When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, they planned to starve 30 million people to death. Seven decades on, famine as a weapon of war is making a comeback, says the author of an authoritative new history

Twenty years after publishing an influential book on starvation as a crime against humanity, Alex de Waal returned to the subject to find that political and military elites continue to act with scant regard for human life. Yet since famine is manmade, political decisions could end it for good, says the executive director of the World Peace Foundation ahead of the publication of his new book Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine