Food relief shipments to Germany had been prohibited by the U.S. until December 1945, since "they might tend to negate the policy of restricting the German standard of living to the average of the surrounding European nations".

[1][2] CRALOG was created after the American Council had dispatched a survey team to occupied Germany, which had reported back on the situation in February 1946.

CRALOG was then on February 19, 1946, established and designated by the Truman administration in a directive on relief contributions to Germany as the only medium through which aid to the U.S. occupation zone could be channeled.

The survey team had been permitted to visit Germany only after President Truman had been subjected to increased pressure both by the American Congress and public.

[4] A relief worker described the situation encountered in Germany in 1946 as follows: Starvation is not the dramatic thing one so often reads and imagines... of people in mobs crying for food and falling over in the streets.