WAR PRODUCTION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 January 1942, Page 6

WAR PRODUCTION

DECLINE IN EUROPE FROM PEAK REACHED LAST SPRING. SABOTAGE AND SHORTAGE OF SOME SUPPLIES. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, January 7. The Ministry of Economic Warfare stated this afternoon that from evidence reaching London it was clear that European war production had fallen below the peak level reached last spring. A decline had set in. Germany was unable to use all the production facilities at her disposal in occupied territories and munitions plants lay idle. Factories in France were short of supplies. In Czechoslovakia labour trouble acted as permanent sabotage. Italy was unable to work to capacity. Her best workers were in Germany, and those that remained were underfed to a point even beyond inefficiency. Germany, the spokesman added, was unlikely to feel any scarcity in metals for the next six months, though her supplies of nickel and copper should be quite exhausted at the end of the war. It was difficult to see in what way she would be able to replace these two vital war materials. Deficencies in oil, leather, rubber and textiles were growing more severe, and in the case of the last, it was reckoned that her needs were only two-thirds covered. In the textile category were included all fibres, such as hemp and jute, which were industrially essential.

Germany was not yet dangerously underfed, though her ally Italy was at starvation level. The position in Italy was so bad that a detailed analysis was illuminating. It was generally reckoned that 3000 calories were' needed daily. Ordinary Italian workers got 2200, a heavy worker 2600. It x was scarcely surprising that the Italian armament output was miserable. In Germany the ordinary man was granted 2300, but the German heavy worker got 3300.

A Moscow communique states that the food situation in Germany is becoming worse every day. The population of Hamburg have not yet received food cards for January, and inhabitants are queuing for 24 hours at one stretch outside food shops. A crowd of hungry women in Hamburg attacked a food shop on January 2 and severely injured two policemen.