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Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 217, 13 September 1944, Page 5

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NAZI WAR POTENTIAL

British Estimate Of Resources Prior To D Day N.Z. Press Association—Copyright Rec. 11.30 a.m. LONDON, Sept. 12. The label "secret" is only now removed from a report on Germany's internal condition on which the Allies acted on D day, writes the Daily Mail correspondent, Colin Bednall. The report was the work of a small army of economists, marshalled by the Ministry of Economic Warfare. These experts were able to declare unequivocally that the enemy, except through an occasional submarine, had not succeeded in breaking the blockade in a single month in 1944. Germany had received from the outside only a minute quantity of supplies, either from territories under Japanese control or from neutral countries overseas.

In the opinion of the experts the selection of the Ruhr, seat of the German war machine, as the first target for liberation bombing was a primary move. Calculations showed that as at March 31, 1944, at least 5,000,000 Germans were homeless as a result of air bombardments. To the Germans' problem of rehousing these 5,000,000 there had already been added by D day, the problem of finding accommodation for the great stream of evacuees fleeing inland from the frontier provinces. Jjoss of Mineral Resources Economic warfare experts also revealed that for the first time during the war the customary German spring labour call-up in 1944 did not yield fresh resources. Experts, surveying the German raw material situation since last December, mentioned the loss of the manganese ore fields at Nikopol, in the Ukraine, in February, and the cutting off of Turkish shipments. One of the results of these losses was the disappearance, before the end of 1943, of the German anti-personnel shell with a tungsten-carbide core. One example of dislocation in Germany which puzzled the Ministry of Economic Warfare was the sudden increase of German coal exports to Sweden. Investigation showed that German plants which should have burned the coal had been put out of action by bombing. Summing up this report of the experts, the correspondent says: "In the economic as well as the military field, Germany, in the first six months of 1944, has suffered a series of major reverses, the ultimate consequences of which must be fatal."