Since the rest of our natural lives will be spent in an economic morass of desperate privation I thought I'd offer up some real hard times for comparison, courtesy of Max Hastings', Armageddon, which surveys the last year of World War II.The Dutch, in the last year of the war under German occupation, lived on a ration allotment of 460 calories per person per day.
The average weight of a 14 year old Dutch boy in 1945 was 71lbs.
In a desperate search for fuel for heat, the Dutch were forced to dig up graveyards for the coffin wood.
One survivor remembers seeing a man stop his bicycle next to a pile of fresh droppings from a sickly workhorse. The man dug with his bare hands through the dung to find the undigested corn within and then ate the morsels while squatting by the curb.
Immediately post-war, in occupied Germany, the going rate for an American GI to get laid by a nice German girl (not a hooker - just an ordinary girl he might meet in a park or cafe) was 3 Lucky Strikes.
We aren't there yet.
1 comment:
ordinary girls go for lucky strikes?
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