RAVAGED BY NAZIS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 November 1943, Page 3

RAVAGED BY NAZIS

RUSSIAN INDUSTRIAL AREAS WHOLESALE DISTRUCTION OF MACHINERY. BUT FOOD SITUATION EASED. (By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright) LONDON, November 5. Not a single enterprise in south Russia’s iron and steel industry has escaped damage, according to a report by Soviet specialists, who recently returned to Moscow from a tour of the Donetz Basin, says the Moscow correspondent of “The Times.” The Germans before retreating destroyed all furnaces, rolling-mills and coke ovens and also mine machinery. The Germans created a special demolition school to cripple this area, where before the war two-thirds of Russia’s iron and steel industry was located. The damage cannot be attributed to the Russians’ own scorched-earth programme, which envisaged only strategic demolition aimed at preventing the Germans from putting the enterprises into operation immediately. Dealing with the reconstruction prospects, the reports state thfib much time will be needed to set south Russia on its feet again, the most difficult problem being the provision of equipment, principally power equipment and rolling mills.

Other reports from the Ukraine describe the enemy’s drastic measures to destroy the collective farm system. The Germans not only removed much of the equipment but also destroyed the State-owned machinery.

The rapid Russian reconquest of the Ukraine has saved 35 per cent of the crops which the Germans planted, thus considerably easing the food situation in Russia, says the Cairs correspondent of the “New York Times.” Moreover, the Russians this summer, in spite of the drain on their manpower for military and industrial purposes have managed to increase the cultivated areas throughout Russia by more than 2,000,000 hectares. The correspondent says that the liberation of the Ukraine has not only thwarted the German plans to loot the Russian crops and enable Russia to increase the bread rations but has also made possible a reduction of the tonnage of Allied food supplies for Russia.