GERMAN MAN POWER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 October 1939, Page 4

GERMAN MAN POWER

ESTIMATES OF STRENGTH. WHERE ARE THE VETERANS? French newspapers estimate that the German Army is only one-third as strong as it was at the end of the last war. It would be helpful, of course, to know on what information this calculation is based. However, certain wellknown facts would lead to the conclusion that at least the German Army is not as good as it was in the Great War. For instance, there were no conscripts in training between 1918 and 1935, during which period the total of the armed forces'was restricted to 100.000 men, the great majority being veterans. With the advent of the Nazis, and the open breach of the Versailles Treaty, feverish haste was shown in building up a more formidable force, but it is generally accepted outside Germany that there can at most be no more than 2,000,000 men trained for immediate combatant duty, if, indeed, short-term service can have properly fitted even that number 1 for front-line work. It is not to be wondered at in the circumstances that mechanisation has been so extensively resorted to, although, according to French reports, they have not proved to be an adequate substitute for man-power. Allowing that ' Germany is short of man -power, it f would explain perhaps her reluctance to engage in major hostilities on the Western Front, in such marked contrast to tactics in the last war.