10 Things German Soldiers Found Strange About American Rations

What did German soldiers really think of American rations in WW2? From K-ration cigarettes and chewing gum to real coffee and a Hershey chocolate bar deliberately designed to taste "a little better than a boiled potato," this is the true story of 10 things German soldiers and POWs found strange about American military food, and what those rations quietly revealed about who was going to win World War II. German soldiers drank ersatz coffee brewed from roasted barley and ate from a horse-drawn field kitchen, the Gulaschkanone. American GIs carried K-rations and D-ration bars packed by chewing gum and candy companies. In this WWII documentary, we compare German vs American rations and follow a single K-ration box through the war, from the battlefield to the prisoner-of-war camps in America to the black markets of postwar Berlin. You'll learn: Why K-rations came with cigarettes, chewing gum, and even toilet paper How Ancel Keys designed the K-ration, and why Wrigley and Cracker Jack helped package it The real story of the Hershey D-ration bar, Field Ration D, made to taste bad on purpose Why a single packet of instant coffee exposed the failure of Germany's U-boat war How German POWs in America were fed like US soldiers under the 1929 Geneva Convention, and why some camps were nicknamed the "Fritz Ritz" Why some Nazi prisoners believed American food was a trick How American cigarettes became money in postwar Germany, the Zigarettenwährung How the Battle of the Bulge was planned to run on captured American supplies What a German officer saw at Albert in 1918, and why it mattered in 1944 How surplus 10-in-1 army rations became the first CARE packages This video is based on documented history, including Arnold Krammer's research on German prisoners of war in America, Hershey Community Archives records on the D-ration bar, U.S. Army ration history, Rudolf Binding's First World War diary "A Fatalist at War," National Archives records on the Berlin black market, and CARE's own history of the first CARE packages. Where a popular story can't be traced to a reliable source, we say so. If you enjoy World War 2 history, military logistics, and untold stories about soldiers on both sides, subscribe for more deep-dive WWII documentaries.