THE UNDEFEATED

TIME Editor Joseph Purtell last week completed a tour of southern and western Germany. One of his assignments: to find out what had really happened, or had not happened, to German industry. His report:

The great cities of Germany are dead. When you first see Cologne, you think that no other city could be smashed into such rubble and crazy, fire-blackened walls. When you see Dusseldorf, you decide that it must be the worst; but Essen changes your mind, until you see Nurnberg. Then you know that they have all been so horribly shattered by air power that the question of whether one has a few more houses blasted than another is inconsequential.

Yet air power did not do what many an American thinks it did. It did not destroy German industry nor the potentials for a third world war. Airmen's explanation: "selective bombing" was never intended to destroy all industry. In any event, the host of Allied experts is gradually realizing that 70% of German industry, perhaps more, escaped the bombs.

The evidence is plain in the great plants which dot the countryside, or lie just outside the devastated cities. The Krupp plant in the center of Essen is a classic example of what bombing can do: a waste of shattered walls, twisted girders, rusting steel. Yet the main Krupp foundry at Rheinhausen is virtually untouched. With other Krupp plants, it could turn out 60% of Krupp's normal steel production.

The great I. G. Farben plant in Leverkusen has already asked the Military Government for permission to make a long list of chemicals out of raw materials on hand. Meanwhile it is feeding 6,000 workers a day out of its food stocks. In Wetzlar, there is a steel plant which covers approximately 16 city-blocks. The Army noted: "Despite tremendous bomb damage around the plant, it has not been injured except by foreign workers."

The remaining stocks of raw materials, particularly steel and aluminum, are tremendous. If Germany was short of anything, except oil, it has not yet been discovered. In Bonn alone, the Army estimated that there are 300,000 tons of aluminum--roughly the amount of U.S. production in 1941. In another plant, 1,000,000 tons of steel were stocked. Said an open-mouthed Army officer: "I'd believe anything you told me on the amount of aluminum they had.''

Virtually all German plants were closed up tight when the Allies marched in. Now the Group Control Council in Frankfurt is desperately struggling with the Protean problem of getting the German industrial machine turning over again, but not too fast. There is a pious hope that this undestroyed industrial giant can be kept manacled. As yet, there is no plan. The Council does not yet know enough about German industry to formulate a plan.

Complete closure of German industry is out of the question. The people of the industrial Ruhr cannot live without their steel plants and coal mines. And the rest of Europe cannot live without the coal which the Ruhr produces.

The Endless Chain. Reparations aside, the economy of Europe rests on the Ruhr's coal. If Ruhr coal is not mined in immense quantities, France and Belgium cannot rapidly rebuild their economies. Starvation in the Ruhr will not produce coal. The policy which many a coal expert is now considering is just the opposite: make the life of the coal miner so pleasant, with plenty of food, clothing and a comfortable home, that he will have the energy and incentive to mine the coal needed. (High wages are almost meaningless in Germany today.)

To get out the coal; the railroads must be rebuilt. This means that steel plants must open. A host of smaller industries must start up. Where will it stop? No one yet knows. The danger is that it will never stop.

The Germans have no intention of stopping. After more than five years of war, their energy and determination are amazing. Nowhere is there the apathy which has contributed to France's paralysis.

The industrialists who gave Hitler his start are frantically eager to resume production. They have the cash, the plans, often the raw materials on hand., They are willing to make anything, even weapons for the Allies to use against Japan.

In Essen I talked to an industrialist who was sitting in his bare room, playing Mozart on a violin. I remarked that it would be easier to abandon the present site of Essen and go into the open country and build there. No, he said, they had considered that. But they had decided that it would be easier to rebuild Essen on its present site: electricity conduits, gas and water mains were already in the ground.

In Dusseldorf they talk of rebuilding the entire city in five years. First, they will fix up the Opera House and the theaters so that the dreadful monotony will be relieved. Then they will rebuild the least damaged apartments, finally the houses.

Germany, the practitioner of total war, most certainly did not suffer total defeat.

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