Sunday, April 14, 1940

TOTAL WAR “ONLY A MATTER OF HOURS”? The news in Friday’s papers was pretty alarming, and seemed to promise that the savage fighting in Norway this week-end would quickly be relegated to a side-show. G.H. Archambault sums up the situation in Friday’s New York Times --

“On the Maginot Line between the Rhine and the Moselle many signs point to an early enemy attack, and all leave has been stopped for the French army. German troop concentrations are reported along the Netherlands frontier, especially at points in the north and south. The Belgian army is standing ready. Evacuation measures are being taken in Luxemburg. The storm seems about to burst.”

What will Hitler do? Mr. Archambault says “the Netherlands and Belgium would be the next logical objectives,” following by a “violent demonstration” against the Maginot Line. John Elliott, Paris correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, quotes the French newspapers L’Intransigeant, Paris Soir, and and Petit Parisien as predicting an imminent German attack on the Maginot Line. David Darrah of the Chicago Tribune says the French believe that Holland and Belgium are targets of the next Nazi push, and reports that the Dutch have cancelled all leaves. He quotes the French newspaper Le Temps as counseling, “The only certain guarantee for a neutral country bordering Germany is to arm to the hilt, organize her defenses on land and sea, and above all, call on Britain and France to come to her aid, for when Germany launches a lightning attack it will be too late.”

Good advice, and let’s see in the next few days if it’s heeded.

HITLER’S INVASION SEEMS TO FALTER. Saturday’s front pages seem to indicate the Nazi plans for Norway might be going awry. A United Press dispatch by Peter C. Rhodes says that “British destroyers have sunk every ship in Narvik harbor,” and that the 5,000-man German garrison at that far northern port has been completely cut off, hemmed in by a combination of British warships and Norwegian troops arriving from further inland. About 30,000 Norwegian fighters have been mobilized in the region.

Meanwhile, the New York Herald Tribune reports Saturday that seven German ships have been trapped in Oslo Fjord by the British. Larry Rue reports in the Chicago Tribune that the British Navy has laid the “biggest mine field in history” in the North Sea, the Skagerrak and the Kattegat. A separate Tribune story says that “the Norwegian army was reported attempting to encircle Oslo.” And the Associated Press reports Friday that Norway’s ground troop have rallied elsewhere, throwing the Germans out of the port of Bergen and beating off an attack on the temporary capital of Elverum.

The Allies have clearly taken the initiative, and the situation sounds promising. But Friday’s Chicago Tribune offers a sobering corrective, reminding us that the Germans have already landed a supporting force of some 20,000 troops in Oslo, and thus the Nazi armies in Norway “are in no immediate danger of being ousted.” The Allies might well prevail, but this battle will probably go on for some time to come.

SOME EDITORIAL THOUGHTS. What newspaper editorials are saying about the German invasion of Norway --

New York Herald Tribune, Saturday -- “It is...a fight which is still uncertain, which may sway back and forth, with heavy losses exacted as the toll of ultimate victory, for an indefinite time before it is decided. It is sea power in action, in a new sense and facing new weapons, which we are now witnessing; one can only suspend prophecy until the action has given its own final verdict.”

Chicago Tribune, Saturday -- “It would seem that the question to be determined very shortly is one of transport. If the Germany army can advance into Norway, what began as military adventurism may be rescued by sound campaigning. What appears as the alternative is the expulsion of the invaders and the first black eye in return for one of Hitler’s startling blows.”

Washington Post, Friday -- “A large part of the prestige which Hitler enjoys among his people has been due to his uncanny ability to achieve maximum results with a minimum of risk. But this time he has embarked on a gamble in which he has laid his people open to some savage punishment. The gamble may succeed. But even so no amount of suppression, or of explanation by Dr. Goebbels’ propagandist machine, will be able to hide the lists of dead and missing from the German people. Nor will any government controls prevent them from wondering uneasily whether the Fuehrer, in his criminal extension of the war to Norway, has not for the first time blundered irretrievably.”

“THE GREAT WAR-GUILT SCANDAL”. Up until the invasion of Norway dominated the headlines, the Chicago Tribune had been having great fun every day with the German “white book” and its “revelations” from alleged Polish foreign ministry documents that U.S. ambassadors Bullitt and Kennedy had secretly fomented the war in Europe. The Tribune had been coming up with a blistering headline every day, claiming, for instance, that Ambassador Bullitt was secretly shipped out of the country by an embarrassed Roosevelt administration, so that the ambassador wouldn’t have to answer congressional inquiries about the sordid affair.

The headlines may have faded for now, but an editorial in the current New Republic says pretty much everything on the subject that remains to be said --

“Even if the [Polish diplomatic documents] are genuine, the mere fact that they are issued by a regime that has openly glorified lying for political purposes will deprive them of influence with the bulk of the American people. The denials issued by the Polish government in France, by Polish ambassador Potocki in Washington and by Secretary Hull will have the right of way. And if the purpose of issuing them was to discredit President Roosevelt in an election year, make a third term unlikely and undermine his foreign policy, as American opinion is quick to suspect, then the mere fact that Hitler is trying to play American politics for his own purposes will make the President unassailable. In a contest, whether or credibility or of attitude, between Hitler and Roosevelt, Hitler will get about one percent of the votes.”

And even if there are genuine documents among the Nazi disclosures, the New Republic joins cooler heads everywhere in urging Americans to take great care in evaluating them -- “we should be cautious in drawing conclusions from what the German government says a Polish diplomat said an American ambassador said the President said.”