six years. Even the return to full employment had not lifted real wages to the level attained prior to the crash of 1929, with household income only rising as more family members found jobs. Years of rearmament, consuming an unheard-of 20 per cent of domestic production in peacetime, curbed the output of clothing, furniture, cars and housewares. Autarchic economic policies, bent on preserving precious foreign currency reserves, restricted imported items like real coffee, turning it into a precious luxury even before 1939. In order to conserve wool and reduce cotton imports, spun rayon was used as a substitute, especially in winter coats, even though it tended to remain stretched after becoming wet and had very poor insulating properties. 7
War depressed the standard of living further, driving civilian consumption down 11 per cent during the first year. The national diet became more monotonous, revolving around bread, potatoes and preserves. Beer became thin, sausage was padded out with other ingredients. When the French pulled back from the territory along the Rhine near Kehl, which they had briefly occupied during the Polish campaign, Ernst Guicking grabbed the supplies they abandoned. He was able to send a packet of real coffee back to Irene and her aunt in Giessen. They were delighted to have a break from the synthetic brew known colloquially as ‘Horst Wessel coffee’ because – like the eponymous Nazi martyr of the Party anthem – ‘the beans only marched with them in spirit’. 8
Meat shortages were altogether more serious. Germany depended on the import of animal feeds from North America, now cut by the British naval blockade. The cost of feed led to culls in the German swine herd in early autumn. Unlike in Britain, in Germany many industrial workers had traditionally supplemented their wages by tending allotments and keeping rabbits or even a pig, a common practice particularly amongst coal miners. More town-dwellers of all classes now started to cultivate vegetables and keep hens or rabbits, but keeping pigs became less popular, not just because of the high cost of feed but also because such ‘self-providers’ were not entitled to meat rations. Lack of refrigeration was blamed for problems in transporting milk, eggs and meat across the country, with Berlin soon suffering from milk shortfalls. In western Germany the cattle herds were so depleted that only 35–40 per cent of the meat quotas could be handed out, while there was a temporary abundance in the south, with one old Social Democrat marvelling at his butcher’s ability to offer ‘sides of bacon without ration stamps’. 9
By issuing food ration cards for periods of four weeks, the Food Ministry maintained maximum flexibility: potatoes could easily be replaced with bread or, less popularly, with rice, if supplies dried up. Because the food stamps could not be carried over to the next month, no mountain of back-claims could accumulate. On the other hand, these short-term horizons and fluctuations rapidly turned food into an obsession, where real and imagined shortages exercised an influence far beyond their actual scale. People of all walks of life, one Social Democratic reporter noted wryly, ‘speak far more about provisioning than about politics. Each person is entirely taken up with how to get his ration. How can I get something extra?’ On Sundays local trains were full of people – including teenagers in Hitler Youth uniform – all leaving the towns to go foraging for foodstuffs in the countryside, much as in the previous war. As a general fear of wartime inflation once again took hold in Germany, people rushed to turn their cash into anything that could be traded later on: luxury items such as furs, porcelain and furniture, which remained unrationed, were swiftly sold out. 10
By October 1939, many believed that the country would not be able to hold out as long as in the last war ‘because there’s already nothing left to eat’. Only the
War depressed the standard of living further, driving civilian consumption down 11 per cent during the first year. The national diet became more monotonous, revolving around bread, potatoes and preserves. Beer became thin, sausage was padded out with other ingredients. When the French pulled back from the territory along the Rhine near Kehl, which they had briefly occupied during the Polish campaign, Ernst Guicking grabbed the supplies they abandoned. He was able to send a packet of real coffee back to Irene and her aunt in Giessen. They were delighted to have a break from the synthetic brew known colloquially as ‘Horst Wessel coffee’ because – like the eponymous Nazi martyr of the Party anthem – ‘the beans only marched with them in spirit’. 8
Meat shortages were altogether more serious. Germany depended on the import of animal feeds from North America, now cut by the British naval blockade. The cost of feed led to culls in the German swine herd in early autumn. Unlike in Britain, in Germany many industrial workers had traditionally supplemented their wages by tending allotments and keeping rabbits or even a pig, a common practice particularly amongst coal miners. More town-dwellers of all classes now started to cultivate vegetables and keep hens or rabbits, but keeping pigs became less popular, not just because of the high cost of feed but also because such ‘self-providers’ were not entitled to meat rations. Lack of refrigeration was blamed for problems in transporting milk, eggs and meat across the country, with Berlin soon suffering from milk shortfalls. In western Germany the cattle herds were so depleted that only 35–40 per cent of the meat quotas could be handed out, while there was a temporary abundance in the south, with one old Social Democrat marvelling at his butcher’s ability to offer ‘sides of bacon without ration stamps’. 9
By issuing food ration cards for periods of four weeks, the Food Ministry maintained maximum flexibility: potatoes could easily be replaced with bread or, less popularly, with rice, if supplies dried up. Because the food stamps could not be carried over to the next month, no mountain of back-claims could accumulate. On the other hand, these short-term horizons and fluctuations rapidly turned food into an obsession, where real and imagined shortages exercised an influence far beyond their actual scale. People of all walks of life, one Social Democratic reporter noted wryly, ‘speak far more about provisioning than about politics. Each person is entirely taken up with how to get his ration. How can I get something extra?’ On Sundays local trains were full of people – including teenagers in Hitler Youth uniform – all leaving the towns to go foraging for foodstuffs in the countryside, much as in the previous war. As a general fear of wartime inflation once again took hold in Germany, people rushed to turn their cash into anything that could be traded later on: luxury items such as furs, porcelain and furniture, which remained unrationed, were swiftly sold out. 10
By October 1939, many believed that the country would not be able to hold out as long as in the last war ‘because there’s already nothing left to eat’. Only the
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