Why Hitler is Losing

The German Reich may still wage a long and strong defensive war, but it can achieve no more major blitzkriegs or offensives on the Russian scale. This was the conclusion that authoritative Allied observers, official and nonofficial, drew last week from evidence that two great bottlenecks are now choking the Nazi economy.

The two bottlenecks are transport and manpower. Both are fundamental; both have been developing for years. Hitler was warned of them by such knowledgeable advisers as Dr. Hjalmar Schacht and some of his key railroad men before the war began. He chose to go ahead despite them, counting on quick conquests. What he did not count on was conquest without victory.

Transport. German war historians admitted that a transportation crisis was a prime reason for the failure of Germany's military effort in 1918. Today Hitler's Reich is suffering from a gradual loss in transport efficiency, a slow decline in speed of movement. Important freight is clogging in yards, on canals, in warehouses. Germany's whole military economy feels the effects.

The Germans have striven desperately to improve their railroads' carrying capacity. Most significant single piece of evidence is the recent revision of steel priorities. The order used to be: 1) submarines; 2) anti-aircraft guns; 3) tanks; 4) locomotives. Now priorities for locomotives rank second to U-boats. The present production schedule is 6,000 locomotives in 1943--double the previous rate of production, but 1,500 locomotives fewer than the Germans at first hoped to get. Also scheduled are 112,000 freight cars. But, say Swiss economic observers, even this program would leave Germany far short of the number of locomotives needed to handle present tasks with normal efficiency.

Target: Locomotives. To hit at this soft spot, Allied fighter planes are now concentrating on German locomotives in western Europe. With armor-piercing slugs in their cannon they aim to blow up boilers (repairing a boiler takes at least half as long as constructing a new locomotive, thus pays dividends in lost man-hours as well as destruction). The Allied bag now averages 20 successful destructions each week. German concern is shown by reports that armor-plated locomotives are planned; anti-aircraft guns are already being mounted on flatcars behind the tenders.

British pilots learned the futility of attempting to ruin tunnels, destroy open railroad lines, bomb out freight yards, which can be repaired within a few hours. Knocking out bridges proved difficult (Cologne's Suedbruecke, hit repeatedly, is still in service). But locomotives are R.A.F. meat. As targets they offer an additional advantage--they must always be brought within range. To supply their Channel defenses, for instance, the Germans have to bring locomotives up to the coast within convenient reach of British fighter planes.

The more than 20,000 locomotives and 600,000 freight cars which Hitler had when the war began were augmented by some 22,500 engines and nearly 600,000 cars when he conquered Belgium and France. But at the same time the railroads were committed to staggering increases in deliveries--60 trainloads of coal daily to Italy, long hauls of wheat and oil from Rumania, some 1,500 miles away. The burden was increased by night & day bombings of the Ruhr and Rhine Valleys (where 40% of all German rail traffic originated, within easy range of bombs from Britain); by the labor shortage; by the loss of thousands of locomotives and cars in the Russian morass.

Waterway & Highway. Germany's waterways (capacity: one-fifth of total traffic) provide an alternative route for freight shipments to relieve rail congestion. Particularly taxed is the Danube route (which freezes in winter), with its job of hauling Rumanian oil. Railroads being poor in the Balkans, it is important to get the heavy oil shipments off the rails and into barges. But the capacity of the water routes is still not great enough to fill the gap.

Nor do highways meet the need, what with lack of tires, lubricating oil and fuel. Der Deutsche Volkswirt, most authoritative German economics journal, said in December 1941 that few fresh transport reserves remained to be tapped and that the limit of expansion had been reached. Since then things have grown worse, not better.

Manpower. With some 6,000,000 foreigners already working in the Reich's factories and fields, the manpower shortage remains one of Germany's most pressing problems. It affects not only the vital production effort at home but the huge military effort on the battlefronts as well.

In all occupied countries the drive for forced labor is being pushed. From Belgium trainloads of workers are sent to the Reich every day. Labor is the Reich's principal demand from France, where it is estimated that 10,000 men are being called up weekly. Bulgaria is being high-pressured, Holland called upon for many thousands of men and women. At home, as men are drafted from factories, work hours increase; a 60-hour week is a minimum, 78 hours not unusual.

Said German manpower expert Paul Hagen in his authoritative book Will Germany Crack?: "The shortage of labor has now become the Nazis' most desperate problem, the chief symbol in the multiple crisis of scarcity in Germany. . . . [It] has not been solved and cannot be, for reasons beyond the Nazis' control. The measures [they] have adopted have only aggravated the situation."

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