Eating Like Hitler
Mar 14, 2024 6:27 pm
The artist Marek Zulawski, translation & Polish-British culture
Hi,
The translation I sent out last issue about the Jerzy Żuławski news is now on the Translating Marek blog.
While adding it there, I had the sudden realisation that I recently passed the age at which my grandfather died – he was only a few weeks past his 41st birthday when he died of typhus. A scary existential thought – thanks for that, brain.
For today's translation, I thought I'd create something based on the work of a great food writer I've had the pleasure of working with: Natalia Mętrak-Ruda. We worked on articles in English, but she usually wrote elsewhere in Polish. Last year, she had an entire Polish book published called Warzywa Zjedz, Mięso Zostaw: Krótka Historia Wegetarianizmu or "Eat the Vegetables, Leave the Meat: A Short History of Vegetarianism".
As you can tell from the title, the book is an entertaining run through vegetarianism's long international story. The short chapter I've translated below is particularly memorable.
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Hitler's Shadow
The curio that is Hitler's alleged vegetarianism is cited in thousands of discussions. It is supposed to prove that vegetarians are neither "better" nor "nobler" than carnivores at all, even if they sometimes think so. However, the data out there on the Führer's diet is contradictory. Indeed, some accounts suggest that he avoided meat throughout his whole life, and that from a certain point, he didn't eat it at all; some eyewitnesses even recalled how he often spoke about the atrocities of slaughterhouses and that he was an ardent opponent of vivisection. Other sources, however, mention his fondness for Bavarian sausages, persuadingly insisting his meatless episodes were in his case mainly dictated by concerns about his sensitive stomach. A certain explanation for this might be found in this fragment from a 1937 article in The New York Times:
"It is well known that Hitler is a vegetarian and does not drink or smoke. His lunch and dinner consist, therefore, for the most part of soup, eggs, vegetables and mineral water, although he occasionally relishes a slice of ham and relieves the tediousness of his diet with such delicacies as caviar, luscious fruits and similar tidbits."
Here we have then a "vegetarian" who eats ham and caviar from time to time; elsewhere appear reports that the Führer gave up meat at some point, except for his favourite Austrian liver dumplings. These contrasts tell us a lot about Hitler's diet and the period's perception of vegetarianism, one clearly different from today's, which is much less permissive towards such deviations. In any case, we do have enough data to assume that Hitler truly identified himself as a vegetarian by the 1940s. He even planned "to occupy himself" with the vegetarian issue after the war, believing that meat would have no place in the future's Aryan society.
Hitler eating vegetables, according to Leonardo.ai
Psychological interpretations (such as the one presented by Erich Fromm in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness) suggest that his resigning from meat could have been a unique form of atonement for the suicide of his niece and alleged lover, Geli Raubal, or a way of demonstrating that he was incapable of taking anyone's life. The British Hitler biographer Robert Payne leans towards the thesis that his ascetic diet was meant to symbolise his total dedication to affairs of state; some interpreters – often vegetarians, like Ryan Berry – go even further, claiming that it was just a propaganda gimmick, possibly doctor's orders, which had nothing to do with ethical beliefs.
For those sympathetic to the vegetarian cause, it is undoubtedly difficult to accept that one of the greatest criminals in human history identified with a movement that supposedly arose – at least in their view – out of the noblest motives. It seems that Hitler may have had at least an indirect influence on the vegetarian discourse: after World War II, the association of a meatless diet with gentleness disappeared almost entirely, as did the link between meat-eating and aggression. Undoubtedly, this is also the aftermath of developments in psychology and psychiatry, which explored the many factors influencing the human psyche without taking account of menus. However, the symbolic shadow cast by Hitler's vegetarianism upon the noble idea of animal non-violence is almost as significant as the energy that Gandhi's vegetarianism added to it.
Either way, Hitler's meatless diet did not signify at all that the Nazi regime supported existing vegetarian organisations or that it wanted to be identified with them. Quite the opposite – accused by the Nazis of dissenting pacifist sympathies, the Deutscher Vegetarier-Bund was forced by the authorities to cease its activities in 1935 and was only revived once the war was over as the Deutsche Vegetarier-Union.
I too eat a mostly vegetarian diet with only the occasional appearance of meat.
That means I eat just like Hitler. However, we do differ in that he also ingested a cocktail of drugs every day.
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Polish food in the 90s
As for her old articles when I used to work with her, Natalia wrote many that I enjoyed. I thought I would put one of my favourites here for you to enjoy: Burgers, Spring Rolls & Fish Sticks: The Culinary Diaries of a Polish ‘90s Kid
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That's all for this week. Many thanks for reading.
Adam
p.s. If anybody you know is looking for a Polish-to-English translator for family memoirs, please do put them in touch with me.
Adam Zulawski