JF Ptak Science Books Post 1157
The idea behind these three images was part of a hearts-and-minds home-front propaganda campaign by the British government to instill fortitude and a feeling of general good in the population, trying to get the message across that British citizens were far better off (in regards to food and staples at least) than their German counterparts. Even though the situation wasn't exactly standard in Great Britain in the last year of the First World War, the situation was far more dire in Germany--there was after all an embargo against ships going into Germany or its allies, making it a very difficult to receive food, whereas that problem did not exist in Britain, which pretty much controlled the seas at that point, and could therefore receive food and other material from the Colonies and allies.
The first graphical display, appearing in The Illustrated London News on June 12, 1918 (and just four months from the end of the War), showed the "ample weekly rations for various classes of the population". 18 classes, actually, that were enjoying more food than the Germans, the "U-Boat having failed to starve" them. In all of this what comes to my attention first are the allowances for male/female prisoners in England; each getting similar amounts of meat, bacon fish, margarine and fresh vegetables, though for some reason the women are given lesser shares of bread, rice and oatmeal. The other bit is that the food allotted to the "childrens hospital" is less by far in all categories than everything else. I'm hoping that this is due to size and consumption differences more than anything else. I also notice that the officer prisoners of war are given more rations than the enlisted POWs. Interned aliens are also given short rations, except for fish (Fresh and preserved) and potatoes, when they get substantially more than anyone else.
Unfortunately we do not see what the Germans had to eat, though in the next graphic (same source, though 23 March 1918) we see the "ingenious" ways in which the German people got around not having certain foodstuffs. The means look more desperate than anything else: meat/sausage for example is replaced by "War Sausage", which was coagulated ox blood bleached with peroxide, and also by a "vegetable" meat, which was dyed glucose.
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