The Third Reich at War, 1939-1945

by Richard J. Evans

Despite all these efforts, there could be no doubting the scale of the damage the bombers had inflicted on the war economy. Arms production had been growing at an average of 5.5 per cent a month in Germany since June 1942; now the growth stopped altogether. Steel production fell by 200,000 tons in the second quarter of 1943 and ammunition quotas had to be cut. There was a crisis in supplies of components for aircraft, and from July 1943 until March 1944 production of aircraft stagnated.20 A raid by American bombers on Schweinfurt on 17 August 1943 badly damaged a number of factories producing ball-bearings and led to a fall of 38 per cent in their production. ‘We are approaching the point of total collapse . . . in our supply industry,’ Speer told the Air Force Procurement Office. ‘Soon we will have airplanes, tanks, or trucks lacking certain key parts.’ If the raids on Germany’s industrial centres continued, he warned Hitler, then Germany’s arms production would come to a total halt.21