"The French don't bathe."

45. "The French don't bathe."

The French don't bathe often enough. They can't. They don't have real soap. They they had no soap worthy of the name since 1940. The Germans took the soap, for four years. That's a long time.

The ration for Frenchman today, four months after the war is over, is two cakes of poor ersatz soap per month - 20 grams every two months. Most real soap can only he obtained on the black market, where it costs around 125 francs for 310 grams.