NAZI STEEL INDUSTRY
Evening Post, Rōrahi CXXXIX, Putanga 94, 21 Paengawhāwhā 1945, Page 7
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NAZI STEEL INDUSTRY
EFFECTS OF ALLIED BOMBING
Rec. 12>30 p.m. RUGBY, April 20. Leading armament experts and technical directors of the German steel industry -who were captured at Dusseldorf have given striking evidence of the extent to which the R.A.F. helped to break the German war machine.
A visit to the Rheinmetall-Borsig works near Dusseldorf has shown that the persistent bombing in the early years of the war lost the German war industry the start it had over the British, American, and Russian armament preparations. One director said: "If you had started bombing a year later the West Wall would never have been pierced." For several years he was in charge of 17,000 men who forged arms in the three huge plants of the firm. Today the sheds are smashed, the furnaces collapsed, and the buildings blasted. But under the rubble are still many guns and dozens of heavy pill-boxes with two-feet steel walls weighing several hundred tons, designed for the West Wall and the Siegfried Line. A sharp R.A.F. attack in November, 1943, smashed the railways and gas and power supplies, and exactly a year later another raid put the plant. already partly transferred to a "safe" area in central Germany and working only 40 per cent., completely out of action. The general manager of the works said that the botnbing delayed the designs of various new types of guns until it was impossible for the damaged plant to carry out production. No complete gun or any aircraft spares for Junkers and Messerschmitt planes left the factory benches after November, 1943. According to the general manager's statement, the German steel production was reduced by bombing from 20,000,000 tons a year to nil between 1942 and 1945—8.0. W.
