Berlin полностью

Aggravating as the air raids were, they were probably not the worst feature of life for most Berliners during the second winter of the war. To judge from complaints recorded by the Gestapo and the SPD’s underground information network, SOPADE (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands im Exil), poor food and shortages of coal were the most pressing issues. Now even the Hotel Adlon abided by “Casserole Day,” as Marie Vassiltchikov discovered to her dismay when she ate there in December 1940. Flannery saw the first signs of a beer shortage in May 1941. Taverns and restaurants announced that they would serve beer only between 11:30 A.M. and 3 P.M., and from 7 P.M. to 10 P.M. Because vintage wines were in short supply, the Kempinski restaurant on the Kurfürstendamm began a policy of selling Spatlese, Auslese, and Trockenbeerenauslese only to regular customers. As in World War I, ersatz goods began to proliferate. Berliners now ate stuff made from puree of pine needles, powdered chestnut, and ground-up ivy leaves. A new cocktail called the “Razzle-dazzle” consisted of wood alcohol and grenadine. Tobacco was not yet replaced by any vile substitute, although a popular brand called “Johnnies” tasted so bad it was said to contain camel dung, courtesy of General Rommel’s Afrika Korps.

Spring 1941 brought relief from the cold and a bit of amusement in the form of one of the most bizarre episodes in the history of the Third Reich. Berliners learned in mid-May that Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s personal deputy, had solo-piloted a Messer-schmitt to Scotland in a quixotic bid for peace with Britain. Hitler was so horrified that he never allowed Hess’s name to be mentioned in his presence again. Göring surmised that Hess was crazy, and this was the thrust of the official communique read over Greater German Radio on May 12. “Party Comrade Hess,” said the bulletin, had “fallen prey to delusions.” In Berlin, where the dour and fanatical Bavarian had never been popular, a new joke made the rounds: “The Thousand Year Reich has now become the One Hundred Year Reich; a zero has just been subtracted.”

The efforts of Hess notwithstanding, Britain remained firmly committed to the war, and a month or so after his flight Germany added another potent enemy, the Soviet Union. Of course it had always been merely a matter of time until Hitler exchanged his handshake with the Soviets for a grab to the throat, but the moment of truth came sooner than even he expected. Having given up attempting to invade Britain, Hitler decided that the best way to knock that nation out of the war was to conquer Russia’s vast natural resources, which would make the Reich invulnerable to the British blockade.

As far as Berlin was concerned, the opening of a new front in Russia on June 22, 1941, constituted what Howard K. Smith called “The Great Watershed.” If the conditions of daily life had started to become more difficult before Operation Bar-barossa, they deteriorated rapidly as the Russian campaign sucked resources out of the Reich. With the drain on livestock supplies, meat rations had to be cut, first to 500 grams per person per week, then to 450. Reductions after that were not officially announced, but were effected by providing butchers and restaurants with less meat. The number of meatless days at restaurants became two, then three. On these days the finer establishments substituted a red-colored paste called Lacks Galantine, which tasted like “soggy sawdust” to Smith, who estimated that after five months of the war in Russia Germans had given up four-fifths of their weekly meet ration. Trying to keep up appearances, the Kaiserhof Hotel continued to put two meat dishes on the menu, but never served more than one. Fats were also at a premium, as evidenced by the appearance of a. faux fat product made by filtering edible garbage and adding artificial flavoring. Even potatoes became difficult to find in the winter of 1941/42 due to a bad crop and demands from the army. Berliners were advised not to peel potatoes before boiling them, as this supposedly wasted 15 percent of each potato. Perhaps worse, the beer supply now became so tight that only the big hotels and foreign press club served it on a regular basis. The Adlon Hotel began watering its beer to make supplies last longer. Hard liquor being equally scarce, bars resorted to serving Himbeergeist, a raspberry liqueur, or a fake vodka that took the roof off one’s mouth. In 1941 wine shops across the city were closed and their contents bought by the government at a fixed price. When Smith left Berlin a month later, he could find no alcohol at all in the German capital. “Against its will, Germany had become, perhaps, the most temperate nation on earth.”