The Hair That Helped Defeat the Nazis

Every day millions of Americans carefully wash, sort, and set out their recycling for collection. But while many might feel proud to be doing their bit to help save the environment, such efforts are minuscule next to the gargantuan recycling effort that accompanied the Second World War. The term “total war” refers to a state in which every facet of a nation’s economy and public life is committed to the prosecution of said war, and no conflict in human history more fully embodied this ethos than WWII. Almost overnight, nearly every commodity imaginable became a strategic material feeding the hungry war machine. Household goods like gasoline, cloth, and staple foods were heavily rationed, scrap metal drives scoured cities and towns for everything from junked cars to toothpaste tubes, housewives collected kitchen drippings to be turned into glycerine for explosives, and in Canada coloured ink became so scarce that comic book publishers were forced to print the now highly-collectible “Canadian Whites.” But few citizens could claim to have possessed a stranger strategic material than Miss Mary Babnik of Pueblo, Colorado. Author: Gilles Messier Editor: Daven Hiskey Host: Simone Whistler Producer: Samuel Avila