Drink

by Iain Gately

France folded against the Nazi blitzkrieg within two months. In the scramble for excuses, the wine ration was singled out for special abuse. France had failed because its soldiers had been drunk at critical moments. Under the terms of its armistice, the country was divided into occupied and unoccupied zones. The Germans took back the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine outright and occupied north and northwestern France and its entire Atlantic coast. The remaining 40 percent of the country was left under the Vichy regime of Marshal Philippe Pétain. Vichy France moved quickly against drinking. Pétain, who had written eulogies to pinard prior to the war, now blamed alcoholism for “undermining the will of the army.” In August 1940 the sale of booze was prohibited “in cafés and restaurants on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.” The same laws also introduced, for the first time in French history, a minimum drinking age: No one under fourteen was permitted to consume alcohol.

  More repressive legislation followed. In September 1941 drinking places were divided into five categories, ranging from those that sold no alcohol, through cafés offering beer and wine, to full-service bars. No new examples of this last category could be opened at all, and severe quotas were placed on all establishments serving drinks. In 1943 more legislation was introduced to aid enforcement: Prefects could close a café for up to three months and the secretary of the interior for up to a year “to preserve order and health.” In consequence of these measures, the number of drinking places in Vichy France fell by a third between 1940 and the end of the war.

  While the Vichy regime was denying wine to its own countrymen, the Germans who occupied France were helping themselves to it. They associated drinking with victory, rather than defeat, and shortly after the armistice Nazi agents were appointed for the Burgundy, Bordeaux, and Champagne regions. Their duties were to source fine wines for the German administration and its armed forces. Between them they managed to extract an average of nearly nine hundred thousand bottles a day for the duration of the occupation. Producers in each of the regions were obliged to sell their vintages to them at debased rates of exchange. Demand was vast, especially for champagne. More than two million bottles of it had been looted in the first fortnight of the occupation alone—a notable exception to the German policy of behaving well in occupied France. The agent selected for the Champagne region, Otto Klaebisch, was expected to source a further half-million bottles per week.

  Resistance, overt and covert, was immediate. Faced with the choice of selling their stocks of vintage champagne to the Germans, or relabeling the 1939, which was almost undrinkable, as “Special Cuvée for the Wehrmacht” they chose the latter course. François Taittinger, of the eponymous producer, was imprisoned for selling champagne so bad it tasted like “fizzy ditch water” to the Reich. He did not help his case by riposting, “Who cares? It’s not as if it’s going to be drunk by people who know anything about champagne!” when accused of the crime. His spirit was typical of the district. Since champagne was used to celebrate fresh Nazi victories, the destination to which it was shipped served as a clue as to where they would strike next. The French resistance passed this information on to British intelligence, who were warned of the impending North African campaign when they received the news in late 1941 that thousands of cases of fizz had been requisitioned for “a very hot country.”

  A similar spirit of defiance prevailed in Bordeaux and Burgundy. Whenever possible, trash wine was substituted for good, or barrels were drained of their vintages and filled with water before they were sent to Germany. Producers hid their best wine—in caves, under wood-piles, in walled-up cellars. They also sheltered Jews, a number of whom had owned vineyards in Bordeaux. Nazi policies toward Jews were applied in France: Their property was confiscated, or Aryanized, and they themselves were deported to concentration camps. The Vichy regime itself “Aryanized” several important Jewish-owned estates, notably those of Baron Philippe de Rothschild, proprietor of Château Lafitte and Château Mouton Rothschild, although this step was taken to keep them under nominally French control.

  The years 1939-41 were bad vintages in most French regions on account of the weather. Moreover, yields were low, so that in order to maintain their quotas producers were forced to sell their reserves. Delicacies such as Pol Roger ’28 were shipped to Germany, from whence they were dispersed to combat zones and private cellars. The redistribution of French wine was managed by Herman Goering, who was all for wringing France dry of its last drop of “bottled sunshine”: “In the old days, the rule was plunder. Now, outward forms have become more humane. Nevertheless, I intend to plunder, and plunder copiously.” He accumulated more than ten thousand bottles of prime French vintages (some of which was “ditchwater” relabeled) for his own cellar. The rest was directed to fellow officers in the Luftwaffe, the Werhmacht, and the Shutzstaffel, or SS.

  The SS were the executors of the Holocaust. In late 1941, the Nazis adopted a program of genocide against Jews and other untermenschen (“subhumans”): “The Führer has ordered that the Jewish question be solved once and for all and that we, the SS, are to implement that order.” Initially, massacres were carried out with firearms. Women, children, and those too old to be used for slave labor were machine-gunned in batches and buried in communal graves. The work, however, sickened even the Aryan volunteers detailed to carry out the task. According to a Nazi report, “Many members of the Einsatzkommandos [SS death squads], unable to endure wading through blood any longer, had committed suicide. Some had even gone mad. Most of the members of these kommandos had to rely on alcohol when carrying out their horrible work.”

  The death squads were not the only wing of the SS to try to drown their humanity with drink. A portion of the vintages commandeered from France was supplied to the officials of concentration camps, where the process of exterminating untermenschen was expedited by the use of gas chambers. The selection of victims for the chambers was carried out by qualified doctors, who also supervised their operation and in some cases provided death certificates. The inconsistency of such activities with the Hippocratic oath need not be elaborated. According to their own accounts, doctors had to drink heavily in order to dull their feelings: “The selections [of people to be gassed] were mostly an ordeal. Namely to stand all night. And it wasn’t just standing all night—but the next day was completely ruined because one got drunk every time. . . . A certain number of bottles were provided for each section and everybody drank and toasted the others. . . . One could not stay out of it.” Auschwitz doctors also drank deep when off duty. The officers’ club was stocked with champagne and cognac, and they used these to acclimatize newcomers to the total absence of ethics. One old hand recalled the process: After a few glasses, an Auschwitz debutante would ask, “How can these things be done here?” Then there was something like a general answer . . . which clarified everything. “What is better for him [the prisoner]—whether he croaks in shit or goes to heaven in [a cloud of] gas?”

  Great Britain was the last European bastion against the Nazis. Throughout 1940 and 1941 it was attacked by waves of German bombers whose aim was to kill and cow as many civilians as possible, as much as to destroy military targets or attain the air superiority deemed necessary for an invasion. Shipping convoys carrying essential supplies to Britain were likewise bombed from the air, and torpedoed by German submarines, resulting in the imposition of rationing for the entire nation. As had been the case in World War I, austerity measures were introduced to preserve grain for food instead of brewing. This time, however, such measures recognized that alcohol could help morale on the home front. This more relaxed attitude toward drink was embodied in the figure of Sir Winston Churchill, who explained his philosophy thus: “My rule of life prescribe[s] as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after, and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.” Churchill usually began each day with a glass of champagne, 66 or a weak whisky and water. He drank wine with his lunch and dinner, and more whisky and water in between times. De
spite the steady intake, he was seldom intoxicated, indeed, expressed his abhorrence for the state: “My father taught me to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk.”

  Churchillian attitudes to alcohol permeated government. Booze was considered a necessity rather than a luxury. In May 1940, the minister for food set out the official position on wartime drinking, with regard to the nation’s favorite beverage: “It is the business of the government not only to maintain the life but the morale of the country. If we are to keep up anything like approaching normal life, beer should continue to be in supply even though it may be beer of a rather weaker variety than the connoisseurs would like.” The resulting brews were indeed feeble—Victorians would have hesitated to offer them to their children. They were, on average, a full 30 percent weaker than the typical nineteenth-century pint and, in the last year of the war, had an average OG of only 1034.5. They were also expensive. Beer duty more than doubled, raising the price of a pint from five pence prewar to a shilling at its conclusion. Supplies of this weak and costly substance were reduced by enemy action: In London alone, breweries receiving direct hits from German airplanes included Barclay Perkins, Taylor Walker, Whitbread, Watneys, Youngs, Fullers, Charringtons, Guinness, and Ind Coope. Pubs also suffered: By 1943 thirteen hundred throughout the country had been obliterated by enemy action.

  Austerity measures were also imposed on whisky makers in Scotland, restricting the amount of beverage alcohol they could produce. The larger distilleries kept going by producing industrial alcohol for propellants and explosives. Many of the small malt stills, however, were forced to close their doors. Although much of Scotland was spared the blitz, on September 29, 1940, one of the few Nazi bombs to fall on Edinburgh hit the warehouse of the Caledonian Distillery, destroying 1.2 million gallons of whisky. The following year distilleries were bombed in Glasgow and Greenock, and during the course of the war a further 4.5 million gallons of scotch in government storage were lost to Nazi air raids. Taxes were hiked on the little whisky available for sale: At the outbreak of war, the duty per gallon had been £3 12s 6d, or £4.12 in modern sterling. By 1943 it had nearly doubled to £7.87.

  While the high price of scotch was beyond the pockets of most Britons, it did not deter American servicemen, who had begun to arrive in the United Kingdom from 1942 onward, following Germany’s declaration of war against their country. In contrast to the position in the First World War, when Americans in uniform overseas had been expected to stay dry at all times, it was now anticipated that they would tipple when off duty, and to this end they were issued with a brief guide to British etiquette, which included advice on where and what to drink with their hosts. The where was in pubs: “A pub, or public house, is what we call a bar or tavern.” The what was whisky, which was admitted to be rare, or beer. The guide elaborated on the latter fluid, probably to forestall the inevitable disappointment that its readers would experience after their first sip of “bitter,” and also cautioned them not to drink too much, for although it was “now below peacetime strength, [it] can still make a man’s tongue wag at both ends.”

  The new relaxed attitude toward alcohol among the American high command was nowhere better demonstrated than in the material broadcast on official radio for the entertainment of the troops. The centerpiece of one wartime Christmas transmission was a “Temperance Lecture” delivered by W. C. Fields. Fields had made his reputation playing drunks in the movies and was famed for his bon mots on the subject of intoxication. His lecture, which would have been blasphemy to the ears of an ASL supporter, sketched a few comic incidents of his failure to stay dry and concluded, “Now, don’t say you can’t swear off drinking; it’s easy. I’ve done it a thousand times.” Clearly, it was now considered safe to represent tippling in a positive light to the troops.

  The entry of America into the war in Europe changed the course of the conflict. Superiority was attained in the air and at sea. Weapons and other materiel were shipped in huge quantities to Russia, which had joined the Allies against the Nazis in 1942, and whose troops were pressing in on Germany from the east. In 1944, American, Canadian, New Zealand, and British troops were gathered on the south coast of England to invade France. The British were prepped for their encounter with Gallic culture through the issue of a guidebook, Instructions to British Servicemen in France, which warned its readers not to expect to be drowned in celebratory drinks once they had crossed the Channel: “The Germans have . . . drunk the wine or distilled it into engine fuel. So there are only empty barrels to roll.” Moreover, “the idea of the French living in a glorious orgy of ‘wine, women, and song’ never was true, even before the war. The French drink wine as we drink beer. It is the national drink and a very good drink, but there was far less drunkenness in peacetime France than in peacetime England.” After explaining that wine would be rare and was different, the instructions, at the top of its list of don’ts, warned the 1944 generation of Tommies against knocking back too much of it: “Don’t drink yourself silly. If you get the chance to drink wine, learn to ‘take it.’”

  As the Allies liberated France during the course of 1944, they received a truly Gallic welcome. Bottles and barrels of alcohol hidden from the Germans were unearthed and offered around. Bars closed by the Nazis or the quisling Vichy regime served drinks once again, often after a symbolic liberation. Ernest Hemingway, over as a war correspondent, performed the ceremony at Jimmy’s American Bar in Paris. The Allies also captured German stockpiles of looted drink, some of which was carried back to Britain, to the chagrin of its customs officials. Duties on wines, beers, and spirits made an important contribution to the war effort. The Americans were perceived to be the worst offenders, not least of all because their camps were beyond the jurisdictionof British bureaucracy. After a thousand bottles of champagne were discovered in a U.S. airfield in Essex, the British Secret Service was detailed to investigate. Colonel J. H. Adam reported that “American officers are bringing wines and perfumes into this country without any Customs formality” and warned, “It will clearly not be long before British officers, realizing the position, will hand such articles to an American officer on the ‘plane’ and ask him to take them to London.” How could Britain expect to repay its lend-lease debts if its officers started to behave like American airmen?

  As the Allies approached the borders of the Third Reich, riding high on a wave of liberated alcohol, Germany’s civilians were plunged into drought. The output of domestic breweries had dried up under the pressure of Allied carpet bombing, and for lack of raw ingredients. The strength of beer had dropped precipitously, from a prewar average OG of 1048 for strong beer, to 1030 in 1942, to 1012 in 1943, or below the strength where its alcoholic content can generate intoxication. Brewing ceased altogether in 1944. German wine production was similarly affected. In 1942 the Hitler Youth had dug out all the hybrid vines in Alsace, to be replaced with Aryan strains. The luxury of time they had anticipated—a thousand-year Reich—was over three years afterward—too soon for the replacements to come into service. Domestic supplies of drink were further reduced to feed the Nazi war machine. Distilled alcohol was needed for munitions and as fuel, notably for the V2-rocket bombs. The small quantity of looted or stockpiled booze remaining was diverted to the armed forces and the Nazi elite.

  Indeed, the only parts of Germany where alcohol was freely available were those under Russian control. After their victory at Stalingrad in 1942, the Soviet armies had pushed the Nazis out of Russia and forced them back into their own territory. The dry policies of the Bolsheviks were a thing of the past: From 1942 onward, Russian soldiers were provided with a vodka ration of a hundred grams per man per day. It was issued in bottles and shared out among sections. The ration was intended to improve morale and to be a source of food: Prewar Soviet research into the nutritional benefits of alcohol had concluded that a small quantity gave the drinker a shot of energy and might therefore boost the performance of the fighting soldier. In the event, however, an allowance of vodka resul
ted in a culture of drunkenness among Red Army troops, who supplemented their rations with whatever came to hand, including industrial solvents and antifreeze. Large numbers were killed or incapacitated by such poisons, and intoxication was also responsible for numerous accidental shootings. By the time the Soviet armies entered Germany in 1945, their discipline had been visibly compromised by drinking. According to an allied observer attached to the Soviets, “Russians are absolutely crazy about vodka and all alcoholic drinks. They rape women, drink themselves into unconsciousness, and set houses on fire.”

  This culture was prevalent among officers as well as common soldiers. Intelligence reports on the performance of officers in the field employed the euphemism “went off to have a rest” to signify that their subjects had been blind drunk. There was plenty of temptation lying around, for the retreating Germans had left alcohol stocks intact, in the belief that a drunken army could not fight. This was a grave error: The Russians had so great an advantage in men, tanks, artillery, and aircraft that they could tolerate a degree of intoxication in the ranks, and the German civilian population, especially its women, suffered at the hands of drunken and vengeful Russians. Over two million were raped during the Soviet advance through Germany to Berlin.

  The scene in the capital of the Reich, in the last weeks before its fall, as the Russians fought from street to street toward its center, blasting buildings into rubble with their tanks and heavy artillery, was apocalyptic. In the Nazi bunkers, a kind of danse macabre occurred. The champagne flowed, and Nazi girls, determined to lose their virginity before a Russian stole it, engaged in drunken fornication with state officials and strangers. Hitler married his mistress, Eva Braun, celebrated the event with a champagne breakfast, then the couple shot themselves. Their bodies were laid in a shell crater and incinerated. Outside the bunkers, among the rubble and ruined houses, whose atmosphere was thick with dust and suffused with the stench of dead bodies, the Russian soldiers drank captured alcohol as if the world were about to end and hunted through the ruins for German soldiers and women. A snapshot of the chaos is provided by a letter written by Vladimir Borisovich Pereverzev, a Soviet front-line soldier, or frontski, in Berlin: