Frozen Food and National Socialist Expansionism

Abstract

Fast freezing, developed from the 1920s, preserved food quality, taste, and appearance better than earlier techniques. After 1933, the National Socialists encouraged fast freezing in Germany because it promised to solve wartime supply problems and aligned with their ideas about modernity, efficiency, and centralization. During World War II, they used freezing to integrate the agricultural products of occupied and allied areas into a continental European economy (Grossraumwirtschaft) under German control. Although occupied populations might have been expected to reject the German-led spread of fast freezing, French responses to these initiatives suggest that some occupied people interpreted them more positively. French experts saw German fast freezing as a continuation of pre-war projects and an investment for the post-war, when they hoped to see France use new infrastructures to gain a pivotal position in a broader European food economy. After surveying alignments between National Socialist expansionism and fast freezing, this article examines reactions to German initiatives in the La Rochelle area on the western coast of France. The French case suggests that local reactions to German involvement in fast freezing were more complex than simple collaboration or, alternately, a juxtaposition of expansionist ambition and local resentment. Wartime formed part of longer patterns of transnational development, transfer, and exchange, and interactions during World War II may have opened the door for the spread of freezing in subsequent years.

Keywords:

• Frozen food
• National Socialism
• occupation of France 1940–4
• fast freezing
• expansionism

Acknowledgements

Research for this article was supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). The author would also like to thank the Global Food History peer reviewers for their most insightful comments.

Notes

¹ Such a purchase was somewhat surprising for Hitler’s nationalist regime. Thoms, “The Innovative Power of War: The Army, Food Sciences and the Food Industry in Germany in the Twentieth Century,” 256 and Thoms, “The Introduction of Frozen Foods in West Germany and Its Integration into the Daily Diet,” 205–6.

² Emblik, “Die Bedeutung der Gefrierkonserve”, 89.

³ Finstad, “Familiarizing Food”, 28–9.

⁴ Ziegelmayer, “Praktische Grossraumwirtschaft der deutschen Heeresverwaltung,” 66–8.

⁵ See Claflin, “Les Halles and the Moral Market”, 82–92.

⁶ Thoms, “Introduction,” 201–2. On the historiography of food, see e.g. Claflin and Scholliers, Writing Food History: A Global Perspective and Pilcher, “Introduction,” In The Oxford Handbook of Food History, xvii–xxviii.

⁷ Thoms, “‘Ernährung ist so wichtig wie Munition.’”, 207–30; Thoms, “Innovative Power”; Thoms, “Introduction” and Thoms, “Zum Konzept der Ernährung”, 89–112.

⁸ Collingham, The Taste of War, 492. On National Socialist food policy beyond freezing, see Corni, Hitler and the Peasants and Gerhard, Nazi Hunger Politics.

⁹ Pelzer-Reith and Reith, “Fischkonsum und „Eiweisslücke“ im Nationalsozialismus,” 4–26.

¹⁰ Finstad, “Familiarizing Food,” 22–45.

¹¹ Claflin, “Les Halles” and Claflin, “La Villette, la viande” 53–79.

¹² Milward, The New Order and the French Economy, chap. 11; Mouré, “Food Rationing and the Black Market, 262–82; Mouré and Schwartz, “On vit mal”, 261–95 and Veillon, Vivre et survivre en France.

¹³ Spiekermann, “Twentieth-Century Product Innovations, 305.

¹⁴ Ibid., 306.

¹⁵ Ibid., 307.

¹⁶ Ibid., 311.

¹⁷ Ibid., 310 and Thoms, “Innovative Power,” 256. Such film was called “Cellophan” (Oberkommando des Heeres, Zubereitung der Kost, iv.i.) or “Viskosefolie” (Verein Deutscher Ingenieure, Gefrier-Taschenbuch, 62).

¹⁸ Thoms, “Introduction,” 204.

¹⁹ Ibid.

²⁰ Oberkommando des Heeres, Feldkochbuch, 7. Cf. Thoms, “Ernährung,” 210.

²¹ On Ziegelmayer, see Thoms, “Ernährung,” 212 and Thoms, “Konzept,” 90–1.

²² Ziegelmayer, Unsere Lebensmittel und ihre Veränderungen, 155.

²³ Ibid.

²⁴ Ziegelmayer, Rohstoff-Fragen der deutschen Volksernährung, 242.

²⁵ The square box was part of the innovation. Kurlansky, Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man, 145–6.

²⁶ Ziegelmayer, Lebensmittel, 155.

²⁷ Plank, “Die Frischhaltung von Lebensmitteln durch Kälte,” 139–41 and Wilson, Consider the Fork, 224.

²⁸ Thoms, “Introduction,” 208.

²⁹ Ziegelmayer, Rohstoff-Fragen, 242. Cf. Ziegelmayer, “Die Entwicklung industriell zubereiteter Lebensmittel”, 1–4.

³⁰ Thoms, “Introduction,” 204.

³¹ Spiekermann, “Innovations,” 310–11.

³² Mosolff, “Der Aufbau der deutschen Gefrierindustrie,”: 596. Cf. Kurlansky, Birdseye, 161.

³³ Pelzer-Reith and Reith, “Fischkonsum,” 13.

³⁴ Thoms, “Introduction,” 205. Solo-Feinfrost was a German affiliate of Unilever. Pelzer-Reith and Reith, “Fischkonsum,” 13. On Unilever in the Third Reich, see Forbes, “Multinational Enterprise, ‘Corporate Responsibility’”, 149–67 and Wubs, “Unilever’s Struggle for Control”, 57–84.

³⁵ Mosolff, “Aufbau,” 597.

³⁶ Ibid.; Pelzer-Reith and Reith, “Fischkonsum,” 13 and Thoms, “Introduction,” 207.

³⁷ Hellmann, Künstliche Kälte, 109–18 and Heßler, “Mrs. Modern”, 373–79.

³⁸ Werbeleiter, vol. 4–5 (1939): 62 cited in Heßler, Mrs. Modern, 379.

³⁹ Hellmann, Künstliche, 117.

⁴⁰ Heßler, Mrs. Modern, 187, 366.

⁴¹ Hellmann notes that there was more freezing activity undertaken in this era than there would be again until the 1970s. Künstliche, 116.

⁴² On connections between food, hunger, war, and the Holocaust, see Gerhard, Nazi Hunger Politics.

⁴³ Adolf Hitler, Speech of May 23 1939, document 539, Noakes and Pridham, eds., Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination, 737.

⁴⁴ Ibid.; Chris Otter, “The British Nutrition Transition”, 815.

⁴⁵ Mosolff, ed., Tiefkühl-ABC, 4. Also cited in Thoms, “Introduction,” 204.

⁴⁶ Plank, “Frischhaltung,” 161.

⁴⁷ Ziegelmayer, Rohstoff-Fragen, 314.

⁴⁸ “6. Tagungsbericht der Arbeitsgemeinschaft ‘Ernährung der Wehrmacht’,” August 21 1942 (Bundesarchiv-Militärchiv Freiburg, RH 9/11).

⁴⁹ Oberkommando des Heeres, Feldkochbuch, 103.

⁵⁰ Ibid., 104.

⁵¹ Ziegelmayer, Die Feldküchengerichte.

⁵² Ibid., 97.

⁵³ Freezing information was also published in e.g. Verein Deutscher Ingenieure, Gefrier-Taschenbuch; Mosolff, Tiefkühl-ABC.

⁵⁴ Emblik, “Gefrierkonserve,” 89, 93.

⁵⁵ Ibid., 89. Under German control, the frozen portion of Norwegian fish exports increased from 10 to 65 percent between 1940 and 1943. Pelzer-Reith and Reith, “Fischkonsum,” 20.

⁵⁶ Emblik, “Gefrierkonserve,” 90.

⁵⁷ Ibid.

⁵⁸ Ibid., 92.

⁵⁹ Ibid.

⁶⁰ Ibid., 93. Developing refrigerated and frozen food transportation and distribution networks was a renewed priority after 1945. Thoms, “Introduction,” 208–9.

⁶¹ Emblik, “Gefrierkonserve,” 89.

⁶² Ziegelmayer, “Grossraumwirtschaft,” 66.

⁶³ Milward, New Order, 255.

⁶⁴ Piettre, “Inauguration des entrepôts frigorifiques”, 773.

⁶⁵ A full account of German involvement in French agriculture is beyond the scope of this article. See Brandt, Schiller, and Ahlgrimm, Management of Agriculture and Food and Milward, New Order, chap. 9.

⁶⁶ Brandt was a University of Berlin professor of agriculture who left for the USA in 1933. In 1945/46, he became the economic adviser to the Chief of Food and Agriculture of the US Military Government in Germany. Though he displayed keen insight into agricultural conditions, Brandt’s report tended to view German policies in France as relatively benign or comprehensible. He based his conclusions on “eyewitnesses to the agricultural and food administration of the occupied territories willing to co-operate.” Brandt, Schiller, and Ahlgrimm, Management, xxv.

⁶⁷ Ibid., 514.

⁶⁸ Ibid., 515.

⁶⁹ Ibid., 520. On rural labour, see Milward, New Order, 259–60.

⁷⁰ Brandt, Schiller, and Ahlgrimm, Management, 520.

⁷¹ Ibid., 521.

⁷² Ibid., 511.

⁷³ Radtke-Delacor, “Produire pour le Reich”, 112.

⁷⁴ Brandt, Schiller, and Ahlgrimm, Management, 520.

⁷⁵ Bloch, “La crise de la pêche maritime (I)”, 234–59 and Bloch, “La crise de la pêche maritime (II)”, 396–419.

⁷⁶ “Décret relatif à l’encouragement de la congélation des viandes métropolitaines,” 1 July 1938, Journal officiel de l’état français, 2 July 1938, 7739.

⁷⁷ “Crise du troupeau national: organisation de l’élevage,” Journal officiel de la République française, parliamentary debates, senate (1938): 631.

⁷⁸ Maurice, “Mesures pour l’intensification”, 214.

⁷⁹ Jouve, “Services vétérinaires sanitaires”, 152–3.

⁸⁰ Piettre, “Organisation de la production agricole”, 677.

⁸¹ Ibid., 678. Franco–German exchange in refrigeration and freezing also involved German Carl Linde, who had started a refrigeration equipment company in 1879. Founder of the German Refrigeration Association, he was a driving force behind the International Refrigeration Institute, founded in Paris in 1908. Thoms, “Introduction,” 203.

⁸² Piettre, “Ravitaillement complémentaire” 335–6. Argentina provided meat to France from the later nineteenth century. See Arnoux, “Le rôle des Français”, 92–3.

⁸³ Piettre, “Ravitaillement,” 335.

⁸⁴ Ibid., 337–8.

⁸⁵ Ibid., 338.

⁸⁶ Ibid.

⁸⁷ Ibid.

⁸⁸ Piettre, “Inauguration,” 765.

⁸⁹ The first U-boat arrived in November 1941. Hellwinkel, Hitlers Tor zum Atlantik, 60–1.

⁹⁰ Piettre, “Inauguration,” 767.

⁹¹ Ibid., 766.

⁹² Ibid., 769.

⁹³ Ibid., 771.

⁹⁴ Ziegelmayer, “Grossraumwirtschaft,” 66. Cf. Ziegelmayer, Rohstoff-Fragen, 314.

⁹⁵ Ziegelmayer, “Grossraumwirtschaft,” 67.

⁹⁶ Piettre, “Inauguration,” 771.

⁹⁷ Ibid. Apparently, the absence of a ventilation system meant rather inconsistent shipment temperatures.

⁹⁸ Piettre, “Technique et hygiène”, 47.

⁹⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰⁰ Piettre, “Ravitaillement,” note 1, 338.

¹⁰¹ “Rôle d’Henri Monthulet pour maintenir la société en activité pendant la guerre 1939–1945,” report, [1945] (Archives de la Vendee [henceforth ADV]: 97J/182).

¹⁰² Piettre, “Technique,” 46.

¹⁰³ Monthulet represented the third generation of a family that began in grain and later provided refrigerated meat for the army during World War I. In the interwar, they developed fish and vegetable canning interests, and the company became Les Eleveurs Vendéens in 1937. See introduction to the Monthulet family papers (ADV, series 97J).

¹⁰⁴ Monthulet, “Rôle d'Henri Monthulet,” 2 (ADV: 97J/182).

¹⁰⁵ Ibid., 1. The Majestic Hotel housed the German military administration headquarters in Paris.

¹⁰⁶ Ibid., 2.

¹⁰⁷ The previous year, Piettre had suggested that modifications would make the abattoir more efficient. Ibid., 1 and Piettre, “Technique,” 46–7.

¹⁰⁸ Piettre, “Ravitaillement,” 337.

¹⁰⁹ Piettre, “Technique,” 54.

¹¹⁰ It should be noted that “frigorifique” could refer to either refrigeration or freezing, or both. The decree creating this committee on 15 July 1941 is cited in “Exploitations frigorifiques,” Journal official de l’Etat français (1942): 1754.

¹¹¹ Bouny, “Voyage au pays du froid artificiel”.

¹¹² Ibid.

¹¹³ Ibid., 3.

¹¹⁴ Thoms, “Introduction,” 208.

¹¹⁵ Ibid.

¹¹⁶ Milward, New Order, 255–6.

¹¹⁷ Ibid., 256.

¹¹⁸ This process could be indirect. In Norway, for instance, large German plants were disassembled and the equipment spread among smaller freezing facilities. Finstad, “Familiarizing Food,” 24.