Hi guys! I'm hoping you can help me find more information on the subject of German civilian rations during the Allied occupation. (1945-47-ish) I'm looking for information mostly on the particular items they had to eat, and how much. (Particularly children.) In articles online (The most useful being wikipedia Food in occupied Germany - Wikipedia) I know that adults only had 1,000-1200 calories a day, but none of them go into detail on what exact foods they had, or what the children were allowed. Can anyone point me in the right direction? (Thanks for being patient with me if this is a dumb question! I'm still kinda new to this.)
The Army Green Books discuss procuring supplies for civilians. Special Studies/Soldiers Become Governors.
The following may be of some use (I haven't looked at them in much detail though): Public Health Work in the British Occupation Zone - The Perils of Peace - NCBI Bookshelf Modern Hungers This one has a table that lists calories for children by age: Logistics Matters and the U.S. Army in Occupied Germany, 1945-1949 This one deals with the Soviet zone but not sure of the detai: The Soviet Occupation of Germany This one concentrates on the British zone: https://www.societies.ncl.ac.uk/pgfnewcastle/files/2015/05/Easingwood-Our-Daily-Bread.pdf Apologies if some of the ones below are duplicates. You are probably aware of it but there's been a tendency of some of the "revisionist" to try and make a political issue of this topic so beware of political agendas: "What it means to be malnourished": Food and Hunger in the Shaping of Postwar German Identities, 1945-1949 - ProQuest https://www.ghi-dc.org/fileadmin/user_upload/GHI_Washington/Publications/Bulletin48/bu_48_059.pdf American food policy in occupied Germany Benevolent Diplomacy: Children’s Art and US Food Relief in Occupied Germany - American Historical Association Hopefully some of these will be of some use. Again I didn't vet these so I may have chosen some that I warned you about above.
And no doubt you'll run into the myth that a million German soldiers were starved to death. Other Losses, a book well suited for historiography classes (where we learn to spot poorly done history), is the story of an author who jumped to a very weird conclusion based on the heading of a single column in a table.
FANTASTIC! This is just what I'm looking for, thank you thank you!! And the advice about revisionist history is very good advice, too--I appreciate it. I've found the best, most accurate sources are the contemporaries of the time who were actually there, so I'm going to keep all this in mind as I move forward. Thank you again for this response!
Very interesting, I haven't heard that myth before (though I know food was really scarce for everyone.) I'm going to tuck that advice away for future reference, thank you.