GERMANY RENEWS THE OFFENSIVE. This morning’s radio reports say the reinforced German armies in France are attacking French defensive positions along a 125-mile front bounded by the Somme and Aisne Rivers. The German high command claims Nazi troops have crossed the Somme at several points between Abbeville and Sedan. But French reports claim that German armored spearheads were “trapped in a new system of defense” created by General Weygand and have been annihilated.
C.B.S.’s William Shirer broadcast last night from Berlin that the new German drive seems to be coming from the right flank, hitting the French on the left. This, he said, would be a reversion to the old Schlieffen plan. If this is the case, then the Nazi armies involved in the new attack would swing down in a wide circle, striking at Paris from the northwest. But Mr. Shirer admits “we were all fooled last time on German strategy, and I’m not going to say any more.”
The Germans are not being bashful. Hitler’s order for the day on Wednesday, according to the United Press, proclaimed that “beginning today, the Western Front goes into action again....The battle will be carried to the annihilation of the enemies in power in Paris and London.”
ITALY MOBILIZES, THEN DELAYS. It’s been reported for days now that Italian entry into the war is now considered inevitable, and that it will happen very soon. But it still hasn’t happened. Herbert Matthews writes in Wednesday’s New York Times that Italy’s Council of Ministers met Tuesday and “passed a series of war measures without, however, disturbing Italy’s precarious balance on the edge of intervention.” Mr. Matthews describes the entire nation as living through a series of ups and downs reflecting “hesitancy in the highest quarters” over a decision for war. Mussolini has been on the verge of deciding several times, but then has postponed it.
President Roosevelt’s lobbying to keep Italy out of the war might be influencing the Italians. Chesly Manly in the Chicago Tribune cites “a high administration source” as disclosing that Italo-American negotiations have been going on now for two weeks and are continuing. In at least one instance, Roosevelt and the Duce have spoken directly by trans-Atlantic telephone, the Tribune reports. But if it’s true what Mussolini is demanding in return for continued nonbelligerency (a French turnover of Tunis, other French colonial possessions, and parts of France itself to Italy), these negotiations surely won’t go anywhere.
The Times story doesn’t make any such claims, but does report that President Roosevelt has made as-yet-undisclosed “concrete proposals” to Mussolini.
“WE SHALL NEVER SURRENDER.” If Hitler has any smug notions about Britain crumbling in the face of Nazi pressure, without giving battle, let him pay heed to Prime Minister Churchill’s speech to the House of Commons Tuesday, as recorded in Wednesday’s New York Times --
“We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France; we shall fight on the seas and oceans; we shall fight with growing strength and confidence in the air; we shall fight on beaches; we shall fight on landing grounds; we shall fight in fields, streets, and hills. We shall never surrender and even if – which I do not for a moment believe -- this island or a large part of it is subjugated or starving, then our empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, will carry on the struggle until in God’s good time the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the liberation and rescue of the old.”
As Raymond Daniell in the Times’ front-page story, “These were brave and prescient words, uttered by a man in whose veins flows British and American blood....None who heard the Prime Minister, who foresaw it all and warned the nation and the world where appeasement was leading, could doubt the dire extremity in which this country found itself today, with no effective Allies save France, which lies partly under the invader’s boot, and with Italy threatening the lifelines of the British Empire in the Mediterranean.”
Meanwhile, Edward Angly in the New York Herald Tribune says Churchill was “at the top of his eloquent form” in the speech. The entire transcript is well worth reading.
A PLEA FOR AID? Characteristically, the Chicago Tribune story, by Joseph Cerutti, paints the Churchill speech in a more sinister light, describing it as an “appeal for American aid” and a call for the U.S. to “discard her neutrality” in the wake of the Flanders debacle. Huh? There’s a difference between an “appeal” and an expression of faith and hope. This speech was definitely the latter. And in any case, the Prime Minister did make it clear that Britain would fight “if necessary for years; if necessary, alone.” To twist these gallant words into a plea for the U.S. to bail out a faltering British and French cause is a misdeed that could be called...sinister.
“WARS ARE NOT WON BY EVACUATIONS.” It’s a good thing, too, that Churchill put the Dunkerque evaluation in perspective. Earlier this week the British press began crowing about the Allies’ success in rescuing the British Expeditionary Force as if it were a major victory of some kind. Anthony Eden’s remarks earlier in the week were along these lines, too. It is exactly the tone that Chamberlain used in his last days in office when he ludicrously claimed the Germans, after utterly thrashing the Allies in two-weeks of fighting in Norway, hadn’t yet “won” anything there. But Churchill didn’t mince words Tuesday and portrayed Dunkerque in just the right respect --
“We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations....our thankfulness at the escape of our army with so many men, and the thankfulness of their loved ones, who passed through an agonizing week, must not blind us to the fact that what happened in France and Belgium is a colossal military diaster....We must expect another blow to be struck almost immediately at us or at France.”
FINAL TALLY IN FLANDERS. The Churchill speech puts the total number of Allied soldiers rescued at Dunkerque at 335,000 men. According to the New York Herald Tribune, British losses in the Flanders fighting totalled over 30,000 troops killed, wounded, or missing. The Allies claim the Germans lost half a million soldiers in the fighting, but the German high command lists its casualties at about 65,000 killed, wounded, and missing.
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