Military food in SCW?

Discussions on all aspects of the Spanish Civil War including the Condor Legion, the Germans fighting for Franco in the Spanish Civil War.
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durb
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Military food in SCW?

#1

Post by durb » 21 Nov 2014, 17:03

I came accross to this topic by the movie "Ay, Carmela" - in it some kind of Republican vaudeville show actors end up by mistake to Nationalist territory and are handed over to CTV troops. The year is 1938. At the beginning of movie is shown the poor food situation in Republican zone and the only meat available is a cat, which has been captured to be served as a rabbit. When the main characters end up with the CTV, they are served with big portions of Spaghetti Bolognese. This makes the main female character to comment: "If fascists eat like this, we have lost the war".

This made me to wonder what was the food supply situation and diet of Republican and Nationalist armies in Spain. I have read some memoirs of Finnish volunteers who fought at both sides.

According to Finnish volunteers in International Brigades their most common meal was "lens with oil", but occasionally also meat was also served.

According to two Finnish volunteers who served in Falangist units the food supply situation was all the time good and they made no complaints about the quality of food.

When it comes to overall assesment, I have the impression that Nationalist had better food supplies and could feed their troops better than Republicans. This partly due to the situation that most of agricultural production of Spain was located in Nationalist area. During the course of war and with continuing territorial losses the food situation in Republican area worsened, although soldiers most probably did receive more calories than the civilians (most normal in wartime - hungry soldiers do not fight so well).

There might be also some differences of calory level and food quality depending on the Republican units. However what I have read about the experiences of Finnish volunteers, their meals in International Brigades may have been quite at the same level as in the Spanish units - no "special food" or extra supplies for Internationals at the cost of Spanish units. Having lens almost all the time may have been boring, but lens are quite nutritive food (for this reason the old Roman legions used lens as the main diet of their soldiers - easy to store and carry, containing well of proteins and nutritive calories).

When it comes to Nationalists, there must have been the special case of Muslim soldiers (regulares) - I would assume that they had a Islamic halal diet (no jamón) and their own cooks preparing it.

For other foreign special groups - did Legion Condor bring its cooks making German style food or did they have Spanish cooks and normal Spanish meals? It is remarkable that this is not mentioned in Legion Condor books and memoirs, which focus on more on drinks like Spanish wine and beer (according to Germans the local Spanish beer was OK).

CTV and Aviazione Legionaria - did they bring their own cooks and some food from Italy? Is the "Ay, Carmela" scene of CTV soldiers enjoying Spaghetti Bolognese pure fiction?

And the gruesome aspect of war: how common was looting and robbing the food resources from the civilian population? For example if some village or area was taken, were the local animals like cows and sheep usually "confiscated" and soon eaten by the soldiers?

Orwell1984
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Re: Military food in SCW?

#2

Post by Orwell1984 » 21 Nov 2014, 19:23

The article "Quiet Fronts in the Spanish Civil War" by Michael Seidman looks at the food issue so may be of interest to you. The footnotes to the article also may help.

https://libcom.org/library/quiet-fronts-michael-seidman


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Leo Niehorster
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Re: Military food in SCW?

#3

Post by Leo Niehorster » 21 Nov 2014, 22:16

Nice find and a good read. Nice to see something "in print" that shows both sides of the SCW without a political axe to grind.
Information not passed on is lost.
URL: World War II Armed Forces

durb
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Re: Military food in SCW?

#4

Post by durb » 23 Nov 2014, 22:21

The article of Seidman was interesting read and confirms pretty much what I have read about the relative food supply situation in Nationalist/Republican camp.

Eugen Pinak
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Re: Military food in SCW?

#5

Post by Eugen Pinak » 03 Dec 2014, 12:58

Leo Niehorster wrote:Nice find and a good read. Nice to see something "in print" that shows both sides of the SCW without a political axe to grind.
Try "Reluctant Warriors. Republican Popular Army and Nationalist Army Conscripts in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939" by James Matthews - good book on mundane matters of soldiers' life during SCW.

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