My mom was born in '36, and basically grew up in an air-raid shelter in the northeast - she would talk about my nana pinning a note to her dress with her name & address and then pinning her tin cup to her coat so it wouldn't get lost going down to the shelter. Once everyone was in & settled, the children were first up with their little cups, they'd get an Oxo cube (beef bouillon), someone would fill it with boiling water, and then a crusty slice of National Loaf dropped in. For her whole life, whenever she was ill or feeling low, a boiling cup of Oxo with a soaking slice of bread was what she craved for comfort, I'd even bring it to her in hospital before she passed. Brightened her right up. She would have *loved* this channel. ❤
The National Loaf had a rather negative reputation among Brits who lived through the war. It was bread designed to be more nutritious and efficient than regular white bread- made from wholemeal flour fortified with vitamins and minerals. Apparently it didn’t taste too bad, but it was an unappealing gray color, and was said to have a texture that was both mushy and gritty. Also, it was only sold when it was at least a day old, on the grounds that a slightly stale loaf could be sliced thinner than a fresh loaf, and therefore would go farther.
What a lovely memory! I’m sure it could get scary at times, but she obviously found comfort in that tiny ritual. I bet it made the kids feel important to be served bread and Oxo first. ❤ Thank you for sharing this.
My favourite thing to do is read the comments of everyone's grandparent's stories about these old times. It's like a second video in itself. Thank you Max for bringing us this side of history
I didn't get a lot of stories from my grandparents before they died, but one thing I know is that one day in '43 while they were eating dinner a bomb hit their house, crashed right through the roof and got stuck in the second story floor - it was a dud, but of course they couldn't know if it would detonate with a delay so they moved in with their neighbors across the way for a couple of days until the bomb was defused and removed and the roof patched over.
My grandpa was drafted but got lucky and the War was just about over. He went to California and since he was a mechanical guy he ended up working on planes for about six months. First time he ever met a black person in his life. Not a single "colored" person lived in his county. He went back to the farm and married a woman for the next fifty plus years. He had the biggest garden of cantaloupes and watermelons of anyone I knew. He used to go to all of his grandkids houses in the fall with his car loaded up. He told me about when he and his father first got a tractor for farming. It was a big argument My dad still has that tractor in his shed. My brother gets it someday he fixes them up and goes on a tractor drive with his friends a few times a year. Imagine thirty tractors going down the road.
Dear Mr. Miller, my family loves to watch your videos. Today’s video I felt missed a very important point. Those hardworking ladies feeding the people in the bomb shelters were the W.V.S. The Women’s Voluntary Service. They did so very much to help the war effort. I thought they deserved to be named. The W.V.S. Helped with the evacuations, grew food, canned jams and other foods and even knitted to help others in Britain and Europe stay warm. These ladies also helped collect rose hips and make rose syrup so the country would not lack for vitamin c. I would love for you to do their rose syrup recipe and share a little of their history.
My Grandmother was one of the kids who was sent out to the country - she was sent to rural Wales ,and apparently had quite the trouble there, since not everyone spoke English. She did eventually learn some Welsh though, and, it worked out as best as could be expected, considering she was one of the children who was placed with strangers. The story that she would sometimes tell is that, when all was said and done and she was reunited with her parents, they got back and their family home was just. . . gone -- except for the family cat, who was still there, and very, very happy to see the humans again. They had no idea how the cat survived, given the state of the building, and that cat was renamed 'Lucky' for the rest of his life. 💙🐾
@@mostlyghosteyvery sadly, pets were not allowed into the bomb shelters all. Unfortunately many people actually were told by a horribly worded government pamphlet that if they were not able to rehome or send their pets to the countryside for safety, they would be better off euthanised. Many people, because of this, sent their animals to shelters or euthanised their pets as they couldn't rehome them, and were likely unable to feed or care for them due to rationing and pet owners being sent to war as soldiers. Horribly depressing time for both the pets and pet owners, where apparently your options are "magically find a safe place for your pets in the countryside with six pence to your name, or kill them for their sake."
I mean, absolutely no disrespect when I say this… But, that cat not only had nine lives, but was a future cameraman. 😊 thank you so much for sharing that story, it is beautiful. 🫂
I don't have any living relatives that remember the war, but my best friend's grandmother did. She very recently passed but she told us what she remembered. She was a child when the war started, she had a single mother and both were evacuated together as she was too young to be alone. They were sent to the Welsh countryside, were taken in by the sweetest couple. The two women had a small farmstead, just a couple cows, chickens and vegetable garden. The women were incredibly welcoming and kind to them for the years they were there. I know many evacuees found abuse or forced labour when they were sent to the country but his grandmother got the lottery placing. Once it was safe they returned home but her mother found it difficult to find work. They ended up going back to Wales, to a small village where her mother got a job typing documents for a local store owner. They never left Wales again, which is why my friends family had all been born and lived here. This experienced truly changed how they thought, living with a gay couple taught his grandmother to grow up accepting, and when my friend came out as gay at 18 she was the only person in his family to be immediately accepting of that. God bless that woman, I hope she's still watching over him somewhere
@bath_foam4576honestly lesbians get shit done, my aunties are ridiculously capable at pretty much everything they turn their hand to. Gardening, mechanics, dog care, carpentry they do it all
I lived in a third world country for a while. Cooking vegetables to mush makes the water more nutritious. The poorer the country, the more water they put in their soups. If you have 3 times more water than veg, you need to find a way to make that water appetizing so you fill your belly.
@@ktspirit1the women in my family used that name too, but only in reference to soup beans that were boiled with a giant ham hock. (Usually using the one leftover from our Easter ham)🩷🐖
This reminds me of an anecdote from my ex wife's family in which, upon heading towards the shelter the elderly matriarch showed great concern as she had gone without her dentures.. The response from the nephew was "Nan! They're dropping bombs, not sandwiches!!" 😂
Regarding the texture, do consider here that: 1: Most people had seriously bad teeth until we started to care more about dental hygiene post-WW2 2: Blitz Soup had to feed people of every age, including the elderly. It was intended to be easily prepared in great amounts to feed anyone who needed it.
My Nana lived in a suburb outside of Manchester during the Blitz. Her stories have stayed on with me all my life. She told me a story about a Luftwaffe pilot who wrote an apology letter to the town she lived in after he dumped his payload when his aircraft was hit. Nana is one of the strongest women I know, she’s 95 next year, still drives, still cooks still lives by herself. That British iron will is REAL.
my grandmother lived in London during that time, just celebrated her 90th birthday, even though she was very young she has so many stories of that time. her and her older sister were shipped off to the country side for i believe 2 years. they had to go to school with a suitcase and tiny gas masks everyday, the story i think that stuck with her most clearly was hiding with her sister under a tablecloth covered side table from the mean teenage boys that they lived with. on a more sad note, the lasting effect of that time is still with my great aunt, a combination of rationing and protecting her young sister took its toll. they are both alive and mentally here. i love them both and all the stories they have from a long well lived life
My parents were born at the beginning of WWII and grew up with Blitz soup as a winter staple even though rationing was comparatively light in Canada. My grandma would put bones in a cheesecloth to be able to get them out easier and she used Bovril as her meat extract of choice. And yes, it would be cooked until it turned to mush! In turn I was brought up with the same in the 60's & 70's but my mum didn't cook it quite as long unless she planned to mash the veg and add cream at the end. It took advantage of the root vegs that were cheap and plentiful during our harsh winters. I still make Blitz Soup in winters nowadays, sometimes keeping the veg whole with less cooking time, sometimes pureeing them and adding cream. Very filling and like a giant nostalgic hug for me! 😊❤
Many people don't realise the enormous contribution that Canada made in WW2 with troops, the RCAF and the RCN. When the war started, the RCN had only 11 warships. If I remember correctly in 1945 the RCN had around 400 warships making it the fourth biggest in the world. Two of my great uncles served in the RN on North Atlantic, and Arctic, convoys initially from Halifax and a place called Sydney (I think) until the RCN grew in strength and they were posted elsewhere.
@@grendelgrendelsson5493 Rationing remained in Canada until 1947. My only memory is my mother giving ration stamps to the butcher. I was too young to realise that there were food shortages. After 1945, food was being sent to Britain which had rationing until 1954 and I remember Christmas packages being sent to relatives. My version of blitz soup is made in a slow cooker using beef or vegetable broth and assorted vegetables. I blend it at the end and add some 18% cream (1/2 cup) for flavour then freeze it in lunch size units.
Kinda tangentially related but the scene with the Pevensie children at the beginning of the most recent Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe movie was one of the best opening scenes of an children’s movie to me. The actual book kinda just brushes past it but the movie having that opening scene of the Blitz really made the stakes known from the start. The kids are basically refugees in their own country.
That and the scene of the children leaving to evacution while the soldiers were being sent to the front, especially when only three or so years separated the oldest of the children and the youngest of the soldiers.
Yeah, that scene really increased my understanding of what the children were going through. It hadn't really hit me before then that this wasn't just a summer vacation type thing.
The government reaction to the blitz early on extended to forbidding local authorities from evacuating people from cities. In my home city of Plymouth (which, per person, was more heavily bombed than any other British city outside of London itself) a local councillor, Bill Miller, was arrested for organising nightly evacuations. Plymouth doesn't have an underground and Bill knew people in the poorest areas, closest to the Dockyard and industrial areas, were most at risk so he commandeered lorries, trucks and buses to get women and children out of danger so they could camp overnight and return in the morning. Although he was charged, he was later vindicated as the government changed policy and allowed local authorities to organise official evacuations. He was a pretty amazing guy; he was the grandson of a freed Senegalese slave, before the war he was known as the "people's lawyer" providing free legal advice to his constituents and organising a free electrical wiring service and instrumental in the building of the city's iconic Tinside Lido. After the war, he worked with the Admiralty to retool the Dockyard so that it could provide prefabricated houses for those made homeless and even refused the offer to become Lord Mayor as it would take him away from the Housing Committee. Between 1946 and 1948 he was awarded the British Empire Medal, an OBE and a CBE, continuing to work as local councillor until shortly before his death in 1970.
Fellow Plymothian here and my comment reflects this fully. I talk a bit more about the food but can confirm this story. Perhaps Max you could do an episode on a Plymothian dish. As a comedian and actor well known in my hometown and London, I would be very happy to collaborate with you.
It's taken me two days to read all the respectful, interesting, and tid-bitty Comments and Stories shared on this video. What a community you have built Max! Thanks so very much for sharing your recipes, experiences and research that inspires us so.
My nanna passed away in August at 95 (3 months off 96). One of the last times I saw her, I got out my voice recorder on my iPhone as asked her about the Blitz and later being in the English Army. She still remembered it in detail and talked about how her and her parents were evacuated to the basement of the Town Hall. She was later sent to a family in the countryside for safety. I will treasure her memories and that recording forever
Maybe the soup had to be mushy because a lot of people actually drank it from a cup or thermos? I guess having a soup bowl/plate was not the best idea in a cramped environment with also the danger of dust etc. falling into the larger surface which would have been much more complicated to cover?
It could also be just that the recipe writer was following Mrs. Beeton's school of cookery. Especially if the recipes were curated from other sources, rather than being developed for the book.
It was likely this. Making it mushier also would allow the cooks to blend the vegetables, and if the soup become to mushy or paste like, you just add more water, so you can serve more people if necessary. Watering the soup down might not be the best idea, but if theres to many people, it might be necessary to do.
These war time videos always make me realize two things in regards to food: - how lucky are we to be able to buy such variety and plenty of foods and ingredients almost everywhere - how you don't actually need that many fancy and exotic ingredients to make a delicious meal but simple can be just as good
My Dad was born in 1924. He was a kid when the war broke out. Towards the end of the blitz, his Dad (my Grandad) would grab him when the sirens went off and they'd meet up with the home guard and fire brigade and wait, while the rest of the family ran to the shelter, as my Dad was the oldest boy. They'd clear rubble and pull people (dead or alive) from any bombed buildings. He lost his first girlfriend who lived in the next street to a bombing raid. He left school at 14 (as you did back then) and got a job as an apprentice fitter at the docks. He tried to join the army and lied about his age but he was small (5'7") and looked young and he was marched back to his parents who confimed he was too young and his Dad smacked him round the head for doing it. By the time he was old enough to serve, he was basically a full time fitter and spent all day fixing railway tracks or re-fitting ships with guns or replacing engines etc - he was classed as essential and had to stay in his job. After the war he joined the Merchant Navy as an engineer and did that for 25 years. He often told me about the Blitz, but he saw a lot of people die. Neighbours and friends alike. Hull was severely bombed due to it's double dockyards and shipworks, and it was a coastal city relatively easy to hit. He described the meals he had back then and carried on eating things like tripe and pigs trotters well into the 1980's. Luckily for him, after my Mum left I learned how to cook a few decent meals so by the mid 90's he was eating a diet fit for a king! XD See when my Mum absconded, my Dad was left to do everything including the cooking. Only he had never learned how. The ONLY thing he could "cook" was stew. And by stew, I mean it was basically vegetables of any type (or age) tossed into a pot of water with a a handful of raw sausages and cooked for 2 hours, then maybe a stock cube thrown in. He'd never heard of salt of pepper or garlic. So I had to suffer that stew for a couple of years. Whats the dinner Dad? STEW! Ok same as yesterday then! Yeah, it's yesterdays stew.. OK so whats for desert??!?!! More stew.... Hence why I learned to cook! XD
I think that this was the sort of response to the Blitz that Anderson was determined to encourage by not reacting to the prospect of aerial bombardment by encouraging everyone to hide. Its a brutally utilitarian calculus but there is something to be said, if you want to win a total war of attrition, for encouraging people to carry on regardless and inure themselves to the danger and the cost rather than hide away and regard normal life as too risky. A few hideous experiences and terrifying moments and before long you have a population capable of taking it on the chin and getting on with the job, as your father did. That may cost a few more civilian lives than the alternative, but winning the war was more important. A hundred thousand less civilians but hardened and prepared to work through it is more useful than cowering troglodytes living in fear. He was probably right, to an extent, the suffering on the home front also galvanised a common effort with the armed forces in a manner that was spectacularly lacking in the First World War.
@@osric1730 And not to forget, the rich didn't live in those circumstances. Any large amount of live lost would be poor poeple, and no parlamentarian would have cared much about those in the 30s...
@@Trekki200 Except they did. Both the British and the French were extremely concerned about the ability of their population to sustain casualties following the experiences of The Somme and Passchendaele. There had been serious unrest, sympathy for the Soviets, national strikes and a good deal of resentment stemming from the previous war and The Great Depression. It wasn't indifference to the lives of the working class, it was a cold hard calculus as to what war mindset it was best to foster among the civilian population facing aerial bombardment, and the necessity to ensure that mindset was such that they would accept risk and "Keep Calm and Carry On". Anderson was concerned with casualties which is why Anderson Shelters were a thing, he just felt that mass sheltering was both hideously expensive and fostered risk aversion in a population that would need to be able to shoulder risk for the purposes of the war effort. It was utilitarianism not indifference. And anyway given the experience of the First World War, the ruling class had no expectation of getting out of the war lightly. Say what you like about the British ruling class but they were more than prepared to be decimated in the front lines of WW1, and they were, and fully expected a repeat performance in WW2. I'm not saying the man was right, simply that there is a more plausible explanation than contempt for the poor. He couldn't afford to treat them with contempt, he needed them to win the war, but he also needed them to take aerial bombardment on the chin and function. And that's what happened.
@@fableagain Dude my brother and I, when my Dad finally passed away, we had so many laughs (with tears) talking about his Stew Days. My brother had already moved out with his young girlfriend and avoided that, she was half-chinese and her Dad owned a takeaway where my brother worked part time as a delivery driver he ate like a King for all that period! But he'd come over and look at the dreaded pot of stew on the stove and feel sorry for me - we were both rolling around the floor laughing about it! XD Even the vicar who'd come over to find out information about my Dad for his wake was chuckling. My Dads dreaded "Stew". LOL! God bless him.
The Imperial War Museum in London has a marvelous Blitz experience simulator. You walk down a London street and as air raid sirens are sounding, go down the stairs to a shelter. The people in the shelter are shaken by nearby bombs with loud noise and shaking effects where the whole room rocks. You emerge into a simulation of the same street, but now with bomb damage and with a tea cart nearby. You'll never forget it!
Went in that 30 years ago and you are quite right - I will never forget it! The mangled baby pram lying on it's side with one of the wheels still turning had me crying.
I went when I was around 6 years old... Nightmares for months and you're right I'll never forget it. I can't imagine how children grew up surrounded by it...
My great gandmother worked in one of the Blitz Kitchens during the bombing of London, i have vivid memories of my grandmother (who during the Blitz was 12-13) telling me stories of eating this exact meal her Mom made among others. It must have been a terrifying time, i have a photograph of her standing on top of a Dornier bomber which crashed in the street where she lived after being shot down. My grandmother continiued to make the Honey biscuits up until the late 90s, so i got to eat them all though my childhood. Great video as always!
I read a story some time ago of children living in the underground during the blitz, they said they didn't really pay attention and just had fun with other kids playing football and skip rope etc. they thought it was grand because they didn't have to go to school.
My mom uses the honey biscuit recipe for cut out sugar cookies at Christmas. I used to wonder why our family's sugar cookies were also so not sweet, but now I know and it makes total sense! I'm sure her mom was so used to rationing that she just kept making this recipe for cut out cookies since they don't swell or spread very much (today would have been my grandmother's 114th birthday!)
I was a little girl during WWII, and remember very well the effort my Mom had to make dealing with the rationing of so many items. When I went to High School there was a girl who had lived in London during the war and she remembered the "buzz bombs" (the V2 rockets) as being the worst. She said it was really bad. We were lucky here in America to only have the rationing to deal with. Love your show Max and am really enjoying these war videos. Take care. Pat in New Jersey
Just a small correction, the "buzz bombs" were the V1 rockets. They used a pulse-jet engine that was designed to shut off over the target and fall into it. They travelled relatively slowly, so people could hear the buzz of their engines, hence the name. The V2 rockets were a true ballistic missile that actually travelled a little into lower space. They travelled faster than the speed of sound and made no noise until they hit the target and exploded. Sadly, both of these were terrifying weapons. 🙁
@@lesliefranklin1870 To add to this, we used to call the V1 rockets 'doodlebugs', because of course we gave such a name to such horrifying weapons that bombed us around the clock. The V1's were less actual rockets, more bombs with wings.
Both of my parents grew up in London and always taught me with doodlebugs when the engine cut you start counting, if you reach 10 it wasn't going to hit you. V2s gave no warning and terrified everyone. My dad also still has the shrapnel from a German fighter chasing him down the street, as a small boy of course he went back for the bullets which didn't hit him 😅
In Birmingham, during the period of bombing, thousands of people would travel out to the countryside. They would even walk if necessary, like a long train of refugees. This was only possible during the better weather because people slept under hedges. It happened night after night. Many people did not go to their shelters. Apparently, during a particularly bad raid, my young mum and my Grandma decided to shelter under the stairs. In the morning, they heard someone moving around in the front parlour and, peeping out, shocked a policeman. He was checking that gas lighting had been turned off. The whole village had been evacuated because of unexploded bombs. He escorted them to the next village where neighbours had spent the night. They took a shortcut through the allotments opposite the house. A brick structure in the middle had had a direct hit, leaving a pile of rubble. Being a child, mum climbed it and jumped down the other side. She landed on something soft. Looking down, she was standing on a hand, attached to an arm sticking out from the rubble! It seems that she screamed so loud, the policeman said that if the village hadn't been evacuated, people would run to their shelters thinking it was the air raid siren! Despite his joke, he was kind and gave mum some chocolate he had in his jacket pocket.
I hope your mother wasn't plagued by nightmares after the experience with the hand. The late Metropolitan Opera General Manager Sir Rudolph Bing worked as a manager in a major London department store during the war and was also a siren warden after hours. He remembers finding a dismembered hand after a raid and had bad dreams about it years after.
My mum was in London when the Doodlebugs started to arrive. Her school was down a narrow road and had to walk past a wall where an ARP Warden had been blown into the rendering by a V1. It had been scrubbed but it he was too deeply imbedded in it and it was stained brown for years.
@@PaladinDansesGirlfriend Sorry, I should've explained! It's a cement coating applied to the wall for weather proofing and/or for decorative purposes. It can be smooth or rough depending on how it was finished. This was rough hence the difficulty in removing the remains of the poor chap.
The initial scenes of Bedknobs and Broomsticks is also a result of the blitz! Carrie, Charles, and Paul are all shipped off to the countryside and wind up with one Ms. Eglantine Price, played by Angela Landsbury, an apprentice witch! With the help of Mr. Emelius Brown and a little bit of magic they repel a German expeditionary force and save the British Isles! My all time favorite Disney movie
My first taste of the Blitz was when I learned about WW2 in 6th grade and had to read a fictional novel called ‘Goodnight, Mister Tom’ for it, a story about a young boy who’s sent to live with a crotchety old man and the bond that builds between them. Though it was in the background, the ominousness of the war and what life was like for the ‘evacuees’ leaving their lives in the city for safety in the countryside felt very real. Also, I’ve probably said this before, but as much as I always love the music selections Max picks to fit the countries depicted in each video, I appreciate when he forgoes music for the more serious ones like the WW2 series to convey the gravity of the world events happening at the time.
I read this book as well! The author, Michelle Magorian, wrote another one about a young girl who was sent to the US (as a few folks here in the comments have described) and came back after the war and really didn't fit in anymore, and she hated it and missed her American family at first. It must have been such a hard adjustment on both ends for many.
My grandma was just a little girl when this happened. Down in the shelters with her mickey mouse gasmask on, and even losing some family to the shelling above. I can't even imagine what it was like for her as she never wanted to talk about it (understandable). She would tell me stories here and there but I know there was a lot of trauma she was suppressing. Her Dad as mean as he was helped smuggle goods in on his tugboat to help the family. A cousin of hers was even up in the skies in a Spitfire. So I have a lot of connection with this period of time. Thank you for making this Max (:
My mother also had the mickey Mouse gas mask! She was born and raised in Northern Ireland though. Still, it is one of the memories of that time that she talked about to me when I was growing up nice and safe in British Columbia, Canada.
Similar. My nan's in her 90s and she would happily talk for hours about the ration cards, the cooking, her playing in the field then having to run home when the siren went off, scrambling to the shelter outside of town... but not about the actual experience of waiting for the bombing to stop.
My Grandmother was in her kitchen out back of her house when she heard a doodlebug engine cut out and sprinted for the Andersen shelter. The V-1 hit across the street, demolished every house on the other side of the street and took out the front wall of her house. And that was just in the suburbs. It beggars belief that anyone thought it a good idea to *not* let people shelter in the tube stations. She lived in that house until she died and I remember the rooms facing front were always colder and draughtier than those at the back because of the repaired/rebuilt front facing wall.
All my family lived in Birmingham, during the war we had a lot of bombing but the name Birmingham was rarley mentioned "A town in the midlands" was how it was reported, there was a lot of war industry in our city, the house I lived in (I was born 1945,) none of the window lintles were straight the sash cord windows rattled when the wind blew also the door lintels were out of place too, the wooden hand rail up the stairs also had deep gashes in from broken glass coming from the skylight and the front bedroom ceiling was a "tempry one " (was still there in 1978 when I left) all this damage was caused by bombing, we lived 2 miles from the city centre, The house my grandparents lived in and the house my great grandmother and aunt lived in were all distroyed by a landmine droping in their back garden, my great grandmother was killed but my aunt survied she was buried in the rubble for a long time. My dad was in the home guard and his sister was in the land army, my mother worked in a parachute factory, everyone was involved in that war, even children, they collected paper for recycling and rode on their push bikes with messages between air raid wardens when phone lines were down, My grandad was an air raid warden, and yes they did "Dig for Victory" they had a huge allotment , they also kept chickens and rabbits, but when the time came to eat the rabbits, they couldn't do it, the chickens were for eggs, only got eaten when they no longer could lay, my Grandmother used tp preserve the eggs in a galvanised bucket with issling glass. Rationing finished in 1954 I was 9 years old. I am 79 years old now.
I love the way Max creates themes of times, places and events rather than just a random bunch of recipes and history lessons. It maks it more like a deep dive into interesting topics.
I remember making these biscuits and dishes associated with the second world war in primary school in england. the '70s were not so far removed from that conflict and many english households still kept tins of corned beef stashed in odd places 'against the day'. oddly, 'bully beef', the 'tommy's' field ration of mashed potatoes and corned beef, is still popular to this day in belgium. odd to think that a school cookery project from my childhood is now worthy of inclusion in tasting history's repetoire! too many now forget the sacrifices made both at home and abroad to ensure their comfortable existence today. *LEST WE FORGET*
My maternal grandmother worked in London during the blitz. She didn’t talk about it much but said you could leave belongings in your space in the tube and they would still be there when returning after work. She also said it was a weird feeling heading out each morning to see what didn’t make it through the night. She came to the US in the mid ‘50s, and she never went to watch fireworks on the fourth and didn’t like the smell of frying beef…. If you saw Bomb Girls, that was her. She put detonators in bombs for part of the war, and the chemicals made her very sick. She recovered, but ended up losing part of a lung when she was elderly due to those same chemicals. When things feel tough, I remember her, and I carry on.
“I am devoutly thankful that we did not adopt a general policy of providing deep and strongly protected shelters.” Me too. I hate it when my citizens can actually survive being bombed.
Figures that some rich, dimwitted, silver spoon asshole aristocrat who's got his own shelter is going to tell the working classes "shut up and deal with the bombs - we need you at the factory tomorrow."
My dad was one of the kids shipped to the country. The people who took him in used them as labour on their farm and were supposedly not the nicest people. Still he did develop a love of the countryside and farm life. Eventually he was brought back to London just in time for the blitz.
My grandmother was born here in northern Sweden on a small farm in 1937, And we stayed out of the war. But she remembers being afriad of planes, Thinking they were going to drop bombs. My grandfathers dad served on the swedish border to finland during the war and was actually captured by the soviets for two days before being released.
My dad was born on a small farm in Sweden in 1929 😁 He recalled that when he heard the adults discussing the war that he shouted att them that he didn’t want any war! The wise words of a child 😅
actually back then food cooked like we do now would be called half cooked. some recipes for christmas dinners called for starting the veg boiling the day before.
I agree, I think dental care was probably hard to get and teeth might have painful. I also think crisp cooked veggies are a more modern taste. A lot of vintage recipes I see have mushy veggies.
@@elizabethmayberry3414 Probably not far off. I believe my maternal grandmother had her teeth removed in her 20s and then wore dentures for over 70 years. One thing with the soup though - first you're not losing any of the nutrients as you don't drain the veg and secondly you didn't generally have a stick blender so you could then just mash it down.
My grandparents were children in the Great Depression. They over cooked meat and veggies...a lot...steaks were like shoe leather and white chicken meat was like drywall. Veggies were boiled into absolute tenderness. Decent pastas though since great grandma was from the old country lol.
Past few years I've been looking into my Mums side of the family, and discovered my grandfathers sister was killed during the Blitz in London. I live in Sheffield, which was also targeted. A few years ago during the anniversary of the Sheffield Blitz, I was in the City Hall watching a Christmas concert. Exited to the sounds of air raid sirens and search lights in the sky. I got chills and it wasn't because of the weather.
Finland has the best shelter system in the world! My mum was born in 1937, so lived through the war. She was evavuated to a farm not far from where she lives now. Her sister was born there just before the war ended. My Grandfather was evacuated at Dunkirk. When he landed in England, there was a chap sitting on the beach in a deckchair. 'What are you doing here?' He asked him. 'I'm on holiday', he replied. LOL
My Grandad was at Dunkirk as well, he told me a little about it but not much, he bloody hated Stukas though, that was the main thing I remember him saying.
I saw a special on Finland’s shelters. They’re amazing. They double as ice rinks, swimming pools, community centres, etc. My Mom was born in Helsinki during the war, but still has vivid memories of the war. When we were little, there was a train derailment (Mississauga, 1981?), and the air raid sirens went off. I will never forget her panic. She also couldn’t stand underground parking lots.
That's very cool. I'd only heard about how the North got most wooden buildings sabotaged by the invading armies... (by my brother whose job is to lovingly restore/re-build the 100-150 year old wooden buildings that remain).
Fascinating as always, Max, and a recipe I can afford (I appreciate that). My mother told me about the air raid drills in Toronto, Ontario and the black outs every night - even though they were in Canada. I remember once in an electrical storm (I was about 13) the old air raid sirens went off (the most terrifying sound) and when I went home my mother was curled up in a ball, reliving her childhood fears. Thanks, Max.
My grandmothers neighbors house was blown up from the bombing, she left with her american husband to the states. They had a house with a garden in Cali, made their own food. I learned a lot from her. The strongest woman I had ever known. Learned most of my cooking from her. I got the chance to Visit the Uk two years ago and its amazing to me that many of the buildings still have large holes from the bombings that are left in place! As a reminder of the past.
I live in the town where my dad was born just before the war started. The main street still has buildings with bullet scars in them because German fighters used to come across the North Sea under the radar, pop up and machine gun the streets. My gran pulled my dad under a bus when a German plane strafed the street when she'd taken him shopping. He was only five but he remembers it as if it happened yesterday.
My mother grew up in London during the war and she and her brother and sister were sent out to the farms for safety and to work in the fields. Being the oldest, my mum came back to the city to work and one of her first jobs was to go to the roof of the office building she was in when the air raid horns went off. She was a spotter for her building and sounded an alarm if the bombing got to close. She met my dad at a dance and after the war came to America to marry him. I grew up on their stories and when we visited London new stories came out when we were actually standing in the places things happened. The effects of the war never left my mum. NOW when people hem and haw about supporting Ukraine and large scale war threatens Europe , and other places in the world, I wish people had heard these stories and felt their power like I did. Their hearts might inform their actions differently.
One of my great aunts was in London during the blitz. She never really talked about it except for one incident where she woke in her bed to see a bomb had torn through the roof and was in her room unexploded
Max's skillful storytelling is great, but I have to add that when Jose gets creative in the subtitles ("[chop]") it always makes me chuckle. Thanks, Jose, for adding a bit of humor in a fun, subtle way.
"I'm going to the bomb shelter so I need to make sure I have tea, biscuits, and soup cooked for twice as long as it should be" is the most British thing I've ever heard
My grandmother was a part of the children sent to the country, but in a bit of a unique way. She was German and Jewish and my family were able to get to England while waiting for their papers to get to America, although they had absolutely nothing while there. My grandmother was sent to the country during the Blitz and actually learned English there. It was only for five months but it’s so crazy to think of the journey she made at the age of 8. Thank you!
My Grannie was one of the children sent to Canada, at only 8 years old, to escape the rockets. She never returned to London, and still lives in Canada to this day. She has quite the stories about the bombings and the trip to Canada, chased by u-boats.
My grampy was a radio communications officer aboard the Corvette that patrolled the St Laurence Seaway during the 2nd world war. He, along with the others aboard the corvettes were making sure that not a single u-boat was going to get thru to sink more ships. Churchill referred to the corvettes as the cheap nasties. He would be pleased to know if he had been alive still that he had helped keeping your granny safe while aboard that passenger ship.
My grandfather was running for his bus in London, and the conductor just stood on the back and laughed at him running frantically down the road after the bus. My grandfather stopped, totally puffed out, and watched the bus drive away. Moments later, it was struck by a doodlebug, and most on board were killed. My grandfather escaped with very minor injuries from the blast. His (and my) lucky day!
My grandmother was a teenager during the blitz. She didn't talk about it a lot but I remember she said that there were a few parties with the other kids and they still had fun. We made a lot of pies together and when she did cook, it was always a classic english meal made with love. My grandfather was stationed in the pacific and picked up a more adventurous taste for curries and spiced noodles. I know she sent him apples and cigarettes once. The apples rotted, but they did make the cigarettes taste like apples which sounds kind of fun. I wish I asked them more about it, it was only when I was doing a project for school that we spoke about it in a lot of detail. I did have her gas mask for a bit. I think it might be with my cousins now. My parents were born about a decade after WW2 but still remember rations and the city being rebuilt. I'm lucky to live in a city surrounded by history and know people who lived through it. Thanks for the video and the channel. My favourites are the ancient history recipes but it's cute how everyone is sharing stories in the comments for this one
My dad was from Scotland and was born 12 years after the war, but he told stories about family members in it (and also WWI). He had an aunt stationed in London during the war, and she was out shopping on September 7, 1940 when hundreds of German planes filled the sky over London. And while useing the tube stations as shealters is famous, only about 200,000 Londoners actually did.
I made the honey biscuits today, but with a few alterations. I switched out the margarine for "butter mix product" (a weird Danish concoction of around 40% butter and 60% oils), and since we had the first snow of the season this morning, I felt a Christmas-y vibe growing in the kitchen, and added ginger, ground cloves and cardamom. They were delightful. I am bringing some tomorrow for my colleagues at the cultural museum where I volunteer, and I can't wait to hear their thoughts. Thank you for a wonderful video as always ❤
@@Tallahassee21 yeah, Marmite in this recipe won't taste of Marmite at all. It'll just give a meaty earthy undertone to tie all the vegetables together. (Every modern vegetable stock cube has yeast extracts in them to tie the vegetables together in this exact manner, anyway!) But tbh I used to eat spoonfuls of salt (or just pour it into my palm) and shot glasses of soy sauce as a child 😅 and, yep, occasionally would work on a spoon of Marmite for, like... an hour. Kinda like a lollipop.
To be honest. My favorite series has to be, The Titanic, Lusitania, RMS Carpathia, Zeppelin, and transportation episodes. The War and Rationing episodes. Medieval recipes. And The Home front series. Tbh I just have so much respect for Max’s dedication and helping spark up my Love for History again. Hope the sugarplums went well! Happy to see your doing alright Max!
A really old series which was really good and is still online is Danger UXB. In it a group of soldiers were in London defusing bombs that had dropped on the city but didn't go explode.
In my geriatric career I took care of people who fought in the Second World War. One private duty assignment was a dear man who was stationed in London during the blitz. The building in which he was living was hit while he slept. He, obviously, survived but the bed next to his where his buddy had slept was gone and he looked at where he was to the outside. Just steps from his bed was gone. He grabbed what belongings he had left and left the room and made his way to the ground by shimmying down the side of what was left of the wall. Many stories he told me of his life. This was the only one he told me of the war.
5:25 I remember stories my grandmother told me about living in the US during WW 2. For most of the way it was just her and my grandfather (he was too old and disabled to serve), so she used her dairy rations to buy butter, but recalled that margarine was called oleo, which was short for oleomargarine was white when you bought it at the store and came with a tube of coloring which you had to mix with the oleo. I later found out that it was illegal to sell colored oleo to prevent stores from tricking people into buying fake butter.
I think those laws were local or state laws, and supported by the dairy industry to make the margarine less appealing - so probably more in states like Wisconsin.
When I’m going through times of stress, my digestive system doesn’t want to work. I end up making a lot of meals that very much resemble Blitz soup! Mush is comforting and easy on the body. And everyone can eat it, including your elders and babies who might have chewing problems.
A bit politically spicy for Max's channel. Are you sure you really want him going there Mr. Serb? You an't gonna be the Good Guy (because there weren't any).
@@obsidianjane4413 he just recently did a video on food on the German Homefront so I'm not too worried. He did a very good job presenting the nuance of the situation.
Honestly, in a strange way, this explains a lot! My mother was a child during the depression, and when she raised her family in the early 60's, was absolutely obsessed with everyone taking cod liver oil. To her dismay, I couldn't keep it down and refused any further attempts to force it down my throat. The other food items you have mentioned also made it to the dinner table when I was a kid... unfortunately!! She never seemed to recover emotionally from food rationing and shortages. Something I didn't fully understand for decades later 😮 She didn't know how to cook, as all dinner food except hamburgers and pork chops came out of a tin and were heated accordingly. I finally learned how to cook from scratch before the 2008 recession by attending night classes at a local culinary school. My mother is now in her nineties and still thinks olive loaf (bologna), jello, and mayonnaise salads are healthy staples. 😂
Well she is in her 90s :) But that whole time period messed with people’s minds for decades after. Same with those who grew up in child poverty and food scarcity.
I love your videos, first saw one after being revived after a accidental drug overdose and then again after being hospitalized for the ... Idk uhhhits above 10th time for b*limia and anor*xia. I never really watch food videos but you talked about the history and distracted me from bad thoughts so I would watch your videos when they served dinner and I was able to force myself to eat as I was distracted. I still eat when watching your videos and it helps me. Thank you, Max for your amazing channel and being an amazing man. You literally saved and changed my life.
My Grandparents had one London evacuee live with them. Ironically he even had the same surname as us. One day he and my father found some matches and boys being boys played with said matches setting a field on fire….Regarding rations my Dad routinely collected dock leaves and nettles to supplement meals. On one occasion his uncle Fred came over on leave and wasn’t impressed when he found out that it was spam for tea! (In the North tea = main dinner). On a different occasion my Dad aged around 8 or so (so more or less 1945), had a pet rabbit called Rupert, was in hospital, after his op, his Mum and Dad visited, my Dads first question was ‘how’s Rupert’, my Grandma’s response ‘well he was a bit tough’ yup he’d gone in the pot. You know things are hard when you are eating nettles, dock leaves and your kids pet rabbit.
Dag nabit, here's me having a bit of a cry at another Max video over my lunch break. There are so many classic children's stories about children who were sent away (Bedknobs and Broomsticks, or The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe) that make it sound like a grand adventure, but from the perspective of a parent it's so hard to imagine how hard it would be to send your child away.
My mom loves the series "Foyle's War," and there's an episode that deals with a family who takes in a London child. As far as I can recall, the child is an ill fit for the house; he constantly causes trouble because he's bored, and the patriarch (who is a piece of work himself) always butts heads with him. I checked on iMDB and I think the episode is called "A Lesson in Murder."
My father's family decided to keep him and his brother in London during the blitz. One night they didn't got down to the tube and slept in their house. He woke up the next morning covered in broken glass. My mother was evacuated to the country and enjoyed it immensely. She still has letters she and her parents wrote back and forth while she was gone. She had good adventures, but she missed her parents.
I wouldn't be here if it were not for the Blitz. It's why my nan's family moved to Harefield and that's where she met my grandad! I heard there was so much light from the fires you could read the newspaper by the window.
@@donnajones4131 When my wife moved in, I discovered how much I hate the sound of people eating as an adult. It occurred to me that I didn't notice while we were dating because we were at restaurants, or there was music playing.
Bedknobs and Broomsticks also is set up with children being sent to live with a stranger in the country. In this case, Angela Lansbury playing a witch studying magic through a correspondence course. XD
I couldn't have been happier to find this video just two days after seeing the film! It's quite distressing to watch but absolutely beautiful, and I would recommend it to everyone unless they have lived through something like that - in which case my recommendation comes with a big trigger warning. Thanks for the video, Max, I hope we'll see more collaborations between your channel and historical films in future.
Another awesome video. I'll be sure to watch Blitz. Thanks Max for helping bring history back to our awareness. The bombings of England horrified the nation, and I've heard only the most brief stories of the children sent into the countryside for their safety and the sheltering done in British cities for those who couldn't escape.. And as always kudos to Jose for his assistance on these projects too. Imagine being a British child in the country seeing and hearing the bombers as they were heading towards London, Hull, Liverpool, Birmingham etc..
My Grandmother was born January '41 in Mile end mid Air Raid, my Great Grandfather was an Air Raid Warden (he had been badly burned working as a mechanic so wasn't enlisted into normal service until the later years of the war) and had to fetch a Midwife on his Bicycle which must've been utterly terrifying, fortunately he got through safely and all were safe, sadly he'd passed by time I was old enough to understand as apparently he managed to avoid death a number of times, at one point booting a bomb into the river that was near some flats and when enlisted as a driver managing to get a truck across a bridge that was about to blow up, they definately were built of sterner stuff back then.
My mom grew up in this era. I didn't have an al dente vegetable until I left home for college and went out to eat with my girlfriend's parents. Suddenly I enjoyed vegetables for the first time in life.
It really is funny. Literally in war, people have to run to shelters and go underground to stop from dying. Bombs flying buildings exploding, but let's make sure that everyone knows we cook vegetables worse than everyone else XD.
So awesome that Metatron has discovered you and your Roman recipes. Two of my favorite channels finding common ground thru food, kind of like how so many alliances were formed in ancient times. My grandfather was born in 1898, and while he was an American and too young for WWI and too old for WWII (also only had one eye by then) he and my grandmother faithfully rationed everything and NEVER wasted a single crumb or drop of food for their entire lives. They ate simple, cheap and easy dishes, the thought of "opulent" food made them sneer a bit. The Brits endured horrible conditions during The Blitz, but their spirit never broke.
a good hearty winter stew that's pretty much all root vegetables and some meat is usually at its best the second or third day and sounds very much like "blitz" soup .. when it's become more mush than anything.. at least in terms of flavour... sitting under a blanket in a comfortable chair and watch the snow fall outside, is the perfect time for mushy overcooked stew..
So as a Corpsman who worked with Seabees and ACOE, there is an actual explanation why they wouldn't want people to congregate there. It was something Germany, China, and the UK learned in WW1, at the main issue is ventilation and Carbon Monoxide. With the tubes, they have a complex system of ventilation shafts to vent out Carbon Dioxide and Carbon Monoxide, which work well, until they are covered by rubble or damaged by bombs. One of the most dangerous things to occur would be a building fire near an intake vent. In Dresden alone, during a similar blitz by the UK (though in Germany) 18,000 civilians died of asphyxiation while taking shelter in the Subway, out of 48,000. By the end of the Desden bombing, over 38,000 died from Asphyxiation, and a total 148k died from the bombing, so effectively 1/3rd of all deaths were from taking cover in deep areas. Now does it mean "Sit in your home", no, but the idea of spreading out the shelters has a logical reason, even if it is grim. Lose say 20 people a day to bombing, or risk losing 600 if some of the ventilation is damage. That's before you start accounting for the incendiary bombs Germany started using after the Berlin retaliatory strikes. It is sadly the grim arithmetic of war, the most pointed to example being Coventry. The entire city was leveled, and thousands died, because while the British *KNEW* the scale and time of the attack well in advance, they didn't warn anybody. Because, if they warned and started evacuating people, Germany would have realized the Enigma Machine was compromised, and changed encryption, thus Britain, the US, and USSR would have lost a major source of intelligence. So which do you chose, lose 100k people to bombings, while trying to minimize the damage, and potentially save over 100k more by keeping the secret of the Enigma, or lose the Enigma, *MAYBE* save 100k,though the Germans will just Coventry another city, and you will have no warning whatsoever.
@@Mikalent Actually the Coventry thing is a myth that first appeared in the Seventies and was repeated ever since. There is no evidence that it actually happened. Could it have happened, maybe, maybe not, but there is no evidence it actually did happen.
@@Mikalent All very good points. Another one to remember from the time is the idea that "the bomber will always get through" - this was believed by a lot of governments including the UK until it was disproved during WW2. This belief meant that the UK government put more preparation into dealing with the effects of bombing rather than protecting against it, including stockpiling hundreds of thousands of cardboard coffins in 1938-39
There's a video online called the forties house. They took a family and recreated the experience of going through World War II in Great Britain. The food and how they cooked in survive during that time was the emphasis of the series. I learned a lot. I was particularly impressed with how The experience changed the grandmother. She almost divorced her husband over it, but in all honesty? She came out for the better. So for the fun of it, I took a week and emulated some of their limitations. No going to the grocery store. Use what I've got, be as Frugal as possible yet make attractive meals. You'd be amazed how far you can make a little bit of food stretch. It's called the 40s house if you're interested. I watch it every month or so to keep my priorities straight.
@newcreatureinchrist5087 my dad used to tell me about it. There were stories. One of the cuter ones was about a older couple who had a mina bird for a pet. It would eat breakfast at the table with them. Breakfast for the bird was buttered toast and tea with sugar in it. When they rationed? She tried to sneak in substitutions to save on rations. She put margarine on the toast instead of butter? The bird took a bite and threw it on the floor. Said, something's wrong with the toast mom. Something's wrong with the toast. She tries sweetener in the tea? Same thing. Tipped it over on the floor and said something's wrong with the tea. Theres a story about Corn Flakes and BLT sandwiches with beets on them. I actually tried that. It's not bad. The depression gave my father a particular appreciation for food. He was a very good cook, and tended to call us spoiled because we had no idea what the Depression was like.
@ConstantComp...I have seen this video. It is almost like a mini series. I love the 1940's era....the clothes, music, meals, etc. I would love to go back in time to experience it.
Holy cow, Max. I just looked over and you have 2.8 million subscribers?! I remember when it was low 3-digits... You've come a long way, and really found your voice! Congratulations, and many more!
thank you so much for sharing this max. my grandparents were so close to me and immigrated to canada from the UK after ww2 for a better life. they were younger during the war but they remembered the bombs dropping. i feel so lucky that i live in the safety of canada and cannot imagine living in the UK with the fear of being hit my bombs or doodlebugs
When i was a little kid in the Cub scouts we had a visit from a couple Of English scout masters, one a veteran of WW1 and another who had been a Scout during the London Blitz. The “younger” scout master spoke if using the bush crafting skills while in the shelter, particularly making dust tents for food from a couple of tripods , a crossbeam made from a broom handle with a bed sheet and blanket
Finland doesn't get enough coverage in this series! They sent many of their children to Sweden during this time. Those children often arrived to a family that didn't even speak the same language. Could you follow a recipe from their wartime cookbooks or maybe do Mannerheim´s Vorschmack?
"Eventually people just busted in" I'm honestly shocked that's an Eventually and not on day 1. Even more shocking that the bobbies kept people out instead of going "oh no, we're being bombed" and hiding in the tube themselves.
My late father managed to procure an Anderson Shelter in the early 1980's. It was to use as a shed on our allotment, seemingly the local council still had a store of them somewhere. It was quite a task digging it in, but it was really solid once finished & warm & snug. It became a bit of a group hut for my friends & I to play games in during bad weather.
My Dad and Grandparents lived through this in Birmingham. My Grandad swept burning embers off rooftops. Another great movie about the Blitz is Hope and Glory.
While London might have been the most bombed, my great-grandfathers on my father's side lived and died in Hartlepool which was where any bombs that hadn't been dumped by that point would get dropped. According to my aunt, her grandfathers died on the same night when the bus they were riding was hit. Hartlepool was a ship building site.
I grew up just outside London in Dartford. There was a massive AA battery on Dartford Heath (and a Vickers factory nearby). The "Bomb" craters I used to play in as a kid were mostly made by downed planes but a Heinkel hitting the ground with enough force still made a bloody big hole in whatever was underneath.
Thanks for this story of our time in WWII London, as I previously described. I was first back there in 1979, 30 years after we left, and for 2 weeks in July 2013, with my wife. It good to see my former residence. 😊
My paternal grandmother, born 1896 in Kansas, was know for her horrible vegetables. The boiled them all, often together, until they were more or less a slurry. Her cooking was one of the reasons that my father decided to join the Navy in WWII -- yep, the military had better food than my grandmother ;-)
@@TastingHistory sir, I have a video suggestion for you in which you might be interested. What did Alexander the Great eat? What was his diet that turned him from a small boy to the world conqueror which we all know and love.
As a Brit from Plymouth (a wartime naval town and still to this day houses a great deal of navy) which also happens to be the exact place the pilgrims set off to America from. Hence the Mayflower steps which is NOT at the monument and only locals know where they truly are. Stew is often cooked for hours because the mushy texture is great to have on a stew sandwich. Basically you take what you made basically and fold it between some standard white bread with butter on. One slice folded and two slices. Simply soon a few spoonfuls onto the buttered bread slice and fold in the hands. Messy but bloody delicious.
My late mother, and her older brother were both evacuated at the beginning of the blitz - they lived in north London on a road which was right next to a railway line. German planes would often fly along the route, occasionally taking potshots at the surrounding buildings. My mother went to Cheltenham, in Gloucestershire, and was very well looked after - but her brother went elsewhere, and was treated like a slave. My gran went to visit him, unannounced, and on her way from the station, encountered a dirty, bedraggled child, carrying large bags of coal. She was horrified to find that the child was her son. Gran confronted the people who had taken him in, and told them in no uncertain terms, that he'd probably have a better life back in London, and went back home with him. I very much doubt that this was an isolated incident. The consistency of the soup might have been deliberate, as it can be eaten by anyone, of any age, whether they have teeth or not.
Up in Nottingham, the citizens took one look at the Anderson shelters and went "nah duck, for the last eight hundred years every time it's gotten real we've headed into the Caves. Ta-ra, bombs!"
In the Wartime Farm series they talk about a network of caves being used as shelter ! It was so interesting Also about people being scared of Anderson shelters since they tended to flood...
My mom was born in '36, and basically grew up in an air-raid shelter in the northeast - she would talk about my nana pinning a note to her dress with her name & address and then pinning her tin cup to her coat so it wouldn't get lost going down to the shelter. Once everyone was in & settled, the children were first up with their little cups, they'd get an Oxo cube (beef bouillon), someone would fill it with boiling water, and then a crusty slice of National Loaf dropped in.
For her whole life, whenever she was ill or feeling low, a boiling cup of Oxo with a soaking slice of bread was what she craved for comfort, I'd even bring it to her in hospital before she passed. Brightened her right up. She would have *loved* this channel. ❤
Thanks for this mini story.
The National Loaf had a rather negative reputation among Brits who lived through the war. It was bread designed to be more nutritious and efficient than regular white bread- made from wholemeal flour fortified with vitamins and minerals. Apparently it didn’t taste too bad, but it was an unappealing gray color, and was said to have a texture that was both mushy and gritty. Also, it was only sold when it was at least a day old, on the grounds that a slightly stale loaf could be sliced thinner than a fresh loaf, and therefore would go farther.
What a lovely memory! I’m sure it could get scary at times, but she obviously found comfort in that tiny ritual. I bet it made the kids feel important to be served bread and Oxo first. ❤ Thank you for sharing this.
@@censusgary I believe Max made some on a separate episode, and yeah it didn’t look great. But I bet it beats silage bread!! 😮
So very sweet. I'm glad you were able to bring comfort to her in the hospital. That's how I feel today about my mother's broccoli cheese soup.
My favourite thing to do is read the comments of everyone's grandparent's stories about these old times. It's like a second video in itself. Thank you Max for bringing us this side of history
Agreed
I didn't get a lot of stories from my grandparents before they died, but one thing I know is that one day in '43 while they were eating dinner a bomb hit their house, crashed right through the roof and got stuck in the second story floor - it was a dud, but of course they couldn't know if it would detonate with a delay so they moved in with their neighbors across the way for a couple of days until the bomb was defused and removed and the roof patched over.
Same here. It's so interesting. My grandparents are gone, so I've enjoyed seeing other people share their stories.
Another reason I love the WWII series. ❤
My grandpa was drafted but got lucky and the War was just about over. He went to California and since he was a mechanical guy he ended up working on planes for about six months.
First time he ever met a black person in his life. Not a single "colored" person lived in his county.
He went back to the farm and married a woman for the next fifty plus years.
He had the biggest garden of cantaloupes and watermelons of anyone I knew. He used to go to all of his grandkids houses in the fall with his car loaded up.
He told me about when he and his father first got a tractor for farming. It was a big argument
My dad still has that tractor in his shed. My brother gets it someday he fixes them up and goes on a tractor drive with his friends a few times a year. Imagine thirty tractors going down the road.
Dear Mr. Miller, my family loves to watch your videos. Today’s video I felt missed a very important point. Those hardworking ladies feeding the people in the bomb shelters were the W.V.S. The Women’s Voluntary Service. They did so very much to help the war effort. I thought they deserved to be named. The W.V.S. Helped with the evacuations, grew food, canned jams and other foods and even knitted to help others in Britain and Europe stay warm. These ladies also helped collect rose hips and make rose syrup so the country would not lack for vitamin c. I would love for you to do their rose syrup recipe and share a little of their history.
good point
Thanks!
Wow! That would be a really interesting episode
This needs more upvotes
I would love to hear about these ladies. What they cooked, crocheted, and did in general. Thanks
My Grandmother was one of the kids who was sent out to the country - she was sent to rural Wales ,and apparently had quite the trouble there, since not everyone spoke English. She did eventually learn some Welsh though, and, it worked out as best as could be expected, considering she was one of the children who was placed with strangers.
The story that she would sometimes tell is that, when all was said and done and she was reunited with her parents, they got back and their family home was just. . . gone -- except for the family cat, who was still there, and very, very happy to see the humans again. They had no idea how the cat survived, given the state of the building, and that cat was renamed 'Lucky' for the rest of his life. 💙🐾
Прекрасна съдба за всички.
I could never leave my cat. We are two peas in a pod. Where I go, he goes. I'm glad lucky was safe!
@@mostlyghosteyvery sadly, pets were not allowed into the bomb shelters all. Unfortunately many people actually were told by a horribly worded government pamphlet that if they were not able to rehome or send their pets to the countryside for safety, they would be better off euthanised. Many people, because of this, sent their animals to shelters or euthanised their pets as they couldn't rehome them, and were likely unable to feed or care for them due to rationing and pet owners being sent to war as soldiers. Horribly depressing time for both the pets and pet owners, where apparently your options are "magically find a safe place for your pets in the countryside with six pence to your name, or kill them for their sake."
I mean, absolutely no disrespect when I say this… But, that cat not only had nine lives, but was a future cameraman. 😊 thank you so much for sharing that story, it is beautiful. 🫂
@@mostlyghostey spoken like someone who has never lived through a war. People were sending their CHILDREN to live with strangers in the countryside.
I don't have any living relatives that remember the war, but my best friend's grandmother did. She very recently passed but she told us what she remembered. She was a child when the war started, she had a single mother and both were evacuated together as she was too young to be alone. They were sent to the Welsh countryside, were taken in by the sweetest couple. The two women had a small farmstead, just a couple cows, chickens and vegetable garden. The women were incredibly welcoming and kind to them for the years they were there. I know many evacuees found abuse or forced labour when they were sent to the country but his grandmother got the lottery placing. Once it was safe they returned home but her mother found it difficult to find work. They ended up going back to Wales, to a small village where her mother got a job typing documents for a local store owner. They never left Wales again, which is why my friends family had all been born and lived here. This experienced truly changed how they thought, living with a gay couple taught his grandmother to grow up accepting, and when my friend came out as gay at 18 she was the only person in his family to be immediately accepting of that. God bless that woman, I hope she's still watching over him somewhere
Thank you for sharing this!
we love wartime lesbians
@bath_foam4576honestly lesbians get shit done, my aunties are ridiculously capable at pretty much everything they turn their hand to. Gardening, mechanics, dog care, carpentry they do it all
I lived in a third world country for a while. Cooking vegetables to mush makes the water more nutritious. The poorer the country, the more water they put in their soups. If you have 3 times more water than veg, you need to find a way to make that water appetizing so you fill your belly.
We call it pot likker (liquor) and I still like to sop my cornbread in it!
I was thinking the same, but from a chemist POV.
@@ktspirit1the women in my family used that name too, but only in reference to soup beans that were boiled with a giant ham hock. (Usually using the one leftover from our Easter ham)🩷🐖
@@cmaden78 Turnip greens, black-eyed peas, etc. Not a drop of that likker is going to waste! LOL
also the old/young who have few teeth can eat it.
This reminds me of an anecdote from my ex wife's family in which, upon heading towards the shelter the elderly matriarch showed great concern as she had gone without her dentures.. The response from the nephew was "Nan! They're dropping bombs, not sandwiches!!" 😂
😂
😂❤
Hence the 1 hour boiling!!
@@casinodelonge haha yep. Plus I figure the ration loaf was so tough, you were glad for the soup to be softer than them!
😂😂😂
Regarding the texture, do consider here that:
1: Most people had seriously bad teeth until we started to care more about dental hygiene post-WW2
2: Blitz Soup had to feed people of every age, including the elderly. It was intended to be easily prepared in great amounts to feed anyone who needed it.
Also a "mushy" soup is easier to eat from certain types of mess tins (if in doubt - drink it)
And …. It’s… SOUP. Soup is soft and liquidy mush
Especially as nobody had immersion blenders etc to hand
My Nana lived in a suburb outside of Manchester during the Blitz. Her stories have stayed on with me all my life. She told me a story about a Luftwaffe pilot who wrote an apology letter to the town she lived in after he dumped his payload when his aircraft was hit. Nana is one of the strongest women I know, she’s 95 next year, still drives, still cooks still lives by herself. That British iron will is REAL.
They don’t make ‘em like they used to.
my grandmother lived in London during that time, just celebrated her 90th birthday, even though she was very young she has so many stories of that time. her and her older sister were shipped off to the country side for i believe 2 years. they had to go to school with a suitcase and tiny gas masks everyday, the story i think that stuck with her most clearly was hiding with her sister under a tablecloth covered side table from the mean teenage boys that they lived with. on a more sad note, the lasting effect of that time is still with my great aunt, a combination of rationing and protecting her young sister took its toll. they are both alive and mentally here. i love them both and all the stories they have from a long well lived life
My parents were born at the beginning of WWII and grew up with Blitz soup as a winter staple even though rationing was comparatively light in Canada. My grandma would put bones in a cheesecloth to be able to get them out easier and she used Bovril as her meat extract of choice. And yes, it would be cooked until it turned to mush!
In turn I was brought up with the same in the 60's & 70's but my mum didn't cook it quite as long unless she planned to mash the veg and add cream at the end.
It took advantage of the root vegs that were cheap and plentiful during our harsh winters.
I still make Blitz Soup in winters nowadays, sometimes keeping the veg whole with less cooking time, sometimes pureeing them and adding cream.
Very filling and like a giant nostalgic hug for me! 😊❤
Thank you for sharing your story! 💞
Love Bovril or Marmite to flavour soups...❤
Many people don't realise the enormous contribution that Canada made in WW2 with troops, the RCAF and the RCN. When the war started, the RCN had only 11 warships. If I remember correctly in 1945 the RCN had around 400 warships making it the fourth biggest in the world. Two of my great uncles served in the RN on North Atlantic, and Arctic, convoys initially from Halifax and a place called Sydney (I think) until the RCN grew in strength and they were posted elsewhere.
@@grendelgrendelsson5493 Rationing remained in Canada until 1947. My only memory is my mother giving ration stamps to the butcher. I was too young to realise that there were food shortages. After 1945, food was being sent to Britain which had rationing until 1954 and I remember Christmas packages being sent to relatives. My version of blitz soup is made in a slow cooker using beef or vegetable broth and assorted vegetables. I blend it at the end and add some 18% cream (1/2 cup) for flavour then freeze it in lunch size units.
Kinda tangentially related but the scene with the Pevensie children at the beginning of the most recent Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe movie was one of the best opening scenes of an children’s movie to me. The actual book kinda just brushes past it but the movie having that opening scene of the Blitz really made the stakes known from the start. The kids are basically refugees in their own country.
My mind immediately went there too. One of my beloved favorite childhood books and films.
That and the scene of the children leaving to evacution while the soldiers were being sent to the front, especially when only three or so years separated the oldest of the children and the youngest of the soldiers.
bedknobs and broomsticks, that disney movie, also happens during the blitz.
@DBZVelena oddly enough, I don't think I've ever seen it. And I'm an 80s baby.
Yeah, that scene really increased my understanding of what the children were going through. It hadn't really hit me before then that this wasn't just a summer vacation type thing.
The government reaction to the blitz early on extended to forbidding local authorities from evacuating people from cities.
In my home city of Plymouth (which, per person, was more heavily bombed than any other British city outside of London itself) a local councillor, Bill Miller, was arrested for organising nightly evacuations. Plymouth doesn't have an underground and Bill knew people in the poorest areas, closest to the Dockyard and industrial areas, were most at risk so he commandeered lorries, trucks and buses to get women and children out of danger so they could camp overnight and return in the morning. Although he was charged, he was later vindicated as the government changed policy and allowed local authorities to organise official evacuations.
He was a pretty amazing guy; he was the grandson of a freed Senegalese slave, before the war he was known as the "people's lawyer" providing free legal advice to his constituents and organising a free electrical wiring service and instrumental in the building of the city's iconic Tinside Lido. After the war, he worked with the Admiralty to retool the Dockyard so that it could provide prefabricated houses for those made homeless and even refused the offer to become Lord Mayor as it would take him away from the Housing Committee. Between 1946 and 1948 he was awarded the British Empire Medal, an OBE and a CBE, continuing to work as local councillor until shortly before his death in 1970.
And shared a surname with our Max!
Now that would make a movie script!
Thank you for sharing this ❤
Fellow Plymothian here and my comment reflects this fully. I talk a bit more about the food but can confirm this story. Perhaps Max you could do an episode on a Plymothian dish. As a comedian and actor well known in my hometown and London, I would be very happy to collaborate with you.
Thank you for sharing this. What an amazing man!!!
It's taken me two days to read all the respectful, interesting, and tid-bitty Comments and Stories shared on this video. What a community you have built Max! Thanks so very much for sharing your recipes, experiences and research that inspires us so.
Thank you! It’s great to share the history with all of you, and learn even more back.
What an amazing channel...Only Max that's for for sure!
My nanna passed away in August at 95 (3 months off 96). One of the last times I saw her, I got out my voice recorder on my iPhone as asked her about the Blitz and later being in the English Army. She still remembered it in detail and talked about how her and her parents were evacuated to the basement of the Town Hall. She was later sent to a family in the countryside for safety. I will treasure her memories and that recording forever
Maybe the soup had to be mushy because a lot of people actually drank it from a cup or thermos? I guess having a soup bowl/plate was not the best idea in a cramped environment with also the danger of dust etc. falling into the larger surface which would have been much more complicated to cover?
Also makes it easy to eat for the elderly and young.
I don't know, all the older generation liked everything overdone from meat to veg.
It could also be just that the recipe writer was following Mrs. Beeton's school of cookery. Especially if the recipes were curated from other sources, rather than being developed for the book.
Great thinking!
It was likely this. Making it mushier also would allow the cooks to blend the vegetables, and if the soup become to mushy or paste like, you just add more water, so you can serve more people if necessary. Watering the soup down might not be the best idea, but if theres to many people, it might be necessary to do.
These war time videos always make me realize two things in regards to food:
- how lucky are we to be able to buy such variety and plenty of foods and ingredients almost everywhere
- how you don't actually need that many fancy and exotic ingredients to make a delicious meal but simple can be just as good
And that no matter what, there is gonna be hardtack!
Amen !
'Deep shelter mentality' is the name of a good heavy metal band.
Doom metal, possibly. Or thrash.
It’s terrible
It's better as an album title
My Dad was born in 1924. He was a kid when the war broke out. Towards the end of the blitz, his Dad (my Grandad) would grab him when the sirens went off and they'd meet up with the home guard and fire brigade and wait, while the rest of the family ran to the shelter, as my Dad was the oldest boy. They'd clear rubble and pull people (dead or alive) from any bombed buildings. He lost his first girlfriend who lived in the next street to a bombing raid.
He left school at 14 (as you did back then) and got a job as an apprentice fitter at the docks. He tried to join the army and lied about his age but he was small (5'7") and looked young and he was marched back to his parents who confimed he was too young and his Dad smacked him round the head for doing it.
By the time he was old enough to serve, he was basically a full time fitter and spent all day fixing railway tracks or re-fitting ships with guns or replacing engines etc - he was classed as essential and had to stay in his job. After the war he joined the Merchant Navy as an engineer and did that for 25 years.
He often told me about the Blitz, but he saw a lot of people die. Neighbours and friends alike. Hull was severely bombed due to it's double dockyards and shipworks, and it was a coastal city relatively easy to hit. He described the meals he had back then and carried on eating things like tripe and pigs trotters well into the 1980's. Luckily for him, after my Mum left I learned how to cook a few decent meals so by the mid 90's he was eating a diet fit for a king! XD
See when my Mum absconded, my Dad was left to do everything including the cooking. Only he had never learned how. The ONLY thing he could "cook" was stew. And by stew, I mean it was basically vegetables of any type (or age) tossed into a pot of water with a a handful of raw sausages and cooked for 2 hours, then maybe a stock cube thrown in. He'd never heard of salt of pepper or garlic. So I had to suffer that stew for a couple of years. Whats the dinner Dad? STEW! Ok same as yesterday then! Yeah, it's yesterdays stew.. OK so whats for desert??!?!! More stew....
Hence why I learned to cook! XD
What a story... I like stew but not that kind of stew!
I think that this was the sort of response to the Blitz that Anderson was determined to encourage by not reacting to the prospect of aerial bombardment by encouraging everyone to hide. Its a brutally utilitarian calculus but there is something to be said, if you want to win a total war of attrition, for encouraging people to carry on regardless and inure themselves to the danger and the cost rather than hide away and regard normal life as too risky. A few hideous experiences and terrifying moments and before long you have a population capable of taking it on the chin and getting on with the job, as your father did. That may cost a few more civilian lives than the alternative, but winning the war was more important. A hundred thousand less civilians but hardened and prepared to work through it is more useful than cowering troglodytes living in fear. He was probably right, to an extent, the suffering on the home front also galvanised a common effort with the armed forces in a manner that was spectacularly lacking in the First World War.
@@osric1730 And not to forget, the rich didn't live in those circumstances. Any large amount of live lost would be poor poeple, and no parlamentarian would have cared much about those in the 30s...
@@Trekki200 Except they did. Both the British and the French were extremely concerned about the ability of their population to sustain casualties following the experiences of The Somme and Passchendaele. There had been serious unrest, sympathy for the Soviets, national strikes and a good deal of resentment stemming from the previous war and The Great Depression.
It wasn't indifference to the lives of the working class, it was a cold hard calculus as to what war mindset it was best to foster among the civilian population facing aerial bombardment, and the necessity to ensure that mindset was such that they would accept risk and "Keep Calm and Carry On". Anderson was concerned with casualties which is why Anderson Shelters were a thing, he just felt that mass sheltering was both hideously expensive and fostered risk aversion in a population that would need to be able to shoulder risk for the purposes of the war effort.
It was utilitarianism not indifference. And anyway given the experience of the First World War, the ruling class had no expectation of getting out of the war lightly. Say what you like about the British ruling class but they were more than prepared to be decimated in the front lines of WW1, and they were, and fully expected a repeat performance in WW2.
I'm not saying the man was right, simply that there is a more plausible explanation than contempt for the poor. He couldn't afford to treat them with contempt, he needed them to win the war, but he also needed them to take aerial bombardment on the chin and function. And that's what happened.
@@fableagain Dude my brother and I, when my Dad finally passed away, we had so many laughs (with tears) talking about his Stew Days. My brother had already moved out with his young girlfriend and avoided that, she was half-chinese and her Dad owned a takeaway where my brother worked part time as a delivery driver he ate like a King for all that period! But he'd come over and look at the dreaded pot of stew on the stove and feel sorry for me - we were both rolling around the floor laughing about it! XD
Even the vicar who'd come over to find out information about my Dad for his wake was chuckling.
My Dads dreaded "Stew". LOL!
God bless him.
The Imperial War Museum in London has a marvelous Blitz experience simulator. You walk down a London street and as air raid sirens are sounding, go down the stairs to a shelter. The people in the shelter are shaken by nearby bombs with loud noise and shaking effects where the whole room rocks. You emerge into a simulation of the same street, but now with bomb damage and with a tea cart nearby. You'll never forget it!
Went in that 30 years ago and you are quite right - I will never forget it! The mangled baby pram lying on it's side with one of the wheels still turning had me crying.
I went when I was around 6 years old... Nightmares for months and you're right I'll never forget it. I can't imagine how children grew up surrounded by it...
Just imagine how the P@/=$tinian$ must feel going through this every few years as the other country "mows the lawn" just because they feel like it.
My great gandmother worked in one of the Blitz Kitchens during the bombing of London, i have vivid memories of my grandmother (who during the Blitz was 12-13) telling me stories of eating this exact meal her Mom made among others. It must have been a terrifying time, i have a photograph of her standing on top of a Dornier bomber which crashed in the street where she lived after being shot down. My grandmother continiued to make the Honey biscuits up until the late 90s, so i got to eat them all though my childhood. Great video as always!
I read a story some time ago of children living in the underground during the blitz, they said they didn't really pay attention and just had fun with other kids playing football and skip rope etc. they thought it was grand because they didn't have to go to school.
My mom uses the honey biscuit recipe for cut out sugar cookies at Christmas. I used to wonder why our family's sugar cookies were also so not sweet, but now I know and it makes total sense! I'm sure her mom was so used to rationing that she just kept making this recipe for cut out cookies since they don't swell or spread very much (today would have been my grandmother's 114th birthday!)
I was a little girl during WWII, and remember very well the effort my Mom had to make dealing with the rationing of so many items. When I went to High School there was a girl who had lived in London during the war and she remembered the "buzz bombs" (the V2 rockets) as being the worst. She said it was really bad. We were lucky here in America to only have the rationing to deal with. Love your show Max and am really enjoying these war videos. Take care. Pat in New Jersey
Just a small correction, the "buzz bombs" were the V1 rockets. They used a pulse-jet engine that was designed to shut off over the target and fall into it. They travelled relatively slowly, so people could hear the buzz of their engines, hence the name. The V2 rockets were a true ballistic missile that actually travelled a little into lower space. They travelled faster than the speed of sound and made no noise until they hit the target and exploded. Sadly, both of these were terrifying weapons. 🙁
@@lesliefranklin1870 To add to this, we used to call the V1 rockets 'doodlebugs', because of course we gave such a name to such horrifying weapons that bombed us around the clock. The V1's were less actual rockets, more bombs with wings.
Both of my parents grew up in London and always taught me with doodlebugs when the engine cut you start counting, if you reach 10 it wasn't going to hit you. V2s gave no warning and terrified everyone. My dad also still has the shrapnel from a German fighter chasing him down the street, as a small boy of course he went back for the bullets which didn't hit him 😅
My Nan remembered that the doodlebugs scared her most, over London. She would tell me about it all.
In Birmingham, during the period of bombing, thousands of people would travel out to the countryside. They would even walk if necessary, like a long train of refugees. This was only possible during the better weather because people slept under hedges. It happened night after night.
Many people did not go to their shelters. Apparently, during a particularly bad raid, my young mum and my Grandma decided to shelter under the stairs. In the morning, they heard someone moving around in the front parlour and, peeping out, shocked a policeman. He was checking that gas lighting had been turned off. The whole village had been evacuated because of unexploded bombs. He escorted them to the next village where neighbours had spent the night. They took a shortcut through the allotments opposite the house. A brick structure in the middle had had a direct hit, leaving a pile of rubble. Being a child, mum climbed it and jumped down the other side. She landed on something soft. Looking down, she was standing on a hand, attached to an arm sticking out from the rubble! It seems that she screamed so loud, the policeman said that if the village hadn't been evacuated, people would run to their shelters thinking it was the air raid siren! Despite his joke, he was kind and gave mum some chocolate he had in his jacket pocket.
I hope your mother wasn't plagued by nightmares after the experience with the hand. The late Metropolitan Opera General Manager Sir Rudolph Bing worked as a manager in a major London department store during the war and was also a siren warden after hours. He remembers finding a dismembered hand after a raid and had bad dreams about it years after.
My mum was in London when the Doodlebugs started to arrive. Her school was down a narrow road and had to walk past a wall where an ARP Warden had been blown into the rendering by a V1. It had been scrubbed but it he was too deeply imbedded in it and it was stained brown for years.
@@grendelgrendelsson5493do you mind sharing what a rendering was?
@PaladinDansesGirlfriend 'Rendering' in this case, refers to the outside coating of plaster/stucco on a wall I believe
@@PaladinDansesGirlfriend Sorry, I should've explained! It's a cement coating applied to the wall for weather proofing and/or for decorative purposes. It can be smooth or rough depending on how it was finished. This was rough hence the difficulty in removing the remains of the poor chap.
The initial scenes of Bedknobs and Broomsticks is also a result of the blitz! Carrie, Charles, and Paul are all shipped off to the countryside and wind up with one Ms. Eglantine Price, played by Angela Landsbury, an apprentice witch! With the help of Mr. Emelius Brown and a little bit of magic they repel a German expeditionary force and save the British Isles! My all time favorite Disney movie
My first taste of the Blitz was when I learned about WW2 in 6th grade and had to read a fictional novel called ‘Goodnight, Mister Tom’ for it, a story about a young boy who’s sent to live with a crotchety old man and the bond that builds between them. Though it was in the background, the ominousness of the war and what life was like for the ‘evacuees’ leaving their lives in the city for safety in the countryside felt very real.
Also, I’ve probably said this before, but as much as I always love the music selections Max picks to fit the countries depicted in each video, I appreciate when he forgoes music for the more serious ones like the WW2 series to convey the gravity of the world events happening at the time.
I read this book as well! The author, Michelle Magorian, wrote another one about a young girl who was sent to the US (as a few folks here in the comments have described) and came back after the war and really didn't fit in anymore, and she hated it and missed her American family at first. It must have been such a hard adjustment on both ends for many.
My grandma was just a little girl when this happened. Down in the shelters with her mickey mouse gasmask on, and even losing some family to the shelling above. I can't even imagine what it was like for her as she never wanted to talk about it (understandable). She would tell me stories here and there but I know there was a lot of trauma she was suppressing. Her Dad as mean as he was helped smuggle goods in on his tugboat to help the family. A cousin of hers was even up in the skies in a Spitfire. So I have a lot of connection with this period of time.
Thank you for making this Max (:
My mother also had the mickey Mouse gas mask! She was born and raised in Northern Ireland though. Still, it is one of the memories of that time that she talked about to me when I was growing up nice and safe in British Columbia, Canada.
Similar. My nan's in her 90s and she would happily talk for hours about the ration cards, the cooking, her playing in the field then having to run home when the siren went off, scrambling to the shelter outside of town... but not about the actual experience of waiting for the bombing to stop.
My grandmother was born just after the war and she never talks about it because the memories are too painful
My Grandmother was in her kitchen out back of her house when she heard a doodlebug engine cut out and sprinted for the Andersen shelter. The V-1 hit across the street, demolished every house on the other side of the street and took out the front wall of her house. And that was just in the suburbs. It beggars belief that anyone thought it a good idea to *not* let people shelter in the tube stations. She lived in that house until she died and I remember the rooms facing front were always colder and draughtier than those at the back because of the repaired/rebuilt front facing wall.
The tube was not bomb proof either. Quite a few took hits with severe loss of live
All my family lived in Birmingham, during the war we had a lot of bombing but the name Birmingham was rarley mentioned "A town in the midlands" was how it was reported, there was a lot of war industry in our city, the house I lived in (I was born 1945,) none of the window lintles were straight the sash cord windows rattled when the wind blew also the door lintels were out of place too, the wooden hand rail up the stairs also had deep gashes in from broken glass coming from the skylight and the front bedroom ceiling was a "tempry one " (was still there in 1978 when I left) all this damage was caused by bombing, we lived 2 miles from the city centre, The house my grandparents lived in and the house my great grandmother and aunt lived in were all distroyed by a landmine droping in their back garden, my great grandmother was killed but my aunt survied she was buried in the rubble for a long time. My dad was in the home guard and his sister was in the land army, my mother worked in a parachute factory, everyone was involved in that war, even children, they collected paper for recycling and rode on their push bikes with messages between air raid wardens when phone lines were down, My grandad was an air raid warden, and yes they did "Dig for Victory" they had a huge allotment , they also kept chickens and rabbits, but when the time came to eat the rabbits, they couldn't do it, the chickens were for eggs, only got eaten when they no longer could lay, my Grandmother used tp preserve the eggs in a galvanised bucket with issling glass. Rationing finished in 1954 I was 9 years old. I am 79 years old now.
I love the way Max creates themes of times, places and events rather than just a random bunch of recipes and history lessons. It maks it more like a deep dive into interesting topics.
I remember making these biscuits and dishes associated with the second world war in primary school in england.
the '70s were not so far removed from that conflict and many english households still kept tins of corned beef stashed in odd places 'against the day'.
oddly, 'bully beef', the 'tommy's' field ration of mashed potatoes and corned beef, is still popular to this day in belgium.
odd to think that a school cookery project from my childhood is now worthy of inclusion in tasting history's repetoire!
too many now forget the sacrifices made both at home and abroad to ensure their comfortable existence today.
*LEST WE FORGET*
My maternal grandmother worked in London during the blitz. She didn’t talk about it much but said you could leave belongings in your space in the tube and they would still be there when returning after work. She also said it was a weird feeling heading out each morning to see what didn’t make it through the night. She came to the US in the mid ‘50s, and she never went to watch fireworks on the fourth and didn’t like the smell of frying beef…. If you saw Bomb Girls, that was her. She put detonators in bombs for part of the war, and the chemicals made her very sick. She recovered, but ended up losing part of a lung when she was elderly due to those same chemicals. When things feel tough, I remember her, and I carry on.
“I am devoutly thankful that we did not adopt a general policy of providing deep and strongly protected shelters.” Me too. I hate it when my citizens can actually survive being bombed.
Figures that some rich, dimwitted, silver spoon asshole aristocrat who's got his own shelter is going to tell the working classes "shut up and deal with the bombs - we need you at the factory tomorrow."
I bet he had a private shelter of its own.
There’s no arrogance quite like the arrogance of British government officials.
Don't British people love to suffer for the royal family, the aristocrats and the capitalists?
In the immortal words of Sir John Anderson: "It seemed like a good idea at the time...."
My first thought of a movie depicting families displaced due to the bombings is the chronicles of narnia: the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe.
Nice call-out!! LOVED those books!
I also thought of the movie Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Disney film, had Angela Lansbury in it. Awesome film!
@@battiekoda i had completly forgotten them , my friend's mum read them to us when we were six -47 years ago, i did watch the movie though
I thought about Narnia AND Bed Knobs and Broomsticks.
My dad was one of the kids shipped to the country. The people who took him in used them as labour on their farm and were supposedly not the nicest people. Still he did develop a love of the countryside and farm life.
Eventually he was brought back to London just in time for the blitz.
My grandmother was born here in northern Sweden on a small farm in 1937, And we stayed out of the war. But she remembers being afriad of planes, Thinking they were going to drop bombs.
My grandfathers dad served on the swedish border to finland during the war and was actually captured by the soviets for two days before being released.
My dad was born on a small farm in Sweden in 1929 😁 He recalled that when he heard the adults discussing the war that he shouted att them that he didn’t want any war! The wise words of a child 😅
Merci!
My guess it was cooked so long to make the veggies super soft to people of all ages could eat it - from babies to the elderly.
actually back then food cooked like we do now would be called half cooked. some recipes for christmas dinners called for starting the veg boiling the day before.
I agree, I think dental care was probably hard to get and teeth might have painful. I also think crisp cooked veggies are a more modern taste. A lot of vintage recipes I see have mushy veggies.
One hour isn't a remotely long time to simmer a soup. My favorite are soups left on the stove all day, or more.
@@elizabethmayberry3414 Probably not far off. I believe my maternal grandmother had her teeth removed in her 20s and then wore dentures for over 70 years.
One thing with the soup though - first you're not losing any of the nutrients as you don't drain the veg and secondly you didn't generally have a stick blender so you could then just mash it down.
My grandparents were children in the Great Depression. They over cooked meat and veggies...a lot...steaks were like shoe leather and white chicken meat was like drywall. Veggies were boiled into absolute tenderness. Decent pastas though since great grandma was from the old country lol.
Past few years I've been looking into my Mums side of the family, and discovered my grandfathers sister was killed during the Blitz in London.
I live in Sheffield, which was also targeted. A few years ago during the anniversary of the Sheffield Blitz, I was in the City Hall watching a Christmas concert. Exited to the sounds of air raid sirens and search lights in the sky. I got chills and it wasn't because of the weather.
That must have been scary! but what an effective way to bring home what it's like in still too many places around the world 🫂
@@BSWVI Second scariest thing to happen to Sheffield after "Threads"!
@@casinodelongethat’s a great movie
Finland has the best shelter system in the world!
My mum was born in 1937, so lived through the war. She was evavuated to a farm not far from where she lives now. Her sister was born there just before the war ended. My Grandfather was evacuated at Dunkirk. When he landed in England, there was a chap sitting on the beach in a deckchair. 'What are you doing here?' He asked him. 'I'm on holiday', he replied. LOL
My Grandad was at Dunkirk as well, he told me a little about it but not much, he bloody hated Stukas though, that was the main thing I remember him saying.
I saw a special on Finland’s shelters. They’re amazing. They double as ice rinks, swimming pools, community centres, etc. My Mom was born in Helsinki during the war, but still has vivid memories of the war. When we were little, there was a train derailment (Mississauga, 1981?), and the air raid sirens went off. I will never forget her panic. She also couldn’t stand underground parking lots.
That's very cool. I'd only heard about how the North got most wooden buildings sabotaged by the invading armies... (by my brother whose job is to lovingly restore/re-build the 100-150 year old wooden buildings that remain).
My grandparents would love this soup as its soft.
They passed on couple years ago. Still miss them from time to time. But in a better place.❤💚🍁
Fascinating as always, Max, and a recipe I can afford (I appreciate that). My mother told me about the air raid drills in Toronto, Ontario and the black outs every night - even though they were in Canada. I remember once in an electrical storm (I was about 13) the old air raid sirens went off (the most terrifying sound) and when I went home my mother was curled up in a ball, reliving her childhood fears. Thanks, Max.
My grandmothers neighbors house was blown up from the bombing, she left with her american husband to the states. They had a house with a garden in Cali, made their own food. I learned a lot from her. The strongest woman I had ever known. Learned most of my cooking from her. I got the chance to Visit the Uk two years ago and its amazing to me that many of the buildings still have large holes from the bombings that are left in place! As a reminder of the past.
I live in the town where my dad was born just before the war started. The main street still has buildings with bullet scars in them because German fighters used to come across the North Sea under the radar, pop up and machine gun the streets. My gran pulled my dad under a bus when a German plane strafed the street when she'd taken him shopping. He was only five but he remembers it as if it happened yesterday.
My mother grew up in London during the war and she and her brother and sister were sent out to the farms for safety and to work in the fields. Being the oldest, my mum came back to the city to work and one of her first jobs was to go to the roof of the office building she was in when the air raid horns went off. She was a spotter for her building and sounded an alarm if the bombing got to close. She met my dad at a dance and after the war came to America to marry him. I grew up on their stories and when we visited London new stories came out when we were actually standing in the places things happened. The effects of the war never left my mum. NOW when people hem and haw about supporting Ukraine and large scale war threatens Europe , and other places in the world, I wish people had heard these stories and felt their power like I did. Their hearts might inform their actions differently.
I couldn't agree more. So many people are living this reality right now 😢
❤
One of my great aunts was in London during the blitz. She never really talked about it except for one incident where she woke in her bed to see a bomb had torn through the roof and was in her room unexploded
Wow!
😮😳😦
Did she make it?
@@nayrusama8378 I mean, she told the anecdote
She officially wins every "You will not believe the morning I've had" story!
Max's skillful storytelling is great, but I have to add that when Jose gets creative in the subtitles ("[chop]") it always makes me chuckle. Thanks, Jose, for adding a bit of humor in a fun, subtle way.
"I'm going to the bomb shelter so I need to make sure I have tea, biscuits, and soup cooked for twice as long as it should be" is the most British thing I've ever heard
My grandmother was a part of the children sent to the country, but in a bit of a unique way. She was German and Jewish and my family were able to get to England while waiting for their papers to get to America, although they had absolutely nothing while there. My grandmother was sent to the country during the Blitz and actually learned English there. It was only for five months but it’s so crazy to think of the journey she made at the age of 8. Thank you!
My Grannie was one of the children sent to Canada, at only 8 years old, to escape the rockets. She never returned to London, and still lives in Canada to this day. She has quite the stories about the bombings and the trip to Canada, chased by u-boats.
My grampy was a radio communications officer aboard the Corvette that patrolled the St Laurence Seaway during the 2nd world war.
He, along with the others aboard the corvettes were making sure that not a single u-boat was going to get thru to sink more ships. Churchill referred to the corvettes as the cheap nasties.
He would be pleased to know if he had been alive still that he had helped keeping your granny safe while aboard that passenger ship.
Was she sent across the ocean by herself?
@@BeaMickeyDoodle with a sibling, just the two girls.
My grandfather was running for his bus in London, and the conductor just stood on the back and laughed at him running frantically down the road after the bus. My grandfather stopped, totally puffed out, and watched the bus drive away. Moments later, it was struck by a doodlebug, and most on board were killed. My grandfather escaped with very minor injuries from the blast. His (and my) lucky day!
Well, atleast your grandpa got the last laugh
My grandmother was a teenager during the blitz. She didn't talk about it a lot but I remember she said that there were a few parties with the other kids and they still had fun. We made a lot of pies together and when she did cook, it was always a classic english meal made with love. My grandfather was stationed in the pacific and picked up a more adventurous taste for curries and spiced noodles. I know she sent him apples and cigarettes once. The apples rotted, but they did make the cigarettes taste like apples which sounds kind of fun. I wish I asked them more about it, it was only when I was doing a project for school that we spoke about it in a lot of detail. I did have her gas mask for a bit. I think it might be with my cousins now. My parents were born about a decade after WW2 but still remember rations and the city being rebuilt. I'm lucky to live in a city surrounded by history and know people who lived through it. Thanks for the video and the channel. My favourites are the ancient history recipes but it's cute how everyone is sharing stories in the comments for this one
My dad was from Scotland and was born 12 years after the war, but he told stories about family members in it (and also WWI). He had an aunt stationed in London during the war, and she was out shopping on September 7, 1940 when hundreds of German planes filled the sky over London.
And while useing the tube stations as shealters is famous, only about 200,000 Londoners actually did.
I made the honey biscuits today, but with a few alterations. I switched out the margarine for "butter mix product" (a weird Danish concoction of around 40% butter and 60% oils), and since we had the first snow of the season this morning, I felt a Christmas-y vibe growing in the kitchen, and added ginger, ground cloves and cardamom. They were delightful. I am bringing some tomorrow for my colleagues at the cultural museum where I volunteer, and I can't wait to hear their thoughts.
Thank you for a wonderful video as always ❤
Marmite jump scare
😂
ViRol sounds worse
you should’ve seen the face i made when it came on screen 🤢😂
Eating marmite by itself is like eating a spoon full of salt, why? But for add ons to food, chefs kiss
@@Tallahassee21 yeah, Marmite in this recipe won't taste of Marmite at all. It'll just give a meaty earthy undertone to tie all the vegetables together. (Every modern vegetable stock cube has yeast extracts in them to tie the vegetables together in this exact manner, anyway!)
But tbh I used to eat spoonfuls of salt (or just pour it into my palm) and shot glasses of soy sauce as a child 😅 and, yep, occasionally would work on a spoon of Marmite for, like... an hour. Kinda like a lollipop.
To be honest. My favorite series has to be, The Titanic, Lusitania, RMS Carpathia, Zeppelin, and transportation episodes.
The War and Rationing episodes.
Medieval recipes.
And The Home front series.
Tbh I just have so much respect for Max’s dedication and helping spark up my Love for History again.
Hope the sugarplums went well! Happy to see your doing alright Max!
They’re almost done. I have the last step to finish them today.
@@TastingHistoryHope your Hairdryer hasn’t caught the smell of sugar. Well at least you guys would smell pretty sweet for the next few weeks
A really old series which was really good and is still online is Danger UXB. In it a group of soldiers were in London defusing bombs that had dropped on the city but didn't go explode.
@@TastingHistorywhat a freaking insane recipe!
@@TastingHistoryI’m invested in the sugarplums to a ridiculous degree and can’t wait for the video!
In my geriatric career I took care of people who fought in the Second World War. One private duty assignment was a dear man who was stationed in London during the blitz. The building in which he was living was hit while he slept. He, obviously, survived but the bed next to his where his buddy had slept was gone and he looked at where he was to the outside. Just steps from his bed was gone. He grabbed what belongings he had left and left the room and made his way to the ground by shimmying down the side of what was left of the wall. Many stories he told me of his life. This was the only one he told me of the war.
5:25 I remember stories my grandmother told me about living in the US during WW 2. For most of the way it was just her and my grandfather (he was too old and disabled to serve), so she used her dairy rations to buy butter, but recalled that margarine was called oleo, which was short for oleomargarine was white when you bought it at the store and came with a tube of coloring which you had to mix with the oleo. I later found out that it was illegal to sell colored oleo to prevent stores from tricking people into buying fake butter.
I think those laws were local or state laws, and supported by the dairy industry to make the margarine less appealing - so probably more in states like Wisconsin.
When I’m going through times of stress, my digestive system doesn’t want to work. I end up making a lot of meals that very much resemble Blitz soup! Mush is comforting and easy on the body. And everyone can eat it, including your elders and babies who might have chewing problems.
Could you do one on the Yugoslavian hyperinflation of the 90s and the so-called Embargo Cake?
When the bags of cash you have to pay weigh more than the groceries you can buy with those bags it’s a bad sign.
Seconding; that sounds like a good video.
A bit politically spicy for Max's channel. Are you sure you really want him going there Mr. Serb? You an't gonna be the Good Guy (because there weren't any).
@@obsidianjane4413 he just recently did a video on food on the German Homefront so I'm not too worried. He did a very good job presenting the nuance of the situation.
Honestly, in a strange way, this explains a lot! My mother was a child during the depression, and when she raised her family in the early 60's, was absolutely obsessed with everyone taking cod liver oil. To her dismay, I couldn't keep it down and refused any further attempts to force it down my throat. The other food items you have mentioned also made it to the dinner table when I was a kid... unfortunately!! She never seemed to recover emotionally from food rationing and shortages. Something I didn't fully understand for decades later 😮 She didn't know how to cook, as all dinner food except hamburgers and pork chops came out of a tin and were heated accordingly. I finally learned how to cook from scratch before the 2008 recession by attending night classes at a local culinary school. My mother is now in her nineties and still thinks olive loaf (bologna), jello, and mayonnaise salads are healthy staples. 😂
My mother told me the same thing about cod liver oil, so she never gave it to us kids, haha.She was born in 1930.
Well she is in her 90s :)
But that whole time period messed with people’s minds for decades after. Same with those who grew up in child poverty and food scarcity.
@@That.Lady.withtheYarnSo true...an entire narrative was proliferated by food companies, grocery stores, and pharmacies. LOL.
@@That.Lady.withtheYarn my mother died in April 2024 at the age of 93. Guess she didn't need cod liver oil!
@@ktspirit1
I was given cod liver oil every day when I was little. This was a few years after the war.
Happy Tuesday, Tastorians
Oooohhhhh!! Tastorians!!! I like that. ❤
I love this! ❤❤❤ Max, make it official. Please call us all your fellow tastorians!
@@jwilliams3269Been trying to make it a thing for a year or more now haha
Every Tuesday is happy for Tastorians!
Excellent episode Max. I am not surprised that the marketing people for the movie got in touch with you, it's kind of a perfect partnership really.
I love your videos, first saw one after being revived after a accidental drug overdose and then again after being hospitalized for the ... Idk uhhhits above 10th time for b*limia and anor*xia. I never really watch food videos but you talked about the history and distracted me from bad thoughts so I would watch your videos when they served dinner and I was able to force myself to eat as I was distracted. I still eat when watching your videos and it helps me. Thank you, Max for your amazing channel and being an amazing man. You literally saved and changed my life.
💗
11:58 Love Max's switch to mid-Atlantic accent
My Grandparents had one London evacuee live with them. Ironically he even had the same surname as us. One day he and my father found some matches and boys being boys played with said matches setting a field on fire….Regarding rations my Dad routinely collected dock leaves and nettles to supplement meals. On one occasion his uncle Fred came over on leave and wasn’t impressed when he found out that it was spam for tea! (In the North tea = main dinner). On a different occasion my Dad aged around 8 or so (so more or less 1945), had a pet rabbit called Rupert, was in hospital, after his op, his Mum and Dad visited, my Dads first question was ‘how’s Rupert’, my Grandma’s response ‘well he was a bit tough’ yup he’d gone in the pot. You know things are hard when you are eating nettles, dock leaves and your kids pet rabbit.
My wife's grandad still has an Anderson shelter in his garden!
My in-laws have one too. A fox lives in it!
Dag nabit, here's me having a bit of a cry at another Max video over my lunch break.
There are so many classic children's stories about children who were sent away (Bedknobs and Broomsticks, or The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe) that make it sound like a grand adventure, but from the perspective of a parent it's so hard to imagine how hard it would be to send your child away.
My mom loves the series "Foyle's War," and there's an episode that deals with a family who takes in a London child. As far as I can recall, the child is an ill fit for the house; he constantly causes trouble because he's bored, and the patriarch (who is a piece of work himself) always butts heads with him. I checked on iMDB and I think the episode is called "A Lesson in Murder."
Especially since in the last book, all except Susan die in a train crash. 😬
My father's family decided to keep him and his brother in London during the blitz. One night they didn't got down to the tube and slept in their house. He woke up the next morning covered in broken glass. My mother was evacuated to the country and enjoyed it immensely. She still has letters she and her parents wrote back and forth while she was gone. She had good adventures, but she missed her parents.
I wouldn't be here if it were not for the Blitz. It's why my nan's family moved to Harefield and that's where she met my grandad!
I heard there was so much light from the fires you could read the newspaper by the window.
Conspiracy theory: the soup is mush so that a packed shelter of eaters don’t have to hear each other munching
Seriously. If I was locked in a tunnel with a few hundred people horrible eating their soup, I might go crazy.
Misophonia is real!
@@donnajones4131 When my wife moved in, I discovered how much I hate the sound of people eating as an adult. It occurred to me that I didn't notice while we were dating because we were at restaurants, or there was music playing.
I don’t get what else you expect soup to be? IT IS SOUP
Bedknobs and Broomsticks also is set up with children being sent to live with a stranger in the country. In this case, Angela Lansbury playing a witch studying magic through a correspondence course. XD
I love that movie so much.
I couldn't have been happier to find this video just two days after seeing the film! It's quite distressing to watch but absolutely beautiful, and I would recommend it to everyone unless they have lived through something like that - in which case my recommendation comes with a big trigger warning.
Thanks for the video, Max, I hope we'll see more collaborations between your channel and historical films in future.
Another awesome video. I'll be sure to watch Blitz. Thanks Max for helping bring history back to our awareness. The bombings of England horrified the nation, and I've heard only the most brief stories of the children sent into the countryside for their safety and the sheltering done in British cities for those who couldn't escape.. And as always kudos to Jose for his assistance on these projects too. Imagine being a British child in the country seeing and hearing the bombers as they were heading towards London, Hull, Liverpool, Birmingham etc..
My Grandmother was born January '41 in Mile end mid Air Raid, my Great Grandfather was an Air Raid Warden (he had been badly burned working as a mechanic so wasn't enlisted into normal service until the later years of the war) and had to fetch a Midwife on his Bicycle which must've been utterly terrifying, fortunately he got through safely and all were safe, sadly he'd passed by time I was old enough to understand as apparently he managed to avoid death a number of times, at one point booting a bomb into the river that was near some flats and when enlisted as a driver managing to get a truck across a bridge that was about to blow up, they definately were built of sterner stuff back then.
My mom grew up in this era. I didn't have an al dente vegetable until I left home for college and went out to eat with my girlfriend's parents. Suddenly I enjoyed vegetables for the first time in life.
На Балканите суровите пресни зеленчуци са голяма част от диетата ни.
I can relate to that. This is how my mother who was a child during the Blitz cooked veggies..
I was raised by my grandparents who both served in that war. Same thing. Found out I liked vegetables when they are anything but boiled.
04:28. Incredibly wonderful British humour!!! Love that it hasn't changed all that much in all these years
It really is funny. Literally in war, people have to run to shelters and go underground to stop from dying. Bombs flying buildings exploding, but let's make sure that everyone knows we cook vegetables worse than everyone else XD.
So awesome that Metatron has discovered you and your Roman recipes. Two of my favorite channels finding common ground thru food, kind of like how so many alliances were formed in ancient times. My grandfather was born in 1898, and while he was an American and too young for WWI and too old for WWII (also only had one eye by then) he and my grandmother faithfully rationed everything and NEVER wasted a single crumb or drop of food for their entire lives. They ate simple, cheap and easy dishes, the thought of "opulent" food made them sneer a bit. The Brits endured horrible conditions during The Blitz, but their spirit never broke.
a good hearty winter stew that's pretty much all root vegetables and some meat is usually at its best the second or third day and sounds very much like "blitz" soup
.. when it's become more mush than anything.. at least in terms of flavour... sitting under a blanket in a comfortable chair and watch the snow fall outside, is the perfect time for mushy overcooked stew..
Anderson's policies against deep shelters smells awfully like a calculated "acceptable" collateral damage approach to me. Appalling.
He knew that the damage would be mostly limited to the lower class and that is always acceptable almost everywhere.
So as a Corpsman who worked with Seabees and ACOE, there is an actual explanation why they wouldn't want people to congregate there. It was something Germany, China, and the UK learned in WW1, at the main issue is ventilation and Carbon Monoxide. With the tubes, they have a complex system of ventilation shafts to vent out Carbon Dioxide and Carbon Monoxide, which work well, until they are covered by rubble or damaged by bombs.
One of the most dangerous things to occur would be a building fire near an intake vent. In Dresden alone, during a similar blitz by the UK (though in Germany) 18,000 civilians died of asphyxiation while taking shelter in the Subway, out of 48,000. By the end of the Desden bombing, over 38,000 died from Asphyxiation, and a total 148k died from the bombing, so effectively 1/3rd of all deaths were from taking cover in deep areas.
Now does it mean "Sit in your home", no, but the idea of spreading out the shelters has a logical reason, even if it is grim. Lose say 20 people a day to bombing, or risk losing 600 if some of the ventilation is damage. That's before you start accounting for the incendiary bombs Germany started using after the Berlin retaliatory strikes.
It is sadly the grim arithmetic of war, the most pointed to example being Coventry. The entire city was leveled, and thousands died, because while the British *KNEW* the scale and time of the attack well in advance, they didn't warn anybody. Because, if they warned and started evacuating people, Germany would have realized the Enigma Machine was compromised, and changed encryption, thus Britain, the US, and USSR would have lost a major source of intelligence.
So which do you chose, lose 100k people to bombings, while trying to minimize the damage, and potentially save over 100k more by keeping the secret of the Enigma, or lose the Enigma, *MAYBE* save 100k,though the Germans will just Coventry another city, and you will have no warning whatsoever.
@@Mikalent Actually the Coventry thing is a myth that first appeared in the Seventies and was repeated ever since. There is no evidence that it actually happened. Could it have happened, maybe, maybe not, but there is no evidence it actually did happen.
@@Mikalent All very good points. Another one to remember from the time is the idea that "the bomber will always get through" - this was believed by a lot of governments including the UK until it was disproved during WW2.
This belief meant that the UK government put more preparation into dealing with the effects of bombing rather than protecting against it, including stockpiling hundreds of thousands of cardboard coffins in 1938-39
I was waiting for it to be a financial reason
There's a video online called the forties house. They took a family and recreated the experience of going through World War II in Great Britain. The food and how they cooked in survive during that time was the emphasis of the series. I learned a lot. I was particularly impressed with how The experience changed the grandmother. She almost divorced her husband over it, but in all honesty? She came out for the better. So for the fun of it, I took a week and emulated some of their limitations. No going to the grocery store. Use what I've got, be as Frugal as possible yet make attractive meals. You'd be amazed how far you can make a little bit of food stretch. It's called the 40s house if you're interested. I watch it every month or so to keep my priorities straight.
Love that whole series, all the eras.
@sharimeline3077 it's one of my favorites. Lyn has such a hard time but I learned the most from her.
I watched that as well. I wish my grandparents were around so I could ask them what rationing was like here in the US.
@newcreatureinchrist5087 my dad used to tell me about it. There were stories. One of the cuter ones was about a older couple who had a mina bird for a pet. It would eat breakfast at the table with them. Breakfast for the bird was buttered toast and tea with sugar in it. When they rationed? She tried to sneak in substitutions to save on rations. She put margarine on the toast instead of butter? The bird took a bite and threw it on the floor. Said, something's wrong with the toast mom. Something's wrong with the toast. She tries sweetener in the tea? Same thing. Tipped it over on the floor and said something's wrong with the tea. Theres a story about Corn Flakes and BLT sandwiches with beets on them. I actually tried that. It's not bad. The depression gave my father a particular appreciation for food. He was a very good cook, and tended to call us spoiled because we had no idea what the Depression was like.
@ConstantComp...I have seen this video. It is almost like a mini series. I love the 1940's era....the clothes, music, meals, etc. I would love to go back in time to experience it.
Holy cow, Max. I just looked over and you have 2.8 million subscribers?! I remember when it was low 3-digits... You've come a long way, and really found your voice! Congratulations, and many more!
2.81 actually
Max is "da bomb" as it were...
Time flies man, it's wild. But I couldn't have happened to a nicer guy
Hope and Glory is one of the best movies set in the Blitz. Written and directed by John Borman based on his own experiences. It's a beautiful film
thank you so much for sharing this max. my grandparents were so close to me and immigrated to canada from the UK after ww2 for a better life. they were younger during the war but they remembered the bombs dropping. i feel so lucky that i live in the safety of canada and cannot imagine living in the UK with the fear of being hit my bombs or doodlebugs
When i was a little kid in the Cub scouts we had a visit from a couple Of English scout masters, one a veteran of WW1 and another who had been a Scout during the London Blitz. The “younger” scout master spoke if using the bush crafting skills while in the shelter, particularly making dust tents for food from a couple of tripods , a crossbeam made from a broom handle with a bed sheet and blanket
Finland doesn't get enough coverage in this series! They sent many of their children to Sweden during this time. Those children often arrived to a family that didn't even speak the same language. Could you follow a recipe from their wartime cookbooks or maybe do Mannerheim´s Vorschmack?
"Eventually people just busted in" I'm honestly shocked that's an Eventually and not on day 1. Even more shocking that the bobbies kept people out instead of going "oh no, we're being bombed" and hiding in the tube themselves.
Not surprising in the slightest. You see police cracking down on the general populace all the time still. Robots obeying orders is all they are.
For real they must have had so much willpower of they didn’t attempt to hide
British Subject mentality.
1:06 "and this is what happens in the movie... the chronicles of Narnia: the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe"
Was just thinking this 😂
0:30 given honey wagons were used to collect night soil, and given classic working class alondon humour, I’m not sure about those biscuits.
Honey trucks are used today to pump out septic tanks.
My late father managed to procure an Anderson Shelter in the early 1980's. It was to use as a shed on our allotment, seemingly the local council still had a store of them somewhere. It was quite a task digging it in, but it was really solid once finished & warm & snug. It became a bit of a group hut for my friends & I to play games in during bad weather.
My Dad and Grandparents lived through this in Birmingham. My Grandad swept burning embers off rooftops. Another great movie about the Blitz is Hope and Glory.
While London might have been the most bombed, my great-grandfathers on my father's side lived and died in Hartlepool which was where any bombs that hadn't been dumped by that point would get dropped. According to my aunt, her grandfathers died on the same night when the bus they were riding was hit. Hartlepool was a ship building site.
I grew up just outside London in Dartford. There was a massive AA battery on Dartford Heath (and a Vickers factory nearby). The "Bomb" craters I used to play in as a kid were mostly made by downed planes but a Heinkel hitting the ground with enough force still made a bloody big hole in whatever was underneath.
When you are starving anything can be flavorful and may become comfort food as it keeps you alive.
Thanks for this story of our time in
WWII London, as I previously described.
I was first back there in 1979, 30 years
after we left, and for 2 weeks in July
2013, with my wife.
It good to see my former residence. 😊
My paternal grandmother, born 1896 in Kansas, was know for her horrible vegetables. The boiled them all, often together, until they were more or less a slurry. Her cooking was one of the reasons that my father decided to join the Navy in WWII -- yep, the military had better food than my grandmother ;-)
The Pokemon plushie got transformed into a helmet it seems
That it did. 😂
Pokemon evolutions got intense during WWII
Naw it’s just a mobile Pokémon bunker. They’re safe and sound (and fed) in safety underneath
@@joshseidel2814 this is my new head canon, I will now entertain thoughts of which one is hiding beneath the helmet, all snug and sound
It's the latest regional variant of Shuckle!
Nice video, sir!!! Me and my grandma always watch your videos to learn about history and to make and try these beautiful historic dishes.
Thank you 😊
@TastingHistory you're very welcome!!!❤️❤️❤️❤️
@@TastingHistory sir, I have a video suggestion for you in which you might be interested. What did Alexander the Great eat? What was his diet that turned him from a small boy to the world conqueror which we all know and love.
As a Brit from Plymouth (a wartime naval town and still to this day houses a great deal of navy) which also happens to be the exact place the pilgrims set off to America from. Hence the Mayflower steps which is NOT at the monument and only locals know where they truly are. Stew is often cooked for hours because the mushy texture is great to have on a stew sandwich. Basically you take what you made basically and fold it between some standard white bread with butter on. One slice folded and two slices. Simply soon a few spoonfuls onto the buttered bread slice and fold in the hands. Messy but bloody delicious.
Great video, Max! And thank you for pronouncing Saoirse correctly!
I love Max’s 1940s newspaper voice
My late mother, and her older brother were both evacuated at the beginning of the blitz - they lived in north London on a road which was right next to a railway line. German planes would often fly along the route, occasionally taking potshots at the surrounding buildings.
My mother went to Cheltenham, in Gloucestershire, and was very well looked after - but her brother went elsewhere, and was treated like a slave. My gran went to visit him, unannounced, and on her way from the station, encountered a dirty, bedraggled child, carrying large bags of coal. She was horrified to find that the child was her son. Gran confronted the people who had taken him in, and told them in no uncertain terms, that he'd probably have a better life back in London, and went back home with him.
I very much doubt that this was an isolated incident.
The consistency of the soup might have been deliberate, as it can be eaten by anyone, of any age, whether they have teeth or not.
Up in Nottingham, the citizens took one look at the Anderson shelters and went "nah duck, for the last eight hundred years every time it's gotten real we've headed into the Caves. Ta-ra, bombs!"
In the Wartime Farm series they talk about a network of caves being used as shelter ! It was so interesting
Also about people being scared of Anderson shelters since they tended to flood...
8:42 crazy that people had to will to fight for the sake of "people" like that.
The worst part is wikipedia and other sites fucking praise this bumbling idiot
the entire time max is holding the biscuits, I'm staring intently and waiting for the Hard Tack CLACK.
I think that's done.