ECONOMIC WARFARE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 September 1941, Page 5

ECONOMIC WARFARE

PAST YEAR’S OPERATIONS REVIEWED WESTERN GERMANY STILL VITAL. CLOSING OF RUSSIAN GAP. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, September 3. A review of the past year from the point of view of economic warfare discloses that 68,500 applications for navicerts have been received since August, 1940, of which about two-thirds were warranted, while 2525 ships sailed with ships' navicerts and only 48 without them in circumstances where they were required. Goods which have been seized in Axis ships in the past four months total 62,498 tons and the total seizures since the beginning of the war are now about 800,000 tons. Thirty-nine ships totalling 143,543 tons have ; been seized in the last year. More important than the actual seizures is the fact that the tightening control stops ships from setting off to try to reach Axis ports. There has been a great intensification of the air offensive against industrial targets and centres of war industry in Germany, Italy and occupied countries and this is the most direct form of economic warfare.

In spite of the efforts to build up war industries in south and east, western Germany remains the principal arsenal of the enemy’s war effort, and the R.A.F. summer offensive has brought powerful assistance to the Russian allies by sapping the supply lines of the Eastern Front. The attack on Russia has fundamentally affected the conditions in which the economic warfare operates. The Germans themselves made much of the imports they got from and through Russia, and the largest gap in the blockade was thus automatically stopped on June 22 last while at the same time Germany for the first time embarked on reckless expenditure of accumulated material which it will be hard to replace. The closing of the Russian gap emphasises the importance of the re-, maining important gap in the block-' ade —the Marseilles leak. There is no doubt that the Germans are trying to increase their traffic between North and West Africa and Marseilles. i

The enemy have done their utmost to prepare against the blockade; the civilians and non-essential industries of the occupied countries and Germany itself must feel the pinch long before the German armed forces, and they are now feeling it acutely. It is now necessary for the Germans to supply many of the countries which they have looted with food and raw materials. The Russian campaign among other things is draining the German manpower, which is vital to the enemy for the fighting armies, armies of occupaftion and industrial army.' It is fair ( to say that the efforts of the blockade rare seen most clearly in the German I difficulties regarding manpower, transjportation and administration. But (these are only the outcome of Germany’s supply difficulties, which will, rapidly increase if their present rate of material expenditure is kept up.