Feeding the Reichswehr

How the German Army fills the belly it marches on was described in scientific detail last week by a Viennese food expert now in Manhattan. In the New York State Journal of Medicine Dr. Max Bernhard Gerson presented a summary of military food facts gleaned from almost two dozen German medical journals.

Sickly Recruits. In 1934, when Hitler was rebuilding the German Army, military doctors found that even in such healthy cities as Kiel, the number of perfect human specimens was "frightfully low"--only 12.6%. Only half the men examined in that district were sturdy enough to join the Army. Even among the most carefully selected men in the Air and Marine Corps, a high proportion suffered from tooth and mouth diseases caused by scurvy (lack of vitamin C). "Especially in evidence" were two types of nervous disorders: 1) constipation; 2) "soldier-heart."

Three Squares. Once the best men available were recruited, said Dr. Gerson, the Army spared no pains and expense to build them up. Each German soldier gets about 3,800 calories a day, the same number of calories required by a ditchdigger. The daily menu:

> Breakfast: strong coffee saturated with sugar, butter sandwiches with sausages and eggs. Soldiers too tired to eat must take cold sponge baths in the morning to stimulate their appetite.

> Lunch and dinner: potatoes prepared in many ways, Kommissbrot (bread made from coarse whole rye, rich in vitamin B), all sorts of cheeses, milk, sour milk or milk powder (it stays fresh for eight months), rice, beans, peas, oats and barley, dried vegetables, dried and preserved fruits. "Fresh vegetables are given in great quantities," and all cooking water is used again for soups and sauces to save vitamins and minerals.

Soldiers get little meat, but that is often nutritious heart, liver, kidneys, lungs. Since no restrictions are placed on food for the Army, Dr. Gerson thinks that meatless rations are not due to economic necessity, "but [to] the newer knowledge of the science of nutrition." German military doctors, for instance, claim that vegetarianism cures neuroses and depression, makes for greater efficiency. But U.S. scientists generally believe that vegetable proteins are poor substitutes for good red meat in building new body tissues. In the U.S. Army, soldiers get about 10 ounces of meat a day.

Food v. Pills. The Germans, says Dr. Gerson, believe that "a dollar will buy more vitamins in the market than in the drugstore." They do not add artificial vitamins to food, nor are Nazi soldiers fed vitamin pills. German doctors learned this lesson from an experiment in the Swiss Army, where soldiers were fed an artificial vitamin preparation (vitamins C and B. mineral salts, iron, dried yeast and a gelatinous sugar). Results: "Poor."

German nutritionists have found, says Dr. Gerson, that doses of artificial vitamins and minerals may act against each other. Example: large doses of vitamin A may drain the body's reserves of C, produce scurvy. The German soldiers get their vitamins in butter, rye bread, yeast extract, soybeans, vegetables, milk.

Sodium pills were tried several years ago to overcome fatigue, but were soon discarded, for "temporary relief is followed by increased weakening."

Food for Work. Soldiers with special tasks get special foods. Examples:

> Recruits receive an excess number of calories, but even so 70% of them lose weight because of unaccustomed hard labor.

> Soldiers in forts and those below the surface get food rich in the sunlight vitamin D--smoked fish, butter, eggs, milk, fat cheeses, etc.

> Parachutists get liver sausages, Swedish hardtack, vitamin C pills. They are the only men in the forces supplied with artificial vitamins.

> Troops in the tropics get frozen fruit preserves and milk powder; those in the Arctic get a mixture of meat and vegetable powders, milk powders and dried pressed fruits.

> A special preparation of fruit and grape sugar, powdered meat, fat, milk protein, vegetable vitamins and fruit essence is given to troops in the field to overcome dryness of the throat and thirst. Most troops carry with them a lemon powder to improve the taste of drinking water.

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