The rationing system goes back to a 1959 SOFA agreement, according to Lanny Hall, personnel services branch chief at 1st Personnel Command.
But according to U.S. Army Europe historians, rationing dates to the U.S. occupation of Germany in 1945.
According to a memo in September 1945, the Official Exchange Ration List established ration scales (not specified in detail) for tobacco, candy, matches, and toilet articles. Historians noted the lack of reference then to alcoholic beverages.
The point was to curtail black market activity and was coupled with currency control efforts, including the use of scrip. It is not clear when the first ration cards were issued, but they were in use not later than April, 1947, according to USAREUR historians.
According to Hall, the German government has rebuffed some efforts in the past few years on the part of the U.S. to do away with the ration cards, which some see as obsolete.
The most recent efforts by the U.S. Forces to get the German Government to discontinue rationing were made in 2002, Hall wrote in an e-mail. The German Government did not agree as the merchandise rationed is highly taxed
the taxes on gasoline, coffee, and tobacco stand for revenues amounting to billions of Euro.
There are no plans to again raise the matter with the German Government in the foreseeable future, Hall wrote.
Along with coffee, cigarettes and alcohol are also rationed although, apparently, not beer and wine. Tea was rationed, too, until 1994, after the German tea tax was abolished.