BY WAR’S GHOSTS
Hitler’s final ignominy
THERE is, though, some tiny, little bit of satisfaction to be had in all of this. Hitler’s bunker site has not been preserved. There is no marker or anything to say this is where he died. No building will ever be built there. It will always be a carpark ( pictured below left). Even the labyrinth of rooms that made up the bunker has gone. It was blown up soon after the war ended. The massive reinforcements are now just broken pieces of concrete, deep underground. The ground above, strewn with beer cans and fast food containers, serves as a carpark for a nearby block of flats. Unless you were taken there and told what it was, you would never guess that this was where the mastermind of one of the greatest genocides ever carried out in the history of mankind killed himself.
Diabolical concoction
AUSTRALIA invented the Chiko Roll made from cabbage, grease and not much else. Initially it was marketed as Chicken Roll even though it didn’t contain any chicken. Medical science has yet to find a more lethal dietary combination than a Chiko Roll and Coke. Throw in a Winnie Blue or two while you’re e at it and you’re a dead man walking. America gave us “beef” burgers made from gristle, eyeballs and other r unmentionable organs salvaged from cattle and served with fries.
The Italians gave us pizza for which we are eternally grateful. The Poms offer up toad in the hole for which they should be eternally ashamed and embarrassed. Toad in the hole is made from sausage-encased Yorkshire pudding batter smothered in onion gravy. Toad in the hole will never get the Heart Foundation tick and will never, never, ever headline the menu at the national vegan food awards night. Germany, a country where veganism is yet to get a toehold, has thrust currywurst upon an unsuspecting world. When I was young it was common to bait wallaby carcasses and opened tins of sardines with purple strychnine crystals to kill dingoes. Aromatic aniseed oil was often sprinkled around as a “topper” to lure the dogs in. I’m sure if you could turn back time you could have saved a lot of expensive strychnine and aniseed and deployed currywurst instead, leaving plates of it under lantana bushes. Dingoes have guts made of iron, but they could not withstand an assault launched by currywurst. This 20th century concoction is made from bratwurst (pork) sausage smothered with reheated gravy sprinkled with curry powder. Somewhere in there, supposedly in t the mix, there are traces of Worcestershire and tomato sauce. What sort of evil mind could conjure up such a diabolical combination of meat and liquids? Enter Herta Heuwer. We are told that British soldiers introduced Herta to the sauces and curry powder in 1949. H Herta obviously had Ptsd-related is issues relating to the food shortages d during the war and the bombing of B Berlin. She went to work, mixing up th the ingredients and pouring them ov over oven-grilled pork bangers. The re rest is history. Herta has all but been ca canonised in Germany. There is a pl plaque mounted to show where she liv lived. The Germans now eat an estimated 800 million currywursts a year. There are currywurst stands on every corner in Berlin. The railway stations are lined with them. There is even a museum dedicated to currywurst that attracts 350,000 visitors a year. In Australia our