Additionally, there were changes in personnel who had faced removal over political concerns that emerged over loyalty to the Communist Party. In opposition to claims by the advisors from Arthur McKee & Company that the facilities were not yet ready for use, the furnaces at MMK were put into action in 1932 with the first flow of molten pig iron being produced. While this move to initiate activities at the complex was applauded by the Soviet leadership, the plant was forced to halt their production only a few days later due to the need for serious repairs in the furnaces. By 1933 the plant was producing steel. MMK played an important role in the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, being the largest steel company in the Soviet Union, and also geographically the most distant from the fighting. The strategic concept of developing various huge modern iron and steel works deep inside the country relied on the idea that future defense of the socialist homeland was going to require both huge amounts of steel and places to produce iron and steel that were as safe as possible from foreign invasion and aerial bombing raids. The notion of protecting the USSR's industrial base from invasion and bombing by locating it deep in the interior was not pursued as completely during the 1930s as it might have been; what parts of it were not overrun and confiscated by the Germans were hastily moved eastward in 1941 and 1942. In 1942, the West knew that "at least one armament factory previously situated near Leningrad has arrived in Magnitogorsk lock, stock, and barrel, complete with personnel, and is already going into production using Magnitogorsk steel." The extent of Western knowledge of the huge eastward shift was summed up as follows: "...Even before the outbreak of war, large electrical equipment plants were removed from White Belorussia on the German frontier and also from the Leningrad district to the Urals and Western Siberia. One such plant is reported to have been removed to Sverdlovsk during 1940 and to have been producing normally in March, 1941. Any plant except the largest smelting, steelmaking, and chemical works can be moved by railroad fairly quickly and with little damage." [...] "Thus, while no figures will be available for some time, it is my opinion that large portions of the industrial machinery formerly located in areas now occupied by the Germans, instead of being captured by them, are already in operation a thousand or more miles east of the present front, in Stalin's Ural Stronghold." After the attack on the USSR, on June 22, 1941, MMK obtained its first order for production of metal armour.