WHAT WAS RATIONED DURING WORLD WAR II?
Answer
Note. There were differences in rationing between the various countries in the war, and variations over time. In addition to rationing by coupon, some products were simply not available for civilian use (for example nylon), and others were often hard to find (for example, photographic film and good quality paper).
Answer
Many things were rationed. Foodstuffs like bananas were scarce and many things including sugar, meat, butter, cheese, eggs, milk, tea, chocolate, clothes, fuel oil, rubber, typewriters, cooking oil and many other things were rationed. This happened because the Nazis were sinking ships importing these foods and materials.
Answer
Nearly all food products were rationed. Cloth, wood and metal, as well as rubber and leather, were all rationed so that the armed forces would have enough for their needs.
Gasoline, oil and grease, as well as kerosene and industrial alcohol, and ink. Paper, carbon paper, pencils, pens and typewriter ribbons, as well as erasors and paperclips and envelopes.
Automobile tires, parts and belts were all unavailable during the war, as the factories were sending all their production to the military's needs. Nylon and silk were used for parachutes, not women's stockings.
Answer
Rationed items: gasoline, tires (or just impossible to get?), sugar, coffee, shoes, meats hard or impossible to get: chocolate, nylons, butter, some spices, cheese, cigarettes, candy bars, things containing rubber, sheets and pillow cases, linens (used flour sacks in place of dish towels).
Answer
Tires and fuel for sure. However many things were just not made as U.S companies were told what to make. For example, Studebaker made trucks, Ford made jeeps and liberty ships and so on. So rationing was twofold with entire types of manufacturing shifted to war production.
Answer
It varied from country to country and from year to year and even from month to month - and sometimes even from week to week. Most countries continued rationing for a time after the end of WWII. In Britain, for example, even bread (!) was rationed for a while in 1946-47.
Things in short supply throughout WWII in most countries included foodstuffs (especially animal products, ranging from milk to meat) and also oil.
Answer
In Great Britain, the weekly ration per person got smaller and smaller as the war dragged on in to its second and third years. Almost every type of food was rationed; some things were simply not available, like oranges and bananas. Eggs were scare and sugar was limited to one ounce a week, per person. Powdered milk and eggs were the usual things for breakfast.
Clothing was rationed, so were paper, ink and soap. Gasoline was limited to those who had a job that was essential to the war effort. Most people parked their car for the duration of the war. Coal and oil was severely rationed in Great Britain, as was all most everythinh else.
WHY?
Because so many things had to be brought to the UK by a ship, and the German U-boats were sinking many of them as they crossed the Atlantic Ocean from North America. In order to send much-needed supplies to Great Britain, people in Canada and the USA had to give up SOME of what they were used to, but the rationing here was no where as bad as it was in Great Britain.
An entire generation of British kids grew up undersized and sickly due to a lack of vitamins during their first few years of life during the war years.
Answer
Actually, great efforts were made in Britain to ensure as far as possible that the next generation did not grow up 'undersized and sickly'. In my schooldays we were given milk and A and D vitamins every day at school, and sometimes further supplements. We also ate a higher proportion of vegetables than was usual before or after rationing.
Take a look at Britons born between about 1935 and 1947 and see if they show any obvious signs of being stunted. :)
In Britain rationing continued till 1954, though clothing was taking off rationing in 1949 and bread was rationed for only about 12 months in 1946-47.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
A 1940'S PIN-UP and A GOOD ACTRESS TOO. ("you know how to whistle, don't you Steve? Just pucker up and blow".) Bogie didn't stand a chance. Oh I almost forgot, it's Lauren Bacall, did I have to add this line? Naw. She and Bogie got married in my hometown, cool.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
I go to the Palomar for some good music from the forties era, but the news about Glenn Miller's death just keeps getting weirder and weirder. I think soon someone will say they saw the Yeti again and he looked just like Miller himself.
Check out the most recent events here at the the Palomar. Before you leave the site, click on some of their music. If you are of a certain age you'll be glad you did.
Here is the link to the Miller story.
Check out the most recent events here at the the Palomar. Before you leave the site, click on some of their music. If you are of a certain age you'll be glad you did.
Here is the link to the Miller story.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Monday, December 29, 2008
My cousin sent me a group of posters. I've seen some of them, but some are new to me. I will post them later, but I will post this one of the Sullivan brothers. I am taken aback each time I run across the story of the five Sullivan boys who perished together during the same battle. I cannot but imagine as in a nightmare how the parents dealt with a tragedy of that magnitude. Of course, because of that tragedy the war department never again assigned family members overseas together.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
I wrote this several years ago, and was reminded of it during remembrances of Pearl Harbor Sunday. I hope you like it.
MY UNCLE FRANK
A Fiction
By Jim Kittelberger
The bright sunlight illuminated my room making it nearly impossible to keep my eyes closed any longer. It was Saturday morning, which meant no school for two days, two glorious days. It’s not that I hate school; it’s just that everybody always seems to be one step ahead of me. Well, maybe I’m not such a great scholar, and maybe I’m a little shy, backward if you want to be downright nasty about it, but it seems like it takes me a beat or two longer to get the drift of what’s happening around me. Of course, I don’t talk about this with any of my friends on the street; we don’t really talk that seriously about anything, well, except maybe baseball, football, bicycles, or the latest and greatest cupcakes we might buy, if we happen to have any money that day, to go along with a Grapette or an RC cola. Maybe if I had an older brother, or maybe even a sister, no a brother, he could answer a lot of questions I can’t, or won’t, ask my parents. But I don’t so I’ll just have to make do being an only child, it’s not really that bad, especially at Christmas time, but that’s another story.
The sun was filling the room with it’s yellow-white rays and was really making it impossible to keep my eyes closed any longer, so with momentary sadness, I left the dream that seemed so real about a B-24 bomber on which I was the tail gunner. It faded away and I took the plunge. I opened one eye, and then a minute later both eyes to the brightness that almost gave me a headache. I reached over to my radio on the stand beside my bed and clicked it on. After a moment, waiting for the tubes to warm up, the familiar voice of Smiling Ed brought me fully awake as he prepared to plunk his magic twanger and conjure up the presence of froggie, the best part of the Buster Brown show with smiling Ed McConnell. It was a regular Saturday morning fixture that I would probably soon outgrown, but not just yet. Besides who knows what I listen to anyway. I could tell the other kids I listen to the Quiz Kids, but I don’t think they would care one way or the other.
As I lay motionless, relishing the warmth of my bed and the smell of the newly laid coal fire wafting into my room through the nearby register, I think back to what I can remember of my dream. It seemed so very real to be flying in a blue sky and watching the tracer shells streaking toward their target, unafraid and courageous. I turned on my side and smiled as I looked at the set of wings on the table beside the radio. They were the gift from my uncle Frank, who came to visit us nearly a year after the war ended, to assure his sister, my mom, that indeed he was all right and in one piece. I loved my uncle Frank and was in awe of him. He was bigger than life to me. He was only twenty-five years old, but when I first saw him in his uniform and then listened to his letters as my mom read them to us at the supper table, he became the stuff of dreams, at least ten-year-old boy dreams.
After each reading of his letters, I couldn't’t wait to be excused and set free to regale my friends with what I had just heard. Just hearing words or phrases such as Germany, England, bomb runs or such would set my mind into such excitement that it became inevitable we would have to dramatize the events with some of the guys holding their arms out horizontally and becoming airplanes trying to shoot down the bomber where I would be manning the machine guns and expelling at least a million rat-a tat-tats. It would end with all of us lying on the ground too tired to stand. At other times he would describe the fire balls created by the bombs they dropped, or the shells exploding close to the plane from the defenders below. During the war I was much too young to know much of what was really going on, and the closest my town ever came to it was in manufacturing materials for the war effort. But I read comic books that chronicled the war and the heroes, and I knew my uncle Frank was out there being brave. He probably should have been featured in the comic books, and if the war lasted long enough I knew he would be.
Since uncle Frank was not married, we, and his parents, were his most immediate family and the recipients of souvenirs from wherever he happened to be at the time. My dad received a pipe from Wales and my mom became greatly excited when the postman brought a box filled with Irish lace and wool from Scotland. He never forgot me, in fact from England he sent me what he called a Toby mug. It was a caricature of Winston Churchill and I loved it, in fact, I still have it although I am afraid to use it too much now for fear I will drop it.
Uncle Frank flew on his bomber missions into early 1945. On what turned out to be his final mission to drop bombs far into Germany, he was unlucky enough, or the enemy was lucky enough to embed a machine gun shell into his shoulder, which ended his flying into harms way and sent him home. We received many letters that affirmed he was well, with no scars from the wound except some stiffness when it got cold, which he was sure he would have to live with forever. But my mom would not be assured until she saw him.
After the adults got through hugging and kissing and asking a thousand questions and things quieted down, in fact my dad fell asleep in his chair, uncle Frank came into my room and sat on the bed beside me. He put his arm around me and told me a little of what he had to do, and why it was the right thing to do. Then he asked me if there was anything I wanted to know? The cat had my tongue and I stammered and stuttered, until he told me to think of him as my big brother and ask him anything, anything at all. At last I had the big brother I always wanted and the questions just flew out of me, until we both were exhausted, laid back on the bed, and fell into a contented sleep.
I have grown old now, and just returned from burying my uncle Frank. He had a military funeral with a bugler playing taps. His family and I cried unashamedly for the man who will always be twenty-five years old to me, and the hero of my childhood.
MY UNCLE FRANK
A Fiction
By Jim Kittelberger
The bright sunlight illuminated my room making it nearly impossible to keep my eyes closed any longer. It was Saturday morning, which meant no school for two days, two glorious days. It’s not that I hate school; it’s just that everybody always seems to be one step ahead of me. Well, maybe I’m not such a great scholar, and maybe I’m a little shy, backward if you want to be downright nasty about it, but it seems like it takes me a beat or two longer to get the drift of what’s happening around me. Of course, I don’t talk about this with any of my friends on the street; we don’t really talk that seriously about anything, well, except maybe baseball, football, bicycles, or the latest and greatest cupcakes we might buy, if we happen to have any money that day, to go along with a Grapette or an RC cola. Maybe if I had an older brother, or maybe even a sister, no a brother, he could answer a lot of questions I can’t, or won’t, ask my parents. But I don’t so I’ll just have to make do being an only child, it’s not really that bad, especially at Christmas time, but that’s another story.
The sun was filling the room with it’s yellow-white rays and was really making it impossible to keep my eyes closed any longer, so with momentary sadness, I left the dream that seemed so real about a B-24 bomber on which I was the tail gunner. It faded away and I took the plunge. I opened one eye, and then a minute later both eyes to the brightness that almost gave me a headache. I reached over to my radio on the stand beside my bed and clicked it on. After a moment, waiting for the tubes to warm up, the familiar voice of Smiling Ed brought me fully awake as he prepared to plunk his magic twanger and conjure up the presence of froggie, the best part of the Buster Brown show with smiling Ed McConnell. It was a regular Saturday morning fixture that I would probably soon outgrown, but not just yet. Besides who knows what I listen to anyway. I could tell the other kids I listen to the Quiz Kids, but I don’t think they would care one way or the other.
As I lay motionless, relishing the warmth of my bed and the smell of the newly laid coal fire wafting into my room through the nearby register, I think back to what I can remember of my dream. It seemed so very real to be flying in a blue sky and watching the tracer shells streaking toward their target, unafraid and courageous. I turned on my side and smiled as I looked at the set of wings on the table beside the radio. They were the gift from my uncle Frank, who came to visit us nearly a year after the war ended, to assure his sister, my mom, that indeed he was all right and in one piece. I loved my uncle Frank and was in awe of him. He was bigger than life to me. He was only twenty-five years old, but when I first saw him in his uniform and then listened to his letters as my mom read them to us at the supper table, he became the stuff of dreams, at least ten-year-old boy dreams.
After each reading of his letters, I couldn't’t wait to be excused and set free to regale my friends with what I had just heard. Just hearing words or phrases such as Germany, England, bomb runs or such would set my mind into such excitement that it became inevitable we would have to dramatize the events with some of the guys holding their arms out horizontally and becoming airplanes trying to shoot down the bomber where I would be manning the machine guns and expelling at least a million rat-a tat-tats. It would end with all of us lying on the ground too tired to stand. At other times he would describe the fire balls created by the bombs they dropped, or the shells exploding close to the plane from the defenders below. During the war I was much too young to know much of what was really going on, and the closest my town ever came to it was in manufacturing materials for the war effort. But I read comic books that chronicled the war and the heroes, and I knew my uncle Frank was out there being brave. He probably should have been featured in the comic books, and if the war lasted long enough I knew he would be.
Since uncle Frank was not married, we, and his parents, were his most immediate family and the recipients of souvenirs from wherever he happened to be at the time. My dad received a pipe from Wales and my mom became greatly excited when the postman brought a box filled with Irish lace and wool from Scotland. He never forgot me, in fact from England he sent me what he called a Toby mug. It was a caricature of Winston Churchill and I loved it, in fact, I still have it although I am afraid to use it too much now for fear I will drop it.
Uncle Frank flew on his bomber missions into early 1945. On what turned out to be his final mission to drop bombs far into Germany, he was unlucky enough, or the enemy was lucky enough to embed a machine gun shell into his shoulder, which ended his flying into harms way and sent him home. We received many letters that affirmed he was well, with no scars from the wound except some stiffness when it got cold, which he was sure he would have to live with forever. But my mom would not be assured until she saw him.
After the adults got through hugging and kissing and asking a thousand questions and things quieted down, in fact my dad fell asleep in his chair, uncle Frank came into my room and sat on the bed beside me. He put his arm around me and told me a little of what he had to do, and why it was the right thing to do. Then he asked me if there was anything I wanted to know? The cat had my tongue and I stammered and stuttered, until he told me to think of him as my big brother and ask him anything, anything at all. At last I had the big brother I always wanted and the questions just flew out of me, until we both were exhausted, laid back on the bed, and fell into a contented sleep.
I have grown old now, and just returned from burying my uncle Frank. He had a military funeral with a bugler playing taps. His family and I cried unashamedly for the man who will always be twenty-five years old to me, and the hero of my childhood.
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