Saving food, saving lives: rationing in the Second World War<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>Such criticisms were prevalent in the press too, with one newspaper editorial in September 1938 bemoaning \u201cthose who pretend starvation stares them in the face unless they have their regular supply of vol-au vent and whipped cream\u201d.<\/p>\n
The regime simultaneously mounted a huge education campaign targeted at housewives, the ones who were most commonly buying the food and cooking for others, which shared the right foods to use and tips on preparing frugal meals in times of shortage. Those who were unsure on how to use ersatz products (meaning \u201creplacement\u201d, a type of substitute often of lower quality) or the best method for preserving foods were encouraged to stop in at one of the 148 advice centres that were run by the Volkswirtschaft\/Hauswirtschaft<\/em> (National Economy\/ Home Economy: set up in 1934, it was a branch of the NS-Frauenschaft<\/em>, a Nazi women\u2019s association).<\/p>\n The health giving properties of whole-grain bread were lauded and, accordingly, it was seen as the food of the Volksgemein schaft (or ‘national community’), dubbed the ‘patriotic loaf’ <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div> There, they could pick up a book on nutrition or home economics, or watch one of the many educational films on offer, such as All Kinds of Things from Quark<\/em> and The Nourishment of Babies<\/em>. In addition, the agency distributed millions of pamphlets, and more than 1.8 million women attended its cookery courses in 1938. The sheer scale of these campaigns and organisations demonstrates the seriousness with which the Nazis took the need to control food consumption.<\/p>\nThis was not only a matter of economics, however, as what people ate was also a health issue. In the Third Reich, the individual had a duty to stay in good shape in order for the nation to be similarly strong.<\/p>\n
The health giving properties of whole-grain bread were lauded in comparison to bread baked from bleached flour, and, accordingly, it was seen as the food of the Volksgemein schaft<\/em> (or \u201cnational community\u201d), dubbed the \u201cpatriotic loaf\u201d. The propaganda campaign around whole-grain bread \u2013 as well as the ban on bleached flour in 1937 \u2013 ensured it became the baked good of choice in Germany. In 1939, only 2,420 German bakeries produced the Volks brot<\/em>; by 1943, 27,454 were making whole-grain bread.<\/p>\nOn the podcast | Richard J Evans responds to listener queries and popular search enquiries about the Third Reich<\/strong><\/p>\n