Delivering beer to the Wehrmacht (part four)

A short and number-heavy post today. Because I'm feeling a bit crap. Nothing too serious, just an annoying cold.

I told you that deliveries to the Germans were very unevenly spread amongst Dutch brewers. Here's the confirmation. But first we're going to look at the absolute quantities involved.

If you consider the security implications, it's weird that the CBK (Dutch brewers' organisation) had access to the figures for deliveries to German canteens. In later documents they state that the ration was 9 litres per head per month. Which works out to around 30 cl per day. Not a huge amount. But that wasn't the real total, as soldiers also drank in ordinary pubs.

Despite this, Wehrmacht canteens were responsible to 8% to 9% of total beer consumption. It's fair to say that the real percentage consumed by the German military was at least double that.

From the quantity of beer, it's pretty simple to calculate the number of German personnel based in Holland. I've had trouble tracking down the exact number from other sources. Though I did find one which gave it as around 125,000. Which tallies pretty well with my calculation.

As you can see in this table:

Wehrmacht beer deliveries
month	hl	% of total Dutch consumption	implied no. of German troops
Dec. 1940	12,516	7.05	139,067
Jan. 1941	12,992	8.43	144,356
Febr. 1941	13,131	9.01	145,900
Source:
Minutes of the management of the CBK on 8th May 1941, held at the Amsterdamse Stadsarchief, document number 31121-1, page 158.

Four breweries - Amstel, Drie Hoefijzers, Heineken and van Vollenhoven - supplied almost two-thirds of the total. Which this next table makes very clear.

Wehrmacht beer deliveries in January 1941 by brewery
Brewery	hl	% of total
Amstel	2,197	16.91%
Bavaria	382	2.94%
Brand	54	0.42%
Drie Hoefijzers	1,654	12.73%
H.B.M. (Heineken)	2,314	17.81%
Klok	251	1.93%
Leeuw	11	0.08%
Oranjeboom	853	6.57%
Vollenhoven	2,138	16.46%
van Waes Boodts	17	0.13%
total of these breweries	9,871	75.98%
grand total	12,992
Source:
Minutes of the management of the CBK on 8th May 1941, held at the Amsterdamse Stadsarchief, document number 31121-1, page 158.

Partially, this inequality just represents the difference in size of the breweries. Amstel, Drie Hoefijzers and Heineken were three of the biggest. Van Vollenhoven, on the other hand, despite being very old , was nothing like on the scale of the other three.