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Not sure if housil or others from europe might have come across this but I recall reading, many years ago, in a SOF-type magazine, that during ww2, the German army in Russia had a rather bizarre way of treating cold weather casualties which involved the feeding of liquified or semi-liquified fats to the casualties made from the drippings of field kitchen stoves and other odds and ends. According to this article, which again my apologies for not recalling, the system was innovative for the time. In our present and 1980s coldweather rations the manufacturers opted for the inclusion of carb-rich snacks and extra hot beverage mixes. Just curious if anyone has heard of ww2 german system and if present german rations contain cold weather extras.

the germans under ww2 didnt have any extra fat food,it was bread,sausage,leberwurst,and thin horse pea soup if they were lucky...
some divissions had "more food" like can beef fish and so on ,but not often used.

theyre suply line was por,first the depot cheaf got what he wante then the chef,than the driver and so on
so there was not much left for the front line soldier.
there was also ration of things so everythung was in shortage.

cheers ken

thanks norge, it did not make sense to me what this magazine article was discussing but that's what i get for having poor memory and trying to remember details of something i read years ago. of course u made the excellent point that during wartime everything would be in short supply. all i can imagine is them possibly providing what hot beverages they could get and besides cold weather casualties could get sick being fed "drippings" from kitchens and resulting dehydration would make them even worse. thanks for imput norge!

The use of extra fat in the extreme cold is common. Many eskimos and inuits eat the blubber from the wales.
Also yesterday I was watching a program in the history channel about the life in Fairbanks, Alaska. They showed how the town works in the extreme cold weather.Then they showed a troops of Boy Scouts being trained in artic survival techniques to earn their -40 and -100 patches. The leader mentioned that when they spend the night in their shelters (quinzees) they give the kids before they go to sleep a big cup of hot cocoa laced with 4-5 spoonfulls of fat rich butter!!!
He said that it gives their bodies the extra fuel to pass the cold artic night.

So that's why the MCW's have a high fat and caloric content.And also why plenty of the people that live in the upper latitudes make and eat a lot of baked goods like cookies and other sweets during winter....

when you eat extreme sweet and fat food just before you go to sleep
your body will produce heat when taking care of the fat/sweet food in your belly.
this is a normal cold weather army training trick,also pee and poo poo before sleeeping
and do it when you have to not wait to long
since your body will use extra het just to heat the --poo
c vitamin is also good in arctic/cold weather

cheers ken

The Wehrmacht did use a high fat- content liversausage type paste in small cans that was airlifted in large amounts to the Stalingrad kessel.

This is documented in Anthony Beevors Stalingrad

Ive been unable to find an on- line picture, if one exists.

Thanks everyone for replies. Proper nutrition in cold environments has been an issue with armies for a long time and of course the weight of carrying individual rations must also play a part in determining what to put in them for maximum nutritional value versus weight.

Bypah - I love it, Wales my country is being eaten!
Also the upper latitudes, it explains why the girlfriend (she's from a cold icy northern land) is so keen on baking, tasty stuff

Norge - interesting stuff - wasting energy by heating crap, hadn't thought of it like that before! One of my soldiers has done an exchange with your Home Guard, I must ask him what unusual ECW tips and tricks he found out...

Rationtin440 - weight, hence dehydrated rations made up with melted snow I guess. Not that that wouldn't have it's disadvantages (carrying more fuel, which is less efficiently burning in the cold anyhow, also you can't eat rations cold if you have no time to cook/are on hard routine like you can with retort...).

I would be careful against the fat-feeding route though with regards to Wehrmacht. I'm sure extra fats in modern Arctic rations are used for good reason, but if you have a seriously malnourished individual and feed them rich foods there is a significant health risk. I read it somewhere (perhaps also Stalingrad, I don't remember) that POWs who worked in the prison camp kitchens would sometimes steal whatever they could, to supplement their poor, starvation-level diets. This anecdote had one prisoner in absolute agony in his stomach (can't remember if lasting injury or death followed) due to having stolen a lump of butter - far too rich for his now-accustomed to diet!

Also I seem to remember hearing that concentration camp inmates, once freed, had to have properly administered centralised feeding for the same reasons. Their first instinct would be to go fill themselves up with rich foods, but it was dangerous to their health and they needed a proper diet to condition them to normal foods again.

Personally, I go for the hot drinks route. In winter I must drink a gallon of tea, rooibos and hot blackcurrant juice a day

The most important reason for heaving fat into cold weather rations is, it has the most calories at same weight.

1 g sugar = 4 kcal
1 g fat = 9 kcal


At the Wehrmacht winter combat at east front, they didn´t eat fat for their higher value of calories, they eat it for the lack of any supply. They eat what ever they got.


I personaly also don´t increase my fat intake at winter. I agree with freezedried -you have to heat up (lot´s of) water in advance.

I was at winter combat camp with Bundeswehr reservist. We slept outside WITHOUT sleepingbags.



we had regular EPa´s "only". We used lot´s of hot tea, coffee from ESBIT cooker to keep us warm.
The power consumption of your body at winter is higher as the body must make much more body heat. The liver is the biggest "heat producer". Shivering consume lot´s of energy from your body you have to replace. You just need "energy", if from sugar, fat what ever does not make any difference. Your body will turn it into glycogen and "store" it into your muscles and liver until you need it.

Btw. - 1g alcohol = 8 kcal almost as much as fat, but alcohol will dilate the blood vessel and increase the lost of body heat.