Ersatz good

In the opening months of World War I, replacement troops for battle-depleted German infantry units were drawn from lesser-trained Ersatz Corps, which were less effective than the troops they replaced.

Another example of the word's usage in Germany exists in the German naval construction programs at the beginning of the 20th century. In this context, the phrasing "Ersatz (shipname)" indicates that a new, larger or more capable ship was a replacement for an ageing or lost vessel. Because German practice was not to reveal the name of a new ship until its launch, this meant that the ship was known by its "Ersatz (shipname)" throughout its construction. At the end of World War I, the last three ships of the planned Mackensen class of battlecruisers were redesigned and initially known simply as the Ersatz Yorck class, since the first ship was considered to be a replacement for the lost armored cruiser Yorck.

The Allied naval blockade of Germany throttled maritime commerce with Germany, forcing Germany and Austria-Hungary to develop substitutes for products such as chemical compounds and provisions. More than 11,000 ersatz products were sold in Germany during the war. Patents for ersatz products were granted for 6000 varieties of beer, wine and lemonade; 1000 kinds of soup cubes; 837 types of sausage and 511 assortments of coffee.[3]

Ersatz products developed in Germany and Austria-Hungary during this time included:[4]

• synthetic rubber Kautschuk produced from petroleum for rubber
• benzene for heating oil (coal gas)
• industrial lubricants made by extracting oils from coal tar and brown-coal slags
• synthetic camphor for imported natural camphor
• nitrate crepe paper made from cellulose for gun cotton
• glycerin from sugar rather than fats
• gypsum yielded sulphur
• pigeon guano used to make fertilizer
• flowers and weeds processed to make alcohol for ammunition
• rosins and gums extracted from coal derivatives
• tea composed of roasted barley, grasses, wild flowers, ground raspberry leaves or catnip
• coffee substitute using roasted acorns, chicory and beechnuts (stretched with caramel-flavoured raw sugar and beet flower later in the war)
• butter replaced by curdled milk, sugar and food colouring
• cooking oil replaced by a mixture of beets, carrots, turnips and spices
• salad oil was 99 per cent mucilage
• eggs replaced by yellow-coloured corn or potato flour
• ground European beetles (cockchafers) and linden wood replaced fats
• sausage made of water, plant fibres, animal scraps and blood - (the infamous 'war sausage' which was equated to 'a mouthful of sawdust')
• bouillon cubes made 70-90 per cent of salt rather than meat extract
• wheat flour stretched by adding potato flour and powdered hay
• chocolates and cocoa replaced by ground cocoa shells and mixed pure pepper*
• oil and sunflower 'cakes' replaced corn and oats as horse feed
• rapeseed, poppy and mustard 'cakes' replaced green feed for cattle
• paper, peat, reeds, bulrushes and free-growing stinging nettle fibres replaced cotton in textiles
• wood and paper used for shoe soles

Germany also stretched its supply of gasoline with 'gasohol' (Benzolspiritus), which consisted of 3 parts petrol to 1 part distilled alcohol.

In World War II, Ersatzbrot (substitute bread) made of potato starch, frequently stretched with extenders such as sawdust, was furnished to soldiers as Kommissbrot, a dark German bread baked from rye and other flours used for military rations,[5][6] and also to prisoners of war.[7][8][9] One recipe discovered in the Food Providing Ministry in Berlin, labeled "(Top Secret) Berlin 24.X1 1941," contained 50% bruised rye grain, 20% sliced sugar beets, 20% "tree flour" (sawdust), and 10% minced leaves and straw.[7]

During the Siege of Leningrad, its citizens were given ersatz flour instead of actual wheat flour (of which there was an extremely limited supply then) by the Soviet authorities. The lack of proper food with any nutrition meant that the city residents not only starved but became vulnerable to deadly illnesses and diseases (such as dysentery) owing to their weakened physical conditions.[10] As a result, the word ersatz entered as a pejorative into Russian and other Slavic languages.

In Britain, this was additionally popularised as an adjective from the experiences of thousands of U.S., British, and other English-speaking combat personnel, primarily airmen, who were captured in the European Theater of Operations during World War II. These Allied prisoners of war were given ersatz goods such as Ersatzkaffee, an inferior Getreidekaffee or "grain coffee" as a coffee substitute by their German captors.

In the Eastern Bloc, many agricultural goods could not be produced domestically, such as tea, coffee, nuts, and citrus fruits. These were generally imported from abroad with scarce foreign currency reserves, or inferior substitutes were produced domestically. In 1977, the East German coffee crisis resulted in the introduction of many coffee substitutes, which were generally rejected by the population. Replacements for orangeat and succade were made from candied carrot and unripe tomatoes.[11]