HITLER’S CALL FOR MEN

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23974, 15 June 1943, Page 2

HITLER’S CALL FOR MEN

LOSSES ON EASTERN FRONT TASK FOR GENERAL VON UNRUH LONDON, March 16. Military experts in Berlin are reported to bt sceptical about the possibility of solving Germany’s manpower problem by the methods used by General von Unruh, who has been given the task of raising the recruits needed for continuing tbs war. writes a special correspondent, of "The Times" on the German frontier, _ rT-,„,iin , c The first observable effect of Unruh s activities is widespread dislocatio:n of the war economy, because of the suade' wholesale withdrawal simultaneously from industries, banks, insurance companies, municipal services, public utilities, ministries, and business houses of thousands of exp ? r in n fnH specialists between the ages of 20 and 45, The difficulties of these busjn® 3 !®,® have-beeu-aggrsvated because Unruh s offlclaKwiffi ruthless, thoroughness have removed for. use in the a™ l }? typewriters and calculating, bookkeeping. duplicating, and addressing ma* chines. This has necessitated a return to obsolete methods, which call for ,ar idmmedly! ta these radical measures have placed at the Wehrmacht s disposal hundreds of thousands if not Slob’s Vt e S s as A SSfSJSIk rtSSr ’S< m. rC Thf maeS^olThVmanpower*. W. IS. PgKjt si'uation is evident from Gernwxi official figures, which eshmate the number of persons moDUisett xor wic forces and the main and auxiliary serSan str-a, - !? ss -STS?’ casualties had recovered but qmte JO per cent, of them were unfit for iron Un Thlse V fig e ure S must not be taken ashSSlS3^,'®“ •“ Unruhthe taskof mustering not fewer than 1,800.000 men to losses behind the line and work in mnnrtion factories. Moreover, as the German Headquarters expect a expansion of military activity on all exist i ne a nc j prospective fronts, it is emulated that to meet emergencies the output of war materials must be increased by 40 to 45 per cent.—an ex tremely difficult task considering that the German war industries have at ready been working at top speed years, with inevitable wear and tear to their plant. Shorter Front in Russia As it is very unlikely that such an enormous increase in output can be achfeved, and as armament executives themselves are convinced that productivity will decrease /übs antmlly through the replacement of skilled male by unskilled female labour, the military and other authorities are more than ever agreed that the eastern front must be drastically shortened to enable the Wehrmacht to resist successfully on all fronts. . . Apparently no final decision on this crucial question has yet been reached in Berlin, and many indicationssuggest that it will be deferred until the results of the present offensives of the Germans in the Donets and of the Russians in the central sector and the numerical yield of the total civilian mobilisation are known. The last recruits of the present drive will not be mustered before the beginning or April. . . The Berlin authorities have instructed Sauckel to increase to 750,000 the number of workers which France must contribute towards raising the number of foreign workers m the “General-Gouvernement” of Poland to 12,000,000. In his speech at the end of January Goering stated that Germany was then employing over 6.000,000 foreign workers. As mentinned above* Hitler has instructed Un* ruh to find another 1,800,000 for the eastern front and 3.400,000 for jobs behind the lines and in munition factories, Added together, these three figures show that, incredible as it sounds, 12,000,000 is not too high an estimate of the number of foreign workers which Germany’s new war programme demands. All these measures seem less grotesque when it is remembered that since November 19 the Wehrmacht has lost on the eastern front more than 200,000 lorries and other transport units, besides 5000 armoured vehicles and tanks, which must at all costs be quickly replaced. Whether this can be done depends now mainly on Unruh’s ability to carry out his task.