by Robin Wickens Europe Under the Counter: Smugglers, Survivors and Shadow Economies in Occupied Europe is the second book in Robin Wickens’s wartime black-market series. Across occupied Europe, rationing, requisitioning and military control emptied shops while hidden markets carried food, fuel, medicine, forged papers, weapons and refugees. Farmers concealed livestock, women cycled into the countryside to barter for potatoes, children smuggled food through guarded boundaries and professional smugglers transformed old contraband routes into resistance and escape lines. This blog explores the difficult distinction between survival, resistance and profiteering. A hidden loaf could save a family, while deliberately withheld grain could make a dealer wealthy. A paid guide might risk his life to rescue refugees, while another could take their jewellery and betray them. Liberation changed the suppliers but did not end scarcity. Allied cigarettes, coffee, soap, petrol and medicines quickly entered post-war markets, while damaged transport systems and continuing rationing kept unofficial trade alive. Written with historical insight, compassion and restrained British humour, Europe Under the Counter reveals what ordinary people did when the official economy no longer met human need. Discover the book and more historical non-fiction at: https://robsbooks.com.co
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