Recycling and rationing in wartime Germany.

Walter Felscher (walter.felscher@UNI-TUEBINGEN.DE)
Mon, 27 Jan 1997 19:19:57 +0100 

Recycling in Germany began to be officially encouraged
already in the years before the war, connected with the
successive "Vierjahresplaene", aiming at the enforced
development of industries useful for war. The purpose of
recycling was to save money, otherwise spent upon imports
of raw materials - the German currency was not convertible.

In the first line, what was collected were used metals, and
not only iron but, particularly, rarer metals such as
copper.  Old clothes were collected for their fibre, meat
bones (as purchased with meat from the butcher) were collected
to make soap from. I remember a verse, made as a parody upon
a song chanted by the girls from the BdM

   Lumpen, Knochen, Eisen und Papier,
   ausgeschlag'ne Zaehne sammeln wir,
   Lumpen, Knochen, Eisen und Papier,
   all' das sammeln wir.

At the same time, the public was encouraged to save on food
(action "Groschengrab", during the war then the analogous
action to save on charcoal "Kohlenklau"), to exercise
modesty [at least once a week families should eat
"Eintopfessen" - a meal which could be prepared by making
use of only one pot, e.g.  vegetables (beans, coal) with
potatoes)], and generally the use of butter was discouraged
in favour of margarine; I remember the slogan "Kanonen statt
Butter", taken, presumably, from one of the speeches of
Goebbels or Goering.

Rationing began immediately with the war's outbreak in
September 1939. For every person, there were rationing
cards for

  general foodstuffs (meal and its products such as nudles, sugar)
  meats
  fats  (butter, margarine, oil)
  tobacco products ,

distributed, I think, every other month or so, and there was
an annual rationing card for clothes and shoes.  The cards
were printed on strong paper, containing numerous small
("Marken") subdivisions imprinted with their value - from "5 g
Butter" to "100 g Butter" etc.  Every acquisition of the
rationed goods required the appropriate "Marken", and
should you wish to eat a certain soup at a restaurant, the
waiter might take out a pair of scissors and cut off one of
your "5 g Butter" subdivisions  -  the required items and
amounts listed on the menu.  In the evening, the shop-owner
would spend an hour at least, glueing the collected "Marken"
onto large sheets of paper which he had to hand in to the
appropriate authorities.   -  Charcoal for heating was
rationed by the household.

The amounts attributed under rationing were sufficient to
live from, but clearly did not permit luxuries. Whipped
cream became unknown from 1939 until 1948, as became
chocolates, cakes with rich cremes etc., and meat, of
course, could not be eaten every day.  The amounts did
differ not only for children and grownups: people doing
physically exhausting work received cards with larger
attributions. Other items were not rationed, but simply
became unavailable as they would have had to been imported from
overseas: coffee in particular which throughout was replaced
by substitutes made from roasted grains. [An amusing
curiosity: also CocaCola had been imported before the war
(though children were told not to drink it as it was
considered not healthy), also that disappeared, and when ,
at about 1950, I drank it the first time again, it still had
precisely the same taste as more than ten years before.]

Not rationed were potatoes, vegetables and local fruit;
imported citrus fruits were rare. Bananas were, again,
unavailable. In more rural areas, farmers continued to bring
their products to the markets; large cities depended on long
distance delivery.

Beginning with 1939, automobiles required a special permit
to be driven, made noticeable by a bright red V-like angle
on their licence plate.  Private cars did not obtain this
permit, except for a few physicians; delivery vans and
trucks received it, and they had no noticeable difficulty to
obtain the necessary gasoline (petrol).  [Also, the better
private cars soon were confiscated by the military
authorities and reappeared as transportation for generals.]
Still, as the war proceeded, efforts were made to fuel
engines not with gasoline, but with the gas emanating from
glomming wood, and there appeared trucks with man-high
cylinders behind their cabins, being the kilns into which
the driver from time to time had to fill more woodchips.

Travel by rail was under no restrictions to the general
public. Resorts operated, and were frequented, as they had
been in peacetime - although after 1941 a number of pensions
and small hotels was set aside for use of the program named
KLV ("Kinder-Landverschickung"). This, at first, was
destined to provide organized, publicly financed vacations
for children from large industrial towns (Berlin, the
Ruhrgebiet), but by then the air raids spread, in larger
towns school was interrupted daily by retreating into
shelters, and so entire classes together with (some of)
their teachers were sent to resort villages, located in
non-industrial areas and unlikely to be the aims of bombing
attacks.

There was no black market to speak of  -  if only because of
the utterly severy punishments distributed to "Volksschaedlinge".
Under-the-counter relations developed as described by
Mr.Holloway: having your shoe dealer sell you the rarer quality
shoes, instead of the sordid cheap ones, became a favour, applied
to those which could reciprocate with other - not necessarily
material - favours of their own.

W.F.