While reading a book about a PoW camp in Northern England, the author gave a lot of info about conditions faced by returning prisoners. Admittedly this is the only source I have so far, so feel free to correct any mistakes. In Vienna, the UN gave one supplementary meal per day to 91000 children between 6-18. Warm clothing, footwear and blankets were extremely scarce, especially for refugees. The German shoe industry had restarted, but was only able to supply enough footwear for the occupation forces. Howe Taylor, P: Enemies Become Friends; A True Story of German PoWs P.64 (Lewes. The Book Guild Ltd. 1997) FM Montgomery said there were 20 million people in the British Zone. He expected the calorie provision to drop to 1500 per day, but in fact it fell to 1050 calories per person per day by 4/3/46. The infant mortality rate in March was 104 per 1000 live births, compared with 64 in March 1938. In some areas, the harvest was 50% below normal. Absenteeism increased in industry; coal production fell from 182000 tons per day to 150000. By mid 1946 steel production had fallen by 10-20%. Between March and June 46, the locomotive repair rate had fallen 30%. Enemies Become Friends p66. Pregnant and nursing mothers got 2139 calories per day, but this was still insufficient. All German domestic stores of food had been used up by mid 1946. Thanks to British supplies the rations in the British zone rose to 1137 calories per day by July. Hamburg reported 4372 new cases of TB in the first five months of 1946, compared to 1617 in the whole of 1945. Enemies Become Friends p67. In the last week of July there were 12 reported deaths from starvation in Hamburg. Civilians stole food and medical supplies. There were mass demonstrations across the country against the food situation: 28/3- 50000 demonstrated in Dusseldorf. 1/4-10000 in Duisburg. 9/5-150000 in Hamburg. 13/5-20000 in Flensburg. In Reinscheld rations sank from 1220 calories per day to 690 in a six week period. Around 10000 people took part in a hunger march on 23rd May. This situation dragged on into 1948, with workers staging 24 hour strikes due to the ration shortages. The largest of these was the simultaneous strikes in the UK and US sectors by white collar workers on 3/2/48. Around 2.5m people took part. Enemies Become Friends p68. The Allies brought in a "pantry law" in response to this, which required all private houses, farms, shops, cafes, and businesses dealing in foodstuffs to return an inventory of their food stocks by a certain date, or face a penalty of up to 3 years in prison and a heavy fine. Enemies Become Friends p69. There are several more pages on food/clothing parcels and what British people and PoWs were allowed to send.
Interesting info and thanks for posting it. It more or less casts some pretty bright light on James Bacque's claims that there was no post war food shortage in post war Europe.
During the first years of the post-war, Germany was in critical situation, as the economy was keept in subsistence levels by the occupation forces. That's because of the trauma of WW2: people believed that Germany was a danger to the rest of the world, so the country was shut down for 2-3 years, from 1945-47/8, by 1948, with the beginning of the cold war, Germany's economy shackles were released and GDP growth averaged 10% a year from 1948 to 1955. By 1958 West Germany's GDP had again surpassed Britain's.
Interesting that Germany could only supply footware to occupation troops. Did they not get them from their own governments? Why would they deny the business to their own people in favor of local suppliers?
I have a book at home that details Europe from 1946 onwards...These shortages are no surprise at all....Housing was a big problem too...many pictures i can remember of huge mounds of bricks, stacked up, with people near them scaping the old mortar of them to be used in the re-build...You know theres a food shoratge when it starts getting measured in "daily calories"! Yet another cost of war thats rarely covered.
I wonder how the "Pantry law" was actually obeyed. I'd assume it was pretty much ignored. I'm sure people simply head their hoards more cleverly, or bartered what they could not hide. A whole topic of itself would be the barter system used in Germany (and other countries for that matter) after the war. (According to Michael Caine, meat was rationed in England until 1960!) A time-life book described the barter system and black market used by the people in Germany, simply to survive. In one frau's case it went something like this: A woman traded some valuable item for a pound of butter. She then went to someone else and traded half the butter for several packs of cigarretes. She traded the other half of the butter to someone else for some meat. She traded half of the meat and cigarettes to another person for a couple bottles of booze, and a box of cigars. She then traded half the cigars and one bottle of the booze for a whole carton of cigarretes. Then she traded one bottle of booze and several packs of cigarretes for a 2 pounds of butter. Then she returned the butter to the original trader on the grounds that it was too expensive! The take when she was done horse-trading: one bottle of booze, one pound of butter, some meat, a box of cigars and half a carton of cigarretes.
The forum members may find this PDF document to be of interest. Goto: http://www.societies.ncl.ac.uk/shspgf/Ed_5/Easingwood.pdf
The protocol of Potsdam which reconfirmed the decisions taken at Tehran (under the strong pressure of Stalin) accepted that the population of specific areas should be moved obligatory in order these areas to be cleaned from German origin people. So 4.000.000 Soudeteans forced to evacuate Czechoslovakia, more than 2.000.000 Germans evacuated Poznan area, Upper Silesia and between the German/Polish borderline of 1940 and the same of 1945. Generally 15.000.000 calculated that left their homes-half of them after the end of the war and moved to Germany mainland. Their new homeland is not accepted them with open arms. Their coming made the food shortage problem enormous. When they entered big cities, the local authorities are not accepting them and they redirected them to the countryside to help in collection of the harvest. They are coming to Berlin with a rythm of 15.000~30.000 people every day. Werner, the mayor of Berlin was given to them a plate of soup and 100gr. of bread and redirect them to the countryside. The protocol of Potsdam defined that the daily food of each German should be of 1.500 calories. This was the minimum quantity in order to avoid pestilential diseases and less of this would make people to rise against the occupation forces. But this minimum portion of food could not be achieved. Marshal Montgomery mentioned that in his occupation zone the inhabitants were taken 1.050 calories per day. General Eisenhower is writing: the average diet remains one third below subsistence level. In the French zone there is not sugar or fat/margarine in the market. The daily bread portion is 120gr. and the calories 810 per day. The famous writer Heinrich Boell is writing : the picture of a loaf of bread coming out of an oven was continuously in my mind. Other people are addicted to morphine, i was addicted to bread. There were not any values like kindness, honesty etc. The most important thing which all the German nation had from sunrise to the dawn was the daily food. After dawn, the price of a body was calculated in plates of chocolate. The value of 2 kgs of butter was more than what you could get working one week in a mine. The railway ticket from Munich to Frankfurt was 44 marks, or 100gr of butter or 5 American cigarettes. The death-rate of the normal people was increased 50% and for the babies up to 100%!! The mayor of Berlin is making in advance 100.000 graves before the soil become hard due to low temperature. The punishment of Germany is really very severe.
