Antisemitism in France Then and Now

French Election, Summer 2024 

News of France this week is primarily the news of the election. If you have been following French current events, you will probably know what I’m about to say, but here is my summary of the situation. France has a multi-party political system, representing a spectrum of views from extreme right to extreme left. For several years, the centrist party of President Macron has dominated the government; however, his party was severely defeated in the election of representatives to the European Parliament last month, and he declared elections for a new French government. 

Sunday, June 30, the first round of voting was a major blow to Macron’s centrist coalition, which came in third behind the far right and the far left. In particular the far right National Rally party (the RN, formerly called the National Front) obtained the most votes, and has a good chance to win a majority in next Sunday’s second and final round of voting. As the Guardian says:

“A high turnout in Sunday’s first round saw RN comfortably win first place with 33.1% of the vote, almost two points up compared with three weeks ago. For context, this is the first time that the party founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen has broken through the 20% barrier in a legislative election.” (source)

This is concerning for many reasons; in this short summary I’m going to concentrate on the issues of antisemitism expressed by members of this party.

From French newspaper Libération: “Twelve million of our fellow citizens have voted for a far right party that is clearly racist and anti-Republican.” (source)

Despite pretense to the contrary, the “rebranded” party founded by self-proclaimed antisemite Jean-Marie LePen and currently run by his daughter Marine is a frightening specter in the French elections this week. A strong possibility of their winning a majority and thus taking over the government is very chilling.

After the first vote on June 30, the extreme right party in France is far ahead of the others.
This is the party of LePen, a dedicated antisemite, though they have stepped back the antisemite rhetoric.

During the electoral campaign in May, there were antisemitic statements from both far right and far left candidates, for example—

“Racist and antisemitic rhetoric and conspiracy theories spread by National Rally candidates came under scrutiny during the campaign sprint — and amplified questions about whether the party’s rebranding was merely window dressing. Almost 1 in 5 of National Rally’s candidates for parliament have made “racist, antisemitic and homophobic remarks,” French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said in a televised debate Thursday.” (source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/06/30/france-elections-macron-le-pen-bardella/)

Further, antisemitic public actions in France (as in other European countries and in the US) has been ongoing since the Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing war last October:

“There were more than 360 antisemitic episodes in France in the first three months of this year, or an average of four a day, an increase of 300 percent over the same period last year, the government said. In the most recent one that shocked the country, the three boys are said to have dragged the girl [age 12]  into an abandoned building where she was repeatedly raped and insulted.” (New York Times, June 20)

Here are few additional examples of antisemitism by National Rally candidates:

“Sophie Dumont, a National Rally candidate in northeastern France, was spotlighted by Libération for a post implying that Jewish financing was behind Reconquest, a rival far-right party led by Eric Zemmour, who is Jewish. Zemmour’s adviser had said that the ritual slaughter of animals to make kosher and halal meat should not be banned in France. “The small gesture that betrays the origin of the funds that fuel Reconquest,” Dumont wrote in a now deleted comment. 

 

“Agnès Pageard, a National Rally candidate in Paris, has advocated for abolishing a law that makes it illegal to question the Holocaust and another that bans ‘incitement to hatred’ against religious or racial groups. She responded to a social media post that alleged ‘collusion’ among prominent Jewish people in France by recommending ‘reread Coston and Ratier’ — two authors known for their antisemitic conspiracy theories.” (source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/06/28/france-far-right-antisemitism-racism-le-pen/)

On the left, there are also a number of candidates who have made antisemitic statements, such as this example about a candidate of the party “La France Insoumise” —

“At least one member of La France Insoumise has made intolerable remarks. Reda Belkadi, a candidate in the Loir-et-Cher department south of Paris, published anti-Semitic messages in 2018 on social media. He had used the anti-Semitic slur ‘youpin.’” (Le Monde, June 29, 2024)

Looking Back: Paris Under the Nazi Regime

Les Parisiennes by Anna Sebba (published 2016)

As I read this book about life in Paris under the Nazis, I constantly thought about the current French election and its all-too-painful reminders of this part of the past. I read this observation about the current party, the National Rally:

“There was a reason a political barrier was long erected against the National Rally, with its quasi fascist history (now disavowed) and its enduring belief that immigrants dilute the essence of the French nation. The party provokes extreme reactions and troubled memories of the collaborationist wartime Vichy government.” (source) 

 

In Les Parisiennes, Anna Sebba depicts the lives of many women who lived through the Nazi occupation of Paris. Most of the author’s subjects had little or no contact with the Jewish residents of Paris, and little or no responsibility for the persecution and deportation of Jews to the Concentration Camps — but there are many stories of the fate of Jewish women, including, for example, the famous writer Irene Nemirovsky. I’m not going to review this book, but only use it to remind us of the past history that haunts many Parisians (and of course others) even today as antisemitism seems to return, along with attacks on many modern immigrant communities and naturalized French citiens.

For the Jews of Paris in 1942, the main event was the arrest of almost the entire Jewish population, which was done by French, not German, authorities. Here is Anna Sebba’s summary (in case you are not familiar with the history:

“On 16 and 17 July, the Vichy government, aiming to satisfy German demands to reduce the Jewish population, arrested some 13,152 Jews, including more than 4,000 children, mostly from Paris, in an operation which they were calling ‘Spring Wind’. René Bousquet, Secretary General of the French National Police, knew that using French police in the round-ups would be ‘embarrassing’ but hoped that this would be mitigated if those arrested were only so-called foreign Jews. However, as the historian Serge Klarsfeld has revealed (making use of telegrams René Bousquet sent to the prefects of departments in the occupied zone), the police were ordered to deport not only foreign Jewish adults but children, whose deportation had not even been requested, nor planned for, by the Nazis. Pierre Laval maintained that including children in the round-ups was a ‘humanitarian’ measure to keep families together, a clearly fallacious argument since many of the parents had already been deported.’ (p. 159)

Before they could be deported on trains to the East, these victims were held at a sports stadium:

“Everyone was taken on French buses to the Vélodrome d’Hiver, a bicycle stadium in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, where most of the victims were temporarily confined for five days in extremely crowded conditions, almost without water as there was only one available tap, with little food and with inadequate sanitary facilities. They were then moved to Drancy, Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande, internment camps managed by Vichy in collaboration with the Germans, before being sent on by train to Auschwitz for extermination. The round-up has been a source of enormous grief in France. It was not until 1995 that French President Jacques Chirac admitted French complicity as French policemen and civil servants had been used for the raid. He urged that 16 July be commemorated annually as a national day of remembrance. It was a ground-breaking moment in French history.” (p. 161) 

Sculpture commemorating the Jews of Paris deported in 1942 (Source: French Dept. of the Army)

The sculpture above shows the “Square de la Place-des-Martyrs-Juifs-du-Vélodrome-d’Hiver, where a sculpture by Walter Spitzer and Mario Azagury entitled ‘N’oublions jamais’ (Let us never forget) remembers the victims of the roundup of Jews on 16 and 17 July 1942, at 8, Boulevard de Grenelle, 15th arrondissement of Paris. © Département AERI”

Paris in July

Along with many bloggers, I’m participating in “Paris in July,” a blog event hosted by Emma at the blog Words and Peace (link). My contribution today connects current events in Paris to the historic events of another July — July, 1942. 

Blog post © 2024 mae sander.

 

How Do You Live?

“You take many things from the world, but I wonder what you will give back in return?”

 (How do You Live? p. 127)

How Do You Live? by Genzaburō Yoshino (1899-1981), written in 1937, has been an influential book for generations of Japanese adolescents. The first translation into English was published very recently. Many readers — myself included — wanted to read it because of its influence on filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. His recent production The Boy and the Heron (which won an Oscar and is widely praised) refers significantly to the book, which is read by the film’s central character. I have loved Miyazaki’s films for a long time, and I’m eager to see this new one. Frustratingly, it has not yet been released on DVD or streaming, and no clear date has been announced. Note that the Japanese title is “How Do You Live?” clearly referring to the classic book.

The Novel

Copper, a fifteen-year-old middle-school student, is the central figure in How Do You Live? His home is in Tokyo and he attends a traditional Japanese boys’ school, where he deals with the typical problems of boys his age: notably with bullying of himself and his best friends. The chapters about Copper’s somewhat rough schooldays contrast vividly with chapters of calm, rather didactic advice and observations written or spoken by Copper’s uncle, his mother’s younger brother. 

The details of school and daily life, including the descriptions of the city, the boys’ clothing and school uniforms, and their homes is an interesting portrayal of a former time — though the most emphasis is on life in the school. Occasionally the author even offers a hint of the domestic life of Copper and his mother, for example, for a holiday called Higan:

“In the kitchen, as was her custom during Higan, his mother was hard at work with the maid, making ohagi, rice cakes covered with sweet red-bean paste, sesame, and other treats.” (p. 257)

A photo of Tokyo in 1936, from a collection in the Guardian.
If you read the book, I definitely recommend looking at these images. (source)

Before the War

Here’s what I can’t stop thinking about while reading: in the 1930s when the story takes place, Japan was experiencing the rise of a militaristic government. Their leaders would soon attempt to conquer the Asian world, having begun with the colonization of Korea (1910) and China (an active war by 1937) — and just a few years later continuing with the attack on the US base at Pearl Harbor and invasions throughout the Pacific. Surprisingly, I found no direct mention of this political and military situation in the book, perhaps because the author, a socialist, had already spent time in jail for his political views, and because a secret thought-police monitored all publications. 

The bullying incident central to the novel thus may have dual meaning in this situation. Here is one quote from the older students who threaten Copper and his friends:

“Make no mistake,” they insisted, “once they enter society, students with no love of school will surely become citizens with no love of country. People who don’t love their country are traitors. Therefore, we can say that students who don’t love their school are traitors in training. We must discipline any such fledgling traitors.” (p. 149)

With over 80 years of hindsight, a reader can’t help wondering how these fictional boys, including both bullies and victims, would have fared a few years later. Did they inevitably become soldiers? Were they heroic? How did they live? Or did they die? And have generations of future readers in Japan also wondered about their wartime fate? 

Of course this type of speculation is not a good way to read fiction that was written in the past, but it’s compelling to think about, in my opinion.

Rich Boys and Poor Boys

Copper and his mother live in a relatively modest home; they lost their more luxurious home when his father died a few years earlier. One of his friends is very wealthy, and one is very poor — a situation that leads to quite a few observations by Copper’s uncle about material goods and human well-being, for example:

“If nobody made anything, there would be no tastes, no pleasures—consumption would be impossible. The work of making things itself makes it possible for people to be truly human. This is not just a matter of food and clothing. In the academic world, in the art world, the producers are needed far more than the consumers.” (p. 140)

The educated and refined thoughts and observations of Copper’s uncle reveal a wide variety of historical and philosophical approaches to how the uncle hopes Copper will lead his life. He tells Copper about many great men, mostly westerners, including Copernicus after whom he chooses the nickname “Copper.” 

For another example, Cooper and his uncle have a long discussion of Napoleon’s rise and fall, with consideration of his military skill and leadership. Thus the author shows a variety of ways that both Copper and his uncle view a great man. His uncle sums up this discussion of Napoleon’s heroic life:

“Because no matter who the so-called hero is—whether it’s Napoleon or Goethe or even Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who ruled all of Japan in the sixteenth century, or General Nogi, who commanded the Japanese army during the war against Russia—all of them were born during this long, long march of human history and will die within it as well.” (p. 169)

 

Buddhism and Representations of the Buddha

While reading How Do You Live? I was constantly surprised at how thoroughly the cultural and historic facts considered central by Copper’s uncle were rooted in European culture rather than Japanese culture. One chapter in particular was striking, because it concerned the artistic roots of traditional sculpture representing the Buddha. Specifically, these roots began with Greek sculptors who lived in a particular area of Afghanistan after the conquest of Alexander the Great. At that time Buddhism was beginning to take hold as a major religion in Asia. During the initial centuries of Buddhism, Copper’s uncle pointed out, there were no sculptures depicting the Buddha with a human face. Then Greek traditional artists modeled the Buddha to look like the traditional figure of Apollo. 

Buddha from the 4th-5th Century BCE, in the Greek tradition. (source)

Here is part of the conversation between Copper and his uncle about the Greek artistic tradition and its effect on Buddhist sculpture throughout two thousand years:

“From his uncle’s explanation, Copper understood that Greeks were the first to produce Buddha statues. Despite that, to think that these Buddhist sculptures, which were so iconic of the East, were actually children of both Eastern and Western civilizations, naturally couldn’t help but give him a strange feeling. 

“‘So, Uncle, the Big Buddha at Nara is also like that?’ 

 

“‘That’s correct. That huge statue was made by Japanese people, but the skills to do so came from China. And China learned them from India. If you follow them back to the source, you end up at the Gandhara Buddhas again, and from there you are connected all the way to Greek sculpture.’” …

“‘When you think of how Greek civilization flowed right over all these natural barriers well over a thousand years ago, crossing the Chinese mainland and carrying as far as distant Japan—Copper, one can’t help but be truly surprised, don’t you think?’” (pp. 267-269)

 

The Great Buddha of Nara, 8th century. (Source)

The Central Thought of How Do You Live?

In the final chapter of the novel, the author makes his point about human responsibility to all fellow humans loud and clear. In Japan in 1937, this might have been a defiant and dangerous approach, and it might seem radical even now, if taken as a deep and thoughtful value. Specifically, Cooper says:

“I think there has to come a time when everyone in the world treats each other as if they were good friends. Since humanity has come so far, I think now we will definitely be able to make it to such a place. So I think I want to become a person who can help that happen.” (p. 275)

At the end, the author asks the reader: “How will you live?”

Blog post © 2024 mae sander, photos as credited.

 

The Setting Sun

About the corrupt and idle noble family, whose life in 1947 is portrayed in his book The Devil’s Flute Murders, mystery writer Yokomizo wrote:

"This was all before Osamu Dazai wrote his work Setting Sun, about the decline of the aristocratic class after the war, so we did not yet have ready terms like 'the sunset clan' or 'sunset class' to describe these people, newly bereft of their noble privilege and falling into ruin. But, if we had, then I think it likely that this case would have been the first to see the term used." (The Devil’s Flute Murders, p. 17).

I quoted this in my review of  Yokomiso’s book earlier this week, and then decided to read Osamu Dazai’s very famous book The Setting Sun, which in a way defined the postwar era as Yokomizu said. Luckily, I already owned this book, along with many other classic Japanese novels. 

Wonderful Japanese classics that I might read again, based on Haruki Murakami’s list.

In reading both Yokomizo’s detective novel and Dazai’s work of literary fiction, I learned that Japan before World War II had a class of titled aristocrats as well as an Emperor, and these aristocrats had much inherited wealth and did not perform productive labor. Noble families lived on large estates with a number of houses, sometimes designed in both Japanese and Western style. Like European aristocrats, the Japanese nobility relied on numerous servants, who cooked for them, served their meals, took care of their beautiful silk kimonos and other clothing, aired and folded their bedding in the morning, and filled their large bathtubs in the evening. The new Japanese constitution outlawed titles and hereditary peerage. The constitution took effect in May of 1947: the characters in both novels are highly aware of this official loss of status that they have experienced, or are experiencing during the events of the two books.

Also in 1947, conditions in bombed-out, burned-out cities were disastrous for rich and poor Japanese people. All necessities, including food, were very scarce for everyone, with black marketeers creating even more problems. Neither of these authors describe the plight of poor people, though one knows they existed, and in fact many lacked not only food but also shelter. Despite being somewhat better off than the poorest citizens (to whom they were suddenly equal before the law), the aristocrats in the novels felt very deprived: their former unearned standard of living simply could not be maintained. In both stories, the noble families include one relative with a bit of his fortune remaining — and the entire family wants to depend on this person. However, that doesn’t last long. 

In The Setting Sun, Dazai’s narrator is a 29 year old woman, Kazuko, who has formerly lived a completely idle and undemanding life with her mother and her recently deceased father. Her brother is missing in action somewhere in Pacific theater after the war, and when he appears, he’s quite a mess. 

Kazuko suddenly finds that she and her mother must move from their rather luxurious home in Tokyo to a small house far from the city they knew. At the insistence of her uncle, who more or less takes responsibility for them, she and her mother, and later her brother, must figure out how to live with no servants, and how to cope with postwar food shortages and other challenges. Her mother is good-natured, very passive, and doesn’t even try to understand what has happened, but assumes that she will continue to be cared for, fed, nursed, and be handed whatever she needs despite her sudden loss of status, money, and servants. She loves her son and her daughter, but fails to understand what they are going through.

Kazuko tries to insulate her mother by doing heavy farm labor to keep them supplied with vegetables, and by selling their valuables one by one: clothing and jewelry, etc. While her uncle tries to help them, he too is rapidly losing his sources of income (the details are vague: we don’t really ever know where their wealth came from previously). Her brother, after being repatriated from the former war zone, spends most of his time drunk; he becomes addicted to opium, takes any money they have, and often goes to Tokyo where he has disreputable friends with artistic careers but little moral character.

Choices are limited, and Kazuko descends into self-destructive behavior, attempting to become the mistress of a dissolute artist who maintains a Bohemian and corrupt lifestyle. Quite a bit of the short novel consists of the long letters she writes to this man, attempting to explain her position in society (or her lack of a position). It’s a very dark book, with an even darker ending. Her efforts to find herself are very fascinating, and I haven’t really captured the spirit of the book in these few paragraphs. It’s a portrait of a person deprived of the environment she had been accustomed to expect. At the same time it is a portrait of a society that has changed drastically and for the complacent aristocracy, has changed catastrophically.

My impression, based on both The Setting Sun and The Devil’s Flute Murders, is that Japan was lucky to be rid of the idle and unproductive nobles, who were effectively living as self-indulgent parasites. This impression is based solely on the two books, and I think this was the intention of both authors. It’s amazing to imagine this long-ago and very alien era compared to dynamic and democratic life in Japan today — if I am not misinformed! I wonder if the few nations on earth that still maintain such an idle class would be lucky if some catastrophe had rid them of these parasites. Finally, I wonder about our own billionaires and how their excessive lifestyle will be able to continue!

Review © 2023 mae sander.

The Culinary Historians Commemorate World War II

The theme of the summer dinner of the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor was
The Kitchen Front in World War II.

We gathered around the table to introduce our contributions, which were characteristic of food during wartime rationing and shortages.

One member also brought the US Flag from the memorial service for her late father, a WWII veteran.

Frugal Desserts in a time of sugar and butter rationing

Mock Cheesecake made with condensed milk and no additional sugar.
This was quite delicious!

“Surprise Spice Cake” uses tomato soup to make up for some of the missing fat and sugar.
I believe that people still make this recipe from time to time.

The dessert table, including a bread pudding and an eggless chocolate cake.

Parsnip pudding with a hint of sugar and cocoa. (Full disclosure: I didn’t try this one!)

The Drinks Table

Lemonade, iced tea, and coffee with chicory: drinks that fit the wartime theme.
The venue has no liquor license so we were not allowed to bring wine.

Main Courses and Sides

To my surprise, not one dish on the well-stocked table included the most famous war-era food, that is, SPAM! Macaroni, noodles, potatoes, and beans all did appear in various forms, as did one big dish of garden vegetables representing the Victory Gardens which were planted by a remarkable percent of the population in the US. 

UPDATE: a better-informed member of the Culinary Historians points out that SPAM was mainly available as rations for the troops during the war, and only widely sold for consumers afterwards, though the book I read did mention a household recipe for green peppers stuffed with SPAM.

A noodle hot dish with bacon that remained a favorite in the family of this CHAA member.

Potato salad with buttermilk dressing rather than mayonnaise — my contribution.
I found the recipe in the book Grandma’s Wartime Kitchen, which I wrote about last month (link)

Carrot and potato mash. I’m not sure why this was a wartime dish, as potatoes were not scarce.

Novelty meat roll: beef and pork surrounding a grated carrot filling.

The contributor of this macaroni salad said she did not know who “Judy” was,
but found the recipe on a random website.

Bacon, Leek, and Potato Turnovers.

The Joy of Cooking and Some Ration Books

Alongside a cucumber salad, here’s a copy of the 1943 edition of the Joy of Cooking!

The 1943 Joy of Cooking added a section on wartime food preparation.

These ration cards were in the attic of one of the members’ grandmothers.

Blog post and photos © 2023 mae sander.

 

Reading

A quick read: Sarah Caudwell’s light-hearted mystery novel The Sirens Sang of Murder (published 1989). Improbably, this book is about a group of lawyers and financial advisers, and is chock-a-block full of really uninteresting details about British tax law. The characters are somewhat eccentric, and the plot, though somewhat thin, is not too bad. What kept me reading was some of the funny British eccentric parody. Some examples:

• “The chagrin of a woman displaced in her lover’s affections is as nothing compared with that of a barrister superseded in the favour of a leading firm of solicitors.” (p. 15)
• “We were driving through one of those bits of France where the hills have vines growing all over them and the names on the signposts make you feel as if you’re driving through the wine list in a rather high-class restaurant.” (p. 165)
• “It seems to us that the readers who want fiction to be like life are considerably outnumbered by those who would like life to be like fiction.” (p. 11)
• “I told her she was talking bilge, because even if she isn’t being followed, it doesn’t mean she’s loopy. People do follow people, so if you think you’re being followed by someone and you’re not, that’s not being loopy, it’s just being wrong—being loopy is if you think you’re being followed by purple elephants, unless you are of course.“ (p. 51)

I have read one other of this series of novels, titled Thus was Adonis Murdered. I may not read more.

Finding more books to read.

My stack of library books ready to check out. This branch library is architecturally beautiful, and serves many purposes besides the traditional library functions. The low bookcases make it very spacious looking.

First Library Book I Read.

"A 'historical novel' is a novel which is set fifty or more years in the past, and one in which the author is writing from research rather than personal experience." -- Historical Novel Society

This excellent and concise definition applies well to each of the historical novels by Susan Vreeland that I have read. Lisette’s List (published 2014) is set in Paris and in a village in Provence beginning as World War II was threatening to begin, in 1937, and continuing until the post-war era. The characters suffer numerous bereavements and deprivations during the war, particularly the loss of many men who have gone to fight. 

Villagers in the novel suffer from the lack of many essentials, such as gasoline for transportation and such as construction materials. There are many descriptions of the food shortages they experience, even though they live in an agricultural village: a French version of the wartime rationing that I wrote about earlier this week. However, the author downplays many of the atrocities of the war: vicious Nazi reprisals happened in other villages, not this one, and serious issues of the occupation, especially of the disloyal collaboration by French citizens, are glossed over in order to create a more romantic story. This soft-pedaling of wartime suffering is a flaw of the book.

For me, reading Lisette’s List evokes many memories, as over the years I have visited Paris and a number of cities and villages in the area where the story takes place. I also love the artists who are at the center of the story: Chagall, Pissarro, Cézanne, and Picasso and works by these painters all are important to the narrator. Lisette actually (fictitiously of course) meets Chagall and his wife as they are fleeing the Nazis; another character, her husband’s elderly grandfather, shares his own memories of the impressionist painters, as well as owning several of their paintings, which play a major role in the novel.

The beauty of France and the losses caused by the war are central to the novel, and to the title character/narrator, Lisette. She is a warm, intelligent and deeply thoughtful human being. Her day-to-day experiences and her deep passions are portrayed in a fascinating way, mingled with larger themes of art and history. Tomorrow I will post some photos illustrating the novel's connection to my memories and experiences in the French countryside.

Note: I found a good review with images of the paintings and places that appear in the novel here: American Girls Art Club.

One of Chagall’s painting that Lisette loves.

More Library Books.

More library books that I intend to read: another historical novel, a Donna Leon mystery, and a history book.

Also, I watched a film.

A great Paris classic: Irma la Douce.

Blog post © 2023 mae sander

Shared with the Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz.

World War II and how people coped

As I wrote yesterday (here), our local Culinary Historians' summer dinner will have the theme of food during World War II. Therefore,  I've been reading about the way that Americans coped with wartime shortages, rationing, and patriotic demands to make do with less. Support for the war effort was broad and deep, beginning on Sunday, December 7, 1941, when the attack on Pearl Harbor definitively brought the nation into the war that was already ongoing in both Asia and Europe. Even individuals who were quite young remembered where they were and how they heard the news, and (for children) how their parents reacted. 

Mobilization of American forces and industrialization to build all the machinery of war took place with incredible speed. Food resources, obviously, were critical for supporting the vast build-up and training program to create fighting forces. Women (mostly) with a responsibility to cook meals for their families realized quickly that food supplies would be a problem, and many started buying staple foods in large quantities. Shortages and spiraling prices seemed inevitable, and the government responded. Sugar was  rationed in May, 1942, and other commodities like coffee and meat were rationed later on that year. 

Creating Price Controls and Rationing

Economist John Kenneth Galbraith was put in charge of price controls for the federal government; across-the-board controls were instituted in the spring of 1942, and remained in effect until 1946.

In an oral history given to Studs Terkel for the book "The Good War," a set of interviews done in the early 1980s, Galbraith said:

"There was an enormous opportunity for expanding output as distinct from raising prices. In the war years, consumption of consumer goods doubled. Never in the history of human conflict has there been so much talk of sacrifice and so little sacrifice. ... The war... had almost unanimous support from the people. There was a strong objection to people who tried to circumvent controls. There was a black market, but it was small. There were troublesome moments in the case of meat, but there was a great deal of obloquy attached to illegal behavior." (Terkel, p. 323)

Terkel's interviewees mainly discussed other, broader issues about the war, but a few mentioned rationing and how their communities dealt with it. For example, he interviewed a woman named Sheril Cunning, who was seven years old when the war started, and was living in Long Beach, California. She said:

"My mother and all the neighbors would get together around the dining-room table, and they'd be changing a sugar coupon for a bread  or a meat coupon. It was like a giant Monopoly game. It was quite exciting to have all the neighbors over and have this trading and bargaining. It was like the New York Stock Exchange." (Terkel, p. 238)

The text on this War Ration Book warns against trading coupons!

Another woman, Georgia Gleason of Seneca, Illinois, described working in a restaurant that fed 900 to 1200 factory workers. Her view was;

"What bothered most people about the war was the rationing. They couldn't have everything they wanted. But they all survived it. It was fun, being young, with all that excitement." (Terkel, p. 311)

What did rich people do? 

Most of what I have read focuses on the wartime cooking of middle-class American housewives, who were mainly patriotic and committed to contributing to the war effort by complying with the letter and spirit of the laws about food, as well as contributing in many other ways. Curious about how wealthier people reacted, I checked some columns in the New Yorker magazine from the 1940s, when the magazine was exaggeratedly targeted to well-off New York City residents. A food writer named Sheila Hibben wrote a regular column titled "Markets and Menus" which gave shopping advice for finding luxury foods in the high-end shops of New York. Here is a quote from this column early in 1942:

"The food-shop people these days are so bent on showing new substitutes for practically everything on earth that they hardly give you a chance to keep up your acquaintance with old standbys, even though many of these seem to be holding out nicely. Wartime pâtés de foie gras, for example, are all right for what they are, and their makers can be congratulated for showing such resourcefulness, but that's not saying a wartime pâté will do any more for a dry Martini than a bit of anytime smoked trout."

Hibben continues this article with a number of recommendations for merchants in New York that were offering high-quality smoked fish. I don't need to belabor the point about how different this is than the things I've read giving advice to ordinary housewives! 

Here's Hibben's advice about entertaining despite rationing: her column from June 12, 1943, subtitled "Doing Nicely" --

"Now that the panic about running short of ration points is over, most people are realizing that, by making a few adjustments it still is quite feasible to entertain in a modest way. Mussels may have to be substituted for roast beef and duckling for a leg of lamb, but for those who prefer a little butter in the company of good friends to more butter all by themselves, rationing and guests can be made to go together quite nicely. The fact is, and we might as well face it, that hostesses who use rationing as an excuse for not inviting us to dinner probably weren't going to invite us to dinner anyway."

A long discussion of how to supply one’s dinner guests with a variety of mixed drinks, such as the julep, then follows. Hibben mentiones that "stocks of bourbon are running mighty low and… getting hold of a drinkable gin has been a chore for some time." Oh, the problems of rich people! I found these little vignettes a fascinating contrast to the challenges to the common people who just wished they could make a Sunday roast and bake a cake the way their mothers had done. Not to mention those who were even more unfortunate — such as the young American soldiers going to war, the Europeans and Asians whose homes had become battle grounds, and the victims of Nazi persecution and death camps. 

Blog post © 2023 mae sander

World War II: Dealing with Scarcity

The coffee ration from 1942 to 1943 in the US was one pound every 5 weeks per person.
Ships to transport coffee (and naval protection for them) could be put to better use. 

Next month is the summer potluck dinner of the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor (CHAA). The theme of this year's dinner is 

"The Kitchen Front in WWII: Home Gardens, Rationing and Eating for Victory."

This is a very intriguing topic! I have started looking at books that describe what it was like to cook when many key foods were severely rationed, and many others were in short supply. About the era, M.F.K. Fisher wrote this:

"There are very few men and women, I suspect, who cooked and marketed their way through the past war without losing forever some of the nonchalant extravagance of the Twenties. They will feel, until their final days on earth, a kind of culinary caution: butter, no matter how unlimited, is a precious substance not lightly to be wasted; meats, too, and eggs, and all the far-brought spices of the world, take on a new significance, having once been so rare. And that is good, for there can be no more shameful carelessness than with the food we eat for life itself. When we exist without thought or thanksgiving we are not men, but beasts."

Wartime in the US: A Few Books 

Grandma's Wartime Kitchen: World War II and the Way We Cooked by Joanne Lamb Hayes.
Based on an academic study of American adaptation to wartime scarcity and rationing.
Although the recipes are somewhat adapted, they give a good idea of how people ate. 

How to Cook a Wolf by M.F.K. Fisher. Written near the beginning of the war.

M.F.K.FIsher wrote this book in 1942, before the actual experience of rationing and wartime shortages was a grim reality. Many of her suggestions are either very theoretical and not very believable or else based not on general scarcity but on experiences of poverty and want of good materials to cook because one couldn’t afford them. Here are a couple of very interesting observations that she included:

• “Perhaps this war will make it simpler for us to go back to some of the old ways we knew before we came over to this land and made the Big Money. Perhaps, even, we will remember how to make good bread again.”
• “In times of war, however, puddings can be pesky nuisances. If you are cooking for people who feel that because they ate some such sweet desserts once a day when they were young, they must perforce eat them once a day when they are middle-aged and working like everything to save democracy, you will be hard put to it to make their prejudices fit your food bill. Eggs and cream and cinnamon, not to mention fuel needed for long slow bakings, have suddenly become rare and precious things to be used cunningly for a whole meal or a weekly treat, not as the routine and unctuous final fillip to a pre-war dinner.” 
• “It is often a delicate point, now, to decide when common sense ends and hoarding begins. Preparing a small stock of practical boxed and canned goods for a blackout shelf, in direct relation to the size of your family, is quite another thing from buying large quantities of bottled shrimps and canape wafers and meat pastes, or even unjustified amounts of more sensible foods.” 

Although How to Cook a Wolf is always mentioned as a book about food issues in World War II, as I actually read it, I realized that it’s really something completely different! It has lots of advice, but it doesn’t really document the wartime experience of Americans on the homefront, which is what I’m looking for at the moment. As a work of food literature, however, it’s very well-worth reading.

"Your Share: How to prepare appetizing, healthful meals with foods
available today." by Betty Crocker.
A copy of many pages of this original 1943 pamphlet is here.

What I've Learned So Far

Most citizens in the US were both patriotic and resourceful, and made the best of a difficult situation. However, there were many challenges to middle-class families: severe restrictions on coffee, meat, cheese, canned goods (to save metal), fats (needed for manufacturing explosives), sugar (because it was mainly brought from overseas and the ships were needed for war), and a few other commodities. Eggs, fresh milk, fruits, vegetables, and Spam were not rationed, but were at times scarce, and in fact markets were apt to run out of many types of goods, especially imported goods like spices or bananas.

Ingenuity was required of anyone who wanted to cook and eat -- unless one had enough money to eat in restaurants, where no rationing was applied. Home owners and renters with space planted Victory Gardens to grow vegetables to eat in summer and to put away for winter, so there are many recipes and explanations of safe canning processes. American cuisine was very centered on meat then, as it still is, so the small meat rations caused real difficulties. Most of the cooking, canning, and shopping was done by women, even those who had assumed full-time paid labor in war-supporting industries where the male workers had become soldiers. Author Hayes describes women who worked in a factory all day and returned home to cook dinner for their family and then gather and can vegetables from their garden until late at night.

Looking for a recipe that would make a good potluck contribution for the CHAA dinner, I was not enthusiastic about most of the choices in these books. The limitations on available products are part of this problem, but I think my reaction also has to do with the considerable change in culinary styles and tastes from that time to this. Much blander and plainer dishes were expected then, compared to what I currently expect to cook or to eat when visiting other people. Meat-centered meals were the norm, so most of the recipes are trying to make up for the small quantities by adding other substances to meat loaf, or by using what was available, for example by making the stuffing for green peppers with Spam.

Above all, this project makes me conscious that even in the worst of times. some people are more privileged than others. The middle-class or wealthy housewives who could pay for the meat and butter that they were allowed by ration points were definitely better off than poorer citizens, better off than most Black Americans, and dramatically better off than the Japanese who were in the shameful detention camps. And in Europe, the war caused hardships that made these middle-class Americans look positively fortunate. Clearly, my project focus is about just a single part of the American population.

Blog post  © 2023 mae sander

For another post on this subject, 

see the follow-up post, World War II and how people coped