Loading coal onto Rhine barges at Cologne, 1937
Workers shovel coal from railway wagons into steel boxes, and a gantry crane swings them out over the Rhine to the barges.
On a quay beside a line of open railway wagons, men shovel coal into riveted steel boxes, some in shirtsleeves, one stripped to the waist. They guide the boxes on their chains as the hook of a gantry crane lifts them, and each load swings high over the quay and out above the broad Rhine, where the open holds of barges lie waiting; factory chimneys line the far bank.
The Rhine carried more freight than any other river in Europe, and coal from the Ruhr was its heaviest cargo. With rearmament and Göring's Four-Year Plan of 1936, demand for coal outran supply, and the unemployment of the early 1930s gave way to a shortage of workers for jobs like these.
