Following a poor harvest, potatoes disappeared altogether. So did the horses that pulled the milk wagons; not that this mattered very much as there was no milk in the churns. There was only powdered milk and powdered eggs, both of which tasted like the masonry dust shaken from our ceilings by RAF bombs. Bread tasted like sawdust and many swore that’s exactly what it was. Clothing coupons paid for an emperor’s new clothes and not much else. You couldn’t buy a new pair of shoes and it was almost impossible to find a cobbler to repair your old ones. Like everyone else with a trade, most of Berlin’s cobblers were in the Army.
Ersatz or second-rate goods were everywhere. String snapped when you tried to pull it tight. New buttons broke in your fingers even while you were trying to sew them on. Toothpaste was just chalk and water with a bit of peppermint flavouring, and there was more lather to be had in queuing for soap than in the crumbling, biscuit-sized shard you were allocated to keep yourself clean. For a whole month. Even those of us who weren’t Party members were starting to smell a bit.
With all of the tradesmen in the Army, there was no one to maintain the trams and buses, and as a result whole routes – like the Number One that went down Unter den Linden – were simply done away with, while half of Berlin’s trains were physically removed to help supply the Russian campaign with all the meat and potatoes and beer and soap and toothpaste you couldn’t find at home.
And it wasn’t just machinery that went neglected. Everywhere you looked, the paint was peeling off walls and woodwork. Doorknobs came away in your hand. Plumbing and heating systems broke down. Scaffolding on bomb-damaged buildings became more or less permanent, as there were no roofers left to carry out repairs. Bullets worked perfectly of course, just like always. German munitions were always good; I could testify to the continuing excellence of ammunition and the weapons that fired it. But everything else was broken or second-rate or substitute or closed or unavailable or in short supply. And tempers, like rations, were in the shortest supply of all. The cross-looking black bear on our proud city’s coat of arms began to look like a typical Berliner, growling at a fellow passenger on the S-Bahn, roaring at an indifferent butcher as he gave you only half of the bacon to which your card said you were entitled, or threatening a neighbour in your building with some Party big-shot who would come and fix him good.
Perhaps the quickest tempers were to be found in the lengthening queues for tobacco. The ration was just three Johnnies a day, but when you were extravagant enough actually to smoke one it was easier to understand why Hitler didn’t smoke himself: they tasted like burnt toast. Sometimes people smoked tea, that is when you could get any tea, but if you could, it was always better to pour boiling water on the stuff and drink it.
Around police headquarters at Alexanderplatz – this area also happened to be the centre of Berlin’s black market, which, despite the very serious penalties that were inflicted on those who got caught, was about the only thing in the city that could have been described as thriving – the scarcity of petrol hit us almost as hard as the tobacco and alcohol shortages. We took trains and buses to our crime scenes and when these weren’t running we walked, often through the blackout, which was not without hazard. Almost one third of all accidental deaths in Berlin were a result of the blackout. Not that any of my colleagues in Kripo were interested in attending crime scenes or in solving anything other than the enduring problem of where to find a new source of sausage, beer and cigarettes. Sometimes we joked that crime was decreasing: no one was stealing money for the simple reason that there wasn’t anything in the shops to spend it on. Like most jokes in Berlin in the autumn of 1941, that one was funnier because it was also true.
Of course, there was still plenty of theft about: coupons, laundry, petrol, furniture – thieves used it for firewood – curtains (people used them to make clothes), the rabbits and guinea pigs that people kept on their balconies for fresh meat; you name it, Berliners stole it. And with the blackout there was real crime, violent crime, if you were interested in looking for it. The blackout was great if you were a rapist.
