England Is No Better Off …

Cigarettes are sometimes substitutes
An English cigarette factory places an advertisement in the press with a text that is so candid that we don‘t want to withhold it from the German reader. The text reads: “There is a cigarette even in our days of substitutes, makeshifts, and deceptive qualities that provides you with unspoiled enjoyment. It consists of the finest Turkish tobacco and is of normal size, which unfortunately is often abnormal today.” So, the English smoke smaller, worse, and deceitfully presented cigarettes and admit it themselves.

There is a cigarette…
… even in these days of substitutes, make-do and make-believe, which gives you unspoiled pleasure of the best Turkish leaf. (…) – 8.  Juni 1944, Ill. Beobachter

From their own difficulties
They try to distract you
While on the newspaper pages
They give you insight information

In the enemy‘s serious troubles
Look here, they have the same crises
As us, yesterday, today, and tomorrow
Like us, that’s the conclusion.

Reading newspaper ads
In English newspapers
There are in the Brit-state
Very bad cigarettes too.

Deceptive qualities
Often nearly impossible to smoke
The enjoyment would almost kill,
Our fellow countrymen need

Certainly not to complain
No, we really must ask them
And we must tell them
Look at the British

Even our range of tobacco
Is no longer the best today
And there is complaint everywhere
Surely it will console you

That England’s smokers suffer,
Black on white one reads, they have
Only minor smoking pleasures
Expensive, bad cigarettes

Minimal size
Drastically reduced by the war
They admit it and what a disgrace
The British are exposing themselves,

Obviously tobacco
Clearly abandoned them
And so the Anglo-Saxon
Really has nothing to joke about

Surely there broke out
Some mayhem as well
Because smokers don’t like
When instead of tobacco, cherry leaves

Or other plants
From the homeland’s fields and meadows
Are artfully blended
Into a dreadful shag.

Every German nicotine consumer
Whether from Buxtehude
From Cologne or Vienna
Be he Christian or Jew

(No, the Jew was a mistake
For the Jews have disappeared
Thanks to the Nazi topmembers
You have been so lucky.)

All those who smoke tobacco
Somewhere in German regions
Will henceforth smoke peacefully
And digest the biggest rubbish

Whether the Wehrmacht, the Navy
Whether the Gestapo, or the SS
One will smoke filth with a cheerful face
Because in England, they’re no better off

For half a cigarette.
A 34-year-old office clerk from Copenhagen, who had used up his tobacco ration, became furious when he saw his sister lighting up half a cigarette after breakfast. He attacked her and grabbed her by the throat. Only the timely intervention of his mother saved the girl‘s life. The brute, who had difficulty abstaining from tobacco pleasure, was overwhelmed and apprehended by the police. – 15-8-44