Strain On Nazi Man-Power

Timaru Herald, Volume CL, Issue 22043, 16 August 1941, Page 4

Strain On Nazi Man-Power

IS it possible that Hitler’s aggression in Europe, * resulting as it has done in the over-running of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, France and the Balkans, to say nothing of his latest venture in Russia, has resulted in the imposition of a terrific strain on German man power ? Whatever successes he has achieved militarily, in order to hold these countries and utilise their resources for his own vast machine, he has to police them, and that means a big drain on his armies? It does not necessarily follow that the armies of occupation need be highly trained, for a disarmed populace would be powerless against men armed only with rifles, but every man so used is a man less to be thrown into a struggle in another sphere. If what economists assert is somewhere near the truth, and that is that in modern warfare it takes five workers at home to keep one soldier going at the front, then in order to keep his widespread armies going, Hitler must now be drawing on practically the whole of his available man power. Confirmation of this assertion is to be found in a statement made by a foreign diplomat who has returned to Washington from Berlin. He remarked that Germany had mobilised practically 90 per cent, of her available man-power for the growing struggle. As is widely recognised, battles to-day are fought on the home front as much as on the field, because the equipping and servicing of a modern army is vastly different from what it was in the last war. Britain is better situated in this respect than Germany, for the Dominions which go to make up the great British Commonwealth are nations in themselves, each for the most part capable of equipping and supporting their own forces, and at the same time providing the Mother Country with products vitally necessary for the maintenance and welfare of her own people. Germany, while driving her own people almost to the limit of endurance, and supplementing their efforts by thousands of workers from the conquered territories, is at the same time endeavouring to convert to her own use the industries of the subject nations, but this can only be done by introducing numbers of her own skilled workers. Her armies are now spread over such vast distances that the problem of transporting war supplies has also to be taken into account, and here again a terrific strain must be apparent. On the one hand free peoples are striving for victory, but striving with the will to win. On the other hand a system akin to that of slavery is operating, and sooner or later it must snap under the ever-growing strain and drain on manpower.