Onward Kitchen Soldiers: Mobilizing Food on Germany’s World War I Homefront

“Spades and wooden spoons, these are the two things that when the war broke out, no one thought would become so important. Spades for digging trenches; Wooden spoons for the fight against England’s hunger-blockade. Of course, the battle with the wooden spoon is not nearly as life threatening as holding out in the trenches. But there is no doubt that combat with both weapons is of equal significance to Germany’s ultimate victory.”

These were the opening words of Dr. Martin Fassbender’s How You Should Live in Wartime! Published in 1915 as one of countless war-time food advice pamphlets, How You Should Live, was aimed at the nation’s housewives with the goal of enlisting their help on the German homefront. Reaching out to women through the rhetoric of patriotism and national defense, Fassbender detailed the urgency of nation-wide food reform as the key to not just survival, but to a victorious war’s end. In 1915 as the nation’s men were settling into trench warfare, German women began their own war of attrition – against privation and hunger in Europe’s first “total war”. Unlike their compatriots, however, they were not being drafted into military service. Rather, these women were being mobilized for duty within their own private homes. Through an analysis of war-time cookbooks, nutritional advice manuals and speeches, and scientific studies, this paper examines how different kitchen experts—social reformers, housewifery leaders, and nutritional scientists-- attempted to mobilize German women on the home front as “kitchen soldiers” whose daily choices about food could have significant impact on the health and welfare of the nation --and even more importantly on the outcome of the war.