I have been watching a lot of WWI movies lately it seems, and it got me started thinking about the homefront, and rationing. I know rationing was a big thing during WW2, but what about the first time around. Did it even
happen, or was the population of such a size rationing was unnecessary? I imagine that at the time, when there were not the processed foods and supermarkets as we have now, that saving. growing and preserving your own food was of prime importance to being with. As this poster seems to suggest.
It seems that soon after the outbreak of the war in 1914 the United
Kingdom declared a blockade of the North Sea, to prevent ships reaching Germany. Germany naturally responded by using its U-boats (submarines) to
sink ships carrying military equipment or food to the United Kingdom. As an industrial nation, Britain relied on
the sea lanes to import food, and luxury items such as alcohol and cigarettes, for its large urban population. The main
exporters to Britain were America, Canada and Australia, which meant that merchant ships had to cross the
Atlantic Ocean. Up to 1916, these merchant ships could travel in relative
safety, although by the end of 1916, U-German boats were on average
destroying about 300,000 tons of shipping a month.
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| American WWI poster |
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| American WWI poster |
Some of the things
the British public were not allowed to do included flying a kite or
lighting a bonfire (which may attract planes or zeppelins) , buying binoculars
(to spy), feeding animals bread (waste) or discussing naval and military matters
– censorship was therefore introduced. During the autumn and winter of 1914, supplies of fuel and light were curtailed, street lamps were dimmed, and no long lines of lights were permitted. As the
war continued, British Summer Time was introduced, to give more daylight for
extra work, while opening hours in pubs were cut , alcoholic drinks were
watered down and customers in pubs were not allowed to buy a round of drinks. People at home were also encouraged not to over indulge.
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A similar act was passed in Canada on 22 August 1914, the War
Measures Act and in Australia on 29 October 1914 as the War Precautions
Act 1914. The Australian version did not limit food or alcohol consumption,
but had quite a few paragraphs to do with ‘aliens’ and their internment or eviction
from the country. You can read an
original copy here.
When they joined the war in 1917, the United
States introduced the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918.
Of course, as is human nature in the face of impending
disaster, people panic bought at the outbreak of war. Some shops sold out of food in days in August
1914. However, after the initial panic, people settled down into a routine and
food was not a problem until the end of 1916,
when the Germans introduced unrestricted submarine warfare. Many merchant ships were then sunk , which
had a drastic impact on Britain's food supply. In April 1916, Britain only had
six weeks of wheat left and bread was a staple part of most diets. Food prices
rose and by October 1916, coal was in such short supply that it was rationed by
the number of rooms a family had in its house, and newspapers filled their pages with advice on fuel-saving cookery and fuel substitutions. In December 1916 a Food Controller was appointed and a Ministry of Food established “to promote economy and to maintain the food supply of the country”.
In February 1917, the German Navy sank 230 ships bringing
food and other supplies to Britain. The following month a record 507,001 tons
of shipping was lost as a result of the U-boat campaign. The success of the
U-boat as a commerce raider forced the British to introduce a rationing system.
The restrictions introduced by DORA did
not really work in regard to food consumption, so the government then tried to
introduce a voluntary code of rationing, to a standard set by the Royal Family. This did not work either, as anyone with money
could get more than enough food on the black market. Signs of malnutrition were
starting to be seen in the poorer areas.
The idea of rationing food though, was to guarantee supplies, not to reduce
consumption. And although official figures apparently show that the intake of
calories almost kept up to the pre-war level, for most people, the type of food
eaten was different. The prestigious potato, that British staple, were in short
supply. Any area that could grow food
was converted to do so - gardens were turned into allotments and chickens were
kept in back gardens for eggs. Even if shops did get food in, the queues were
huge, as described by WWI veteran Charles Young:
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| A smiling soldier sitting in the mud near the Front, eating a spoonful of hot food, possibly a potato, WWI |
“when some food did
get delivered to the shops everyone for miles around besieged the place. The
queues stretched for miles, and if you were old or infirm you stood no chance. Food
riots were very common. But news like this was kept from us, over in France. we
only got to hear about it from men who came back after being on leave.”
Meat was also hard to get. The consumption of butchers' meat
dropped from an average of 2.36 to 1.53 lb a week during this period. Bones from the shop were made into soups, and
people in the country hunted rabbits and fished for their meat, and back yard
rabbit keeping became popular.
Sugar, sourced largely from Germany before the war (beets) , was the
most difficult to come by item, and it
was the first food to be rationed in January 1918. The weekly consumption of sugar was 1.49 lb in
1914, it fell to 0.93 lb in 1918. By the end of April 1918 meat, butter, cheese
and margarine were added to the list of rationed food. Ration cards were issued
and everyone had to register with a butcher and grocer. This rationing took
place after three and half years of fighting, which is astounding compared with
the rationing in WWII, which began only three months after the outbreak of war. Although officially the people of Britain did
not starve, there were instances reported of children dying of starvation. Charles Young again:
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| A wartime food queue in Reading, UK |
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| Canadian WWI poster |
“One said to me
"Chas, I am going home to my wife and kids. I'll be some use to them as a
cripple, but none at all dead! I am starving here, and so are they at home, we
may as well starve together." With that he fired a shot through his boot.
When the medics got his boot off, two of his toes and a lot of his foot had
gone.”
The allied soldiers were given their own emergency ration,
the so-called 'Iron Ration', for use in
the event of their being cut off from regular food supplies. The Iron Ration in
1914 was as follows:
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| British Food Rationing, First World War, 1918 |
1 lb. preserved meat
3 oz. cheese
12 oz. biscuit
5/8 oz. tea
2 oz. sugar
1/2 oz. salt
1 oz. meat extract
3 oz. cheese
12 oz. biscuit
5/8 oz. tea
2 oz. sugar
1/2 oz. salt
1 oz. meat extract
In addition the troops in the trenches were regularly supplied
(or meant to be) with rations. Including meat, tea, jam and sugar. You can see the daily rations for British and
German troops here.
The Germans seemed to get a lot more sugar and a bit more alcohol and
tobacco....
In Germany the food situation
was more dire than in Britain. It is
thought that Germany did not introduce rationing, despite the decline in farm
production and no access to American or Canadian goods. Although the German rural (and industrial) labour force had been
largely reduced because of conscription Germany did not start using women to
replace male workers as did Britain. By
1917 there was wide-spread hunger in Germany. Potatoes were in short supply and
many people subsisting on the less nutritious turnip.
The powers introduced by DORA allowed the
government to take over land when it felt that it was necessary to do so, and in
1917, the government took over 2.5 million acres of land for farming. By the end of the war, Britain had an extra
three million acres of farming land, farmed mainly by the Women's
Land Army (Conscientious
objectors also worked on the land). Some farmers resisted the idea of women working on farms, and the Board of Trade had to send officers around the country to persuade farmers to accept women employees. The strategy was successful, and by the end of 1917 there were over 260,000 women working as farm labourers. Indeed the British wheat harvest in 1917 was at record levels, thanks in no small way to women.
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| Soldiers receive a midday ration near the front, August 1917. |
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| German WWI Poster |
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| WWI poster |
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| CHRISTMAS Postcard, 1917 |
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| US poster, WWI |
Read more and References:
Charles Young - http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWrationing.htm
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