Why Did Germany Have to Sacrifice Sausages to Fly Zeppelins?

During World War I, German forces flew menacing zeppelin airships into war zones -- but they had to give up a lot of sausages to do it. Learn why zeppelins and sausage were both made with cow intestines in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey
brain Stuff, Lauren Bogle bomb here. World War One wasn't
just ground combat. The submarine surreptitiously navigated under water, and
the skies buzzed with planes from which soldiers fired guns
and dropped bombs. Another airborne war machine was developed at

(00:23):
this time too, but has since vanished from contemporary combat.
Zeppelin Zeppelin's were intimidating to behold. These massive cylindrical balloons
were built with metal skeletons and filled with hydrogen to
stay aloft. Their skeletons and rudders allowed them to be
steered into and out of enemy territory, and they crept

(00:44):
along in night skies, their heavy hum announcing the presence
of oncoming bomb raids. Germany was confident that zeppelin lead
raids would give them an advantage in the war. This
wasn't exactly the case, though. There wasn't much precision in
airstrike efforts this early on in flight history, and Zeppelins
were more effective in their fright factor. They were hugely menacing,

(01:09):
but where they really helped was in supply and soldier transport. Additionally,
their elevated vantage point aided submarine detection and allowed them
to act as an overhead bodyguard for troops moving along
the ground. Throughout World War One, Germany's a hundred and
forty Zeppelins or responsible for just one thousand, five hundred deaths.
You could argue that they wreaked more havoc in the

(01:30):
kitchen than in the skies. Early Zeppelins were constructed internally
from rubber, but engineers soon discovered that the most effective
material for encase in hydrogen was gold beaters skin. That
is to say, that's here's some insight into this unique material.
The cows and pestons sourced from butchers in Germany and

(01:51):
German occupied territories like Austria, Poland and northern France, were
washed and skinned of their external membranes. Then they were
bathed in galine mixture and stretched to dry. The resulting
product was called gold beaters skin, named so because it
was originally used by jewelers in hammering out a piece
of gold into super thin gold leaf. They would sandwich

(02:13):
a sheet of gold in the pliable but sturdy material
and hammer away. But zeppelin engineers found another use for it.
If the skin was moistened again and the pieces were
patchworked together into large sheets. They would dry with air
tight seals. No other material of the time, including the
rubber of the day, could be so tightly sealed, and

(02:34):
that tight seal was imperative. Hydrogen is the most lightweight
element and can easily escape containment. The gold beater skin
was worked into a bag shape and filled with hydrogen.
Those bags allowed zeppelin's to float weightlessly in the sky.
If you're thinking that you'd need a ton of guts
to make a big enough skin bag to fill a

(02:54):
zeppelin's mighty frame, you'd be absolutely right. On average, it
took two d and housing cows intestines to create a
single zeppelin. That's why kitchens suffered Germany, known as the
Land of Beer and Brockworst, banned sausage making during World
War One to preserve all of the cow intestines that
would have been used for sausage casings. The Kaiser's agents

(03:17):
monitored butchers to ensure that they were handing over all
of their cow intestines for zeppelin construction, leaving behind nothing
to use a sausage casing. While Germans and those living
in German occupied territories brewed their sausage. The opposing forces
rapped their brains over how to bring down the airships.
In a documentary titled Attack of the Zeppelin's, University of

(03:40):
Cambridge engineer Dr Hugh Hunt explains that there's not much
surviving information on how zeppelins were constructed or how they
were deconstructed, that is, shot down. It wasn't exactly like
popping a balloon. A bullet could produce a hole in
the zeppelin, but that wouldn't sink the ship. Towards the
end of the war, the British devised a method of
spraying the Zeppelins with bullets and then firing phosphorus containing

(04:03):
incendiary bullets that, in contact with the hydrogen within, created
an explosion. The hearth always suffers as much as the
home front in wartime. But why deprived countrymen of their sausage?
Why single out cow intestines for a zeppelin construction. We
spoke with Taylor Hudnall and Alexandria, Virginia based butcher and chef,

(04:25):
who explains that cows cuts are bigger than other animals
and testines. A standard sausage sold in a Northern Virginia
butcher shop measures one point five inches that's about four
centimeters in diameter, and is encased by pig intestines, which
are truer to that dimension. Hudnall explains that butchers prepare
intestines for use by cleaning them of debris and packing
them in salt water or dry salt, then flushing them

(04:48):
with cold, clear water before they're stuffed with seasoned ground
meat to make sausages. These days, there are artificial casings
made of collagen or cellulose so that you can enjoy
sausages without employing into Austin's. And of course you can
just make the seasoned ground meat without stuffing it into
any casing. And furthermore, modern manufacturing technology allows for the

(05:08):
creation of products like some hot dogs that are molded
and don't have any casing at all on the final product.
But casings, and particularly natural casings made from intestines, provide
product stability if you're going to save smoke or age
the sausage, plus a pleasurable bite. If you've ever had
a sausage with a really good snap when you bite

(05:29):
into it, that's from the casing. None of these types
of casings add much, if any, flavor to the sausage.
It's more of a texture thing. Hudnall explained that as
a butchery practice, quote, casing is a good way to
use up a wasted part. Anytime you're using organs, you're
doing the animal a good service. There's less waste. So

(05:49):
we asked, are there other good uses for intestines. Hudnall said, well,
they're hermetically sealed containers and make good water balloons, which
was precisely the logict that influenced Zeppelin construction. Today's episode
was written by Candice Gibson and produced by Tyler Clang.

(06:11):
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