Rationing

Rationing hit Germany and Austria-Hungary hardest, as the British blockade cut them off from imports. Before the war Germany had imported about a third of its food, fodder and fertiliser, and from January 1915 it introduced bread cards. In the winter of 1916–1917 potatoes ran out and swedes took their place. By the summer of 1917 rations provided about 1,000 calories a day. Britain long relied on appeals for economy and introduced compulsory rationing of sugar, meat and fats only at the turn of 1917 and 1918, with national ration books in July 1918; bread was never rationed.

In the occupied lands, Belgium and the Kingdom of Poland, rationing went hand in hand with requisitions and hunger. The word also had a second, commercial meaning: from 1915 the British "rationed" Germany's neighbours, the Netherlands and Denmark, allowing them to import goods only in peacetime quantities so that they would not pass on to Germany.