In World War II the long-term measure of military striking power is the power to produce, and production is on the side of the nations with the heaviest industries. On the following two pages TIME presents a map of Europe showing the distribution of Europe's productive capacity among the combatants. It shows above all the striking effects which Germany's conquests have had on her capacity to wage modern war.
The Industrial Revolution determined the location of Europe's heavy industries—close to the sources of coal and iron. Europe's major coal field lies roughly in a great arc. Using Oslo as a centre it is possible to describe that arc with a compass. It begins in the Scottish Lowland and ends in Upper Silesia. On it or close to it are strewn the maroon areas of mining districts and the red areas of manufacturing—the English Midlands, South Wales, northern France, Belgium's Sambre-Meuse Valley, Holland's Limburg, the Saar, the Ruhr, middle Germany. Lesser mining and manufacturing areas are scattered in other quarters of Europe but neither in area nor in productive capacity are they of comparable significance.
Through this vast productive crescent, sprinkled with iron ore, the pattern of industry runs with scarcely an interruption—dingy houses, sooty factories, chimneys, smoke, grime. Here are the blast furnaces, iron foundries, rolling mills which turn out the indispensable metal of warfare—steel. Here is the crucible which forges the weapons of World War II.
Less than half of this crescent (and not the richest half) was in prewar Germany. Nonetheless with her great industrial talents Germany managed to produce about 20% of Europe's manufactures. On the Lower Rhine near the coal of the Ruhr was four-fifths of her industry. In that neighborhood are 16 cities with populations of better than 100,000 apiece—among them Cologne, Essen, Düsseldorf, Duisborg-Ruhrort, world's largest inland port. But the mills of industry do not grind without metal-bearing ores, and Germany was weak in them.
She had enough lead, zinc, and magnesium. That was all. Two-thirds of her iron ore and 85% of her copper had to be imported. To feed her highly-developed smelters at Leipzig, Breslau, etc., she had little or no bauxite (aluminum ore), antimony, tin or the critical ferro-alloy metals: molybdenum, tungsten, chrome, nickel. The map shows how conquest enlarged her resources. Fine lines show her post-Versailles boundaries, the heavy line her holdings at the end of year I of World War II.
Austria was the first victim. But Austria, which had not recovered from World War I, did not bring Germany much because her own industries were fed by imports. So were Czecho-Slovakia's. From both of them Germany got an annual supply of nearly 4,000,000 tons of iron ore (a third of her own production). In the event that Germany should be bombed out of the Ruhr, Austria's iron and steel industry at Graz, CzechoSlovakia's well-developed heavy industry near Prague (including the mighty Skoda munitions works at Pilsen) will be important.