GERMANS CUTTING NORWAY IN HALF. The radio is full of worrisome reports this morning that a new Nazi drive might be about to cut Norway in two, along a line from the port of Trondheim eastward to the Swedish border. This development follows a number of stories in Monday’s papers indicating that Hitler’s forces are pushing inland against determined but disorganized Norwegian resistance. The New York Times reports a “substantial German success” in a drive against Norwegian forces attempting to surround the Nazi garrison in Oslo. The Germans have seized Fredrikstad, Sarpaborg and Halden, giving them control of the eastern shore of the Oslo Fjord. The offensive has also sent 3,000 Norwegian Army troops fleeing into Sweden, where they’ve been disarmed and interned.
But the Associated Press, among others, quotes a B.B.C. broadcast Monday as vowing that “British troops are on their way to help the Norwegians.” In fact, according to bulletins this morning, an expeditionary force of British troops, undetermined in number, may already be landing in various spots along Norway’s coast. The Norwegian News Service also claims the British have taken the northern port of Narvik, and that its German garrison has fled inland. Another A.P. report says the British Navy has sunk or captured at least 21 German transport and supply ships off Norway, and that a German prize pocket battleship, the Admiral Scheer, has been “successfully attacked.”
Two things are increasingly clear -- (1) this battle will go on for some time, and (2) the Allies stand a fighting chance. The Germans have a lot of striking power close by and may yet take control of Norway, but Hitler’s expectations of another cheap victory have clearly been thwarted.
SO MUCH FOR “PROTECTION”. Monday’s New York Times also has a very interesting dispatch from Stockholm, by Erik Seidenfaden, on just how close Norway’s government came to capitulating shortly after the invasion. Ministers were on the verge of surrendering Norway Tuesday night, he writes. But then a “Battle of Lexington” took place at the temporary capital of Elverum -- “at about 2 o’clock Wednesday morning, soldiers and peasants fought and repulsed a German force...thus turning the tide and leading to general resistance to the invasion.” The resistance, composed of Elverum’s army garrison and some peasants armed with rifles, successfully repulsed an attacking force of 200 heavily armed Germans.
In spite of Nazi claims to be “protecting” Norway’s government from the Allies, a United Press article says the Germans actually took to bombing every town that King Haakon and his government stayed at after their flight from Oslo. The temporary capital of Elverum has been “virtually destroyed” by German bombers, according to the U.P.
BELGIUM, HOLLAND SEE WAR AHEAD. Alex Small of the Chicago Tribune reports from Brussels in Monday’s editions that the Belgians are breathing a little easier this week -- but only a little. “The conviction was general,” he writes, “that the war will not spread to Holland or Belgium for the next two or three days. Beyond that, the most hazardous spirit will not predict.” There are predictions being made, though, and Mr. Small cites “well-informed sources” as forecasting that Germany would likely attack Holland first. Then, Belgium would go to her neighbor’s defense and be drawn into the fighting. Belgium’s 700,000-man army is under arms and in the field, and ready for whatever comes.
Meanwhile, Edward Angly reports in Monday’s New York Herald Tribune that Sweden shares Belgium and Holland’s “sense of immediate insecurity”, and that the German radio and press have launched blistering campaigns against the Swedes and the Dutch. Mr. Angly writes that Allied experts are more concerned about these threats than the one to Norway -- “British strategists profess not to be worried about the situation opened up this week in the north. Whatever the immediate local successes of German troops against the Norwegians, the feeling in London is that the Nazis, having gone into Scandinavia without securing sea communications to supply and augment their land forces, are out on a limb, which the Allied fleet is sawing off.”
Hope that’s true.
NORWAY’S IMPACT ON U.S. OPINION. Arthur Krock says in a Sunday New York Times commentary that Hitler’s invasion of Norway is affecting American opinion in a way that earlier acts of German aggression did not --
“It feels certain that the pro-Allied, or rather the anti-Nazi, sentiment of the American people has been increased by Hitler’s invasion of Norway and seizure of Denmark. The fates of Ethiopia, Albania, Poland, and Austria and Czecho-Slovakia were more distant tragedies. The pioneer parts played by Scandinavians in the founding of the United States, and the democratic examples these nations have set and maintained while autocracy was growing all around them, produced a feeling of kinship and a spiritual bond which even Finland did not evoke. Of this the Administration is as fully aware as the man in the street.
But Mr. Krock sees no sign that these factors have done anything to solve the President’s chief foreign policy problem -- “It is, and has been from the first, how to lend the Allies every aid ‘short of war’ which will assure the defeat of Germany, and yet will permit the United States to maintain the technique of neutrality, preserve the few neutral rights is has asserted, and avert either intervention or the successful charge that this is the hidden objective or the inevitable consequence of the Administration’s policy.”
ROOSEVELT CRITICIZES THE INVASION. Sunday’s Washington Post reprints a brief statement from the President condemning the invasion of Denmark and Norway -- though not mentioning Germany by name. What he said was, essentially, “Force and military aggression are once more on the march against small nations....If civilization is to survive, the rights of the smaller nations to independence...must be respected by their more powerful neighbors.”
Pretty mild, it sounds to me. But to prominent isolationists in Congress, even this is war-mongering. Senator Nye of North Dakota responded by saying, “I cannot look upon statements like this without feeling that they are, each and every one, taking us a little closer to involvement in the holocaust abroad.” His colleague from North Dakota and fellow Republican, Senator Frazier, condemned the President’s comments as “unneutral.”
There’s no pleasing these people, is there? The President might as well call a spade a spade, and denounce Hitler by name.
DEMOCRATS BETTER OFF WITHOUT F.D.R.? Sunday’s Washington Post also offers a startling new Gallup poll that deals a blow to “the widespread belief that President Roosevelt is the only man who can lead the Democratic Party to victory next November.” It does show Roosevelt winning a third term over a Republican candidate, Senator Vandenberg, by a margin of 53% to 47%. But it shows Secretary of State Hull doing a lot better, beating Senator Vandenberg by 58% to 42%.
The reason for this, according to Dr. Gallup, is that “the third-term tradition is still a major handicap to Mr. Roosevelt. Although his personal popularity is high from coast to coast, a small but important group of Democrats still say they will not vote for him for a third term.”
Democrats shouldn’t take any comfort over Gallup’s finding that Roosevelt would still win. It’s odd that Gallup would choose Senator Vandenberg as its “test” candidate for the G.O.P., since Gallup’s own polls have long shown him badly trailing Thomas Dewey – and in fact, the current issue of Time magazine proclaims that Dewey’s huge wins over Vandenberg in the Wisconsin and Nebraska primaries have practically knocked Vandenberg out of the running. The race at the moment is between Mr. Dewey and Senator Taft. The latter will probably amass a larger number of delegate votes than Dewey by convention time, despite Taft’s refusal to compete in the primaries. But either Dewey or Taft would likely be a bigger vote-getter than Vandenberg.
Dr. Gallup says that future trial heats will show how President Roosevelt stacks up against Mr. Dewey and Senator Taft. Those surveys should prove most interesting.
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