Pottgeisser
July 1942 economic traffic:
Direction West-East 16,398 wagons (409 trains or 13 trains a day)
within the area of Russia 38,527 wagons (963 trains or 31 trains a day)
Direction East-West 18,221 wagons (400 trains or 15 trains a day)
The IV quarter of 1942 economic traffic:
Direction west-east................................................... 557.192 t economic goods
In the inland transport of the eastern territories.................. 2,400,980 t economic goods
Towards Germany ,................................................... 1,471,808 t economic goods
and 613.900 head of cattle
A further expansion on these figures can be obtained from Germany and the Second World War Volume 5/II showing that 18 million tonnes was seized from the occupied Eastern territories either for use in theatre by the Ostheer or to be shipped back to Germany:
However of that 18 million tonnes only 10.7 could be shipped out before the military situation collapsed and its transport abandoned. As shown by this table relating to the Donets Basin a considerable proportion of this was in raw material stocks. Since the Donets Basin was occupied from August 1941 until February 1944 (Krivoy Rog for iron ore, Nikipol for manganese) there was an effort to get mining re-started using 2,000 German miners and a lot of Soviet miners with the priority being given to the Manganese mines:
The raw materials used by the Wehrmacht included fuel, wood for heating and construction and iron and steel for local manufacture of weapons which was restarted in captured factories on a small scale and for repairs of weapons and vehicles. In addition food was moved in huge quantities to feed the Ostheer and sent back to the Reich.
As before the lack of capacity in the transport network restricted this traffic.
