>>620433
http://ntf.hu/index.php/2017/03/04/palinka-pezsgo-pergotuz-szeszkorkep-a-don-kanyarbol/
Here is an article in Hungarian about the Hungarian forces fighting by the Don river. Here is the gist of it:
>bringing the supplies from the second line to the first one was hard due to a lack of vehicles, so people in the second line were supplied well with alcoholic drinks (and foodstuff, and medicine, and other important things), but in the first line life was hell
>soldiers in the first line they were supposed to receive 0,5dl of rum every day, so the people responsible for it had to mix 20l of rum to the pot of morning coffee
<instead they mixed 1l of it and drank the rest
>once some people started máking pálinka from the pears of trees in a village, and they did it with their commander's approval, as the equipment was on the yard of his house (pic related)
>the doctor who wrote about this asked the man behind the operation if he had any experience; he said yes
<then the doctor asked him if he had problems with tax collectors, and he said no, because he is one of them
>Russian often drank before an attack, and they did became so reckless that the defenders just had to call in a mortar strike and watch them die
>once they got so drunk before an attack that they just sat down on the trumps of a destroyed forest and just remained there as the Hungarian soldiers were shooting them
<if one of them died an other one took his drink and sat down on his treetrump
>later the frontline started to collapse, and a logistical company was fighting in a village
>in one of the houses they found civilians making spirits
>in the middle of a firefight
>the company commander was incapacitated for some good 20 minutes by an explosion
>so a runner ran to the cellar of that house
>later two soldiers went after him and found his corpse by the door
>they too went down to the cellar and found three old Russians with their primitive distilling equipment but no weapons
>then they went back to the corpse of their comrade and found two bottles of spirits in his pockets
>brought them down to the three Russians and asked them if that's what he took from them
>they said yes, and so the Hungarian soldiers opened one of the bottles and gave it to the Russians who all drank once (emptying half the bottle )
<then the last one in turn gave it back the bottle to the Hungarians, who in the end went away with the other bottle
>once the frontline collapsed and everyone was retreating people were drinking both to cleanse their stomachs and to lessen the effects of illnesses
<one of the officers is complaining in his diary that they are turning him into an alcoholic who has to drink spirits every morning
>Hungarian officers time-to-time received French champagne from the Germans
<but it was always the low quality stuff
>during New Year's Eve the officers had a small celebration
>a few of them stayed up until 5AM
<a different group of officers managed to found prostitutes for the occassion
>once a few Hungarian hussars went in to a local pub and started singing
>the Germans there called them barbarians, so the hussars unsheated their swords and chased them out
>the Germans called other Germans, but the hussars disarmed them one-after-the-other
>in the end the German high command complained to the commander of the Hungarian army
<he gave it into order to the whole army to try to avoid such incidents, but don't let anyone mock them for being Hungarian
Also, we have a whole genre of dance and music that evolved from recruiters getting people drunk to sign up for service:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbunkos