Talk:Ersatz
Shouldn't this be a wikitionary article?--The Kooky One 21:14, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
"Ersatz" is just the German word for substitute - e.g. a substitute player is called "Ersatzspieler" where "Spieler" means player. The word has not gained its meaning in the WWs, and it has no aftertaste for German speakers as is indicated in the article in the first three paragraphs.
I suggest to reorganize the article - get the meaning, get the usage of the word in English and then add the part about WWs. --WebWombat 16:35, 24 Sep 2005 (GMT+01)
I reedited the article as described. --WebWombat 10:59, 02 Oct 2005 (GMT+01)
Why does the article say that the germans gave ersatz coffee to pow's because they did not have real coffee, is it documented that they wished to give real coffee. I think it would make more sense that in a time of war pow's may not be treated extremely well and because of this would be given lower quality foodstuff. But really in a wikipedia article we should just say that they gave them ersatz coffee period, unless we have strong information saying why they did it we should leave out speculation about their motives. If someone could make this change I think the article could be better, if you wish to edit my comment to make them fit proper format feel free as I am not competent enough to do so. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.113.54.80 (talk) 23:37, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
- Whether they would have given the POWs real coffee if they had it, we'll never know. What we do know is that they didn't have real coffee. Germany was under British blockade in both World Wars and hence could not import coffee. I will say this, though. The Germans only invented ersatz coffee because they didn't have the real thing. I doubt they would have wasted their time inventing a fake coffee just to spite POWs if they had the real stuff on hand. Jsc1973 (talk) 19:23, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
