Abstract

Behind the Enemy Line

The German journal "V&ooml;lkischer Beobachter" reported on February 25, 1943, "recently an unscrupulous business man who had been selling meat surreptitiously was sentenced to death by the Darmstadt court. This will serve as a warning to all who were toying with the same idea." As one sees, the risks of operating on the black market in meat are much greater in Germany than in the United States. Nevertheless, not even the scaffold, plus German "organization," plus dictatorship, plus three and a half years of rationing, have been able to prevent it entirely. Day in and day out it is hammered into the German people that the era of privileges for the well-to-do is past. The most touted of the virtues of the new "total mobilization" is the fact that it affects everybody, without discrimination. Such statements may be propaganda, but to take them for merely propaganda would be completely to misunderstand the German situation.