Canned pork for butter... or worse

Spain remains on the outside

While seismic changes were taking place in the Pacific, the paper reported how the sudden gear change in fighting would affect people at home.

“Less butter and bacon,” read the headline above a story about changes to rationing which were rushed in because of the latest developments.

“Difficulties obtaining butter from Australia may mean a reduction in the butter rations,” it stated. “There may also be less bacon available.

“There will certainly be less bacon and cheese from America.”

It added: “There has been a rush on tinned salmon since the introduction of point rationing”, while US canned pork sausage will be cheaper to buy.

Good news – or perhaps not. Given the news that America had entered the Second World War in the days previously, the world was understandably on high alert.

This small story recognises the fact by relating that Spain would remain nominally outside the conflict.

Although Spain did not officially join the war, the country, under Generalísimo Francisco Franco, was allied to the Axis Powers.

Indeed, Franco wrote to Hitler the previous year, on June 19, 1940, offering to join the fighting.

The story reads: “Spanish Foreign Minister Suner told Mr Weddell, US Ambassador, that Spain’s policy would remain unchanged in spite of the latest war development.”