Monday, September 01, 2008

This Just In: Germany Prepares for War

... Germany is storing enough of what it already has to last out a two years’ siege (just in case Russia marches through Czechoslovakia); and what Germany hasn’t got, it is brilliantly inventing. Thus articles marked Reine Wolle (pure wool) now contain twenty-five per-cent pure wool and seventy-five per-cent pure something else. Automobile tires are an Ersatz composition of old rubber and a coal-oil compound, are very good indeed, cost ten percent more than the real article, and, like it, are at the moment unprocurable. ... Though edible grains may no longer be fed to livestock, even this summer's exceptionally fine wheat, rye, barley, and oat crops will not suffice for man, and winter bread will contain corn.

--Janet Flanner, The New Yorker, September 1, 1937

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