NAZIS’ FALSE STEP

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 128, 30 April 1940, Page 7

NAZIS’ FALSE STEP

ORE SUPPLIES LOST. EFFECT OF BLOCKADE. ALLIES’ SHIPPING GAINS. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) (British Official Wireless.) Received April 30, 9.35 a.m. RUGBY, April 29. The attention of the British Press is again being directed to the effect of the invasion of Norway on Germany’s supplies of iron ore. The subject is also attracting attention in the newspapers of certain neutral countries and prominence is given in London to a carefully-balanced survey in the Vatican newspaper Observatore Romano. It points out that in 1938 Germany produced eleven million of the thirtythree millon tons of ore she required. Of the twenty-two million tons she has hitherto obtained from' abroad some one million tons came from Norway and nine millions from Sweden. The blockade of Narvik and the destruction of the railway to Kiruna have paralysed traffic. The situation, it is pointed out, may change, but at the moment Germany has lost nine million tons of ore imported from Ally countries and ten million from Scandinavia, and can only count on getting three million tons from other sources at a time when iron ore is of paramount importance. MERCHANT SHIPPING LOSSES. The paper examines the loss which Germany's Scandinavian adventure has inflicted upon herself in regard to shipping. Norway’s mercantile licet of 2950 shins and four and ahalf million tons is exceptionally large—the third largest in the world —while Denmark’s eight hundred ships represent one and a-lialf million tons. A great part of the fleets of both nations were in foreign ports when the invasion began and cannot in any case return to their home ports and, as is now known, most ol them passed into Allied control. The Vatican newspaper remarks that the Allies have thus not only been compensated for all losses of their own mercantile marine, but have actually augmented the size of their merchant fleets. Further points arc made that, wane at the beginning of the war, the trade of Denmark and Norway with the United States was increased by 50 per cent, and presumably extra American goods were going to Germany, neither Denmark nor Norway can now render such a service to Germany.