Hard Nut

When the bombs came down on Berlin last week (see p.30), one casualty was Professor Albert Speer's big Ministry for Armaments and Munitions in Pariserplatz. A Swedish correspondent reported that suave, slick-haired Albert Speer rose to the occasion, gathered his staff around him and declaimed: "Gentlemen, we will not take it to heart that our dossiers are destroyed. It will teach us to have even less red tape in our department."

Priorities Up. Professor Speer took power as Germany's overall production czar on Sept. 2. Earlier, he had handled munitions alone. For both jobs he has cut through economic and manufacturing routine, generally managed to deliver what the armed forces demanded, and pushed through a ruthless concentration and conversion of industry to war work.

Result according to the British Ministry of Economic Warfare: although total German industrial production has fallen off at least 20% since last year, the output of such high-priority defensive weapons as fighter planes, tanks, land mines, antiaircraft and anti-tank guns has actually risen. Even Ruhr coal production has been largely maintained by doubling and tripling shifts, calling for volunteer workers. The locomotive shortage, one of Germany's worst problems, has been eased as German forces retreat and shorten the distances to the front.

Optimists Down. Such reports from Germany are often 30 to 60 days behind current facts. But sober MEW men believed last week that Germany's economy was still in a process of deterioration, not collapse. If they were right, Nazi Germany can still take a lot of beating from the air and on the fronts.

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