Saturday, October 10, 2009
The Turnip Winter of 1916-17
I cannot imagine a worse, more depressing situation than to be an average german on the homefront during the Turnip winter of 1916-17. As the police reports indicate, the people where between a rock and a hard place. "The mood can only be described as very bad...the discontent in the population has reached a new intensity...the attitude of women toward the war can be summarized as 'Peace at any price.' (66)" First the government rations the bread, and provides potatoes instead. Then, potatoes by 1916 become increasingly difficult to find legally, so the only alternative become turnips. As Fritzsche points out on pg 69, over 28,000 copies of "Turnips Instead of Potatoes" were published in newspapers and cookbooks during this awful time in German history. I have never eaten just turnips, or turnip soup, but if that was all I could eat, for months at a time, without meat, bread, potatoes, or hardly any sugar or chocolate to consume either, I could not be a happy camper- to say the least. On top of the terrible eating situation, Fritsche continues by adding that "the winter turned out to be the coldest in memory...35,000 households in Nuremberg simply ran out of coal before the winter ended... 175,000 men and women died of influenza in the year 1918." I just canot fathom a worse living quagmire than to not only be able to eat hardly anything, not be able to keep yourself warm, and to sit back and read daily reports of how the war was not going germany's way any longer. This shows how devoted the people were to not only the war, but to their country, and for that these poor souls should be recognized for enduring one of, if not the worst living conditions possible in all of german history. There is just no way I could have been able to survive through that horrible turnip winter.
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You do a great job of highlighting the suffering of average Germans during the war, a key point raised by Fritzsche. But the question remains: what was the significance of this suffering for the course of German history? How did the people understand this suffering and how did it alter their political outlook?
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that the turnip winter had great influence in getting the average person to ask "I am only able to eat these nasty turnips, now what do I get in return for my hardship". I feel that the only reason German Nationalism was so high and more people did not dissent during the turnip winter was simply because everyone in Germany had family or knew some person on the front lines. If not for that simple fact this may have been called the turnip revolution.
ReplyDeleteMy main concern is whether or not the people had any actual choice. Their country was entangled in a war, and all of the men had been sent to the front lines. The women were kept busy with the survival of their families and their own livelihood. I doubt that there was any time left for revolt of any kind. Certainly most people would have been beyond displeased. But with all that was going on, I doubt that there would have been much participation regarding any organized displeasure with the government. Rather, their concern with survival seems to have been first and foremost. Stoic though they were, it seems that it was the only choice.
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