Eating, Living, and Starving on the Ration

FOR THOSE WHO LIVED THROUGH WORLD WAR II, food rationing was a core experience. While writing Ashes and Ruins, I began to wonder: Did rationing in Japan differ from rationing in Germany? Was rationing in the US anything like the ration policy in Britain? With these questions in my head, I dove into the research rabbit hole. My Research Addiction

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Some Background

By the twentieth century, most counties imported food from somewhere else.

Britain imported about 70% of its food—everything from oranges to meat, from wheat to sugar to cheese. Population growth in pre-war Japan outstripped their domestic rice production. The United States possessed ample domestic food, but Americans relished imported treats like coffee, tea, sugar, chocolate, tropical fruit, European cheese, and yes, even Russian caviar.

The start of WWII massively disrupted world shipping. U-boats roamed the seas and targeted the merchant fleets of Britain’s empire. US and British blockades, and later strategic bombing, targeted German harbors and disrupted vital shipments of rice from Korea and Taiwan to Japan. Food rationing naturally followed.

During World War II, food shortages and transport difficulties plagued every nation; only the degree and the specifics varied. The governments of four major players, Germany, Japan, the US, and the UK, dealt with the issue differently.

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How Nazi Germany Fed Its Elite and Starved Everyone Else

Hitler, who always envisioned a war of expansion as part of his plan, began an austerity campaign early in 1936. German housewives were encouraged to prepare simple one-pot soups and stews for their families. Hermann Göring is reported to have said, “Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat.” He and the Führer wanted the Third Reich to be self-sufficient before the inevitable war started. The government reduced the amount of fodder for animals that could be imported, which resulted in less meat, butter, and cheese in the markets. For my grandmother Clara, grocery shopping became an unpredictable chore. Her usual market stalls displayed signs reading, “No service to Jews,” and the shelves of Jewish-owned shops stood nearly empty.

Strick food rationing began in Germany on September 1, 1939, the same day Hitler invaded Poland. Color-coded ration cards and stamps regulated the amounts of meat, fats, and sugar that could be purchased. In the countryside, small agricultural villages deemed self-sufficient were sometimes left to their own devices, without ration cards. Naturally, these were the very areas where the government got the vegetables and meat to distribute in the cities, often leaving villages with little left to feed themselves.

Rations in Germany were far from equal. Hard-working industrial laborers were allowed extra calories to ensure their strength on the job. The upper-echelon Nazi elite were not subject to rationing at all and could buy whatever they wanted. Göring, the man who said guns were better than butter, often managed to consume the equivalent of a normal man’s weekly calories at one meal . . . proving that indeed butter did make a man fat. Naturally, in this biased system, Jews, prisoners, and POWs, all considered expendable, received only near-starvation food rations. Jews were forbidden to buy certain items, and their shopping hours were restricted too.

To maintain the food supply in the homeland and the illusion that Germany was self-sufficient, the Nazi government established the Hunger Plan. This policy mandated looting of all occupied territories in Eastern Europe in order to supply food to the homeland. In Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Ukraine, and Russia, people starved by the thousands as the food grown and produced in these countries was shipped back to Germany to feed Germans. Even so, the stalls of German markets carried less and less of everything.

By 1944, internal graft and corruption, as well as enemy bombing and the advancing Allied armies, caused the rationing system in Germany to collapse. A ruthless black market ran rampant. Germans foraged among the bombed-out ruins of their country. Thousands suffered from malnutrition, and many died of starvation. In post-war West Germany rationing lasted until the spring of 1950. In East Germany, where Communism reigned under Russian influence, food rationing persisted until 1958.

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How Japanese Imperialism Starved Its Own People

Despite having a divine emperor and a figurehead prime minister, the government of Japan was dominated by its strong military. The military’s overriding concern was the need to feed and supply the county’s burgeoning population. Expansion began in 1931 with the invasion of Manchuria (a district in northeastern China). From then until the middle of the war, imperialism dominated Japanese policy as they occupied one country after another—Southern China, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Sumatra, Guam, and most of the other islands of the Eastern Pacific. Even with all this territory now under their control, Japan was unable to feed its own people without rationing.

In 1939, the Japanese government took the first step toward rationing when it froze the already inflated prices for rice. By the winter of 1940, Japan’s military dictatorship had taken complete control of rice, the staple food of the Japanese people. They distributed it, and later all grains and other foods, according to their priorities: the military first, the civilian population, rich and poor alike, second.

All foodstuffs were first delivered to the government, which supplied the military and then sold the surplus, if there was any, to local neighborhood associations. These associations monitored their members and doled out the food. Rations were allotted per family based on the number of people, their genders and ages, and the adults’ occupations (heavy laborers received more).

Year by year, conditions worsened. A farm labor shortage resulted from massive military call-ups, and British and American harassment of merchant shipping significantly reduced the amount of rice that reached Japan from Korea and Taiwan. The government replaced portions of the rice ration with barley, rye, or other grains, or mixed in dried insects to boost the nutritional value. Fish and fresh vegetables almost disappeared, and people abandoned their jobs to go to the country to barter for sweet potatoes, cabbage, and seaweed or forage for wild food. A voracious black market thrived and helped keep starvation at bay, especially for those with valuable family heirlooms to sell.

The people of Japan were expected to endure starvation as their patriotic duty. It is estimated that over one million Japanese died of starvation—men, women, children, and soldiers. Rationing in Japan remained on the books for decades after WWII, though, with US help, widespread shortages ended by the early 1950s.

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How the Land of Plenty Helped Feed Britain

In the US, food rationing began in May of 1942, six months after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, and lasted until shortly after war ended in 1945. In the proverbial “Land of Plenty,” the US government employed rationing, not because of food shortages, but to ensure adequate food and supplies for the military. Rationing also gave Americans the feeling of unity in adversity. Movie shorts and newspaper articles explained the need for rationing, and most people considered austerity a way to help beat Hitler and Hirohito.

Ration books and color-coded ration stamps (red for meat, cheese, and fat; blue for processed foods) were issued and local volunteer ration boards administered and enforced the rules set by the OPA (Office of Price Administration).

Sugar was the first thing put on the ration. Then came coffee. Americans learned to like (or tolerate) alternatives to sugar and coffee. Rationing of meat and cheese followed to ensure a good supply of protein to the US military. On the homefront, housewives were encouraged to stretch their meat allotment by making stews and casseroles rather than roasts, or to cook variety meats such as kidneys and liver, which were not rationed.

All fats, including butter, margarine, lard, and oils, were closely rationed because they were needed to make glycerin (think nitroglycerine) for bombs and other explosives. Besides the careful use of rationed fats, cooks saved pan drippings and bacon fat to turn in for extra points. I clearly remember going with my mother to the grocery and being allowed to hand the butcher our can filled with the congealed fat she had saved.

Besides sugar, coffee, meat, and fats, most other foods were rationed by points, everything from canned goods to dried fruit, from lentils to peanut butter. Point values of food items changed based on availability. “Ceiling prices,” intended to prevent inflation, also varied from day to day. Housewives faced the daunting task of budgeting not only the coins in their purse but also the number of stamps remaining in their ration booklet. Homemakers were reminded that tin was in short supply and was needed for the canned rations shipped overseas to feed their husbands, brothers, and sons in the military. Victory Gardens and home preserving became patriotic activities.

The successful rationing program in the US never resulted in hunger or malnutrition. In fact, beginning in the spring of 1941, massive amounts of food were sent from the US to the United Kingdom to augment the efforts of the British government to feed their population. Shipments included Spam, dried eggs, evaporated milk, flour, navy beans, and concentrated orange juice.

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Which brings me back again to rationing in the UK, the place where my grandmother and my aunt (and the characters in Ashes and Ruins) spent the war years.

How Rationing Made Brits Healthier.

Everyone in Great Britain knew that food shortages and rationing were the inevitable byproduct of war. By the 1930s, the UK imported 70% of all food consumed in the UK, but more importantly, imported foods accounted for 50% of the nation’s calorie intake.

Concerned about the hardships endured during rationing in WWI, the British government conducted a secret study on nutritional self-sufficiency. The study found that people could thrive on a diet produced and grown entirely in England. With this study in mind, the government created a rationing plan to sustain the British population, rich and poor alike.

Soon after war with Germany was declared, the government announced rationing would begin on the first day of 1940. Each family needed to register with the butcher, greengrocer, baker, and grocer of their choice, and each family member was issued a color-coded ration book that identified the age range of the holder. From the first day of 1940 until the summer of 1954, when the final restrictions on meat were lifted, Brits “lived on the ration.” Even the king and queen had their own ration books and received nothing additional due to their status.

The Ministry of Food regulated amounts and types of foods to be rationed, subsidized needed staples in poor areas, produced informational films and radio shows, and ran ads in newspapers and magazines. As the war continued and shortages affected the nation’s food supply, rationing in England progressed one step at a time.

On the first day, bacon, butter, and sugar were rationed. In March, meat was rationed, though variety meats (which the English call offal) were not. That summer, tea and margarine were added to the list, and the National Milk Scheme (*1) allowed for extra fresh milk for children under five, pregnant women, and nursing mothers. Young children were also allowed extra eggs, issued con-liver-oil, and given preference for available fruit. The rationing of jam, cheese, and eggs came next.

In December of 1941, the Ministry of Food inaugurated the Points Scheme. It provided a monthly allowance of coupons that could be used to get scarce, commercially packaged foods according to personal choice—things like tinned meat, dried fruit, canned Golden Syrup, canned fish, dried beans, rice, condensed milk, and biscuits (cookies). By spring, the items available for points included foodstuffs arriving from America with the Lend-Lease program. Spam, powdered milk, and powdered eggs appeared on the shelves of British grocery shops and could be purchased if one had enough points. By the middle of 1942, almost all foods were rationed except for fresh vegetables and fruit, fish, and bread. Shoppers spent hours every day standing in queues to buy food for their family.

But rationing could not protect against food shortages. Even unrationed food was sometimes difficult to find, and their cost varied. Potatoes and carrots were always easy to find, but onions were a rare delicacy. The Ministry of Food encouraged eating potatoes at every meal and published a “Potato Pete” recipe booklet. “Dr. Carrot” appeared in countless newspaper articles. The propaganda even claimed that eating lots of carrots was the reason RAF pilots could see enemy planes on dark nights, and Londoners were urged to eat plenty of carrots so they could see better during nightly blackouts.

Unrationed fresh fish disappeared from markets as fishermen joined the Navy. Canned fish, like the beloved Kippers, were replaced by tinned snoek (snake mackerel) from South Africa and whale meat from the Antarctic. Fresh oranges were so rare that they became Christmas stocking treats. In 1941, the Ministry of Food mandated that only a standardized cheddar be produced, and fancy cheeses were not seen again until 1954. In the spring of 1942, white flour was banned to maximize nutrition and use every ounce of the imported grain. Only 100% whole wheat (wholemeal) flour and coarse bread called the “National Loaf” were available in shops and bakeries.

“Victory Gardens” in backyards, city parks, and amidst the rubble of bombed-out lots supplemented the loss of fresh vegetables from abroad. To raise farm production and make the nation self-sufficient, the government forced landowners to plow up grazing lands and plant them with food crops and provided thousands of new tractors to farmers. They recruited 250,000 women to become “Land Girls” and work the farms while male farmhands were off fighting the war.

Yet, even with all the shortages, the British wartime diet produced an amazing result. English health improved, nutrition improved, and the rate of infant death declined, especially among the poor and working class. Fair rationing took away a lot of choice, but it ensured everyone remained healthy and strong. The Ministry of Food enforced rationing rules, cracked down hard on the black market, and insisted on equal distribution to all classes of society, from the king down to the poorest workers. Some say that it is due to this experience of enforced equality that the UK changed from a class-dominated society into the more equal democracy it is today with government-funded welfare and the National Health Service.

*1 – Note that the term “scheme” in the UK means an official program such as a “pension scheme” being a retirement plan, or the “National Milk Scheme” being the plan to supplement the milk allowance for babies and mothers. In the UK the word does not carry the negative meaning, as in the US, of a secret, evil plot.

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Beyond Food

This article deals only with the rationing of food, making (I hope) the importance of well-planned and fair rationing self-evident. During WWII, there was, of course, also rationing of raw materials, fuel, and other commodities to sustain industry and the war effort—enough information for further articles.

There are more interesting stories to be told about food rationing systems too. For example, the Bracero program, an agreement with Mexico that allowed seasonal laborers to work in the US, began in 1942 to solve our WWII farm labor shortages.

Would you like to hear more about this? I’d love to know what interests you . . . and what doesn’t.