Mystery of why German soldiers use 10 toilet rolls a day

Napoleon observed that an army marches on its stomach, but even he would have been astonished by the financial accounts presented by the Bundeswehr. German soldiers, the figures revealed, use ten rolls of lavatory paper each every day.

This superhuman consumption sparked a political debate. The Green Party, which has been leading a campaign for a more environmentally conscious, paper-free Germany, was outraged. What exactly were the country’s soldiers eating? Were peacekeepers in Afghanistan being force-fed dried prunes? Or perhaps soldiers were hiding in lavatories rather than doing their duty?

A comparison with other government ministries seemed to show that soldiers were indeed spending a great deal more time in lavatories than other civil servants. The Defence Ministry was using 800 million rolls a year, but the Interior Ministry, which has a similar number of staff, was working its way through only 620,000.



There were big users elsewhere - the Health Ministry, with 2.74 million rolls and the Finance Ministry 5.37 million – but nothing compared with the demands of the armed forces.

A team of military accountants was set to work. Computers whirred. Worried phone calls were made to battalion commanders, and an answer was found: the figure was wrong.

Eight hundred million sheets - not rolls - of lavatory paper were used last year. There had, apparently, been a slip of the pen. That equates to about 5.3 million rolls for the ministry’s 360,000 uniformed and civilian employees, although precision still eluded the officials. “It is difficult to say exactly how many sheets are in a roll since some are three-ply,” an official said. Ministry accountants are working on the basis of a 150-sheet roll.