The Great War - WW1
The German Home Front
The demands of war, with its greed for guns and shells, created an industrial revolution. New industries sprang up to feed the war machine, and with them new systems of working and new social problems; food shortages and rocketing prices, resentment at 'profiteers' and the maintenance of the wives and families of men serving in the armed forces.
Germans blamed the food shortages they endured throughout the war on the distant navel blockade maintained by the British. Unlike Britain, however, Germany had imported little or no food before the war. The main problem was caused by the departure of millions of men from the land into the army. In 1916 there was a bad harvest followed by a bitter winter in which root crops became a staple diet; known as the 'turnip winter'.
The food shortage concerned Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who by 1916 were the most powerful figures in Germany. Ludendorff presided over the establishment of a new body, the Kriegsamt, which organised the civilian manpower of Germany for war. In theory it could conscript all male labour between 18 and 60. In practice it bribed workers with higher wages.
But the food shortages haunted Germany right up until the end of the war.