Jobs for Little F

A group of foreign correspondents with Nazi cicerones last week completed a 2,500-mile tour of occupied Ukraine. Their findings:

No More Resistance. "The territory we went through was militarily under control, beyond any doubt. Strongly garrisoned and kept orderly, it was ready for the next phase, which is administration and exploitation."

But the Russians had done a pretty good job of sabotage: "It will be a year at least before the Ukraine can be got into industrial working order again."

Man Power. "If any advanced country had thousands of able-bodied farmers and skilled factory hands to send into the Ukraine, it would be a marvelous investment for a conqueror. As things stand now, tens of thousands of men have been taken away by the Russians."

Farm Land. "Nowhere did we see any signs of burned crops, such as might be expected under the Soviet scorched-earth policy, although almost all tools, tractors and livestock had been removed or destroyed." For the job of reclamation, the Germans had brought Sonderfuehrer (special leaders) from German farms. These little Fuhrers, used to tending small German farms, were dismayed to find themselves put in charge of almost 100,000 acres each.

They found a good sugar-beet crop waiting for them, but all the sugar factories wrecked. They set women to harvesting standing wheat and rye, but they had to harvest with scythes and horses instead of modern machinery. They tried to get autumn sowing done, but only put in from 5% to 7% of normal seedings.

Kiev. Said a German officer: "We hesitated to turn on electricity for fear of throwing switches that would set off mines, so electrical service was restored gradually, one block at a time. Some were fixed to explode when electricity was turned on; others when radio transmission started.

Seven thousand of the mines we removed were planted in the most unexpected places, where they had no right to be--in museums, cloisters, churches and administrative buildings. . . . The other 3,000 mines were found where one could expect them--at railway emplacements and other points .which the Russians expected Germans to occupy. . . . The Russian forces had taken the fire department with them, including personnel, trucks and hose."

Nilcolayev, a center of shipbuilding, had scarcely an intact factory. A partly completed 35,000-ton battleship had been blown up. A cruiser, one-third armor-plated, lay toppled off its ways, which had been burned under it. Two unfinished submarines had also been destroyed.

Odessa has miles-long catacombs, dug in the 19th Century to get sandstone for the city's construction. From these caves Russian suicide squads were still reported operating. They were said to come out at night, creep from house to house, find enemy rendezvous, blow them up. Fortnight ago the Rumanian general in charge of the city was blown up with his staff. The Rumanians vainly tried to fumigate the catacombs, have now posted machine guns at the vaults' entrances. Wrote one correspondent: "The whole atmosphere is one of lurking danger and stealthy death, such as I've never experienced in visits to the battle front during the last two years."

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