Sugar wasn’t the only thing short

We know that people complained about sugar rations and the lack of rubber for tires during World War II, but we don’t hear so much about the wartime shortage of liquor.  Alcohol that normally would be consumed in south Louisiana night spots was being used to make bombs instead of booze.

In February 1944, Ed Dauphin, chairman of the Southwest Louisiana liquor industry board, explained about the shortage.

“The whiskey shortage is a reality, notwithstanding rumors to the contrary,” he said. “Furthermore, the shortage is likely to continue to be real as long as the war lasts.”

He said “abnormal labor and economic conditions” were partly to blame, but that “the shortage is due primarily to the fact that military demands for alcohol in the manufacture of explosives are so great that no alcoholic beverages have been distilled since Nov. 8, 1942.”

He said 100 gallons of alcohol were used to make just one 18-inch shell and also that “it has been discovered that a better grade of butadiene is more economically made from alcohol than from other materials formerly used.”

Butadiene was important in making synthetic rubber.

The good news, he said was that 420 million gallons of whiskey were stored in bonded warehouses in the United States.

The bad news: “That figure represents the amount put in barrels several years ago. The government allows 15 to 35 percent loss through soakage and evaporation … [and] the industry has placed aside a post-war reserve since whiskey cannot be aged quickly enough after the war to meet any immediate demand.”

That meant that only 208 million gallons of whiskey would be available for the duration of the war—and nobody knew in February 1944 how long the war would last.

A shortage of whiskey would not normally have been that big of a deal in southwest Louisiana. Some of the best booze to be made during Prohibition had come from Acadiana and the art of home distilling had not been lost.  But this time we couldn’t fall back on the still behind the barn because of sugar rationing; homemade hootch used lots of sugar.

But even with a short supply of whiskey, the bars seemed to be doing OK, perhaps because of other attractions.

In September 1944, Provost Marshal  Fred Allen, the man in charge of military police in the area, found it necessary to call a meeting  of “bartenders, tavern, and saloon keepers” to discourage “the frequenting of their places by women of questionable character.”

The barkeeps said they would surely keep a careful watch and would “weed out the undesirables,” but Captain Allen was back in the newspapers in January 1945, when he warned  that bars selling liquor to minors would not be allowed to serve GIs.

According to the press, “Captain Allen stated that the abuses of this law have caused considerable trouble. … [and] operators who do not comply with the laws … applying to minors and who still favor the minors’ business … cannot expect future military patronization of their establishments.”

Luckily, there was still a bit of whiskey left when the war ended in 1945 and celebrations spilled over into the streets. The record is not clear on whether minors and undesirables joined that party.

 

You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jhbradshaw@bellsouth.net or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.