At the end of World War II, years of total war had left the world with a “textile famine”. Manufacturing in all belligerent states had prioritized military needs, and as peace returned, the global shortage of clothing and shoes posed urgent challenges. Allied political leaders, military commanders, and relief workers understood that garments were not luxuries or second-tier needs, but vital to dignity, public health, and social stability. As President Harry Truman warned in August 1945: “Without adequate clothing and other necessities of life to sustain victims of war on the long road to rehabilitation, there can be no peace.”
Clothing became currency and marked out power hierarchies. From the streets of ruined cities to displaced persons camps and courtrooms like those in Nuremberg, garments told stories of suffering and survival - and helped stitch together a new social order. In her Konrad Adenauer Lecture at the Cologne Center for Advanced Studies in International History and Law (CHL), Professor Susan L. Carruthers traces the significance of fabric - literal and metaphorical - in shaping relations in postwar Germany: between Allied personnel and German civilians, among refugees and camp survivors, and in the symbolic politics of postwar justice. Pressing issues of justice were often negotiated at the level of who wore what, and who was clothed at whose expense. Prof Carruthers draws on her book, Making Do: Britons and the Refashioning of the Postwar World (Cambridge University Press, 2025), as well as her earlier work, The Good Occupation: American Soldiers and the Hazards of Peace (Harvard University Press, 2016).
The lecture is part of the Konrad Adenauer Lecture Series at the CHL. As a central research institution at the University of Cologne funded by the Alfred Landecker Foundation, the CHL promotes interdisciplinary collaboration between international law and history. The lecture series will feature leading scholars who will address critical questions about democracy, human rights, and global governance by shedding light on the intersections of these fields. It was inaugurated with a lecture by Prof. Andrew Thompson (Oxford).
Watch Prof. Carruthers full lecture here.