Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food (30 page)

A similar story played itself out in France. The country’s reputation for fine food and wines meant that the German occupying forces were all the more rapacious in their plunder. With the exchange rate absurdly
weighted in their favour, German soldiers could afford to supplement their rations with sumptuous meals in restaurants and cafés. On a trip to Paris from Berlin in October 1942 Marie Vassiltchikov, who worked for the German Foreign Ministry, wrote to her mother: ‘life is still most agreeable so long as one can afford it. This does not mean that things are particularly expensive; but to have a decent meal (say, with oysters, wine, cheese and fruit, plus a tip) you must fork out about 100 francs per person; which is, after all, only 5 marks.’
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German officers were served beefsteaks ‘imperfectly concealed under token fried eggs’ and washed down with champagne. The First World War hero turned famous author, Ernst Jünger, a German officer in Paris during the war, recorded in his diary that ‘to eat well and to eat a lot’ while surrounded by the hungry, ragged French, ‘gives a feeling of power’.
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For occupying troops in France the Wehrmacht’s policy of living off the land translated into living off the fat of the land. Even the lowliest of the German occupiers were able to afford luxuries in France. When he was doing his labour service Alois Kleinemas was billeted at the chateau in Cognac. He was able to collect a crate of brandy to take home to celebrate his parents’ wedding anniversary. He also used to post them packets of butter.
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Helmut Radssat recalled that the canteen of the Verneau barracks in Angers was particularly cherished by those soldiers who had come from the eastern front. ‘The precious aroma of wine and brandy was quite new to me. In Germany such luxuries were becoming more and more scarce. It was in those barracks that I learned to know and appreciate good wines.’
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French agriculture was particularly badly hit by a shortage of labour. Around 50,000 of the 2 million French prisoners of war were agricultural workers who were sent to work on German rather than French farms. Altogether, about 400,000 agricultural workers were missing, leaving women and the aged to run the farms. Shortages of horses, tractors, fuel, fertilizer and pesticides led to a precipitous decline in yields. Worst hit were meat and milk, but even potatoes, sugar beet and wheat showed steep reductions, particularly in the first year of the war, after which yields stabilized.
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Official food prices rose only modestly but prices on the black market soared. This triggered an inflationary spiral whereby the less the food authorities were able to requisition the more the rations were
reduced. In August 1942 Göring responded to internal food shortages within the Reich by calling together the various leaders of the occupied territories and insisting that they deliver more food to Germany. ‘As far as France is concerned’, he pronounced, ‘I am positive that its soil is not cultivated to the maximum … also the French stuff themselves to a shameful extent … Collaboration from the French I see in one way only: let them deliver as much as they can.’
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Given Göring’s own notoriously extravagant eating habits and the behaviour of the German occupiers who were known to wolf down omelettes made with twelve precious eggs, this was the application of the worst possible kind of double standard. Göring demanded from France quantities of wheat, meat and butter which amounted to between 15 to 20 per cent of all available food.
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His secretary, Paul Koerner, noted that Germany’s military commander in France was so horrified by the demands that he initially refused to convey them to the authorities in Paris.
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He feared that it would lead to further ration cuts and food riots. In the long run he concluded that it would simply be counter-productive and would further demotivate the farmers, leading to a long-term fall in production.
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By 1944 the energy value of the French ration had fallen to 1,050 calories and, as in Belgium, the black market or connections to a rural family with food became essential for the survival of anyone living in a town or city. This in turn pushed up prices on the black market, leading to the diversion of more and more food on to the illegal market.

Germany exported wartime hunger to the countries it occupied. In Belgium and France those who suffered were the people without any or only limited access to the black market. Thus, prisoners in Belgian gaols began to die of starvation in 1942, unable to survive on the 1,550 calories a day that the ration provided and unable to supplement their rations from alternative sources. Urban office workers, clerks, civil servants and the old suffered disproportionately as they lacked the cash or the luxury goods to barter for supplementary food.
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By 1943–44 Belgian and French families were spending 70 per cent of their income on food. Even middle-class Parisians had to make do with a dreary round of soup, a little sausage and the occasional egg with beans.
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Tuberculosis, which is strongly associated with malnutrition, spread among the young and in France deaths
from the disease doubled. Malnutrition could be read in the stunted growth of children. In 1944 French girls were 11 centimetres, and boys 7 centimetres, shorter than the height of their counterparts in 1935. By 1943, 80 per cent of urban Belgian children were suffering from rickets, caused by severe vitamin D deficiency in the diet. Parisians betrayed their lack of vitamins in their dull eyes and sallow complexions.
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ALLIES AND ARYANS

In theory Italy and Germany were allies but when in October 1940 Mussolini tried to assert Italy’s autonomy by invading Greece without consulting Hitler all he succeeded in doing was relegating Italy to the position of a satellite state of the Reich. Italy’s humiliating inability to defeat the Greeks and the need for Germany to send in its own troops to finish the job discredited Mussolini in the eyes of both the National Socialists and his own people.
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When Mussolini was overthrown in the autumn of 1943 Italy went over to the Allies, triggering German occupation of the country.

Italy’s agricultural sector should have been well prepared for war. When Mussolini seized power in 1922 one-quarter of Italy’s budget for imported goods and services was spent on wheat. Mussolini could see that if his plans for a Mediterranean empire were to be realized, food self-sufficiency would be an essential element in addressing the balance of payments deficit and freeing up foreign exchange. Once these problems were solved Italy would have a far more solid economic foundation for industrial development.
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Italy’s agricultural sector was certainly in desperate need of regeneration, marked as it was by low productivity, high unemployment and poverty. The ‘Battle for Wheat’ was launched in July 1925 and by dint of land reclamation the area under wheat was increased. Outreach and education programmes introducing machinery, fertilizers, higher-yielding wheat varieties and irrigation were extremely effective. By 1935 Italy had increased its wheat production by 40 per cent and significantly reduced its expenditure on food imports. The only problem was that internal wheat production did not cover the gap created by cutting imports, and the annual
amount of wheat available across the population declined by 14 kilograms per person.
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When Hitler invaded Poland, Italian officials began to panic-buy wheat from Hungary and Yugoslavia, afraid that they would be unable to feed the population with Italy’s own wheat harvest, and bread and flour shortages did indeed plague wartime Italy. Meanwhile, Darré went on a tour of the country to assess future prospects for food exports to the Reich.
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Once Italy had entered the war a general state of administrative chaos meant that Mussolini’s Battle for Wheat campaign was neglected and overall agricultural yields fell. In 1943 they had fallen by 25 per cent. Once the Germans had occupied the country they sank dramatically to 63 per cent of pre-war levels.
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Filled with contempt for their erstwhile allies and careless of its impact on the Italians’ food supply, the National Socialists continued to demand wheat, rice, tobacco, cheese, fruit and vegetables in exchange for coal. Those German soldiers stationed in the country were allocated a meat ration of 750 grams a week. This represented about double the amount of calories provided by the daily Italian ration. The Italians complained that the Germans were ‘eating away at Italy’.
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In 1944 the Agriculture Minister, Edoardo Moroni, begged for Germany to send a delivery of grain or at least trucks so that food could be transported to the cities. His pleas fell on deaf ears.

The gradual worsening of the Italian food situation was reflected in the experience of the family of Giovanni Tassoni and his wife Guila. The family was very poor. They lived in a one-room shack near the gravel pit where Giovanni worked manufacturing lime in a kiln. The nearest town was Valmonte, two hours’ train journey from Rome. No one in their neighbourhood possessed a radio or read newspapers, so they were only vaguely aware of the course of the war and most of their information came from rumours. In the early years the war had little effect on the family. Women, children and the elderly became increasingly dominant in the town as the young men were conscripted, and food became more difficult to acquire. By 1942 the shortage of food began to make itself felt. The ration of bread sank to 150 grams a day, and meat, oil and butter rations were all gradually reduced. Then suddenly in August 1943 Germans appeared and, as the Tassonis realized, they were now in charge. ‘Food became even scarcer’, and this
was not helped by the demands of the occupying troops who would come to their shack and demand eggs or bread.
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By late 1943 at least thirteen people were living in the Tassonis’ hut besides the Tassonis and their own five children. It was a struggle to feed everyone. The Germans had requisitioned the local flour mill so ‘Giovanni reconstructed an old coffee mill for the milling of the flour. When properly fastened to the table, it was possible to produce four to five kilos of flour if one worked all night. At first the only wheat that was available was black, and when that ran out fava and ceci beans were ground to make the flour for bread.’ The family turned their entire garden over to the production of potatoes, and ‘Guila coaxed her hens to make more eggs so that she could trade some for bread, which the Germans baked in their giant ovens nearby.’
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The Tassonis were eventually driven out of their home by Allied bombing and went to live in a cave. German soldiers fleeing from the invading Americans would occasionally turn up there and beg for civilian clothes. Then one day the Americans arrived and scattered caramels from the turrets of their tanks. ‘Word spread quickly that the fields near Cisterna and Anzio where the Americans had been dug in, were full of such treasures, and so people from all over bicycled, ran, and walked in that direction to bring home whatever they might find. The scavenging was always dangerous because of the possibility of setting off a land mine. The food was as welcome as it was unfamiliar. Everything was in cans – even the spaghetti – and tasted of sugar.’
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When the Allies liberated Italy they were shocked by the utter deprivation of the urban population. As the troops arrived in the port of Naples they were horrified to observe malnourished people, dressed in rags, picking scraps of garbage out of crevices in the pier. In the town itself a prostitute could be bought for 25 cents, the price of an American C ration can of meat and vegetable hash.
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Even if the Italians began the war as Germany’s allies their supposed racial inferiority and military ineptitude meant that the National Socialists accorded them little respect. In contrast, the Danes were regarded as fellow Aryans. Consequently, the occupying German authorities interfered less in the agricultural administration of the country and allowed the existing pre-war institutions to remain in place.
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This caused far less disruption to agriculture than was the case in Belgium
or France and enabled the government to maintain greater control over its farmers.

The Germans had highest hopes for receiving food imports from France and Holland. It was hoped that the Dutch surpluses, which had previously gone to Britain, would simply be redirected to the Reich. But this calculation failed to allow for the impact of the loss of agricultural inputs such as fodder and fertilizer because of the blockade. The Dutch responded to this problem by quickly converting from livestock to arable farming and although they were able to send large quantities of meat and fat to the Reich in the first two years of the war, by the end they were only able to supply potatoes, feed grain, sugar and large quantities of fruit and vegetables.
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It was Denmark which surprised the Germans. Danish administrators adopted a pricing policy which encouraged farmers to maximize production of the commodities most desirable for Germany – beef, milk, pork and bacon – and, despite difficulties associated with the lack of imported feed and fertilizers, the farmers delivered.
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Control over Danish consumption was left in the hands of the Danish government and was limited to no more than butter rationing and restrictions on the purchase of meat. The reasonable rations meant that the black market barely existed in Denmark and the Germans were able to cream off a surprisingly large surplus. Denmark provided the Reich with about one month’s worth of butter, pork and beef a year. As food supplies in Germany decreased, this contribution became ever more important, providing perhaps as much as 20 per cent of the urban population’s meat in 1944.
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