FEWER GERMANS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 7, 19 March 1947, Page 6

FEWER GERMANS

POPULATIONS DECLINE WOMEN FAR EXCEED MEN Germany’s present population, according to the first official census taken since the war, is nearly 66,000,000. This figure represents a substantial decline from the 1939 total for the same area. Today the population, of this area is 65,910,999. In 1939 it was 69,622,213, a figure which reflected Hitler’s population policies. The new figure covers a territory considerably smaller than that of Germany in 1933, when Hitler took control. But it is about equal to the number of Germans in Hitler’s Reich just before he annexed Austria and the Sudetenland.

The provisional results, which are as of October 29, 1946, disclose a number of interesting facts, even though it is not yet possible to draw from them the actual war losses incurred by Germany. Determination of such statistics must wait until it is known how many prisoners of war still are held in other countries, and how many Germany have come back to Germany either as refugees or earlier as war workers from abroad, as well as how many German babies have been born in recent years. - '

Reliable estimates have placed Germany’s total war losses at more than 8,000,000. As in the pre-war era, the number of women is greater than the number of men—36,597,146 as compore with 29,313,853. The return of war prisoners can be expected to reduce the discrepancy but not to reverse the ratio.

The consequences of this situation are significane in the politics of a country where both sexes are accorded equal electoral rights—especially inasmuch as this population ratio applies not merely to a single district, but is very evenly distributed throughout the whole of Germany.

For those who include demographic considerations in their basic political and economic calculations the census figures carry an importance when broken down for each of the occupied zones.-

Population of the Soviet Zone is 17,313,58.1: of the British Zone 22,794,655; of the American Zone, 16,682,573; and of the French Zone, 5,939,807. In other words, the three western zones have 2£ times as many people as the eastern zone, a fact which in view of differing political climates at present, should play an important role when Germany again is under unified administration.

In some quarters it is suggested that the implications of this situation are one factor convincing the Russians they will not be able to keep a firm hold upon Germany, especially after economic improvement has come to such industrial areas as the Ruhr and the Rhineland.