During the Great Patriotic War first winter, the fascists would steal warm clothes and footwear from the Soviet people in the occupied territories. But then, due to the German senior management’s special order, in Berlin they began to make ersatz-valenki, which could partially substitute the needed footwear.

In Germany during the First and Second World War, there were “ersatz” grocery store goods and materials, in other words, substitute and surrogate items. “Ersatz” bread was baked with the potato powder and “ersatz” sausage was made from pea flour. Even “ersatz” weapons were manufactured: they could merely frighten the enemy but were unsuitable for real fighting.

A “Blitzkrieg” — method of a swift offensive warfare — was the initial German war plan for the USSR. That is why no winter uniforms were prepared for the soldiers, except for Wehrmacht-Luftwaffe, Schutzstaffel (the SS), and other elite divisions. As the Blitzkrieg plan failed, both warm clothes and warm footwear became a necessity for the German army on the Eastern Front.

The Red Army soldiers used the captured from the Germans ersatz-valenki as food for the horses. The Germans also reported that horses would not mind treating themselves to the shoes. There is a preserved excerpt of an interrogation where a German prisoner of war said that in one section of the frontline, the horses have eaten the soldiers’ straw footwear.