HITLER INVADES THE LOW COUNTRIES. On Friday morning, twenty-nine German divisions set out to conquer three neutral nations -- Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg. (With stunning gall, Germany’s Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop says the purpose of the Nazi air, artillery, and land assault is to “protect the neutrality” of the three countries). Luxembourg has been overrun, but Belgium and the Netherlands are trying gamely to halt the Nazi tide along well-fortified defenses. And Robert Okin of the Associated Press reports that as of Saturday, British and French troops were “pouring into the most important areas of Belgium” to defend their new ally. G.H. Archambault writes in Saturday’s New York Times that British naval vessels are rushing troops and supplies to Holland’s coastline.
According to the United Press account on Friday, the Germans began the attack on Holland with parachute drops of troops to seize strategic points in the area of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, and other cities. There were also numerous air raids on Dutch airdromes and a land assault in the southeastern part of the country, at Roermond. Meanwhile, the initial German invasion of Belgium took place at four points, and was accompanied with widespread bombings of Antwerp and Brussels.
ATTACKS ON FRANCE, TOO. And it’s not just the Low Countries -- a Saturday A.P. dispatch by Roy P. Porter indicates “widespread raids” by German planes against a dozen French cities. Radio bulletins this morning tell of an unsuccessful attack by a Nazi division of 14,000 men against the Maginot Line, in the Sierck region of the Moselle River Valley.
CHAMBERLAIN OUT, CHURCHILL IN. In the midst of all this, a critically important story almost got lost in Saturday’s papers -- Prime Minister Chamberlain resigned, and within ten minutes Winston Churchill had replaced him. According to Joseph Cerutti in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune, the change “came with dramatic suddenness,” after two weeks of twists and turns. Chamberlain, under intense pressure for days to form a new government of national unity, received a bombshell when the opposition Labor Party announced it would only participate in such a government “under a new premier who would command the confidence of the nation.” Thus, he was effectively left with no choice but to quit.
Actually, news reports Friday had indicated errantly that Chamberlain would probably retain his premiership after all, because of Hitler’s attack on the Low Countries. Raymond Daniell speculated in a New York Times story that it looked like Chamberlain would “be saved just as it looked like he was sure to fall,” as opposition parties seemed to closed ranks with the Conservatives in the face of a grim, all-out military struggle. Mr. Cerutti reported that any cabinet changes were at first thought “likely to be postponed because of the international situation.”
WHAT’S CHURCHILL LIKE? I haven’t seen any Sunday papers yet, though no doubt they’ll contain some good profiles of the new prime minister. Jack Culmer of the Associated Press jumps the gun a bit with a Saturday article, which ran on the Washington Post’s editorial page. He describes Churchill has a tough, likeable old bird -- “People like the forthright way he says what he thinks and feels, the frequent surprises he springs, and his ‘bulldog determination’ to defeat Nazi Germany....His wartime speeches have been hailed as ‘the best oratory of the war.’ They have been criticized, but Churchill weathers criticism with dogged imperturbability.”
Sounds like a heartening contrast to Chamberlain in a few key respects, at least.
GERMANS SEIZE KEY BELGIAN FORTRESS. Most worrisome development of the Nazi offensive so far is a successful attack on Fort Eben Emael, said to the strongest fortress in Belgium’s Leige defenses. William Shirer made this sound quite important in his C.B.S. broadcast last night, saying the fort was of “great strategic importance” as the gateway to the junction of the Meuse River and the Albert Canal.
Mr. Shirer also mentioned an intriguing German claim that the Eben Emael was put out of action and its defenders made helpless by a “new method of attack.” There’s some speculation that this might be a “magnetic mine” or some other kind of secret weapon, but no one in the press seems to know, and the Germans obviously aren’t telling.
ARE THE ALLIES HOLDING THE LINE? Of course, not too much else is known at the moment about how the overall battle is actually going. But there are a few hints of optimism for the Allied cause in Saturday’s papers. Beach Conger writes in the New York Herald Tribune that Dutch troops “have been holding their own in pitched battles” at Rotterdam, where they have been fighting German parachute units disguised in Dutch uniforms. Nazi parachute troops are said to be held at bay in other Dutch cities, too. Mr. Conger also reports claims by Dutch military authorities that the Nazis have yet to seize a strategic military objective in the border region.
The Associated Press quotes Belgium’s King Leopold Saturday as saying defiantly that his nation’s army is “fighting foot by foot” to protect its soil. Belgian authorities claim their army “had halted the German invaders all along the border area.”
All this sounds good, but so did the initial reports following the Allied landings in Norway a month ago. We’ll see what this looks like in a few days.
THE EDITORS SPEAK OUT. The editorials printed so far on the latest German attack indicate just how grave a development this is –
New York Times – “The first feeling of the people of this heartsick country must be sheer inability to believe that the thing long feared has actually happened....Hitler has unleashed his total war. He has struck on the main front. He has staked everything on a gigantic gamble which, if he wins, will mean the end of freedom and democracy and culture throughout all Europe in our time...This is the fateful hour. We in America who live behind the defenses of the Western European nations which are the outposts of our own kind of civilization must watch with deep anxiety to see whether the line will hold.”
Washington Post – “The seizure of the Low Countries would greatly augment the threat of submarines and airplanes to Britain’s sea-borne commerce. If the Germans can capture the Dutch and Belgian ports, as they have already taken over those of Denmark and Norway, half the British coastline, from Dover to the Shetland Islands, will be encircled. Even if the docks of London were left unscathed no ship would be able to leave or enter that great port except at serious risk of air or undersea attack. If Great Britain should be beaten to her knees, and Hitler is staking everything on that prospect, France would of course be at the mercy of the Berlin-Rome axis. But there is no reason to suppose that the Allies have any illusions about the magnitude of their joint peril.”
New York Herald Tribune – “This time the blitzkrieg has been tried again, but there is one vast difference in the attempt. This time, and for the first time, it has been launched upon prepared positions, and against peoples, armies, and staffs who for eight months have had little else to do save to make ready for exactly this eventuality. While the Germans have been practicing and perfecting their technique on other victims, the Dutch, the Belgians, the British and the French have been free to study that technique in all its aspects and to perfect their own replies....It is much too early yet to say how well they have learned their lesson. But the first reports suggest they have not neglected it.”
THE TRIBUNE’S CURIOUS WORDING. One more editorial comment on the offensive, this time from Saturday’s Chicago Tribune --
“Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg have been drawn into the war which now covers most of central and western Europe....The new blows of the war in its growing intensity, afflicting peoples whose one great purpose in the crisis was to keep their peace, naturally affect American sentiment profoundly. Our judgement continues to tell us that the best service the American government can do...is to preserve a great area of the world in which civilization keeps its sanity, its strength, and its peace.”
“Have been drawn into the war.” Isn’t it strange that the Tribune editors choose such bloodless, passive, let’s-not-blame-anybody language to describe yet another brutal, unprovoked Nazi attack? Do they really define “neutrality” as the denial of physical reality? Then again, if President Roosevelt invaded a country, one suspects the “World’s Greatest Newspaper” might manage to work up some real outrage about it.
THE DANGER TO AMERICA. Walter Lippmann’s column in Saturday’s New York Herald Tribune might be his most important writing ever. In it, he sounds the alarm over just how much the outcome of Hitler’s new offensive means for America’s future --
“For the United States this is the beginning of the most critical period in 70 years. Our security is gravely jeopardized. The Nation is unprepared in all essential respects -- in the material for defense, in training, in discipline, in its industrial organization, in its politicians, and in its mind and heart -- to protect adequately and swiftly its vital interests. Our cities will not be bombed; our young men will not be conscripted and sent to fight in Belgium. But if the offensive which Hitler has launched succeeds, we shall know no peace in our lifetime. If it succeeds, and as it succeeds, we shall be confronted...with choices of the greatest magnitude. We shall be compelled to choose again and again – in the Pacific, in the Atlantic, in the Caribbean, in South America, in Africa between retreat and resistance....For if the Allied power falls, there will fall with it all the outer defenses of the Western Hemisphere, and we shall be left isolated in a world dominated on both sides of our oceans by the most formidable alliance of victorious conquerors that was ever formed in the whole history of man.”
Mr. Lippmann describes the “alliance” that would form around Hitler if he appeared to be winning -- “Mussolini will join him and almost certainly Russia will follow. If the blow is deadly enough, Spain in Europe and Japan in the Far East will find some way to intervene so that they may participate in the totalitarian victory and qualify as partners.”
JAPANESE DETAINED NEAR PEARL HARBOR BASE. An odd, brief note in Saturday’s papers from the Associated Press -- “Rear Admiral Claude C. Bloch, commander of the 14th naval district, said five Japanese crew men on the liner Asama Maru were apprehended yesterday in the vicinity of Pearl Harbor, mid-Pacific American naval base. They were released after questioning and sailed on their Japanese boat.” One wonders what the heck that could be all about.
“THE WORLD OF TOMORROW.” As the New York World’s Fair opens for its second year (with many of the foreign pavilions understandably shut down), the Washington Post ran a chilling editorial cartoon Saturday that seems to sum up the sadness of total war. The cartoon consists solely of a blackened box. It was captioned, “The World of Tomorrow.”
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