Towards ‘Total’ Recycling: Women, Waste and Food Waste Recovery in Germany, 1914–1939

Abstract

AbstractIn two critical periods of German history, namely during wartime Imperial Germany and the National Socialist era, the German state resorted to salvaging waste to mobilise both people and resources at home for the war effort. Waste recycling efforts were part of preparing the national economy as well as home front morale for ‘total’ war. Since domestic waste – the generation of which was largely an urban phenomenon before the advent of mass consumer society – has traditionally been defined as a female responsibility, urban women were seen as the main pillars of waste work. Collecting, separating and storing reusable leftovers became a pervasive element of their everyday lives, as well as those of schoolchildren. Moreover, in the case of the First World War, under the umbrella of the so-called National Women's Service (Nationaler Frauendienst or NFD), women's associations set up grass-roots local waste collections before the state discovered the potential of waste for its war mobilisation efforts from 1916 onwards. The article highlights this self-mobilisation in the case of food recycling. Furthermore, it explores the continuities and differences between First World War waste salvage and later Nazi waste policies. Claiming to have learnt their lessons from the salvage drives of the First World War, the Nazis aimed at a ‘total’ waste recovery at the latest from 1936 onwards and took a top-down approach to reach it; in contrast, waste salvage drives of the First World War had been dominated by local and often female initiatives.