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Though the Reich will omit its Erntedankfest (Harvest Thanksgiving Festival) as a war measure, German bellies had reason to be thankful. It was reported by Minister of Agriculture Richard Walther Barre that the German grain harvest was only 2% below normal; root crops had broken all records (e.g., the potato yield: 2,203,000,000 bushels); only fruit, after a freezing winter, was seriously short. Even if the Germans were padding these figures for home consumption, Britain's authoritative Economist grimly admitted that Germany's food situation was all too satisfactory, warned against the inexplicably widespread tendency glibly to assume the contrary. (In occupied territories, on the other hand, the food situation worsened steadily: they were in for at least thin times, perhaps even relative starvation, this winter.)
Berlin announced that the incurably inventive Teutonic mind had not been idle: now out of the experimental stage was a process whereby coal, through hydrogenation and catalysis, came out "butter." The Reich Air Ministry, at Hitler's own suggestion, stirred up a weird brew of grape sugar, soybeans, cocoa, meat and kola-nut extract, cast it into a "Luftwaffe bar" for tired pilots. Quick freezing was being rapidly developed to offset shortage of metal and glass preserving containers, although few German shops have the refrigerators necessary to keep such produce. Eight types of practically nonalcoholic (between .3% and .48%) beer were being developed, presumably to conserve grains for war uses. There was even a Buck Rogers-like story of Army automobiles filling their gasoline tanks at water fountains, by means of a concentrated gasoline tablet.
Winter-relief collections, being one of the few "voluntary contributions" which are reasonably voluntary, provide some index of popular feeling. When German moppets turned in their red-&-white collection boxes after the first Sunday's campaign, their contents totaled a thumping 22,412,092 marks, up 95.5% over last year and indicating that the Germans:
1) expected a winter of severe hardship;
2) still were willing to stick together. It meant that millions of Germans who were not behind Hitler in anything else were cemented together in the dreary but compelling thought: "We lost the last war and starved for 20 years; what will happen to us if we lose this one?" Unlike British morale, it was merely negative; but it was enough for the moment.