HARVEST LOST

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 October 1941, Page 5

HARVEST LOST

IN WESTERN UKRAINE INDUSTRY EVERYWHERE SHATTERED. LITTLE BUT PROBLEMS LEFT FOR GERMANS. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) LONDON, October 28. The Stockholm correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph,” quoting the Swedish journalist who has just concluded a journey across the Ukraine, writes: “When the Germans crossed the borders of the western Ukraine the corn was still unharvested in many districts, but it was an empty triumph because the Russians deprived them of the tractors, reapers, binders and threshing machines. The Germans found an incredible number of tractors lying in ditches, all of them rendered useless by the removal of vital parts. “As the Germans progressed the sight of tractors was more rare, because the Russians had mostly removed them in lorry convoys instead of destroying them. “In the central and eastern Ukraine the Russians themselves succeeded in gathering and removing the harvest. “Apart from the lack of machines the Germans have a difficult, labour problem, and only in the extreme western Ukraine have they managed to mobilise farm labourers.”

The correspondent adds: “Even where sugar-beet is being harvested in the western Ukraine the Germans are finding the utmost difficulties. The work consists only of pulling up and stacking the roots in huge dumps, because transport is completely lacking and the Russians have blown up nearly all the sugar refineries.

“The German genius for organisation is facing in the occupied Ukraine an even harder test than oh the battlefields. Industry everywhere, is shattered.

“It is estimated that it will take at least two years to repair the Dneprostroy Dam and nearly two years to restart the Krivoi-Rog iron mines. The Kiev and Kharkov factories lhave either been dismantled or blasted and their power installations wrecked. Stalin and Makeevka will take 18 months to repair. ' “It will be practically impossible for the Germans to ensure anything like normal crops in the Ukraine before 1943. Next year’s Ukraine crop is already doomed, and enormous quantities of seed must be found to replace the seed which the Russians have removed.”