Blog Archives

Chocolate in WWII

Posted by GP

Chocolate is a fighting food.

Seventy-five years ago, more than 160,000 Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy during the D-Day invasion. And while we all know that day served as a huge turning point for the Allied cause, you probably haven’t thought much about what those soldiers carried with them to eat during and after the invasion.

Food had to be lightweight, nutritious and very high in energy; after all, these men were about to invade Nazi-occupied land. As it so happens, the one substance that could fulfill all those requirements was a very unlikely it — a Hershey’s chocolate bar.

The Hershey Chocolate company was approached back in 1937 about creating a specially designed bar just for U.S. Army emergency rations. According to Hershey’s chief chemist, Sam Hinkle, the U.S. government had just four requests about their new chocolate bars: (1) they had to weigh 4 ounces; (2) be high in energy; (3) withstand high temperatures; (4) “taste a little better than a boiled potato.”

The final product was called the “D ration bar,” a blend of chocolate, sugar, cocoa butter, skim milk powder and oat flour. The viscous mixture was so thick, each bar had to be packed into its 4-ounce mold by hand.

As for taste, well – most who tried it said they would rather have eaten the boiled potato. The combination of fat and oat flour made the chocolate bar a dense brick, and the sugar did little to mask the overwhelmingly bitter taste to the dark chocolate. Since it was designed to withstand high temperatures, the bar was nearly impossible to bite into.

Troopers had to shave slices off with a knife before they could chew it. And despite the Army’s best efforts to stops the men from doing so, some of the D-ration bars ended up in the trash.

Later in the war, Hershey introduced a new version, known as the Tropical bar, specifically designed for extreme temperatures of the Pacific Theater. By the end of the war, the company had produced more than 3 billion ration bars.

In 1942, 200,000 pounds of M&M’s were produced weekly in the Newark, NJ factory, most of it going to the military. Soldiers in WWII carried the m&m’s with them. By the end of the war, the factory was producing 600,000 lbs each week. In 1946, with the war over, M&M’s was readily available to the general population. In 1947, a ¼ lb bag of m&m’s was sold for 15 cents. Going to the tropics, now you know why they were created to melt in your mouth and not in your hand.

Along with the D rations, troops received 3 days worth of K ration packs. These were devised more as meal replacements and not sustenance snacks like the D rations, and came complete with coffee, canned meats, processed cheese and tons of sugar. The other chocolate companies would soon join in with the production.

Soldier with a Tropical Bar

At various points during the war, men could find powdered orange or lemon drink, caramels, chewing gum and of course – more chocolate!! Along with packs of cigarettes and sugar cubes for coffee, the K ration packs provided plenty of valuable energy for fighting men.

######################################################################################