RESOURCES STRAINED.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 64, Issue 8, 20 October 1943, Page 3

RESOURCES STRAINED.

OIL POSITION IN GERMANY. REVIEW BY BRITISH MINISTER. LONDON, August 22. What is Germany’s oil position? How, is the combined pressure of the blockade and the air offensive affecting her war potential, not only in oil but in other war supplies, and in domestic necessities? The Earl of Selborne (British Minister of Economic Warfare) gives an answer to these questions in an interview with the political correspondent of the “Sunday Times,” the general conclusion of which is that Germany is being strained to the uttermost, and is no longer able to mount the tremendous and prolonged offensives that carried her armies deep into Russia and made her master of Europe.

“Wihile there is not the same acute shortage of food in Germany as there was in 1917 and 1918,” said Lord Selborne, “and while the actual privation among Germans is not so severe as it was in the last war, the blockade is having a very serious effect upon Germany in relation to certain commodities that are essential to the waging of Avar —oil, rubber, and copper and chrome and a number of other metals, and also in relation to articles of domestic consumption, such as clothes, and consumer goods generally. This situation is immensely aggravated by the attentions of the Royal Air Force and the American Bth and 9th Air Forces. “Germany is really worried about oil.”