My interest in the Second World War has grown substantially in the past few months. I have read multiple memoirs, books, and journals and have binged almost every documentary, movie, and series that is available on mainstream streaming platforms. And so I turned to the internet in search of battle reports, videos, stories, and other interesting facts about the Second World War. Today I will add my share of interesting Second World War facts on the internet by looking at the food that sustained the troops during the 5-year period.
The Importance of Food
During the Second World War, the US Military counted approximately 16 000 000 personnel. These 16 million heads were scattered over the whole world, some could be found in the tropics of Asia, others in the hills of Europe, and some in the sands of the Sahara. It took an incredible effort to build a system where every military would receive his/hers breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
‘An army travels on its stomach,’ this was said by Napoleon. A platoon will not follow your orders if no one has eaten anything nutrient in 48 hours. The effectivity, intensity, and energy of your troops are all dependent on the food they’re eating. And so, many new foods were designed especially for the war. Food had to be nutritious, compact, cheap, and most important, it had to have a very, very long shelf life. Taste often came last or was completely ignored/forgotten in the process of making the canned and dried goods.
Panzerschokolade & Pervitin
The German SS took the saying: ‘An army travels on its belly’ quite seriously. German scientists, including agronomists and nutritionists, were marshaled to devise a plan of food production in step with the Third Reich’s ambitions to conquer Europe and eventually turn the East into one large farmland for Greater Germany. The individual entrusted with affecting the far-reaching programs was Richard-Walther Darrel, an early friend of Heinrich Himmler.
The combat ratio or the so-called Halbieserne of a German military contained one 300-gram tin of meat and one 125- or 150-gram unit of hard bread. The meat could be schmalzfleisch (pork), rinderbraten (roasted beef), truthahnbraten (turkey), or hahnchenfleisch (chicken). This all seems pretty normal.
However, the Germans stationed on the front line received something additional. The Army troops received Pervitin, a mint spiked with methamphetamine. Pilots and tankers who were preparing for a fight or bombing were given a bar of panzerschokolade, chocolate spiked with again, methamphetamine.
Historian Shelby Stanton comments: “They dispensed it to the line troops. Ninety percent of their army had to march on foot, day and night. It was more important for them to keep punching during the Blitzkrieg than to get a good night’s sleep. The whole damn army was hopped up. It was one of the secrets of Blitzkrieg.”
The meth-spiked products made sure the army kept moving, soldiers didn’t sleep for three nights straight and marched hundreds of kilometers. The Blitzkrieg depended on speed, relentlessly pushing ahead with tank troops, day and night.
In April 1940, the Blitzkrieg quickly led to the fall of Denmark and Norway. The next month, the troops moved on to Holland, Belgium, and finally France. German tanks covered 240 miles of challenging terrain, including the Ardennes Forest, in 11 days, bypassing the entrenched British and French forces who had mistakenly assumed the Ardennes was impassable. Paratroopers sometimes landed ahead of the advance, causing chaos behind enemy lines; the British press described these soldiers as “heavily drugged, fearless and berserk.”
Rice, Rice Baby
The Japanese didn’t drug their military. The Japs had already such high morale for their country that the use of meth would be complete overkill.
Japanese military rations were relatively plain and not very diverse. There was one element that was featured in every dish. It didn’t matter if it was morning or evening and what day it was. Rice was always there.
The rice was often cooked right next to the battlefield with dried meat, fish, vegetables, shoyu sauce, or miso. Most of the Japs fought on their home turf and so they had the advantage of knowing which mushrooms, fruits, and berries they could pick. Hunting was also often done by small groups of Japanese soldiers in order to get some fresh meat or fish.
During the fight between the USA and Japan, many US military began eating rice too since it was quite nutritious, easy to prepare, and light to pack. Also, the distribution of food for the US military didn’t always run as smoothly as it should have. Many battles were fought on tiny islands, which were difficult to reach. With the knowledge that you will not be getting food for a couple of weeks, you begin looking at alternatives. The first was by looting the enemy.
America does it best?
The USA took pretty good care of their military force when it came to food. Products like chocolate, biscuits, and hard candies could often be found in the pockets of a US private. The rations of the US military stand famous as the K-rations, they were designed by Ancel Keys in 1941.
The K-rations could fit into the pocket of a soldier and contained breakfast, supper, and dinner. The rations were tested on different platoons who were in training, the results were successful. What had not been taken into account, however, were the conditions in which the soldiers would fight and the intensity of the fight.
In Burma, the US unit Merrill’s Marauders had primarily been living on the K-rations in the last couple of months. A heavy weight loss and vitamin deficiency were noted which caused a higher vulnerability to tropical diseases. By the end of the health research on soldiers who had fallen ill some had lost from 15 to 30 kilograms.
One of British General Orde Wingate's units in the Dehra Dun area was visited by quartermaster logistics officers some months after they had last eaten K-rations. At the sight of a box of K-rations carried by the visitors, two of Wingate's men vomited.