Europe's Recovery

Last week was still too early to estimate the rate or the degree of Europe's economic comeback, but there were already isolated examples of Europe's surprising ability to pick itself up from its wreckage:

A quick survey of newly liberated ports facing the North Sea indicated that supplies from the outside world might soon be unloaded. Hamburg's port was a shambles, with the hulks of more than 50 large ships sunk in the harbor. But damage to the docks was not so great as expected, and British minesweepers were busy clearing the channel. At Bremerhaven and Wesermuende it was believed that 20 Liberty ships could soon be docked. Eight ships could dock at Bremen.

The opening of these ports will mean that the ports of France and the Low Countries can more quickly carry a flow of peacetime goods. Rotterdam docks are in fairly good shape, but the harbor is still blocked by sunken shipping.

The indomitable Dutch had production rolling in the N. V. Philips Co.'s huge, bomb-pocked electrical manufacturing plant at Eindhoven. In addition to high-priority electrical gadgets for the Allied armies, production at Eindhoven included such prosaic, civilian essentials as pots and pans.*

When Army G-5 surveyed the rubble that had been Cologne they discovered, surprisingly enough, that the Ford Motor Co. plant was only 15% damaged by bombs and artillery fire. More surprising, G-5 found that some hundreds of trucks could be assembled from the large stock of parts on hand. Apparently, the mauling given the German railroad system by Allied airmen had not entirely blocked the delivery of carburetors, engines, chassis, etc., from subcontractors throughout Germany. Promptly G-5 summoned the Burgomaster of Cologne, ordered him to round up Ford workers, get them back to work. Their production last week: ten trucks a day, delivered to the U.S. Army for transporting supplies.

At Le Havre, transatlantic cable messages are pouring through the Commercial Cable Co.'s operating room, deep in a dark, dank cellar. Divers had patched the broken cable link with the U.S., had removed the mines the Germans planted over the cable bed. But the company could not move its operating offices above ground until a suitable building could be found in badly battered Le Havre.

The Paris plant of International Telephone & Telegraph Corp., which escaped with little destruction because of hasty German retreat, was able to do an immediate rush job for the U.S. Army, after the liberation of Paris: it delivered a complete radio station to SHAEF within 24 hours.

The thrice-bombed B. F. Goodrich Co.'s Paris plant, now sweating out 500 tires a day, plans to double its output.

As European industry creaks back to life, lack of raw materials is a brake on production. All industries are short of steel, coal, chemicals, rubber, textiles, oil.

* With the enemy gone, the Dutch dared tell how they had assembled clandestine radio sets during the German occupation. When Allied air raids sent German guards scurrying for shelter, Dutch workers pilfered radio parts from the Philips plant, passed them to radio men of the Dutch underground.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.