Hoover campaigned against the British blockade. He was critical of Churchill, and later wrote that for Churchill, civilian starvation, if speeding up the end of the war, was justified.
[35] On 11 August 1940, Hoover issued a statement arguing that there was no reason why aid could not be sent to Europe through a neutral non-government organisation.
[34] This statement specified that such a scheme should go ahead only if the German government agreed to not take food from the occupied countries—which the Nazis were doing in Poland from the start of the occupation.
[34] Other demands by Hoover included permitting imports from the USSR and Balkan countries, granting unimpeded passage to aid ships and allowing the non-government organisation to control the distribution of aid to the degree necessary for it to be confident that these guarantees were being met.
[34] Hoover also requested that the British allow aid shipments as long as the German Government met the conditions he had specified and asked that the governments in exile provide funding for aid supplies.
[34] He also argued that "the obvious truth is that there will be wholesale starvation, death and disease in these little countries unless something is done about it".
[36] The US Government did not support Hoover's statement and it also failed to win public support.
[37] An opinion poll conducted on 1 September 1940 found that only 38 percent of Americans believed that the country should send food aid if famine broke out in Nazi-occupied European countries of Belgium, France and the Netherlands.
[38] Nevertheless, a campaign to provide food relief to Europe continued in the US until the end of the war, though it attracted little attention after the
attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
[36]