HITLER ATTACKS NORWAY, DENMARK. The radio bulletins are sketchy, and the late editions of the morning papers should offer a clearer picture. But what we do know is stark enough -- Oslo, the capital of Norway, was attacked early Tuesday morning by what was described in one early report as “a mysterious naval expedition of an unknown power,” later identified as part of a German flotilla of 125 vessels in the area. Apparently four hostile warships attempted to storm their way into Oslo Fjord, but were forced to retreat by Norwegian coastal batteries. An air raid alarm was sounded in Oslo at 2 a.m. local time. A Reuters correspondent has wired that German troops were debarking at Norwegian ports at 3 a.m. local time. One bulletin quotes Norway’s foreign minister as saying his country is “at war” with Germany.
Meanwhile, the Reich sent an unknown number of troops into Denmark at 5 o’clock this morning local time (11 p.m. E.S.T. Monday night), crossing the narrow border at several points and landing troops at six seaports. Copenhagan reportedly has been occupied without incident. It is said the Danes are offering no resistance nationwide.
What to make of this? It’s no surprise that the Nazis are again using their Blitzkrieg (“lightning war”) tactics against small, peaceful countries who are ill-prepared to fight back, instead of against Germany’s evenly-matched enemies, Britain and France. Hitler is, above all else, a bully. But why attack northward? Britain’s mining of Norwegian harbors (see below) is an excuse, not a justification, for the Nazi action. And if Germany were looking for forward bases to use against Britain, invading Holland would make much more military sense. If securing resources were the goal, seizing Rumania would be more cold-bloodedly profitable. For what it’s worth, the Germans say they’re not interested in taking military advantage of the bases or resources of either Denmark or Norway. They’re only “protecting” the Danes and Norwegians from a coming British invasion. Germany’s self-justifications would be funny if the consequences weren’t so terrible.
THEY SAW CORRECTLY. One of the front-page headlines in Sunday’s New York Times read, “Norway Sees War If Her Neutrality Is Not Respected.”
ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER TREATY VIOLATION. The editors of the Chicago Tribune and other isolationist papers have been baying through the winter about the need for both sides to realize that military might cannot settle this war – that they must sit down and “negotiate” a settlement. But as the radio news has reminded us this morning, Denmark chose talks with the Nazis -- to no avail. The Danes had a bilateral nonaggression pact with Germany, signed last June 1. It outlawed war by one side against the other. Will the isolationists now finally realize that it’s futile to sign agreements with the Hitler regime? Yes, the U.S. should stay out of this war, but the Allies have no choice but to fight for the goal of overthrowing Nazi-ism. And America should aid them in that task.
ALLIES HAD MINED NORWEGIAN HARBORS. One day before the German attack, the British and French governments took the extreme step of laying mines in three places off Norway’s coast. According to an Associated Press account on Monday, the Allies justified this apparent violation of Norway’s neutrality by calling attention to Germany’s airplane and submarine attacks on neutral shipping, which the Allies call “pure terrorism.”
The A.P. quotes the Allies’ formal statement as contending that “international law has always recognized the right of a belligerent, when its enemy has systematically resorted to illegal practices, to take action appropriate to the situation created by the illegalities of the enemy. Such action is generally recognized to become lawful in view of the other belligerent’s violation of the law.”
Indeed, while this step was a daring one for the Allies, it is small potatoes compared to the Nazis’ campaign of attacks on neutral shipping bound for Allied ports, which has cost over 150 vessels and over 1,000 lives of neutral seamen. British forces mined three points, off Stadtlandet Peninsula, Bud, and West Fjord in southern Norway, and had planned to patrol the mined areas for forty-eight hours to prevent Norwegian or other vessels from inadvertently passing through the dangerous areas. The goal was not to destroy and kill, but merely to make it practically impossible for the Germans to continue shielding their ore imports from British attack by sailing them through neutral waters.
WHY NORWAY, WHY NOW? A Sunday New York Times analysis by Edwin L. James makes an interesting point that raises the question of why the British bothered to mine Norwegian harbors, and why the Germans chose now to invade. After all, Mr. James notes in an article written before these developments, Hitler has an alternate route in the warm-weather months --
“The German supply of iron ore from Sweden, badly needed in the construction of heavy artillery, constitutes one of the chief Allied problems. The plans discussed for halting the shipments from Narvik through Norwegian waters to Germany come up against the difficulty that in a few weeks now, and until next Winter’s ice comes, the Germans can import the Swedish ore through the Gulf of Bothnia and the Baltic, rather out of reach of British sea power. All during the World War the British were unable to halt these shipments of Swedish ore to Germany. A British submarine or two might get through the Skagerrak into the Baltic, but it will probably prove to be a dubious undertaking to halt the summertime shipments by direct methods.”
NEW DEALERS SPYING ON WILLKIE? The New York Herald Tribune ran a startling front-page item last Friday that got very little notice over the week-end, but definitely deserves further attention. Wendell Willkie, president of the Commonwealth and Southern Corporation, told an audience at New York’s Town Hall that “he understood that a file on his activities and utterances was being kept in Washington and that a government official recently had stated, ‘We are going to get him if it is the last thing we ever do.’”
Now, Mr. Willkie is not a candidate for the Republican nomination for President at this point, and might not ever be. Party officials have mentioned him as a possible compromise candidate if there is a deadlock at this summer’s convention between Messrs. Dewey, Taft, and Vandenberg. But given Mr. Dewey’s sizeable victory in the Wisconsin primary last week and his continued popularity with rank-and-file G.O.P. voters, he could well win the nomination outright.
But someone in the Roosevelt administration badly dislikes Mr. Willkie, and recently told a reporter for a national publication something along the lines of, “Well, you know, the Investment Bankers of America are making an attack on a certain institution here in Washington, and we don’t think they are really doing it. We think Wendell Willkie is behind that, and we are keeping a file on his activities, we are keeping a file on where he talks, and what he says and what he does with his time, and we are going to get him if it is the last thing we ever do.”
Mr. Willkie rightly says that such tactics are more typical of a “primitive, feudal society” than of a modern democracy. President Roosevelt should condemn such goings-on, and move immediately to stop them.
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