Discuss @David Flin 's latest article here
I do find it ironic that, just as everyone had finished trying to remove German names from English because of war jingoism, 'ersatz' entered the English language as a neologism.Yeah, it's no coincidence that "Ersatz" became a common word in this time. I don't have the source right now, but during the war, hundreds of kinds of ersatz whatever were invented, and thousands of ersatz drinks. Even Konrad Adenauer (yes, that one) got a patent for such a bread, which included rice, maize, topinambur, and pearl barley.
It also entered the French lexicon at the same time. I'd like to know how many other European languages picked it up.I do find it ironic that, just as everyone had finished trying to remove German names from English because of war jingoism, 'ersatz' entered the English language as a neologism.
That's definitely an aspect of WW1 that receives too little attention. One just has to count how many Central Power victory TLs out there simply assume that the German population will sustain itself on thin air until their army defeats the Entente. It seems that French mutinies are always on the verge of causing a general collapse of the Entente's will to fight, while starvation on the German home front is just something that can be handwaved away.
I do find it ironic that, just as everyone had finished trying to remove German names from English because of war jingoism, 'ersatz' entered the English language as a neologism.
About that, would you happen to know how much grain and other foodstuffs the Germans were able to seize in the territories they gained with Brest-Litovsk?I still wonder whether an Eastern strategy would have helped the CPs regarding that. Ukrainian grain and all that.
About that, would you happen to know how much grain and other foodstuffs the Germans were able to seize in the territories they gained with Brest-Litovsk?
I think it's probably instructive for the prosecution of WWII as well: in Wages of Destruction, Tooze makes the quite cogent point that a lot of Nazi officials had served as infantry and hated having to attack with less than sufficient shell barrages simply because there were ammunition shortages (something which plagued all WWI states at various points) and that they made extra sure shells were not lacking in the first years of WWII by allocating their production some extra resources. Similarly, the reminder of the Turnip Winter and the collapse in both Tsarist Russia and Imperial Germany (and Austria-Hungary had a similar story as well, but piled various nationalisms on top) is probably a good explanation as to why until the Sportpalast Speech, there was no putting Nazi Germany on complete total war footing. Which in turn meant looting every conquered country of its foodstuffs as well as their coal, machines and manpower.
And it's also probably instructive that while they had access to the world market, the democracies paid much more attention to this issue and took serious and competent steps to alleviate hunger.