Margot Wölk: Taste of Death—Hitler’s Food Taster

Maniacal dictators tend to develop a sense of paranoia throughout their reign, as was the case with Adolf Hitler.

Hitler was a vegetarian (it is not precisely known when he became vegetarian), but certainly he was throughout World War II. Allegedly, he once commented that he didn’t like to eat lobster because he thought it was cruel how lobsters—cooked alive.

Margot Wölk was a former German secretary. At the age of 24, she fled her bombed-out parental home in Berlin in the summer of 1942 and moved to Groß-Partsch in East Prussia to live with her mother-in-law. Two and a half kilometres to the west was the Führer headquarters, Wolfsschanze. Her husband Karl, whom she had married at the start of the war, was missing in action, presumed dead. She did not plan to become one of the food tasters or Adolf Hitler. She was one of a group of fifteen young women in 1942 who had to test Hitler’s food for toxins at Wolf’s Lair. She was the only surviving witness from this group. The existence of this group of food tasters was unknown until 2013.

Every meal could have been her last. And when she had finished eating the bland vegetarian dishes put before her, 25-year-old Margot Wölk and her young female colleagues would burst into tears because they were grateful still to be alive.

Margot was the only one to survive. All her colleagues were rounded up and shot by the advancing Red Army in January 1945.

There had been rumours that the Allies had plans to poison Hitler. Each day, the women sat around a big table in front of plates heaped with the food prepared for that day, which included rice, noodles, and dumplings, so they didn’t go hungry. Once the confirmation came that the food was safe, it was packed into crates and taken to the main headquarters by members of the SS.

After Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg’s failed 20 July plot in 1944 in the Wolf’s Lair to assassinate Adolf Hitler and remove the Nazi Party from power, they tightened security around the Wolf’s Lair and the food tasters were no longer allowed to stay at home. A vacant schoolhouse was nearby and used for the tasters to board. “We were guarded like caged animals,” Wölk said in an interview. Each morning at 8 a.m., Wölk every morning was woken up by the SS, who shouted “Margot, get up!” from beneath her window. At that time, her only food taste service needed was if Hitler was actually at the Wolf’s Lair.

When the Soviet army was just a few kilometres from the Wolf’s Lair, a lieutenant took her aside and told her, “Go, get out of here!” He put her on a train to Berlin. It saved her life. She saw him again after the war and learned the fate of the other food tasters, shot by the Soviet soldiers.

Her life was saved a second time by a Berlin doctor who took her in after she fled the Wolf’s Lair. When SS soldiers showed up at his practice searching for the fugitive, he lied to them, and they left.

As Wölk returned to Berlin, she fell into the hands of the Soviet Army after the end of the Battle of Berlin. For two weeks, they raped her repeatedly, inflicting such injuries that she was never able to bear children.

A British officer called Norman helped her recover. He went back to Britain after the war. He wrote asking his German girlfriend to join him. But Ms Wölk told him she wanted to wait and find out if her husband Karl was still alive.

In 1946, she reunited with her husband, Karl. His disposition, mentally and physically, was marked by years of war and imprisonment. The married couple lived happily together until he died in 1980.

Margot Wölk died in April 2014 at the age of 96.

Sources

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20190807-the-women-who-tasted-hitlers-food

https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/hitler-food-taster-margot-woelk-speaks-about-her-memories-a-892097.html

https://www.joyvspicer.com/joy-blog/2022/8/22/history-margot-wlk-adolf-hitlers-food-taster

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/hitler-s-food-taster-reveals-the-horrors-of-the-wolf-s-lair-9738880.html

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/hitler-s-food-taster-reveals-haunting-past-1.1342930

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SPAM

I am going to Spam this blog and I won’t even apologize for it.

But wait before you delete the post.

On this day in 1937 the Hormel Foods Corporation,  head quartered in Austin- Minnesota, USA,  first introduced the product SPAM The square can of pork, salt, water, sugar, potato starch and sodium nitrite that first rolled off the assembly lines 82 years ago during the late depression era. it was invented .as a way to capitalize on  the then-unprofitable pork shoulder.

According to Hormel ,SPAM stands for ‘spiced ham’ and not “something posing as meat”

The product became very popular during WWII.

It is actually said that SPAM helped win the war. It went global during World War II, when the US shipped out over 100 million cans to the Pacific, where it made an inexpensive yet filling meal for U.S. troops Millions of cans of SPAM were also  sent to the Soviets and they loved it.

Khrushchev once said “SPAM was a godsend for another hungry group—Russian soldiers in World War II.”

But how did get SPAM such a bad name when it comes to IT?

We have Monty Python to thank for that. in the 1970s Monty Python’s Flying Circus had a sketch , which is the pop culture Spam reference most people will remember.

The sketch is about a  customer in a restaurant  who desperately tries to order something that doesn’t contain SPAM, only to find that  everything on the menu features it. In the course of his disastrous  dinner, a nearby party of Vikings( It is Monty Python)breaks into song: “SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, lovely SPAM! Wonderful SPAM!”

 

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Taste of death-Margot Wölk ,Hitler’s food taster.

Every meal could have been her last. And when she had finished eating the bland vegetarian dishes put before her, 25-year-old Margot Wölk and her young female colleagues would burst into tears and “cry like dogs” because they were grateful still to be alive.

Hitler was a vegetarian, it is not precisely known when he became vegetarian but certainly throughout  WWII. Allegedly he once commented that he didn’t like to eat lobster because he thought it was cruel how lobsters were cooked alive.

Yet he had no issues killing millions of men,women and children, nor did he have any problems forcing 15 young women to become his food tasters, to ensure he wouldn’t get poisoned.

Margot Wölk, (born 27 December 1917), is a German former secretary who was one of 15 young women who, in 1942, were selected to taste German leader Adolf Hitler’s food at the Wolf’s Lair in East Prussia for some two and a half years in order to confirm that the food was safe to eat and didn’t contain any harmful toxins or poisons.She was the only one of the 15 to survive World War II, and her background as Hitler’s food taster was not revealed until a newspaper interview on her 95th birthday in December 2012.

She was the only one to survive. All her colleagues were rounded up and shot by the advancing Red Army in January 1945.

Just after Wölk’s arrival in Gross-Partsch, she and 14 other young women were selected by the local mayor and brought to the barracks in nearby Krausendorf (now Kruszewiec, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, Poland), where cooks prepared the food for the Wolf’s Lair in a two-story building. Wölk was picked up by a bus every day from her mother-in-law’s residence. The tasting took place daily from 11 to 12 o’clock. The service personnel filled platters with vegetables, sauces, noodle dishes and exotic fruits, placing them in a room with a large wooden table, where the food had to be tasted. “There was never meat because Hitler was a vegetarian,” Wölk said in an interview.“The food was good … very good. But we couldn’t enjoy it.”

There were rumors that the Allies had plans to poison Hitler. After the women confirmed that the food was safe, members of the SS brought it to the main headquarters in crates.

After Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg’s failed 20 July plot in 1944 in the Wolf’s Lair to assassinate Adolf Hitler and remove the Nazi Party from power, the security around the Wolf’s Lair was tightened, and the food tasters were no longer allowed to stay at home. Instead, they were boarded in a vacant school building nearby. Each morning at 8 a.m., Wölk was rousted from bed by the SS, who shouted “Margot, get up!” from beneath her window. By that time, she was only needed if Hitler was actually at the Wolf’s Lair,

“The security was so tight that I never saw Hitler in person. I only saw his Alsatian dog, Blondi,” Ms Wölk recalled.

Security was draconian, but one night she was raped by an SS officer.-shack.”Later in 1944, when the Soviet Red Army was just a few kilometers away from reaching the Wolf’s Lair, a lieutenant took Wölk aside and put her on a train to Berlin. After the war ended, Wölk met the lieutenant again, and he told her that all of the other 14 food tasters had been killed by Soviet soldiers.

As Wölk returned to Berlin, she fell into the hands of the Soviet Army after the end of the Battle of Berlin. For two weeks, they raped her repeatedly, inflicting such injuries that she was never able to bear children.

A British officer called Norman helped her recover. He went back to Britain after the war. He wrote asking his German girlfriend to join him. But Ms Wölk told him she wanted to wait and find out if her husband Karl was still alive.

In 1946, she was reunited with her husband Karl; he was marked by years of war and imprisonment, but the married couple lived happily together until his death in 1980.

For decades after the war, Wölk never talked about what happened in Gross-Partsch; however, the experience came to her often in dreams. It wasn’t until December 2012, on her 95th birthday, when a local Berlin journalist from the newspaper Berliner Zeitung paid her a visit and began asking questions, that she spoke about what she calls the worst years of her life.It was then, she suddenly decided to break her silence.

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Food in WWII

Anyone who knows me knows that I take my food seriously. Never mind the danger to my family or me, the deprivation of my daily requirements of food would probably be enough reason for me to go to war.

Luckily enough I never had to go a day without food(although it would have done me no harm). during WWII however some of my family had to do with tulip bulbs for food, apparently it tastes a bit like onion.

Even though none of my family ever mentioned this, I do know that not every cat was assured of any of its 9 lives during the war.(I hear it tastes like chicken) But that was the case in the Netherlands and most of the other occupies countries.

Although food wise Britain and the US fared better then the occupied countries they also had to ration their food.

 

This poster encouraged people to save peelings and food waste for the ‘pig bin’.

Shoppers wait patiently in a queue. This photo was taken in London in 1945. There had been rationing in Britain since 1940.

One thing there was no shortage of was rabbits, so rabbits stew was not so much a popular dish but rather a dish born out of necessity.

Rabbits could be caught wild and the government encouraged people to keep them to provide food. This recipe uses rabbit and was adapted from a pre-war recipe which used cider. The wartime version uses grated apple instead.

If someone wants to try it out, below is the WWII recipe for Rabbit stew

• 1 whole rabbit, cut into joints
• 1 tbsp vinegar
• 1oz flour
• salt & pepper
• 1-2oz dripping
• 2 bacon rashers, de-rinded & chopped (if available)
• 2 medium onions, sliced
• 3 medium carrots, sliced
• 1 pint (600ml) water or stock
• 1 cooking apple
• fresh herbs (as available)

 

• Measuring jug
• Weighing scales
• Tablespoon
• Saucepan
• Wooden spoon
• Strainer
• Knife
• Chopping board
• Peeler
• Frying pan

1. Put the rabbit to soak in cold water with the vinegar for 30 minutes
2. Remove and dry well
3. Mix the flour with the salt and pepper and coat the rabbit joints
4. Heat the dripping and add the bacon rinds.  Then add the rabbit joints and cook steadily for about 10 minutes or until golden brown in colour
5. Remove from the pan
6. Add the bacon, onions and carrots and cook for 5 minutes then return the rabbit to the pan
7. Add the water or stock and the grated apple and stir as the liquid comes to the  boil and thickens slightly
8. Add the herbs
9. Bring to the boil and simmer for 30 minutes
10. Quickly put dish into the hay box and leave for 4 to 5 hours
11. Serve with seasonal vegetables.

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