GERMANY: The Great Gourmand

The occasion was the Harvest Thanksgiving Day. The place was the Berlin Sportspalast where Adolf Hitler had commented four days before on German victories. The speaker this time was Reich Marshal Hermann Göring. The subject was Göring’s favorite: Food.

If there is starvation in Europe this winter, it will not affect Germany. Said Göring: “The German people come before all other peoples for food.” If Germans are away from home garrisoning their new order, they will not suffer. Said Göring: “The whole German Army is fed from conquered countries.”

There was a hint in Göring’s speech that because of two bad wartime harvests there would be difficulty in feeding more than “6,000,000 foreign workers in Germany and over 5,000,000 prisoners of war.” The fate of starving millions in occupied territories he skipped. On his own food troubles he made no comment. But Turkish fishermen did. They reported that one of Göring’s planes visited Istanbul every Thursday and loaded up with lobsters (at $7.50 each) and caviar (at $15 a pound).