| OCR Text |
Show 72 of Income Reich War Cost Same Ration in U. S. Would Reach $57,600,000,000 In Year for Defense. WASHINGTON. Germany's wartime war-time bill in the early months of 1941 is apparently running at the enormous enor-mous annual rate of 72,000,000,000; marks, which is 72 per cent of the national income of 100,000,000,-000 100,000,000,-000 marks, the commerce department depart-ment reports. At the official German rate of exchange, ex-change, the 72,000,000,000 marks would amount to $28,000,000,000 but because of the many types of German Ger-man currency, no accurate translation trans-lation into dollars is possible. The last estimate of Great Britain's Brit-ain's annual expenditures in this war was about 520,000,000,000. The United States expects to spend this year for all purposes, including defense, de-fense, $17,500,000,000. If we were to devote as high a percentage of our expected national income for 1941 to defense as Germany is to her war effort, the bill would be $57,600,000,-000. Taxes Believed Rising. The 72,000,000,000 marks Germany is expending for war purposes do not include the costs of occupation imposed upon Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands, Belgium and France, says H. Arnold Quirin of the finance division of the commerce department, who was responsible for the study. France alone pays occupation costs of 7,200,000.000 marks annually. Detailed budget data have not been published since the beginning of the German rearmament program, pro-gram, but the trend of tax receipts and disclosed borrowings afford an indication of the Reich's increasing expenditures. In the second half of 1940 they were running at an annual an-nual rate of about 68,000,000,000 marks. ! Assistant Finance Minister Fritz Reinhardt of Germany declared recently re-cently that all indications point to an increase in German tax revenues from an estimated 27,000,000,000 marks in the current fiscal year ending March 31 to 30,000,000,000 in 1941-42 and that the wartime contributions con-tributions of German communes and other miscellaneous revenues will yield an additional 4,000,000,000. Total Sum Available. Dr. Reinhardt also placed the Reich's total disclosed indebtedness, including tax certificates, at 79,000,-000,000 79,000,-000,000 marks at the end of 1940. This represents an increase of 19,-000,000,000 19,-000,000,000 during the second half of 1940. If borrowings continue at this rate the total amount available from Reich sources for wartime expenditures expendi-tures will reach 72,000,000,000 marks in the coming year. Though neither total actual expenditures ex-penditures nor those for military and non-military purposes are known, Reichsfuehrer Hitler stated at the beginning of the war that Germany had spent 90,000,000,000 marks in war preparation. This will be the total cost of the full United States defense program, according accord-ing to some computations, though others have placed it higher. The total disclosed amount available avail-able for all German expenditures accumulated since April 1, 1933, reached 95,932,000,000 marks by June 30, 1939, and probably 103,000,-000,000 103,000,-000,000 by August 31, 1939. In the 18 months from July, 1939, to December, De-cember, 1940, apparent expenditures were 83,243,000,000 marks, or nearly equal to the 86,875,000,000 in the six fiscal years from 1933 to 1939. Germany's disclosed public debt at the end of 1940 was 79,000,000,000 marks. |
