Berlin at War (20 page)

to 2,000 grams early in 1942. The meat ration, meanwhile, dropped

to 400 grams in 1941, then to 300 in 1942.56

Yet to accept these statistics at face value – as most historians of the

period tend to do – is to ignore the central fact that they represent the

amount to which each consumer was
entitled
, not the amount that each

consumer actually
received
. The difference between the two was often

significant. The complaints of one American in Berlin in 1940 summed

up the situation for the general population. ‘Every month’, he wrote,

the Germans tighten up on our ration cards – which were jokes anyway.

We started out with four pounds of meat a week and later got two. We

started out with four pounds of rice a month, which was cut to one

pound – and not a store in Berlin had any rice to sell. We had ration

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85

cards for oil, eggs, peas and beans. None of these articles was to be

found, ration card or no ration card.57

The reality, therefore, was that the rationing allocations were often

largely theoretical – especially after 1941 – and that most ‘consumers’

in the capital were forced to make do with reduced allocations, infe-

rior alternatives and long queues.

The primary indicators of the shortages were the rows of empty

shelves that were often to be seen in Berlin’s shops. Though this was

a problem throughout the city, it was perhaps most remarkable in the

expensive department stores in the city centre. As well as a shortage

of foodstuffs, Berlin suffered serious shortages of just about every-

thing else, from material goods to consumables and toys. One shopper,

for instance, complained after searching for two hours to find some-

thing of use in the elite Ka-De-We store on Wittenberg Platz: ‘That big

barn is empty’, he said. ‘It is a feat of skill to get rid of fifty pfennigs

on all seven floors.’58

Shortages were quickly felt across the board. William Russell noted

how many everyday items were already unavailable in the early months

of 1940:

It is difficult for me to write down all the things one could not buy in

German shops.

Just think of anything that you would like to buy, anything at all. It

was a cinch that it wouldn’t be in the store when you asked for it. Or

if it was, it wouldn’t be for sale.

Shoe strings. None.

Toilet paper. None.

Suspenders. None.

All canned goods.
Verboten
.

Rubber bands and paper clips. Sold out.

Other things which one could not buy in German stores: shaving

soap, electric wire, candles, any metal object, phonograph records . . .,

typewriters, electric razors, electric water heaters, clothing of all kinds

. . ., furniture, thread (one spool a month), many kinds of paper and

stationery, color film, vanilla, spices of all kinds, pepper, gelatine, leather

goods, buttons, cigars.59

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berlin at war

The list went on. Soap was already a rarity, with Germans being

permitted to purchase only one cake of so-called ‘unity soap’ per month,

which was supposed to cover all requirements, from washing dishes to

laundry and personal hygiene.60 In addition to such household items,

many foodstuffs were also becoming scarce. Coffee had already begun

to assume the status of an ersatz currency. Fruit and vegetables, though

unrationed, were also increasingly hard to find, with more exotic items,

such as tomatoes and oranges, swiftly disappearing altogether.

Despite the shortages, many shopkeepers did their best to maintain

the façade of normality and kept elaborate window displays to tempt

customers. One observer claimed this was a propaganda ruse ordered

by the authorities, to reinforce the domestic myth that there were unlim-

ited supplies in the Reich all stored away for eventual use.61 Whatever

its precise origin, the paradox of having empty shops with well-stocked

window displays often led to frustration. One eye-witness noted: ‘The

shop windows were stacked full of things, but in the right hand lower

corner was the now familiar sign: “GOODS DISPLAYED IN THE

WINDOWS ARE ABSOLUTELY NOT FOR SALE”.’ At the same time,

he said, ‘Everywhere in Berlin I met with the same answer – “all sold

out”.’62 Another would-be consumer noted that the sign in his local shop

window stated that the contents of the window would not be sold until

the decorations were changed. However, he observed, ‘the decorations

simply did not change . . . I put in a bid at one shop for a pair of red

pyjamas . . . Six months later, the decorations – i.e. my pyjamas – still

had not changed.’63

Berlin’s hotels and restaurants colluded in a similar deception. The

bar of the elegant Kaiserhof Hotel, for instance, contained a large

display of many-coloured liqueurs and bottled spirits from around

the globe. However, as one customer commented, ‘it caused visible

pain to the old bar-tender to answer an order for a cocktail saying

that he was dreadfully sorry but today, precisely today, he had run

out of ingredients’.64 The truth, it seems, was that many of the bottles

were filled with coloured water.

Naturally in such times of shortage, queuing became something

like a national pastime. Berliners had to queue for almost everything,

meaning early mornings, late nights, and long hours standing in line,

waiting – often in vain – for whatever was at the end of the queue.

Howard Smith would gauge the availability of a particular item – in

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87

his case tobacco – by recording the length of the queue which formed

in the street outside his apartment:

One could make observations like this, for the queues generally

remained a fairly consistent length while the tobacco shop had cigar -

ettes and cigars, from the time the door was opened until, about half

an hour later, when the door was closed and the ‘sold out’ sign was

hung on it. The queues increased from around twenty yards in length

in the second month of the Russian war, to ninety yards the evening

I left [in December 1941].65

Missie Vassiltchikov spoke for millions of Berliners in May 1940 when

she recorded her frustrations at the meagre fare available when one

finally got to the front of the line. ‘I sometimes get desperate’, she wrote

in her diary, ‘at having to queue up after the office, just for a piece of

cheese the size of one’s finger.’66

Given these attendant irritations, some Berliners developed ingen-

ious solutions so as to supplement their official allocation. Theft was

the simplest answer, but it was not treated lightly if discovered. A

Berlin housewife who stole three ration coupons from her neighbour

in December 1939, for instance, was sentenced to three months in

prison.67 Some were bolder still. One woman was sentenced to two

years’ hard labour in the spring of 1944, after it emerged that she had

fooled the authorities into believing that she had a child. She had been

collecting food rations for two for over a year.68

Few were quite so brazen, however, and most restricted themselves

to smaller-scale measures to ensure that they were not left empty-

handed after a hard day’s queuing. It helped enormously if one had

a regular source where items might even be reserved for favoured

customers. Christabel Bielenberg stressed the vital importance of such

contacts: ‘Unless you were known to some shopkeeper, some whole-

saler or better still a farmer, and were able to come to a deal by dint

of the ingratiating smile, the tender enquiry after wife and children,

[then] cows no longer had livers, hearts, kidneys or tails and hens had

vanished off the face of the earth.’69

Others were rather more inventive. One observer noted how Berlin

housewives developed a cooperative system of ‘rotating queues’, whereby

one individual could effectively stand in more than one queue at the

88

berlin at war

same time, thereby giving them the chance to get different items from

the markets on a single day. ‘The scheme operated this way’, he wrote:

Frau Schmidt reached the market early in the morning and got a place

in the potato line, the most important of them all. She immediately set

about making friends with Frau Mueller behind her. When relations

were cemented and an oral pact made, Frau Mueller agreed to hold

Frau Schmidt’s place in the potato line while the latter went over to the

carrot line and repeating the procedure, succeeded in inducing Frau

Hinkel to hold her place while she returned to the potato line in order

to hold Frau Mueller’s position, while Frau Mueller went over to the

carrot line. At length Frau Schmidt’s turn for potatoes arrived, and after

she had bought her potatoes she rushed over to take her position, by

now at the head, in the carrot line. Thus, and thus alone, could one

buy two vegetables.70

Consumers were also obliged to expand their cooking repertoire

and experiment with new, exotic – and sometimes not so exotic –

ingredients. In this way, chicory, endive, aubergines and Jerusalem

artichokes all made an appearance in the German diet. Similarly, the

definition of meat became increasingly elastic as the war progressed,

encompassing anything from assorted cuts of offal, such as lungs and

brains, to pigs’ tails and baked udder. In the winter of 1940, one Berliner

was surprised to see a dead donkey being carried into the back door

of his local butcher – he recognised it by its hooves and ears, which

were sticking out from under a tarpaulin.71

Bread, as an essential staple of the German diet, was adulterated with

just about anything to stretch the limited supply. As the war went on,

the quality gradually deteriorated and loaves began to get increasingly

grey, even green, in colour, as more additives and alternative ingredi-

ents were included. Some claimed that sawdust was being added, while

others suspected darkly that bonemeal was now included in the recipe.

Whatever the additions used, the flavour did not improve. With a gritty

texture and a taste reminiscent of cardboard, wartime bread was barely

palatable.72

Manufacturers of all manner of products began to show similar

ingenuity and many items for which there were the most serious short-

ages were soon replaced by an ersatz alternative. Berlin consumers

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89

had the choice of ersatz honey, ersatz egg powder derived from fish

and ersatz sugar made from sawdust. One observer noted that the

icing used in Berlin bakeries ‘tasted like a mixture of saccharine, sand

and cheap perfume’.73 He was probably not far from the truth.

The fashion-conscious could – theoretically at least – also avail them-

selves of ersatz items of clothing that were not subjected to the

rationing restrictions. There were wooden clogs to be had, for instance,

women’s shoes made from straw and even overcoats made from fish

skin.74 Ersatz wool was spun using cellulose from wood pulp, sugar

cane or even potato peelings. Even more bizarre experiments were

made with ersatz products for the military: pistol holsters were fash-

ioned from laminated paper, and uniforms were made from leftover

food and wood fibres.

Such peculiarities gave rise to a rich seam of popular humour.

According to one joke that did the rounds in 1942, a man ‘who is tired

of life tries in vain to hang himself – impossible: the rope is made of

synthetic fibre. Then he tries to jump into the river – but he floats,

because he’s wearing a suit made from wood. Finally he succeeds in

taking his own life. He has been existing for two months on no more

than he got from his ration card.’75 Another Berlin wit imagined a

conversation between a Dutchman and a German:

The Dutchman, who had plenty of food in his belly, was sympathetic

with the plight of his hungry neighbour.

‘I hear that it’s so bad in Germany,’ he said to the German, ‘that

you’re even eating rats.’

‘Gosh, and were those rats good!’ the German exclaimed reminis-

cently. Then his face fell. ‘But now they’re all gone, and the government

is feeding us
ersatz
rats!’76

Few Berlin consumers were laughing, however. Though the novel-

ties of ersatz were widely publicised, the fact for most German

consumers was that even these products were not available. The reality

after 1941 was that clothing shops stocked neither the genuine articles

nor the much-trumpeted ersatz alternatives. The grim truth was that

– as one would-be consumer complained – ‘clothing rationing became

purely theoretical. Clothing simply ceased to exist.’77

In the few examples where ersatz products actually reached the

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berlin at war

market, meanwhile, the most common complaint was that they rarely

met the standards expected by the buying public. Wooden clogs or

wooden-soled shoes were uncomfortable and straw fell far short of

the strength and durability of leather. Moreover, the ersatz products