Nowhere was the Nazis’ skill with propaganda more evident than in their ability to keep both public morale and food supplies steady, a problem that had stumped Germany’s leaders during World War I. During World War II, the Nazis knew their calls for steadfastness would succeed only with a people who had enough to eat. That was the simple, nonideological, but thoroughly Machiavellian lesson they had learned from the collapse of 1918.
