gestures could turn a highly differentiated and often conflictual modern society into a cosy pre-modern ‘community’ that had only ever existed in romantic imaginings of a lost ‘golden age’ before industrialisation. The longer the war lasted, the more the central state, the Party and its mass organisations, local authorities and the churches would have to do in order to offset this shortfall in national solidarity.
*
The regime knew that both military victory and its own political survival depended on how successfully and equitably it fed the German population. In the First World War, food distribution had been a disaster, with rampant price inflation and an even more exorbitant black market reducing the urban working class to near-famine conditions. The Royal Navy’s blockade, the provisioning crisis and the ‘turnip winter’ of 1916–17 had paved the way for the revolution of November 1918. In the Ruhr by 1916, children’s growth was markedly stunted. By 1917 and 1918, the death rate of civilians living in Berlin had outstripped that of soldiers conscripted from the city; it had been highest amongst teenage girls and young women, as tuberculosis swept through the unheated tenement blocks that housed the urban working class. This, the authorities were determined, would not occur again. Hitler in particular remained apprehensive about what level of hardship the German people would endure, and the SD’s reports duly found that the ‘mood of the population’ was influenced by food supplies more than anything else. 4
Food rationing was introduced on 27 August 1939, the day after Germany mobilised its armed forces. ‘For a couple of days my stomach has been troubling me, especially now that we have to save on food,’ Irene Reitz reluctantly reported to her boyfriend Ernst Guicking, conscious that civilians were not meant to give soldiers reason to worry. Watching everyone else foraging for flour, sugar and fat in the first weeks of the war, she had not worried, confining her own efforts to going to a stationer’s and buying ‘silk paper in all colours. You know, to be able to wrap presents prettily in the future. Wasn’t that a good idea?’ In late September it all changed, when one of her co-workers in the flower-growing business in Giessen was called up: he had always brought in extra bread and sausage for her lunch from his village. ‘I miss him a lot now, especially the sandwiches,’ Irene admitted. 5
Fearing a run on the shops, the sale of linen, footwear and clothing was prohibited except for those with an official chit. But as the public piled into the understaffed rationing offices, the bureaucrats had no way of checking if the claimants needed the items they were asking for. Though they had to sign a declaration consenting to having their households inspected, it is doubtful how far this deterred civilians gripped by fear of a goods famine. ‘Anyone with two pairs of shoes doesn’t receive a new chit to buy a new pair,’ Irene reported to Ernst. ‘So of course everyone writes that he only has one pair. Thank God that I’ve not needed to go there yet. You can easily queue for two hours.’ Meanwhile, the SD reported, shopkeepers did not know whether to demand chits for gloves or not, and whether only for leather pairs or also for cloth ones. It took two months to overhaul the system and introduce clothing cards which gave most people 100 points for the coming year, backdated to 1 September. Socks and stockings took 5 points, for example – but no more than five could be bought in a year – pyjamas took 30 and a coat or suit 60 points. 6
Dependent on imports for half of its leather, shoe production went into immediate crisis and there was no more leather for resoling shoes; across the country, customers were being told they would have to wait six to eight weeks even for repairs using synthetic soles. However, German consumers had effectively been living in a war economy for the previous
*
The regime knew that both military victory and its own political survival depended on how successfully and equitably it fed the German population. In the First World War, food distribution had been a disaster, with rampant price inflation and an even more exorbitant black market reducing the urban working class to near-famine conditions. The Royal Navy’s blockade, the provisioning crisis and the ‘turnip winter’ of 1916–17 had paved the way for the revolution of November 1918. In the Ruhr by 1916, children’s growth was markedly stunted. By 1917 and 1918, the death rate of civilians living in Berlin had outstripped that of soldiers conscripted from the city; it had been highest amongst teenage girls and young women, as tuberculosis swept through the unheated tenement blocks that housed the urban working class. This, the authorities were determined, would not occur again. Hitler in particular remained apprehensive about what level of hardship the German people would endure, and the SD’s reports duly found that the ‘mood of the population’ was influenced by food supplies more than anything else. 4
Food rationing was introduced on 27 August 1939, the day after Germany mobilised its armed forces. ‘For a couple of days my stomach has been troubling me, especially now that we have to save on food,’ Irene Reitz reluctantly reported to her boyfriend Ernst Guicking, conscious that civilians were not meant to give soldiers reason to worry. Watching everyone else foraging for flour, sugar and fat in the first weeks of the war, she had not worried, confining her own efforts to going to a stationer’s and buying ‘silk paper in all colours. You know, to be able to wrap presents prettily in the future. Wasn’t that a good idea?’ In late September it all changed, when one of her co-workers in the flower-growing business in Giessen was called up: he had always brought in extra bread and sausage for her lunch from his village. ‘I miss him a lot now, especially the sandwiches,’ Irene admitted. 5
Fearing a run on the shops, the sale of linen, footwear and clothing was prohibited except for those with an official chit. But as the public piled into the understaffed rationing offices, the bureaucrats had no way of checking if the claimants needed the items they were asking for. Though they had to sign a declaration consenting to having their households inspected, it is doubtful how far this deterred civilians gripped by fear of a goods famine. ‘Anyone with two pairs of shoes doesn’t receive a new chit to buy a new pair,’ Irene reported to Ernst. ‘So of course everyone writes that he only has one pair. Thank God that I’ve not needed to go there yet. You can easily queue for two hours.’ Meanwhile, the SD reported, shopkeepers did not know whether to demand chits for gloves or not, and whether only for leather pairs or also for cloth ones. It took two months to overhaul the system and introduce clothing cards which gave most people 100 points for the coming year, backdated to 1 September. Socks and stockings took 5 points, for example – but no more than five could be bought in a year – pyjamas took 30 and a coat or suit 60 points. 6
Dependent on imports for half of its leather, shoe production went into immediate crisis and there was no more leather for resoling shoes; across the country, customers were being told they would have to wait six to eight weeks even for repairs using synthetic soles. However, German consumers had effectively been living in a war economy for the previous
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