Bullets and Booze: How WWII Changed America's Drinks [16:30]

YouTube ^ | November 1, 2024 | The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

[SunkenCiv]

Eighty-two years ago, on November 1, 1942, America's distilleries were faced with a second prohibition, this time coming from the War Production Board. No more liquor would be produced by the nation's distilleries, as the entire efforts of their industry was needed to produce war alcohol. It is one of the many ways that America's booze was affected by the World War. 

Bullets and Booze: How WWII Changed America's Drinks | 16:30 
The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered 
1.64M subscribers | 150,246 views | November 1, 2024

---

TOPICS: History; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: beer; california; godsgravesglyphs; lancegeiger; oenology; thehistoryguy; thg; whiskey; wine; wwii; zymurgy

[SunkenCiv]

YouTube transcript reformatted at textformatter.ai *may* follow.

[SunkenCiv]

The weekly digest list of topics will show up down below.

[SunkenCiv]

The other GGG topics added since the previous digest ping, alpha:

• After July 1776, the party ended quickly for George Washington [08/04/2026]
• Ancient Beams Offer New Evidence of the First Temple's Destruction [07/20/2026]
• Book hidden in fireplace returned to Australian library 150 years overdue [08/08/2026]
• Delegates sign Declaration of Independence (250 years ago today Aug 2, 1776) [08/02/2026]
• Emperor Domitian - Rome's Tragic Tyrant Documentary [55:45] [08/07/2026]
• European Drought: Danube's Water Level Has Gotten SO LOW that WW2 Nazi Shipwrecks and Even 1,000-Year-Old Mammoth Fossil Are Revealed in the River Bed (VIDEOS) [08/07/2026]
• 100-Million-Year-Old Fossil Preserves an Ichthyosaur That Ate a Pterosaur Before Becoming Food for a Giant Predator [08/04/2026]
• This Viking Longship Crossed the Atlantic Before Starring in Christopher Nolan's 'Odyssey' as Odysseus' Greek Galley [08/02/2026]
• Titus - The Good Emperor Documentary [1:10:49] [08/07/2026]
• Vespasian - The General Who Became Emperor Documentary [1:06:04] [08/07/2026]

[ComputerGuy]

Occasionally, pints from home would show up in the mail. Folks coming back from R&R always brought a fifth or a quart. Nothing ever lasted much more than two minutes or so.

[Empire_of_Liberty]

Interesting.

I always credited Germany for figuring out how to make alcohol into a weapon with their V1 and V2 rockets. Alcohol was usually too-slow in burning to be used as a weapon.

I had no idea that America would want to restrict the sale of alcohol.

[Freedom4US]

They must have made some booze, though not for civilian sale?

Cigarettes were never rationed stateside. You couldn’t get them hardly, is my understanding. But they weren’t rationed, ha. I would deduce a great number of cartons were mailed back to the USA.

[SunkenCiv]

On the one hand, it’s good to stay sharp when on patrol. By contrast, nothing like a hangover once the combat starts. 😁

[kaktuskid]

We had beer and wine available, just not the hard stuff. Beer was in bottles, no cans. As beer was being shipped to the troops, there were short supplies on the home front.

[SunkenCiv]

Germany was the world capital of chemistry for a couple of centuries, beginning well before modern unification. During the OPEC embargo, the crash programs (crash is a good way to describe most of them) to develop alternative fuels led right back to the millions of pages (many on microfilm storage) of the German wartime synth fuel programs.

Methanol and LOX was the combo used in the V2, because other common fuels were restricted. Just recently I read that the 3000 V2s launched during the war killed 12,000, meaning that each missile on average killed four people. Shows how well civilian populations took cover, I suspect.

In the postwar US, the V2 was altered to use RP1 (refined kerosene) and was used in 1946 to take the first photos from space. More kick in kerosene than in methanol, apparently.

Not sure what fuel the V1 used. The design is so simple it could probably be built in one’s garage. I think the number built did not far exceed the number of V2s, which is weird. A storm of 10,000 of those over the course of a few days, and armed with incendiaries instead of an explosive, would likely have burned down parts of whole cities.

[kaktuskid]

Alcohol was used to make synthetic rubber. And there was “medicinal alcohol”…often mixed with fruit juice by our troops.

[Freedom4US]

Supposedly more slave labor died manufacturing the “vengeance weapons” than were killed after launch.

[rlmorel]

“Torpedo Juice”...:)

From when torpedoes ran on Ethyl Alcohol... You can bet that the supply chain did the best they could to keep a handle on that stuff, but… Boys will be boys!

[DugwayDuke]

The internet agrees with you: An estimated 20,000 slave laborers died manufacturing the Nazi V-1 flying bombs and V-2 rockets. More forced workers and concentration camp prisoners died building these weapons than the total number of civilians killed by them in combat strikes.

[Empire_of_Liberty]

I am sorry, but you people are simpletons. Do you really think that the Nazis cared how many people died creating their “vengeance” weapons?

Every enemy death was a plus. Alcohol was mostly useless to any 20th century war effort. The metal in a V2 rocket was better used than in a tank that had no fuel.

[imardmd1]

X-rations were for commissioned officers only, available in any Officer's Club.Where they paid for it, and for their meals, as well as for their uniforms.

Enlisted personnel were not admitted to these clubs. They could obtain 3.2% beer on base, nothing stronger--no wine or strong ale.. But vanilla extract rarely got past the mess sergeant, nor Aqua-Velva shaving lotion beyond the First Sargeant's locker.

If a sailor was found smuggling X-rations aboard ship in his seabag, brig time was the likely outcome, or at least a lot of deck swabbing and/or rusty paint-scraping duty. Same for soldiers: post stockade or latrine sludge burning or kitchen patrol.

During WWII, civilian smokes were plentiful, but every pack or cigar box or tin of pipe tobacco had better be wearing a hefty Federal Tax label. White lightning wasn't the only untaxed commodity run out of Dixie to northern cities.

And until Viet Nam, no addictive narcotics wanted anywhere by the honorably dutiful constituents.

[Paal Gulli]

Habits of consuming soft drinks and cigarettes also were greatly affected by the World Wars.

Most WWI soldiers had their first exposure to factory-rolled cigarettes in the war. Which got them accustomed to the convenience and the convenience encouraged them to smoke more of them. By the time the US entered the war, >90% of British soldiers were dedicated smokers. Black Jack Pershing said tobacco was as important to winning the war as bullets were so there was a grass roots effort in the US to provide the Doughboys with cigarettes. And of course about the same time, the cigarette manufacturers started paying the motion picture industry to have their products featured in glamorous and sophisticated ways in the movies. Which put America well on its way to a cigarette smoking pandemic.

In WWII, cigarette smoking was institutionalized for the armed services and each field ration meal included a small box containing four individually boxed cigarettes.

When WWII broke out, Robert Woodruff, president of Coca-Cola, took the decision that every US serviceman was going to be able to buy a Coke for 5¢, regardless where he was, and regardless what it cost the company to get it to him. He built 64 factories in war zones and served 5 billion (with a “B”) bottles of Coke to GIs.

And of course when the servicemen came home from the war(s), they had a distinct preference for any “comfort” items they’d had access to during the war.

RE: beer and the military, during Gulf War II, the dining facilities in the war zones served (free) beer to the GIs, but only during the broadcast of the Superbowl (all DFacs had big screen TVs & satellite reception) and you only got two beers. When you were served the first beer, they marked the back of one hand with a Sharpie. Come back for the second and they marked the other hand.

SouthCom set up an R&R camp in Qatar which also had a cruise boat. The cruise boat served beer but only when outside of Qatar’s coastal waters and, again, only two beers a day (regulated by the Sharpie method). A few enterprising GIs took their two beers (separated by a respectable interval) and auctioned them off for a princely sum while nobody who mattered was around.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks!

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Fascinating history, SC! Thanks for posting.

I learned lots of things. One of the most pertinent for me was the government limiting base and ship beer to 3.2% ABV (at 7:42). I matriculated at Mizzou in Columbia, MO in 1969, 23 years after the government dictat came down about 3.2% beer. At Columbia, we could only buy 3.2% beer on Sundays! The palate for bland, mild beer was created and led to blah mass produced, weaker, lagers post-war.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Alcohol was rationed and curtailed in WWII for several overlapping reasons.

Grain and agricultural priorities

Distilling whiskey, gin, and other spirits uses grain (corn, rye, wheat, barley) that the government wanted diverted to food production and, more importantly, to industrial alcohol production. Grain that went into a bottle of bourbon was grain that wasn't feeding troops, allies, or livestock.

Industrial alcohol as a critical war material

This was the biggest driver. Ethyl alcohol (ethanol) was a key feedstock for making synthetic rubber, since Japan's conquest of Southeast Asia had cut off roughly 90% of the U.S. natural rubber supply. Ethanol-based synthetic rubber (via butadiene) was urgently needed for:

• Tires
• Gaskets and hoses
• Countless other military equipment components

Alcohol was also used to produce:

• Smokeless gunpowder and other explosives (as a solvent and processing agent in cordite and similar propellants)
• Antifreeze
• Various industrial solvents and cleaning agents for war production

Torpedo fuel

Alcohol also went directly into weapons. Steam-powered torpedoes, including the U.S. Navy's Mark 14, used a "wet-heater" engine that burned grain alcohol mixed with water and compressed air to drive a turbine. Each torpedo carried several gallons of high-proof alcohol as fuel.

This supply became notorious among sailors as "torpedo juice." Crews would siphon the alcohol from torpedo tubes and mix it with pineapple or grapefruit juice to make it drinkable, despite the practice being against regulations. The Navy attempted to discourage this by adding toxic denaturants, such as croton oil, to the fuel.

Government mandate

In the U.S., the War Production Board ordered distilleries to stop making beverage alcohol and convert to producing industrial, high-proof alcohol for the war effort. Many famous distilleries (Seagram's, National Distillers, Hiram Walker, and others) retooled their stills to produce industrial ethanol instead of whiskey and gin. This is why whiskey in particular became scarce and aged stock ran low: production of new beverage whiskey was essentially halted for stretches of the war, and what remained on shelves was older pre-war stock being sold off.

Bottling and packaging shortages

Glass, cork, and metal (for bottle caps) were also needed for the war effort, further constraining beverage alcohol packaging even when spirits were available.

Medical use

Ethanol was also used as a solvent and antiseptic or disinfectant in military medicine, and as a base for various pharmaceutical preparations, though this was a smaller draw than the rubber and munitions uses.

Summary

It wasn't really a matter of booze being taken from soldiers' morale rations; beer was actually still produced in reduced quantities, partly for troop morale. Rather, the same grain and the same alcohol molecule that make whiskey were also raw material for synthetic rubber, gunpowder, and even torpedo fuel, and the war machine won that competition for supply.

[SunkenCiv]

Probably helped start the rocks-glass bourbon and scotch after the workday. Presidents Truman through Bush41 (apart from Carter, who was active from '46) were WW (I and/or II) vets and they drank the hard stuff.