Margaret Hoover

speaker

359 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2026 last heard 5 Aug

Margaret Hoover’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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The David Frum Show · Was Herbert Hoover America’s Most Misunderstood President? · 5 Aug 2026 podcast

And so he is really sort of this extraordinary figure.

At 40 years old, Stanford, he's Stanford University's most famous alum.

He's invited onto the Board of Overseers.

And in 1914, when war breaks out in Europe, he's heading home to Stanford, to California, to ultimately buy a newspaper or do something that is a bit more public-facing and decides...

instead to stay in Europe and organize famine relief for the country of Belgium, which had been invaded and occupied by the Germans, blockaded by the English, and faced imminent starvation.

And when you think about it, because he had been moving materials around the world in the form of ore and coal and gold and minerals, he actually had a network of ships with which to send food around the world.

And so he was actually uniquely positioned as a private citizen.

Of course, U.S.

wasn't in the war yet.

So he's an American living in London.

But both sides decide that he can fairly administer food relief in the name of feeding the Belgians.

Because remember, the Belgians were occupied by the Germans, and the Germans took no responsibility for feeding the population they occupied.

They were happy to let them starve to death, and it would have taken six to eight weeks.

Belgium didn't have enough food inside it.

It was a post-industrial country.

80% of their food is imported.

Because no food could get in, they really were going to starve.

This is 8 million Belgians, and then there were like 2 million French on the other side of the lines.

And they would have faced imminent starvation.

And Hoover is able to get wheat, corn, flour from all over the world, from Argentina, from the United States.

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