Lebensraum Lost

Anglo-American successes in North Africa have knocked out one of the props supporting the Nazi planners' patchwork continental economic structure, and are giving the United Nations substantial economic as well as military advantages. With the loss of Morocco and Algeria, Germany's Europe will forfeit an annual: > 410,000 tons of high-grade iron ore. This is a particularly heavy blow in view of R.A.F. bombing of the barge route via Rotterdam across the Ruhr and the growing reluctance of Swedish sailors to carry ore to Germany from Sweden.

> Considerable tonnages of manganese, molybdenum, antimony, nickel, lead--plus cobalt, used for the Reich's production of synthetic gasoline.

> 1,500,000 tons of phosphates, essential to Germany's attempt to grow more food on the continent.

> Rich agricultural and pastoral lands, which in the first six months of 1942 yielded Germany: 1,600 tons of wool; 400,000 tons of fresh fruits and vegetables; 300,000 tons of grain; 65 million gallons of wine; 12,000 tons of oil seeds and vegetable oils, 5,000 tons of tanning materials, 1,500 tons of leather and skins, 25,000 tons of fish, 130,000 head of sheep, quantities of livestock, oranges, lemons, dates, preserves.

For the United Nations there were also direct gains:

> To the U.S. will be shipped cork, of which North Africa produces 20-25% of the world's normal supply.

> To Britain, cut off since 1940 from its supply of Swedish iron ore, will go most of the Algerian ore instead of iron from the U.S.

> The British also exulted over "a windfall of 200,000 to 300,000 tons" of shipping that had been working for Nazi Europe.

The conquest of North Africa by no means opens up the whole Mediterranean. But it is a beginning. Should this occur, there would be a 50% saving in shipping by using the Mediterranean route to Alexandria as against going round the Cape of Good Hope. On the basis of estimates of past tonnage figures, going to the Near East, we might thus gain up to 2,000,000 tons. On the other hand, the U.S. faces the necessity of steadily reinforcing and provisioning her North African troops, which will put an added strain on the Atlantic run.

None of this forecasts German economic collapse or a return to normal Mediterranean commerce by British and U.S. interests. Trade with North Africa will be based on strict military necessity for the duration. Nevertheless, conquest of the hump is a powerful reminder to waivering neutrals--Turkey, Sweden and the Argentine--that the United Nations, not the New Order, will one day determine the new conditions of world trade. And it has set U.S. businessmen thinking, as they have had little occasion to do for many months, as to how in fact world trade can be revived when peace comes.

*Based on Standard & Poor's weekly stock indexes. Peace stocks include: gold mining, textiles and apparel, mail-order houses, meat packing, drugs, house furnishings; war stocks: aircraft, steel, copper, machinery, shipbuilding, metal fabricating.

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