approved what by then was called the Heifer Project Committee of the Brethren Service Committee of the Church of the Brethren. In this way the Heifer Project—sometimes referred to as “Heifers for Relief”—became an official part of the Brethren’s national plan.²¹ The logic of the Heifer Project was described by the Brethren in the simplest terms: “A heifer provides milk (immediate food), a calf (to become another cow), and the heifer itself (more milk over a period of time), and soil rehabilitation (fertilizer).”²² An important additional element of the Heifer Project plan was to breed the female cattle before shipping so that they would give birth soon after arrival; recipients would, in effect, receive two animals for the price of one, and the lactating cow would more quickly become a useful milk provider for the family that owned her. A similar preference for sending bred heifers would later be reflected in UNRRA’s dairy cattle aid program as well.

The animals would thus facilitate an expanded and more robust approach to aid giving and would help lay the foundations for long-term self-sufficiency in target countries. This was part and parcel of the “rehabilitation” goal that formed one of the three Rs of UNRRA policy (the others being immediate relief and then eventual reconstruction). Moreover, for the Heifer Project (as for UNRRA), the animals would be given without regard for the political preferences of the receivers. This was already familiar from the Friends’ approach to their Spanish program when they provided aid to both sides in the civil war; as the saying went, “milk knows no politics.”²³ Kermit Eby reiterated this point using much the same language when he described the Heifer Project: “The program is rooted in the simple belief that milk knows no politics, that Communist babies are not born flying the hammer and sickle any more than ours are born computing compound interest.”²⁴

There was another significant requirement for Heifer Project animals specifically: that the firstborn female calf of every donated heifer be given away in turn to another needy family. This was called “Passing on the Gift.”²⁵ Whether almost immediately or a little later (once a female calf was born to the animal that had been placed with a family), recipients thus “paid” for their gift. The animals themselves played a crucial part in this “cycle of giving”—or the “cycle of empowerment,” as modern-day humanitarian agencies often prefer to call it.²⁶ This gesture was practical and useful, to be sure, and, in addition, the Brethren hoped it would build positive links between individuals in a given community while allowing people to preserve their self-respect and to feel like they were contributing to their own welfare. For West and the other Heifer Project enthusiasts in Brethren circles, it was also important that the donated living animals required active care from the receivers. The need to attend to the animals would bring dignity to people’s situations while laying the foundations for self-sufficiency and reconstruction.²⁷

The Heifer Project: “High Seas Service”

From the start, West and others believed that ecumenicalism would make the Heifer Project stronger and more successful.²⁸ The recent experiences of the peace churches working together in Spain (the Mennonites were involved in the Quaker-led relief project there as well) showed how productive that cooperation could be and arguably resulted in a growing recognition of the compatibility of the denominations’ goals and beliefs; it gave each of the churches firsthand evidence of their ability to work together, and it cemented their identities as “peace churches.” West thus reached out to other Christian denominations and invited them to join the Heifer Project. The Fellowship of Reconciliation joined first, in 1943, followed in 1944 and 1945 by the Quaker Rural Life Association, the Evangelical and Reformed Church, and the Catholic Rural Life Conference. In 1946 the Northern Baptist Convention, the Mennonite Central Committee, and the Methodist Committee on Overseas Relief all joined.²⁹ Joining the Heifer Project meant being able to name a representative to the Heifer Project Committee, and it also signaled a commitment to organizing heifer collections at the local congregation or church level and thereby contributing materially to the overall Heifer Project relief effort.³⁰ Despite this ecumenicalism and the fact that the Heifer Project received a degree of both moral and material support from other Christian denominations, it was a Brethren initiative, and the Brethren would maintain a lead role in it for several years. It was not until incorporation in 1953 that ties with the BSC were formally severed.

Until the war ended, however, it was impossible to realize the Heifer Project idea fully and to ship cattle across the ocean. In fact, no cattle would ever make it to Spain, the country where the idea was first conceived and to which West had hoped to send animals.³¹ At any rate, throughout what would turn out to be the last part of the war, in 1944 and 1945, the Brethren were busy working on other relief programs. These included organizing nonperishable food aid drives, providing care for war orphans (in unoccupied France, for example), and collecting material relief like clothes and bedding for distribution to people who needed these items. As the war turned in the Allies’ favor, the Brethren also did ministry work with German prisoners of war in Allied camps.³² While these relief efforts were taking place, the Brethren were also working out the logistics of the plan to transport living animals from the United States to Europe. For this the Brethren needed (and so far lacked) ready contacts in target countries that could receive the aid they were offering.³³ Despite his work on a number of other Brethren initiatives, West remained part of the Heifer Project Committee during this period of building and organizing.

While logistical details related to the Heifer Project were still being worked out, the Brethren began spreading news of their plan throughout supportive communities across the United States. The plan was for heifers to be donated directly from supporters to the Heifer Project. Already by mid-1944—well before it was possible to ship cattle to Europe—the Brethren had approximately one thousand donated animals awaiting shipment.³⁴ The majority of animal donations would eventually come from rural Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, and Indiana, and to a lesser extent from California, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas, in addition to smaller donations from many other states.³⁵

To prepare for the day that European shipments became possible, the Brethren organized practice runs closer to home. The first such test run happened in the summer of 1944. From a stockyard in Nappanee, Indiana, eighteen heifers were transported by train to Mobile, Alabama, before seventeen of them (one was sick and was kept behind) were placed on SS William D. Bloxham and sailed to Puerto Rico, where a food and public health crisis was mounting.³⁶ The Brethren already had some experience in Puerto Rico. This experience came through their administration of the Martin J. Brumbaugh Reconstruction Unit, one of many Civilian Public Service camps that had been established during the war as part of the American government’s alternative service program for Conscientious Objectors. Known as Camp #43, the Brumbaugh Unit operated in Castañer, Puerto Rico, and worked on a wide variety of projects designed to improve public health, medical care, and food access.³⁷ In this context the heifer shipment represents an extension of the Brethren’s already strong commitment to providing relief in that specific location. With their gift of heifers to Puerto Ricans, the Brethren attached a note; the note read, simply, that “these producers of nutritious milk” were being given “in the spirit of brotherhood and service to our fellow men.”³⁸ To this day the start date of that first shipment—July 14, 1944—remains an important one in the history of the Brethren and is considered the anniversary of Heifer International’s founding. The second Heifer Project shipment to Puerto Rico came less than a year later, in May 1945, and there was also a shipment to Mexico plus two additional shipments to Arkansas. These first deliveries all happened before the partnership between the BSC and UNRRA had even started.³⁹

These initial trial runs were celebrated as a great success. Important pieces were falling into place. The Heifer Project plan had the approval of the Church of the Brethren, and it had support from other Christian denominations. Donated heifers were accumulating in supportive communities. It was at this point, in 1944, that Michael Robert (M. R.) Zigler, the first executive secretary of the BSC from 1941 to 1948, contacted UNRRA with a proposal to include Brethren heifers as part of the general aid shipments that were just then being planned for Europe. Dan West, who worked with Zigler, had already established contact with Ollie E. Reed, the head of the Bureau of Dairy Industry in the US Department of Agriculture from 1928 to 1953. Reed gave West his general support for the idea of the Brethren donating heifers directly to the UNRRA program, but no concrete plans or promises had been made.⁴⁰

Zigler received a similarly noncommittal initial response from UNRRA and was told that there were no immediate plans to include live animals in the aid shipments that would start soon after the war ended. The UNRRA country programs were still very much in the making. No one denied that including horses and cattle as part of the aid packages would allow UNRRA to best realize its rehabilitation plans. But it appeared to be too daunting a job, even for a vast organization like UNRRA. There were many reasons for UNRRA’s hesitation. The first was that UNRRA, by necessity, had to focus on immediate relief first, and this meant providing inexpensive yet nutrient-dense food like grain; grains would ultimately account for almost half of the total UNRRA food expenditures for all countries combined.⁴¹ During the planning phase, it was not clear how much of UNRRA’s total available resources could be directed away from emergency food supplies and toward the provision of other types of aid instead. How much support UNRRA was able and willing to give to longer-term agricultural renewal remained an open question.⁴² The right balance was difficult to set.

From UNRRA’s perspective shipping living animals was logistically complicated, labor-intensive, time-sensitive, and expensive, and factoring losses in raised the costs of an animal aid program further still. The upfront purchase cost was in the range of $175 for a single Brown Swiss heifer and a little less for a Holstein-Friesen; bulls of these breeds (the ratio of female to male cattle shipped would be roughly thirty to one) cost considerably more at about $300.⁴³ Horses were cheaper to buy at about $78, but they cost more than cattle to ship to the ports, to feed, and to care for generally. They were also much more likely to get sick and die at some point along the way to the American port, at the port, or on the sailing from the US, meaning that they were a very risky investment from a financial standpoint.⁴⁴

The Ocean Shipping Division of UNRRA, which would take responsibility for procuring the aid-carrying ships, also expressed reservations about launching what it viewed as an expensive, hazardous, and complicated livestock program. They raised several practical concerns. For one, animals had to be moved as quickly as possible from their point of origin to the ships so as to reduce loss rates, and the animals would need care along the route to the ports. Second, the arrival of draft animals at their destinations needed as much as possible to be coordinated with the arrival of other essential agricultural goods that UNRRA supplied in large quantities as well—like seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and planting and harvesting tools—so as to be of maximum use in growing cycles. In addition to these arguments, there was yet another significant challenge: finding available and capable men who were willing to accept a several-weeks-long job crossing an ocean with animals that weighed hundreds of pounds each and that required around-the-clock attention. These men ideally needed some experience handling animals to protect UNRRA’s investment and to ensure the success of its goals. UNRRA was also concerned that, given the contemporary job market, it might have to pay far too much in wages to the animal tenders, thereby raising the already high costs further still.⁴⁵

But this was a dynamic and creative period, and assessments of needs, risks, and possibilities changed quickly. While logistical considerations in the United States tipped the balance away from running a live animal program, certain other practical and intellectual considerations favored it. The matter was open for discussion. For their part, agricultural specialists were telling UNRRA bureaucrats that, despite the challenges of sending animals abroad, they were essential for real agricultural rehabilitation, and UNRRA had already defined agricultural renewal as a key goal that would in turn spark other elements of rehabilitation. The argument was compelling.⁴⁶ In addition, UNRRA bureaucrats were becoming convinced that, from a social perspective, the animals would bring stability, rootedness, and a measure of normalcy to fragile communities; the animals constituted an important step toward broader reconstruction. To that end UNRRA’s Technical Committee on Agriculture ultimately came out in favor of sending animals to war-destroyed countries. The director of UNRRA’s Agricultural Rehabilitation Division, Edwin R. Henson, also pressed for the inclusion of draft animals and dairy animals in the organization’s rehabilitation program.⁴⁷

While different aspects of the livestock program were being discussed at the institutional level, the target countries were also pressing for livestock aid. Greece, for example, reported that it had lost 60 percent of its cattle during the war, and it argued that it therefore needed a sizable injection of breeding stock to build artificial insemination programs; these programs were themselves an important part of rebuilding livestock herds and animal-related industries (like the dairy industry).⁴⁸ UNRRA responded by facilitating a special shipment of six pedigreed bulls to Greece. The bulls came as a gift via the Heifer Project. The animals sailed from Saint John, New Brunswick, in Canada on May 14, 1945, on a Swedish ship called Boolongena.⁴⁹ Other target countries—like Poland—also made clear to UNRRA how important horses and cattle were to their rebuilding plans.⁵⁰

In early May 1945, at long last, Edwin Henson of the Agricultural Division received permission from Roy F. Hendrickson, UNRRA deputy director general, Bureau of Supply, to move ahead with the livestock program. Henson immediately purchased six hundred head of cattle and six hundred mares. The United States Commercial Company of the Foreign Economic Administration, Office of Food Program, was in charge of procuring the animals for UNRRA at this time, though in October 1945 this body was liquidated and the Livestock Branch of the Department of Agriculture took over the job of animal procurement for UNRRA. The Livestock Branch would also eventually have the responsibility, along with UNRRA’s Personnel division, of recruiting the veterinarians that would be responsible for animal care throughout the various stages of the process, including during the sailings.⁵¹

The challenge of where to find the livestock attendants remained, however.⁵² During previous wars the Army Veterinary Service had either assigned enlisted men to attend to the animals aboard any given maritime voyage or hired civilian casual laborers to work as “horsemen.”⁵³ UNRRA was of course not a military operation, however, and at any rate qualified military-age men were still enlisted in 1945. As such, UNRRA looked to voluntary agencies for a solution, and not surprisingly it very quickly turned to the BSC, which had already been in touch about the idea of sending livestock abroad. UNRRA contacted the BSC with a proposal: UNRRA would take Brethren heifers on its livestock ships without charge, and in return the BSC would recruit the cattle attendants that would accompany all livestock ships. The attendants would care for the animals—Heifer Project animals plus UNRRA animals—from port to port, and the animals would all travel together on the same UNRRA ships.⁵⁴ The men would be paid $150 for each trip, regardless of destination and regardless of how long the trip actually took. An agreement outlining these general terms between UNRRA and the BSC was signed on May 9, 1945 (and amended slightly in October 1945).⁵⁵

More elaborate plans formed quickly after that, and a full-fledged UNRRA agricultural program that included the shipment of live animals tended by Brethren-recruited cattlemen was established. This partnership between the BSC and UNRRA lasted throughout UNRRA’s tenure. Each side saw a benefit in the relationship. By functioning as what was essentially an employment agency for UNRRA, the Brethren gained free passage for their animals on UNRRA ships plus access to UNRRA’s resources and contacts abroad. This tiny religious organization had hitched itself to an enormous global body with international political status and influence.

For its part, UNRRA left the recruiting of cattle attendants to a steady partner with administrative experience in aid provision and unusually good access to specific pools of available men: most notably those from the Brethren and related churches, and those from other Christian denominations that had joined the Heifer Project. To be sure, many of the recruited animal attendants would not be active Christians and would sign up mainly in pursuit of adventure or to earn fast money. But others, those who came out of religious milieux, were motivated by their faith and by the service ethic that was part and parcel of their local church communities.⁵⁶ Could UNRRA have shipped so many live animals without the BSC? Maybe, but skepticism about being able to recruit adequate numbers of men for the job had been identified early on as a key obstacle to running the livestock program. Even if large numbers of men had been demobilized quickly from the armed forces, many of them would likely have wanted to take advantage of the excellent in-country employment opportunities available to veterans. Robert Lintner, the chief of the Livestock Branch of UNRRA’s Agricultural Rehabilitation Division, also feared that “the caliber of persons customarily employed to care for commercial shipment of livestock” was, as he said, often “undesirable.”⁵⁷ The BSC seemed to offer a good solution to these concerns: the BSC wanted to do the job and to recruit the “right” kind of men, and it saw this work as so much more than simply fulfilling a contract.

What about the BSC? Could they have found another way to practice humanitarian aid giving? Could they have placed their animals with people abroad without UNRRA’s assistance? The BSC did send four shipments of heifers to France and Belgium independently of UNRRA during the UNRRA period; in each of these cases, the recipient countries paid for the shipping.⁵⁸ But those countries where the need for animals was greatest, in eastern and southern Europe, could hardly afford to pay shipping costs for hundreds of animals. Besides, the cooperation with UNRRA allowed the Heifer Project to focus on animal procurement and placement without having to figure out the shipping logistics or costs on top of that. And organizing care for the UNRRA animals itself constituted humanitarian service. Ultimately, the UNRRA-Brethren partnership facilitated the mass movement of thousands of animals from one continent to another.⁵⁹ In late June 1945, two UNRRA ships sailed for Greece—SS F. J. Luckenbach from New Orleans and SS Virginian from Baltimore—with a full complement of BSC cowboys on board to attend to the animals. The UNRRA-Brethren partnership had begun in earnest.⁶⁰

Mid-Century Humanitarianism and Christian Statesmanship

By the summer of 1945, both the Brethren’s Heifer Project and UNRRA had come to the same conclusion: that shipping live animals from America to target countries was a necessary component of agricultural renewal and therefore of wider rehabilitation goals; it was a nonnegotiable element of humanitarian relief programming. Yet the BSC and UNRRA were two vastly different organizations. The one was a relief arm of a small American Christian church that was motivated by making a difference in the lives of others while fulfilling religious commandments to serve and give. The other was an enormous secular international body composed of dozens of countries from around the world, though dominated financially, administratively, and culturally by America. The practical reasons for this partnership are evident. But there were additional factors that explain how these two organizations saw common cause and came together as they did at this crucial postwar moment.

Part of the answer has to do with the role that Christianity played in mid-century humanitarian activism of all types and with the position that Christianity occupied in mid-century American identity more broadly. The United States at the time saw itself largely as a “Christian nation,” and America’s humanitarian impulse—including UNRRA’s humanitarianism—was framed in Christian terms that would have been familiar to the BSC.⁶¹ To some extent UNRRA had both evolved from and reflected Christian ethics.

In the speech he gave upon accepting the position of UNRRA director general in March 1946, Fiorello La Guardia used explicit Christian references when he talked about where the will to organize this massive relief effort had come from: “There is precedent for it [UNRRA] in the old scripture, in the new scripture, to love our neighbor, to aid the needy. That is not original. It just hasn’t been carried out.” La Guardia, an Episcopalian, liked a Christianity that was practical, busy, and helpful and that aspired to realizing the lofty goal of bringing “the heavenly kingdom” to Earth. He continued, “That is our call. That is all there is to it, to respond to that prayer. We then become a great army of mercy, great army, carrying out God Almight’s [sic] response to the call for daily bread. . . . That is the mission of UNRRA, and that is the army I am going to lead.” La Guardia’s “army of mercy” would heal and build rather than kill and destroy; that was its “mission.”⁶²

UNRRA described its own cattle shipments, as we have seen, as following “in Noah’s footsteps.” This expression recalled the biblical ark from which the new world would be populated. In ancient times it was a flood that had led to rebirth, and in modern times “following Noah’s footsteps” evoked the destruction that came as a result of war while it also looked optimistically toward peace and reconstruction in Europe and beyond.⁶³

Others also made the connection between the contemporary humanitarian moment and the Judeo-Christian past. For UNRRA historian George Woodbridge, the organization embodied “the exhortation voiced long ago” by biblical prophets to protect the vulnerable and to show compassion for the weak. In his official history of UNRRA, Woodbridge drew on familiar biblical language to explain UNRRA’s mandate: “Do right to the widow, judge for the fatherless, give to the poor, defend the orphan, clothe the naked, heal the broken and weak.”⁶⁴ The Christian imperative embedded in UNRRA’s mandate to “act humanitarian” was already familiar to Americans.

Contemporary American media reinforced the Christian bases behind UNRRA. In a New York Times Magazine article from the fall of 1947, the photojournalist and writer Gertrude Samuels suggested that UNRRA was nothing less than “a holy word.”⁶⁵ At the end of 1946, as UNRRA was preparing to wind down, one Life editorialist reflected on what UNRRA had managed to achieve during its short tenure: “The American Christian knows, too, that the needs of his neighbors have a special significance. For, as Thomas Jefferson noted with pleased surprise, whereas the Greek philosophers had concerned themselves primarily with man’s duty to himself, Jesus taught of man’s duty to his neighbor. In UNRRA we had some promising answers to the question of Christian neighborliness.”⁶⁶

Harry S. Truman, who assumed the American presidency in April 1945, was himself praised by some contemporary religious leaders for his “act of Christian statesmanship” in supporting UNRRA.⁶⁷ The heads of seventeen Protestant denominations (including Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians) signed an appeal in February 1946 to the “Christian forces of our country” to continue funding aid programs like UNRRA. The church leaders encouraged the American people to write to their representatives and even to the president directly to signal their continued support for UNRRA. “Feeding a hungry world,” the appeal read, “is too great a task for private agencies. It calls for action by the nation as a whole.” The appeal went on: “The President has summoned our people to the sacrifices necessary to save millions in Asia and Europe from starvation.”⁶⁸ Given the country’s wealth, this responsibility fell to the United States first and foremost.⁶⁹ In a separate statement on the subject of aid, Rev. Dr. John Sutherland Bonnell of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian in New York City connected America’s foreign policy choices directly to the words ascribed to Jesus Christ: “‘I was hungry and ye gave me meat, I was thirsty and ye gave me drink, I was naked and ye clothed me.’”⁷⁰

The appeal to Christian obligation is well reflected in the 1946 pro-UNRRA American propaganda film Seeds of Destiny. This film won the Oscar for the Best Documentary Short that year, and it was also shown in the summer of 1946 in Geneva at the Fifth Council Session of UNRRA when continued financial support for relief provision formed part of the deliberations.⁷¹ Seeds of Destiny is just twenty minutes long, but it delivers a powerful message that reflects the Christian bases of the moment and warns against doing nothing. The title card that appears at the start of the film quotes a passage from the Bible: “A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit” (Matt. 7:18). The film shows dozens of images of war’s harrowing effects, especially on children.⁷² Flashing across the screen are children maimed by the war, children dying slowly of malnutrition, and children orphaned and alone after witnessing the murders of their families. The narrator warns that disregarding their obvious distress today could only lead to a new war tomorrow. Is there a young Einstein or Madame Curie in the crowds of children? Or is there a Hitler and a Mussolini? The narrator tells us that in providing “the plasma of peace”—vital relief goods—UNRRA is waging the “last battle” of World War II.⁷³

The Christian influences in the Heifer Project are of course more obvious. The Brethren understood humanitarian relief as “a practical expression of the spirit and teachings of Christ” and as part and parcel of fulfilling fundamental obligations of Christian people to other people, whether Christian or not, wherever in the world they were. The BSC promoted the Heifer Project as a form of “creative citizenship and Christian testimony,” a token of friendship and goodwill that transcended political divisions and national or ethnic boundaries as it strove to lessen the worst effects of war.⁷⁴

Dan West himself referred to Brethren aid projects as “harness[ing] up our Christian faith to the world’s needs.” In a speech he delivered in 1993, Dan West’s son Philip reflected on the Christian elements in the Heifer Project specifically; in effect the younger West answered the question of why the Brethren believed that heifers were so important. Heifers, the younger West said, “were more than animals”; they were “the reminder of Christian responsibilities, of sharing. . . . Heifers meant working together” to achieve a collective goal.⁷⁵ Professor and Brethren minister Kermit Eby similarly expounded on how the Heifer Project reflected something fundamental about Brethren Christian values: “Heifers, unlike bombs, are personal, particularly if you bring them up or sacrifice for them. Before they mature and become cows (giving their new host not only milk but the beginnings of a dairy herd) they become pets. Sent away to help the needy, a part of you goes along. Received by fellowmen [sic] in need, the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man is reaffirmed.”⁷⁶

Christians, including the peace church members, had played an important role in the development of modern western humanitarian action, and these religious elements continued to be reflected in the postwar era. Mid-century humanitarianism—the UNRRA era—should not be read as a simple triumph of secular liberal internationalism and a wholesale abandonment of humanitarianism’s Christian background.⁷⁷ Christians continued to play an important role in postwar humanitarianism, and powerful Christian inflections continued to exist alongside the new mid-century vocabulary of secular humanitarianism and liberal internationalism. As Samuel Moyn has argued, the “new” discourse about individual and collective human rights that started to unfold at this time, with its emphasis on basic rights to dignity, security, and opportunity, owes far more to Christianity and to religious humanitarian activism than we often recognize. The lines between the “old” way and the “new” were not so clear cut. Likewise, the commitment of UNRRA to political neutrality and impartiality in delivering aid (at least in theory) is often read as distinctly modern and as signaling a new era of relief provision. But we might argue instead and in addition that this choice reflects longer-standing ideas adhered to by some Christians about the “brotherhood of man” and “international friendship.”⁷⁸ Quaker-Brethren cooperation in Spain had practiced this “neutral” approach to aid provision, for example, and in the aftermath of World War II the Brethren’s Heifer Project was in favor of political neutrality in aid distribution as well.

The Economics and Politics of Mid-Century Humanitarian Aid

At the same time, relief programs formed part of the economic and political arsenal that helped establish the United States as a global leader after the war.⁷⁹ State actors understood the calculus that acting munificently in the present would yield benefits in terms of status, influence, and access to future markets.⁸⁰ Aid for Europe, in other words, could provide economic and other advantages for America if it were handled correctly. “Food is power,” Senator and later Vice President Hubert Humphrey declared about American foreign assistance programs decades later.⁸¹ This held true in the UNRRA period too.

Not surprisingly then, the US Congress stipulated specific conditions for the forms that American aid contributions could take.⁸² Congress insisted that the aid chain begin in America and that the overall aid program provide concrete benefits to American companies, agricultural and otherwise, as they pivoted away from wartime to peacetime production, while also providing jobs for American workers and returning soldiers. International aid programming would absolutely have to serve American national interests. Far from having been devastated by the war, the American agricultural sector experienced a huge wartime boom and was therefore in a uniquely strong position to sell its surplus—grain and animal—after the conflict ended. In fact, the war years were seen as ushering in a kind of second agricultural revolution in the United States. Mechanization of farm labor in the US also decreased the demand for horses while it increased agricultural yields. American food production in the immediate postwar era rose by one-third compared to the prewar period. America had an abundant supply of grain and other foodstuffs, most notably dairy products, that it could sell through the UNRRA program.⁸³ The American approach to aid provision reflected an American approach to farming, diet, and food generally: a focus on volume and diversity.⁸⁴

It was not just the American agricultural sector that benefited from UNRRA. Railroad companies like C&O experienced a significant rise in business too after they were engaged by UNRRA to move relief supplies (including animals in addition to food) to American ports.⁸⁵ Ports boomed as well. The main UNRRA port was at Newport News, Virginia, and for a time this location was known as “the largest waterfront stockyard” on the Atlantic Coast of the United States.⁸⁶ Newport News was well connected by railway to the Midwest (from which many animals traveled) and was conveniently situated along the Atlantic coast for Europe-bound trips. It had been a major embarkation depot for supply, troop, and horse shipments already in World War I and World War II, meaning that much of the required infrastructure for animal transport was already in place there.⁸⁷

Newport News started accepting animals for the UNRRA program in February 1946, several months after the very first animal shipments had started. SS Carroll Victory was the first ship to sail from Newport News to Poland. Until March 1947 Newport News sent out a total of 175 animal-carrying ships to various destinations, and at its 1946 peak two and even three ships with a total of between 1,500 and 1,600 animals were sent out from this one destination every twenty-four hours.⁸⁸ Even at the time, the work accomplished at Newport News was a source of pride for UNRRA. A BSC satellite office was established at Newport News as well so as to be best able to administer the cowboys and coordinate with UNRRA. By May 1946, with many months yet left to go in the Brethren-UNRRA partnership, approximately forty thousand horses and fifteen thousand cattle had been sent abroad from Newport News.⁸⁹

Other ports sent out UNRRA animals too. The major ones were in Savannah, Georgia; Baltimore, Maryland; New Orleans, Louisiana; Houston, Texas; Portland, Maine; and Montreal, Canada.⁹⁰ Shipyards worked to capacity, and in general the shipping industry flourished in this immediate postwar period. The UNRRA program accounted for most of this growth, but, even earlier, lend-lease was an important factor as well, as was the army.⁹¹ G. Ben and Sol Levinson’s Levinson Livestock Company, with a four-thousand-acre farm along the C&O Railroad in Virginia, profited from improved business, too. The Levinsons built a modern thirty-acre terminal stockyard next to Pier X in Newport News, where UNRRA animals were stocked before they were loaded onto the waiting ships; the stockyard could hold a few thousand animals at a time.⁹² Henry Lintner from the UNRRA shipping division praised the Levinson yard, which included a chute to the loading area at the pier, as “the most efficient system in any port in the nation.” The whole enterprise created jobs for the local economy too.⁹³

From an American economic perspective, then, it made sense to buy livestock in the US and ship the animals to Europe rather than buying “surplus” animals from somewhere closer to the countries that needed them. Even in a Europe generally so overwhelmed by war, there were arguably more convenient options than packing hundreds of live animals onto a ship and sailing across the Atlantic. In fact some relief horses did come from Iceland and the United Kingdom, and many more horses and cattle came from Denmark.⁹⁴ The Danes had a large surplus of horses (mostly the Jutland breed) in part because during the war, when their access to oil was cut off, they had to rely on horses over tractor power, and then, after the war, they no longer had use for the animals. UNRRA paid the Danes about three times what it paid for American horses and directed about forty thousand of them to Poland from 1946 through 1949, albeit without the American seagoing cowboys aboard the ships.⁹⁵ Short maritime trips in part explained why the Danish horses were healthier and stronger when they arrived at their destinations.⁹⁶ Other animals, like mules, came from Italy as surplus from the US and British armies; the mules were shipped to Greece and Yugoslavia. It was UNRRA’s European Regional Office in London that handled these smaller livestock purchases of animals in Europe for Europe.⁹⁷ Generally speaking, and in keeping with postwar American political and economic priorities, UNRRA, working with other agencies and especially with the Department of Agriculture, purchased the animals from American farmers, American livestock companies, or American breeding associations.⁹⁸

The aid program, including the animal aid program, was therefore sold as being good for American business in the short term and in the longer term, too, as Europe’s economic rehabilitation and political stability would ideally translate into attractive markets for American goods. The economic argument was a key part of the pitch. “You can’t do business with a graveyard,” wrote a journalist in Virginia’s Highland Recorder as part of an explanation as to why America should devote such substantial resources to UNRRA.⁹⁹

Yet arguments about maximizing economic advantages and amassing political capital through aid provision needed to be made carefully as they were so obviously self-serving, even if it was American economic and political strength that had enabled expressions of “Christian generosity” in the first place. There was also an emotional element at play here. The period after the war’s end gave rise to a new and powerful “transnational ‘emotional community’” into which both Christian and secular actors could imaginatively place themselves.¹⁰⁰ Collectively, Americans empathized and “felt bad” when viewing images of suffering (as shown in Seeds of Destiny, for example) and were thus motivated to help strangers across the world. Emotional responses to the brutality of the war produced new ways of understanding one’s relationship to people all over the globe and created new connections between “us” and “them.”¹⁰¹ Relief furnished what Arthur Bliss Lane, American ambassador to Poland, called in his memoir “a great spiritual bond” between givers and receivers and between the recipients and “Western civilization.”¹⁰² This marked the start of what some recent scholarship has referred to as a “diplomacy of sympathy.”¹⁰³ To some extent it was these feelings that had sparked the creation of UNRRA and the Heifer Project in the first place.

In the next chapter, we explore Brethren motivations for mid-century relief work in detail while we also trace the process by which men became seagoing cowboys. The chapter is about the wartime American circumstances that produced these men. Given that recruiting the cowboys was the responsibility of the BSC, and not of UNRRA directly, the chapter is largely about the Brethren.