The Duchess Who Wouldn't Sit Down Read Online Free PDF

Schorfheide forests, Danzig salmon and the last of the French pate de foie gras." They
     also enjoyed "100 bottles of French Champagne, 180 bottles of vintage wines, eighty-five bottles of French Cognac, fifty bottles
     of imported liqueurs, 500 imported cigars and 4,000 cigarettes." Occupying American troops found twenty-five thousand bottles
     of champagne in the wine cellar of his home in Berchtesgaden the following May.
    Back at the Berghof, by January 1945 - with certain defeat in sight and Germany's cities already in smoldering ruins - the
     hospitality situation had deteriorated dramatically. As we have seen, at the height of his powers Hitler had a keen grasp
     of just how useful the subtle indulgence could be to a host's reputation and his guests' morale. Now, however, with his grip
     on reality fatally loosened, his hosting instincts were correspondingly dulled. He pared down the menu, serving spaghetti
     with ketchup, mushrooms, and curds, and decreed the Sunday meal to be Eintopfgericht - leftovers served from a single pot. Eintopf was now represented by the state media as a "national meal of communitarian sacrifice and solidarity." Not surprisingly, guests
     stopped accepting invitations to the Berghof and he took to eating alone, the last refuge of a desperate man and, as I have
     indicated elsewhere, a clear indication of criminality.
    There is some anecdotal evidence to support the claim that Hitler had intended to address the problem of German meat-eating
     after his victory in the war. Goebbels explicitly refers to this plan in his diary entry of April 26, 1942: "Of course he
     knows that during the war we cannot completely upset our food system. After the war, however, he intends to tackle this problem
     also." He needn't have worried - by 1942, Germany was well on its way to becoming vegetarian by default. Although a German
     soldier's meat ration was three times that of a civilian's, it is safe to say that Cassel spareribs and roast venison were
     no longer on the menu.
    Watching German diners stuff themselves on sole and duck at the Tour d'Argent in occupied Paris in 1942, Ernst Jiinger noted,
     "In times like these, to eat well and to eat a lot gives a feeling of power." That may have been of some consolation to those
     on the homefront - who had been told "they have to go without food so that the starving people of Europe may be fed" - but
     I doubt it. By that time, they were drinking antifreeze or paying one hundred marks per pound for black-market tea. On April
     22, 1942, the Nazi mouthpiece Volkischer Beobachter announced, "Less food will be offered, according to the simpler way of life introduced for the nation and a rationed cuisine
     . . . There are two meatless days a week." In June, the Westdeutscher Beobachter editorialized, "Caterers must compensate for small meat portions with larger portions of potatoes, vegetables or salads."
     Coupons for hotel meals were assessed down to the tiniest allotment of nutrition, "even as to how much fat is to be used for
     a certain dish and how much flour for thickening the sauce."
    The use of the word "ersatz" was forbidden; the patriotic euphemism "German" was endorsed for synthetic products, as in the
     joke "Germans buy German Van Goghs." But by then the quality of even these supplements was so awful that on April 24 the Deutsche Volkswirt was forced to announce, "Expressions like 'German' pepper, 'German' caviare are forbidden from now on because they are apt
     to injure the good reputation of German products in general." The ersatz "new flour" with which wartime bread was made was
     so hazardous to the public's health that eating it fresh could make a person sick; it had to be allowed to mature for several
     days before it was safe to eat. Heinz Pfennig, a German lieutenant at Stalingrad, lived on dried potato flakes. His rations
     for Christmas Day 1942 were one tablespoon of peas, two tablespoons of potato soup, and two squares of chocolate. No