GERMAN SUPPLIES SHORTAGE

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 September 1944, Page 6

GERMAN SUPPLIES SHORTAGE

BLOCKADE & BOMBING EFFECT.

(fire. 12.10 p.m.) .LONDON, September .12

The .labc. l “Secret” is only now removed from the report cm Germany's internal condition, on which the Allies acted on I) Day, writes a "Daily Mail,” corresDondent, Colin Bednall. The report: was the work of a small army ol 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 for 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, the seat of the German war machine, as the first target, for the liberation bombing was a primary move. Calculations .showed that at March <3l last at least five million Germans were homeless as a result of the air bombardments. To the Germans the problem of rehousing the five million had already been added to by the D Day problem of finding accommodation for the great stream of evacuees fleeing inland from the frontier provinces. The 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. The experts had been surveying the German raw material situation since last December and mentioned the loss of the manganese ore fields at Nikopol 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 the dislocation of Germany which puzzled the Ministry of economic Warfare was the sudden increase in German coal exports to Sweden. An investigation showed that German plants which should have burned coal had been put out of action by bombing. Summing up their report, the experts say; “In the economic, as the military field. Germany in the first six months of 1944 suffered a series of major reverses, the ultimate consequences of which must be fatal.”