Expanded from an earlier answer of mine

Part I

The German civilian experience of the First World War was one characterized by considerable shortcomings of consumables. Not only did luxury items like chocolate or tobacco disappear, but so too did essential foodstuffs like fats and meats. The long memory of civilian privation weighed very heavily on the leadership of the Third Reich. Although public rhetoric often stressed Germans' devotion to duty was greater than the desire for non-essential luxuries, there was a serious concern that there would be a repeat of the collapse of civilian morale in 1918. Thus the state sought to simultaneously ameliorate these shortages while simultaneously asserting Germans could do without them. The Third Reich adapted an overlapping three-prong strategy to provide consumer goods like tobacco and coffee.

Although the British blockade was keenly felt since 1939, it did not have absolute control over the continent. British naval power could not reach into the Balkans, which German economic initiatives in the 1930s had sought to transform trade with Germany into a demi-colonial relationship whereby the Balkans provided commodities in exchange for German finished goods. Tobacco production in Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Greece increasingly served the German market and the outbreak of the war accelerated these trends. Additionally, overland contact with Turkey, and after 1940, Spain, allowed a window of sorts to the West for a trickle of products to come through into occupied Europe. In more than a few ways, these trading relationships replicated the First World War use of the Dutch by Germany as a means to evade the Entente blockade. As small-power neutrals, there were limits to how much they could provide either from domestic stores or by exporting their imports, but it was a cheap means in both wars to evade the blockade.

Turkey's economic relationship with the Reich was emblematic for this neutral trade. Ankara initially tried to play both warring sides off each other when war first broke out in 1939, making near-identical demands on Germany and Britain for finished goods and military equipment as the price for stopping or continuing the German trade. The Fall of France and the British need to rebuild its army after losing the BEF's equipment in Dunkirk gave Germany a temporary advantage. A July 1940 trade agreement allowed for Turkish goods ranging from strategic metals like chromium to such sundries as tobacco and dried fruits in exchange for German machine tools, locomotives, and military equipment. This initial bilateral agreements treaty laid the foundations for the subsequent Clodius agreements in 1941, which established the sale of 100 million RM of military equipment in exchange for Turkish raw materials and consumables. By 1943, Germany was Turkey's largest trading partner, much to the consternation of the Allies and some Turkish diplomats who saw the writing on the wall for the Axis. Yet, contrary to the hand-wringing against the Turkish trade in various Allied capitals, the Turks did gain from this arrangement. So long as the Germans were desperate for these materials, Turkish neutrality was assured. Additionally, the bilateral trade of war equipment also further guaranteed Turkey emerged from the war in a greater position of strength than if it had simply been an impartial neutral. The trade itself was not sufficient to meet all of Germany's needs, whether for strategic or civilian consumption, so it gave Ankara a degree of flexibility when confronting the Allies as Germany began to lose the war.

Germany's supply of tobacco was largely dependent upon its connections to southeast Europe. Tobacco cultivation of this region began in earnest in the nineteenth century with Bulgaria becoming one of main European exporters of tobacco. The Bulgarian government used tobacco as collateral during the First World War to guarantee a loan from the Central Powers prior to Bulgaria's entry to the war on their side. The tobacco concerns used the First World War to drive out the largely American-owned competitors and exported the majority of their harvest to both Germany and Austria-Hungary. The sheer volume of tobacco cultivation was actually counterproductive to Bulgaria's domestic interests as the expansion of the tobacco fields pushed out the production of foodstuff. The interwar period caused a degree of tensions between Bulgaria and Germany over tobacco, especially since Bulgaria's most prominent tobacco magnate, Jacques Asseof, was a Jew. Asseof's background became the bone of contention between the fights between the Nazis and the German tobacco manufacturer Reemtsma. The latter company had a business relationship with Asseof's Bulgarian concerns and this coupled with the prominence of the Russian Jewish emigre David Schnurr led Nazi firebrands to call Reemtsma a "Jew cigarette" company. The NSDAP had their own rationale for pushing against Reemtsma in that the SA sold a variety of paraphernalia through this office. One of the more visible, non-military, items the SA sold were so-called Sturm-Zigaretten (Storm cigarettes). These cigarettes were branded with the SA logo and advertisements such as this one emphasized the manly camaraderie of this powerful brand. Other ads like this one emphasized the SA's lightning logo, but also employed some of the stark visual language of contemporary German advertising. The idea of a paramilitary hawking tobacco products came from a down and out NSDAP member, Arthur Dressler, who suggested in 1929 that the SA sell its own brand of cigarettes.

Hitler's ascent to power and NSDAP boycotts of Reemtsma led to Schurr's reassignment and the Aryanization of the company. Aseoff remained a prominent tobacco magnate, but he was on borrowed time in Bulgaria. He left the country in 1940. There were fears both within the Bulgarian government but also within the tobacco industry that German economic connections would reduce the country into an economic colony of Germany. These fears were correct, but the war led to the Germans holding out the carrot of guaranteed markets, but also expansion of the country's tobacco plantations through Macedonian and Thracian territory carved up from Greece. One minor, but no less brutal, aspect of the occupation of Greece was the Bulgarians' expropriation of land from its original owners (especially if they were Jews) and the expanded cultivation of tobacco to meet the needs of the Axis armies and civilian markets.

The neutral and Axis trade though could not entirely cover Germany's needs. Not surprisingly, Germany often plundered occupied Europe when it came to providing civilian luxuries. The Hunger Plan, a plan to systematically starve the Soviet population to feed the occupation, was only the most extreme of this type of plunder economy. Reemtsma, much like other German corporations, was an active participant in the plundering of German conquests. Not only did it use German successes to squash its rivals, the company aided in the consolidation and transport of captured Soviet tobacco in 1941. The company's tobacco experts likewise worked with the occupation government in 1942 to transform the newly-captured Crimea into a German-run tobacco plantation. Reemtsma exploited forced labor to guarantee a healthy profit margin for tobacco and tobacco products that would be shipped back to the Reich. In Western Europe and Scandinavia, German plundering came both from above and below. Occupation authorities had broad powers to expropriate warehouses and other materials deemed necessary for the war effort, and that included luxury consumables and other items necessary for homefront morale. One example of this was in the summer of 1942 where the Goering's officials combed through Western European inventories of toys and bought them at debased prices where they could be prepped and shipped to bombed out German cities at Christmas time that year. State procurement agencies bought up the preexisting supplies of such goods and Metz soon emerged by 1940 as a major hub for returning these goods back to the Reich for distribution. The state itself had experience with this type of plunder and redistribution because of its antisemitic Aryanization policies. The SS had already systematized the forced sale of Jewish property with the occupation of Austria in 1938 and such experience was put to good use both in the Aryanization of Western Europe as well as the fleecing of gentiles under German occupation.