The Timaru Herald FRIDAY, JANUARY 14, 1944. Germany’s War Industry

Timaru Herald, Volume CLV, Issue 22790, 14 January 1944, Page 4

The Timaru Herald FRIDAY, JANUARY 14, 1944. Germany’s War Industry

JJNDERj Minister Todt the material basis of Germany’s war effort was expanded by territorial conquests. The war economy was fed, in addition to home resources, by booty from occupied countries, and foreign labour supplies seemed almost without limit. This gave flexibility to totalitarian organisation. Dr Todt s successor, Dr Albert Speer, an architect by profession, came on the scene immediately after the first winter reverse in Russia. In February, 1942. Speer could not know that his task was going to be a ceaseless struggle to maintain war production on an inexorably contracting material basis. By setting up an Armament Council he tried to achieve the greatest possible concentration of industries in the shortest possible time for a knock-out blow against Russia. There was no knock-out blow, and Speer was forced to realise that from then on all his assets were wasting.

The German economic situation, as it developed during the winter of 1942 to the summer of 1943, called for great mobility and flexibility in production because of the worsening military situation and the sustained Allied bombing attacks on Germany and German-occupied countries. In addition the husbanding of manpower and material resources became imperative. Organisation was of itself no solution. In the autumn' and winter of 1942-43 Germany’s war (economy suffered more than ever'from over-organisation. Flexibility had vanished after the initiative of employers and workers had been dangerously clogged by endless rules, regulations and bodies and by a bureaucracy grown out of all proportion, even in a totalitarian country.

•Speer concentrated the manufacture of weapons and munitions in the most efficient factories, which he placed,, wider purely technical control. Events culminated in Speer-ac-quiring virtual control over all war industry. He was appointed Minister for Weapons and War Production. and the system of purely technical control is being extended from the war industry proper to all industry. The Speer committees, formerly confined to armament and munition factories, arc being set up in otlief industries. A committee has been formed for the building industrye'. The district chambers and industrial federations have lost, or arc losing, any practical economic importance. They simply provide a framework for the compulsory organisation of employers, who are now in- the same position as the workers occupy in the Labour Front.

The advance of the Speer committees is first explained as the logical..transformation of the policy of “steering” the economy into a system of central planning. At the same time it is repeated that the Speer committees are a wartime institution that will disappear at the end of the war. Before Speer's phenomenal rise, Nazis were emphatic in the belief that their totalitarian economy was organised in such a way that its main principles served peace and war needs equally well. .. What has happened in Germany is not the result of personal or other conflicts between Speer and Funk. It cannot even be said that Speer wields supreme powers. These changes, forced by events, are being done'in the name of Speer. He formed his ideas about economic organisation under the Nazi regime, and displays the supreme contempt of the... Nazi totalitarian bureaucrat, and Believes that technocratic principles must be decisive, in a Nazi context. Direct political control over human factors in the economy is growing. .The district chambers, for example, are under the immediate political control of district advisers, who must be members of the Nazi party, and work with a steadily growing staff of local and district representatives. At the top is the Nazi Party Chancellery under Bormann.

Speer himself works in collaboration with representatives of the Wehrmacht and leading industrialists. His Armament Council is made up of seven generals and eight leading -industrialists. The Central Planning Department, an offshoot of Goering's Economic General Council, has come into prominence. These organisations are more powerful than any of the individuals directing them, and Speer’s new prominence is the result of a process in planning and control. It began long before the war with the allocation of raw' materials. The industrial federations then collaborated in this task; the use of scarce materials was prohibited, but factory managers were still free to find the best method of produelion within these restrictions. Now the Central Planning Department, with its infinite variety of subsidiary bodies, plans the finished articles and the methods of production down to the smallest details. The factory manager is told which materials he must use, and is ordered to employ manufacturing processes which have been worked out by Speer’s controlling engineers. It is an extraordinarily laborious method of control. Stoppages, breakdowns and miscarriage of orders and material art;frequent. To counter-balance this‘“shock methods” are used. Speer’s committees work with highly mobile engineers, working staffs and special detachments, who can take over'whole factories. Where they appear urgent work ordered by the •Wehrmacht, approved by the Armament Council, and distributed by “order steering departments” is done to the disadvantage of all other •work in this particular factory, or even in a whole branch of industry.

Speer’s methods cannot be used 5n all industries. They are mainly confined to manufacturing. This explains why there is still a great .variety of controls of both the old and new type. At the top, centralisation ha* been carried a step forward. The Wehrmacht is no longer . • *

supreme in placing orders. Army and Navy orders are finally approved by Speer’s Armament Council. Only the Luftwaffe has maintained some independence for its supply services. In industry as a whole the distinction between armament works and civilian works has gone. Technocratic principles have become supreme, which, although wasteful in the extreme, still ensure the manufacture of a considerable volume of weapons, munitions and military equipment.