“PEACE AT (ALMOST) ANY PRICE.” The nations of the Balkan Entente (Rumania, Greece, Turkey, and Yugoslavia) have decided on “peace at any price except independence.” That’s the verdict of Sam Brewer in the Chicago Sunday Tribune on the Belgrade conference. Even though Turkey and Rumania both favor making the Entente a formal military alliance, the Yugoslavs are cool to the idea. More importantly, Mr. Brewer reports, “Germany and Italy have pulled such strings as they could to avoid having too united a front in the Balkans.”
The official conference communique, published Monday, shows Rumania did obtain a promise from the other three powers to maintain a “common vigil” in support of Rumania’s current borders. And in a gesture of good neighborliness, the Rumanians agreed to cede a strip of the Dobruja region to Bulgaria -- it’s a portion of territory the Bulgarians have been demanding since Rumania took it away in 1913. But the conference came no closer to finding a common stance on Hungary’s demand that the Rumanians cede Transylvania. And while the United Press describes the Entente as “rallying to support Rumania’s defense of its frontiers,” one is hard-pressed to find anything in Monday’s papers that specifies any practical steps the conferees have bound themselves to take in Rumania’s behalf. If the Russians march into Bessarabia, or the Germans move in to seize the oil fields, what will Rumania’s Entente partners do? Keep on maintaining that common vigil, I guess. (Although, to be fair, Turkish Premier Saydam has on past occasions threatened to go to war with any country that invades the Balkans. We’ll see.).
Whatever they do in the future, the Entente did declare this week-end to be four-squarely in favor of the “maintenance of peace” in the region. Good luck to them.
THE DISUNITED ENTENTE. Dorothy Thompson writes Monday in her New York Herald Tribune column on the big reasons the Balkan states haven’t formed an effective bloc -- (1) their lack of a common enemy, and (2) powerful neighbors who don’t want to see it happen --
“However weak their nations may be individually they have sufficient strength as a bloc to give pause to any potential aggressor. And they are also aware that the more united they are the better their chances of getting aid from the Allies should they be attacked....[But] as it happens not all of the Balkan nations are afraid of the same potential aggressors. Rumania, today, is more fearful of Russia than of Germany, which can get more out of Carol’s kingdom by squeezing than by invasion. Yugoslavia, on the other hand, is more fearful of Germany than of Russia. Greece happens to be far away enough from both of these great powers to believe that her peace and neutrality might be preserved simply by doing nothing. The nation she most fears is Italy. The result is disunity. And it is a disunity which not only Russia and Germany but also Italy have sought to foster.”
FINLAND THROUGH REPORTERS’ EYES. If you want to know what the Finnish war looks like up close, read a pair of harrowing first-person accounts in Monday’s papers --
K.J. Eskelund, New York Times, reporting from the Mannerheim Line. “Only the sanguinary battles of Verdun and Ypres in the World War may be compared with this shell-shattered hell....The Finns here are almost completely hidden among trees while it is necessary for the Russians to cross a bare flatland to attack, their movements being visible over the range of about a mile. Russian prisoners tell of the fear with which they start these attacks after seeing hundreds of their comrades set off before them and never return. They are unable to see the Finnish lines while advancing in the bitter cold with bullets incessantly shrieking around them. Now and then the Finnish artillery concentrates a volley and everyone throws himself on the ground. When the survivors approach the Finnish lines the fire increases.”
Donald Day, Chicago Tribune, witnessing a bombing raid at Sortavala. “I caught a glimpse of the burning city still miles away. Zigzagging to avoid fresh bomb holes and dodging tiny fire engines pumping water from Lake Ladoga, I entered the town. I passed entire blocks of burning buildings and hundreds of men fighting fires or attempting to save furniture, food, and merchandise. Soviet planes still were over the town dropping bombs, but the explosions were almost unnoticed by the firemen, home guards, and other men who were salvaging property and rescuing people from buildings or bomb shelters and sending them to safety in the suburbs....Altho I saw hundreds of women with small children hurrying thru the streets towards...buses and trucks, I saw no sign of panic, tho many of the children were cold and hungry from a day spent entirely in bomb shelters, most of them unheated.”
One man is responsible for all this slaughter and horror -- Joseph Stalin. One man could bring it to an end with a single command -- Joseph Stalin.
HINTS FROM A NAZI NEWSPAPER? The new issue of Time magazine finds a possible portent of what’s to come in a quote from Völkischer Beobachter, Berlin’s Nazi Party organ. In an article on the spiritual ties between modern-day Nazis and Frederick the Great, the essential ingredients of a German offensive are spelled out by General von Brauchitsch, commander of the army --
“The great King seeks battle. He prefers to attack. In this, four elements predominate -- speed of movement, surprise, concentration of forces at a decisive point, and thrust into flank and rear.”
If the Germans followed this formula, they would definitely not strike at the Maginot Line. But it now seems unlikely that the Nazis could combine these “four elements” into even a flanking attack against France, period, given the additional French fortifications now built along the Belgian border. Meanwhile, Time sees another excerpt from the Brauchitsch article as warning the German people of a long war ahead, in which the Reich might not always have an advantage in men and material over the Allies --
“Rightly we speak ever and again in our day of the Frederician spirit. It was this spirit that filled every officer, corporal, and man, which made the Army follow the King for seven long years and which enabled it to make ever new exertions. It permitted a smaller number to triumph over a larger one.”
NO EASY CHOICES FOR HITLER. Raymond Daniell writes in a Sunday New York Times news analysis that the Allied blockade of Germany is working quite well. And it spells ultimate defeat for Hitler, unless he can overcome it through military force. And the most likely ways the Fuehrer could do so would play right into the Allies’ hands --
“With the Maginot Line barring the German way in the West, expansion north or south is the only logical course Herr Hitler’s armies can take. The only thing against this plan of campaign is that it would not be completely distasteful to the Allies. Britain and France, while unwilling to violate the neutrality of any country, would not regard it as a calamity if an invasion of Sweden gave them the opportunity to carry out a flanking operation against Germany, nor would a Rumanian campaign be regarded as foredoomed to failure so long as Turkey remained steadfast in her agreements. The fact that the Allies, who have an alliance with Rumania and an understanding with Norway and Sweden that if they are attacked because of the help they are giving to Finland the Allies would come to their rescue, would welcome a German attack on these countries is the strongest reason for thinking it will not materialize.”
Saturday, February 6, 2016
Thursday, February 4, 2016
Sunday, February 4, 1940
A MURDEROUS RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE IN KARELIA. Stymied by Finnish defenders north of Lake Ladoga, the Russians launched a blistering new offensive against the Mannerheim Line Thursday night. They hit the Finns with everything -- six hours of artillery fire (perhaps the heaviest barrage since the World War), more than 130 bombing planes, plus fighter planes, dozens of tanks, waves of assault troops, and smoke screens. The United Press says that the Red Army trotted out a new weapon as well, armored sleds “filled with men and machine guns and pushed ahead of the tanks.” The attack was aimed at Summa, near the western end of the sixty-mile Karelian Isthmus, and beyond that Finland’s second largest city, Vibourg, some twenty miles back from the front.
Both the initial U.P. and Associated Press accounts said the outcome would not be known for several days. But a dispatch in Saturday’s New York Times by K.J. Eskelund offers without contradiction Finnish claims that the offensive has already “collapsed.” The “queer-looking” armored sleds are said to have been shattered by Finnish fire, and a night-time parachute attack behind Finnish lines involving hundreds of Red Army soldiers went awry in the darkness and unfamiliar terrain -- a few of the parachutists surrendered, “but most...fought until they were killed.”
If Saturday’s account is true, it says something again about the Finns’ masterful ability to continuously withstand Red assaults. The attack itself says something about the seemingly inexhaustible supply of men and machines the Soviets can send into the fight. On Friday President Kallio of Finland once again offered Russia “an honorable peace.” One hopes against hope that Stalin will cut his losses and take the Finns up on it.
AN ALLIED ATTACK IN THE BALKANS? Rumania, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Turkey are meeting in Belgrade this week-end to discuss regional security. And just before the opening gavel sounded, a startling story appeared in Thursday’s New York Herald Tribune about an alleged plan for a British and French attack in that region. Reporter Joseph Barnes cites “confidential information” given to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to the effect that Britain and France now have 500,000 trained soldiers on duty in the Near East. These troops are supposedly at the heart of an Allied blueprint to “strike at Germany in the spring from the southeast,” while Turkey launches a synchronized attack on southern Russia.
If true, this report could shed some light on other news from Britain. Could the recent, mysterious resignation of War Minister Leslie Hore-Belisha, architect of Britain's passive war strategy, have to do with his opposition to such a daring scheme? And might Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, have had more than wishful thinking on his mind when he predicted last week that one day Britain would take the offensive against the Germans?
RUMANIA ON THE HOT SEAT. Whatever happens in the Balkans, the men who rule there feel increasingly squeezed by both sides in Europe’s war. Sam Brewer reports from Belgrade in Friday’s Chicago Tribune on the strategic dilemmas Rumania faces, and the impact of those dilemmas on the conference --
“Rumania’s problems are a damper on the conference’s activities. The delegates fear German troops near the frontier and Germany’s diplomatic pressure may force her to drop efforts toward Baltic coöperation and devote herself to feeding the German machine. The Nazis are demanding more oil from Rumania. Great Britain and France threaten to withdraw their guarantees of Rumania’s integrity if she forces their companies to produce more oil that might be sent to Germany. Rumania faces pressure from three other sides. Russia has demanded the return of Bessarabia; Bulgaria wants the Dobruja region returned, and Hungary has called upon her to return Transylvania. All were given to Rumania after the world war. Rumania’s control of the mouth of the Danube river also is eyed covetously by Russia. Rumania wants to be really neutral, but Germany is very near and Britain and France are far away. Also, she remembers the empires’ guarantees to Poland and Czecho-Slovakia.”
LIPPMANN WARNS OF WAR WITH JAPAN. No one seems more alarmed at the expiration of the U.S.-Japanese commercial treaty than New York Herald Tribune columnist Walter Lippmann, who has written twice now on the matter. His latest column on the subject, in Saturday’s paper, claims U.S. policy in the Orient is badly mismanaged --
“Having ended our treaty relations for the purpose of impressing the Japanese, we shall become increasingly unimpressive if they now go forward to do everything to which we object. We have threatened to act, and in foreign relations where the vital interests of great powers are involved, a threat which is not carried out may be quite as dangerous as one which is carried out. It would be as dangerous to let the Japanese army think we are pacifist bluffers as it was to let Ribbentrop and Hitler think the British were pacifist bluffers; it may incite them to do things that the American nation would find intolerable. On the other hand, in carrying out a threat against a great power there is always the likelihood of reprisal, and that makes war a real possibility....Let no one think there is any cheap and comfortable way out of this dilemma. The fact is that it is a dilemma which cannot be resolved by running away from the Japanese and must not be resolved by running head on into them....The answer is that it cannot be resolved as long as we make the pretensions of a great power in world politics and at the same time conduct ourselves as if we were a feeble, little nation.”
Twice now also Mr. Lippmann has singled out for criticism Senator Vandenburg, Republican of Michigan. He is the strict isolationist who introduced a congressional resolution last summer to abrogate the commercial treaty. Mr. Lippmann says that Senator Vandenburg wanted on the one hand to use an embargo to force Japan to withdraw from China and to employ U.S. troops to enforce international Nine-Power Treaty rights in the Far East. On the other hand, the Senator played a large role in opposing arms sales to the Allies last fall and maintains that a German victory in Europe would make no difference to America. The isolationists don’t understand the effect that our policy in the Atlantic has on our policy in the Pacific, Mr. Lippmann asserts –
“It will be no secret to the Japanese that the United States can take no risks in the Pacific Ocean, certainly no risk that could possibly lead to war, as long as the outcome of the naval war in the Atlantic is in doubt. To become involved in the Orient without absolute certainty that the Atlantic Ocean is securely in the hands of our friends would be to commit the unpardonable blunder if advancing into danger without safeguarding our rear.”
VANDENBURG VERSUS LIPPMANN. Meanwhile Senator Vandenburg, a candidate for the G.O.P. presidential nomination, replied Friday by letter to an earlier criticism from Mr. Lippmann. According to the United Press account, the Senator shunted aside responsibility for ending the commercial treaty, noting that his own resolution had been shelved in committee and that the Roosevelt administration had taken the initiative in cancelling the treaty. His own approach, the Senator claimed, was more cautious, and he still hopes the Japanese will negotiate a new treaty that takes stock of current “realities.” But significantly, the Senator doesn’t rule out an embargo, and acknowledges what it could lead to --
“Whatever our sympathies may be and whatever our sense of deep outrage over the conquest of China, our official responsibility as a matter of foreign policy is not to force Japan to retreat from China. It is to protect American interests....If the American people are ever deliberately and consciously ready to take what might thus be the first step toward war itself (imposition of an embargo), we can meet that situation when the issue is unavoidably precipitated.”
NOVER SCORES “LAME” HITLER SPEECH. Fuehrer Hitler’s surprise address last Monday at the Berlin Sports Palace didn’t impress Washington Post columnist Barnet Nover, who wrote on Friday --
“The only offensive which the Nazi regime has so far carried out in the west is the oratorical offensive that began with Hitler’s speech of October 6 and reached a rather lame anti-climax this week. However potent Hitler’s oratory may have been in the past, it has lost its magic. Success this time would not be the result of overwhelming odds applied against a weak and relatively helpless opponent but against a combination which is today the equal and may tomorrow be the superior of the Reich. And in such a struggle none of Hitler’s past victories provide any sure guide of action. No wonder he hesitates and seeks to pull one more rabbit out of his hat.”
It seems reasonable to say that Hitler doesn’t like a fair fight -- which makes me wonder if his latest threats against Britain and France aren’t intended to be mis-direction. It just might be that before the Allies could do anything in the Balkans, the Fuehrer might launch a major offensive there himself this spring, seeking through conquest a monopoly on Rumanian oil, as welll as other resources denied to him by the British blockade. Geography would give the Nazis much better odds on that front.
Both the initial U.P. and Associated Press accounts said the outcome would not be known for several days. But a dispatch in Saturday’s New York Times by K.J. Eskelund offers without contradiction Finnish claims that the offensive has already “collapsed.” The “queer-looking” armored sleds are said to have been shattered by Finnish fire, and a night-time parachute attack behind Finnish lines involving hundreds of Red Army soldiers went awry in the darkness and unfamiliar terrain -- a few of the parachutists surrendered, “but most...fought until they were killed.”
If Saturday’s account is true, it says something again about the Finns’ masterful ability to continuously withstand Red assaults. The attack itself says something about the seemingly inexhaustible supply of men and machines the Soviets can send into the fight. On Friday President Kallio of Finland once again offered Russia “an honorable peace.” One hopes against hope that Stalin will cut his losses and take the Finns up on it.
AN ALLIED ATTACK IN THE BALKANS? Rumania, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Turkey are meeting in Belgrade this week-end to discuss regional security. And just before the opening gavel sounded, a startling story appeared in Thursday’s New York Herald Tribune about an alleged plan for a British and French attack in that region. Reporter Joseph Barnes cites “confidential information” given to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to the effect that Britain and France now have 500,000 trained soldiers on duty in the Near East. These troops are supposedly at the heart of an Allied blueprint to “strike at Germany in the spring from the southeast,” while Turkey launches a synchronized attack on southern Russia.
If true, this report could shed some light on other news from Britain. Could the recent, mysterious resignation of War Minister Leslie Hore-Belisha, architect of Britain's passive war strategy, have to do with his opposition to such a daring scheme? And might Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, have had more than wishful thinking on his mind when he predicted last week that one day Britain would take the offensive against the Germans?
RUMANIA ON THE HOT SEAT. Whatever happens in the Balkans, the men who rule there feel increasingly squeezed by both sides in Europe’s war. Sam Brewer reports from Belgrade in Friday’s Chicago Tribune on the strategic dilemmas Rumania faces, and the impact of those dilemmas on the conference --
“Rumania’s problems are a damper on the conference’s activities. The delegates fear German troops near the frontier and Germany’s diplomatic pressure may force her to drop efforts toward Baltic coöperation and devote herself to feeding the German machine. The Nazis are demanding more oil from Rumania. Great Britain and France threaten to withdraw their guarantees of Rumania’s integrity if she forces their companies to produce more oil that might be sent to Germany. Rumania faces pressure from three other sides. Russia has demanded the return of Bessarabia; Bulgaria wants the Dobruja region returned, and Hungary has called upon her to return Transylvania. All were given to Rumania after the world war. Rumania’s control of the mouth of the Danube river also is eyed covetously by Russia. Rumania wants to be really neutral, but Germany is very near and Britain and France are far away. Also, she remembers the empires’ guarantees to Poland and Czecho-Slovakia.”
LIPPMANN WARNS OF WAR WITH JAPAN. No one seems more alarmed at the expiration of the U.S.-Japanese commercial treaty than New York Herald Tribune columnist Walter Lippmann, who has written twice now on the matter. His latest column on the subject, in Saturday’s paper, claims U.S. policy in the Orient is badly mismanaged --
“Having ended our treaty relations for the purpose of impressing the Japanese, we shall become increasingly unimpressive if they now go forward to do everything to which we object. We have threatened to act, and in foreign relations where the vital interests of great powers are involved, a threat which is not carried out may be quite as dangerous as one which is carried out. It would be as dangerous to let the Japanese army think we are pacifist bluffers as it was to let Ribbentrop and Hitler think the British were pacifist bluffers; it may incite them to do things that the American nation would find intolerable. On the other hand, in carrying out a threat against a great power there is always the likelihood of reprisal, and that makes war a real possibility....Let no one think there is any cheap and comfortable way out of this dilemma. The fact is that it is a dilemma which cannot be resolved by running away from the Japanese and must not be resolved by running head on into them....The answer is that it cannot be resolved as long as we make the pretensions of a great power in world politics and at the same time conduct ourselves as if we were a feeble, little nation.”
Twice now also Mr. Lippmann has singled out for criticism Senator Vandenburg, Republican of Michigan. He is the strict isolationist who introduced a congressional resolution last summer to abrogate the commercial treaty. Mr. Lippmann says that Senator Vandenburg wanted on the one hand to use an embargo to force Japan to withdraw from China and to employ U.S. troops to enforce international Nine-Power Treaty rights in the Far East. On the other hand, the Senator played a large role in opposing arms sales to the Allies last fall and maintains that a German victory in Europe would make no difference to America. The isolationists don’t understand the effect that our policy in the Atlantic has on our policy in the Pacific, Mr. Lippmann asserts –
“It will be no secret to the Japanese that the United States can take no risks in the Pacific Ocean, certainly no risk that could possibly lead to war, as long as the outcome of the naval war in the Atlantic is in doubt. To become involved in the Orient without absolute certainty that the Atlantic Ocean is securely in the hands of our friends would be to commit the unpardonable blunder if advancing into danger without safeguarding our rear.”
VANDENBURG VERSUS LIPPMANN. Meanwhile Senator Vandenburg, a candidate for the G.O.P. presidential nomination, replied Friday by letter to an earlier criticism from Mr. Lippmann. According to the United Press account, the Senator shunted aside responsibility for ending the commercial treaty, noting that his own resolution had been shelved in committee and that the Roosevelt administration had taken the initiative in cancelling the treaty. His own approach, the Senator claimed, was more cautious, and he still hopes the Japanese will negotiate a new treaty that takes stock of current “realities.” But significantly, the Senator doesn’t rule out an embargo, and acknowledges what it could lead to --
“Whatever our sympathies may be and whatever our sense of deep outrage over the conquest of China, our official responsibility as a matter of foreign policy is not to force Japan to retreat from China. It is to protect American interests....If the American people are ever deliberately and consciously ready to take what might thus be the first step toward war itself (imposition of an embargo), we can meet that situation when the issue is unavoidably precipitated.”
NOVER SCORES “LAME” HITLER SPEECH. Fuehrer Hitler’s surprise address last Monday at the Berlin Sports Palace didn’t impress Washington Post columnist Barnet Nover, who wrote on Friday --
“The only offensive which the Nazi regime has so far carried out in the west is the oratorical offensive that began with Hitler’s speech of October 6 and reached a rather lame anti-climax this week. However potent Hitler’s oratory may have been in the past, it has lost its magic. Success this time would not be the result of overwhelming odds applied against a weak and relatively helpless opponent but against a combination which is today the equal and may tomorrow be the superior of the Reich. And in such a struggle none of Hitler’s past victories provide any sure guide of action. No wonder he hesitates and seeks to pull one more rabbit out of his hat.”
It seems reasonable to say that Hitler doesn’t like a fair fight -- which makes me wonder if his latest threats against Britain and France aren’t intended to be mis-direction. It just might be that before the Allies could do anything in the Balkans, the Fuehrer might launch a major offensive there himself this spring, seeking through conquest a monopoly on Rumanian oil, as welll as other resources denied to him by the British blockade. Geography would give the Nazis much better odds on that front.
Monday, February 1, 2016
Thursday, February 1, 1940
HITLER VOWS A TOTAL WAR. The surprise big story this week has been the abrupt appearance of Fuehrer Hitler to address a hastily-assembled rally Tuesday at the Berlin Sports Palace. It was the first Hitler speech since the attempt on his life at Munich beer cellar on Nov. 3. It was full of the usual sneering bombast -- he ridiculed Chamberlain at one point as a “pious, Bible-reading warrior for God.” But as Otto D. Tolischus reported in Wednesday’s New York Times, it carried a stern warning “that the first phase of the war -- the phase of political and military preparation, including the Polish campaign -- was ended and that the second phase -- that which will carry the war to the west on land, on sea and in the air -- was now beginning.” Hitler gave no hints, of course, on how or where the blows will be struck.
Most significant is the amount of time Hitler gave to denouncing France, in particular Prime Minister Daladier. Previously, the Nazi line had been to blame the war entirely on Britain and to refrain from criticizing France, in hopes of splitting the Allies. But last night Hitler address Daladier directly -- “The whole German people stand against you....[German troops] will give you enlightenment personally. You shall make their acquaintance.” He blamed “French generals” along with Winston Churchill for advocating the destruction of the Reich and reacted to Mr. Churchill’s claim that the British Navy has sunk half of Germany’s U-boats with a bit of humor -- “Germany must be on the verge of complete collapse. I just heard today that we only have three submarines left.”
POOR REVIEWS IN BRITAIN -- AND ITALY. Britain, not surprisingly, has seized on Hitler’s denunciations of France as evidence that the Nazis have abandoned a failed policy. Ralph W. Barnes in the New York Herald Tribune quotes the British authoritative commentary -- “The main lesson to be learned here is that he has at last learned the folly of his previous efforts to separate France from her ally in order to destroy each of them singly and at his leisure.” Intriguing, also, was the estimation in a New York Times dispatch from Rome of Italian reaction -- “they shrugged their shoulders after hearing the speech and forgot about it quickly.” The Times adds that, judging from the number of Hitler’s mentions of Russia, “it must have been hard for [Italians] to avoid thinking that the Berlin-Moscow Axis has now really supplanted the Berlin-Rome Axis.”
SCANDINAVIA WILL DEFEND HERSELF. Time magazine’s current issue observes that “nobody had any more doubt last week that Scandinavia would fight if attacked.” Two Time stories describe why. One tells of the debate in Sweden’s Riksdag on whether to jump into the Finnish war wholeheartedly -- the country’s former foreign minister, Rickard Sandler, revealed the reason he resigned last month was because cautious Prime Minister Hansoon vetoed Sandler’s plan to send an full-fledged expeditionary force of 10,000 men to defend Finland’s Aland Islands from the Red Army. Sandler also stood up in the Riksdag to denounce the government’s neutrality policy as “idiocy.” On the other hand, the Swedish government did take a tough stand in demanding -- and getting -- a formal apology from Stalin for Soviet violations of Swedish airspace.
The other Time dispatch describes a controversy in Denmark over a “pessimistic” New Year’s address by Premier Stauning, which caused Copenhagen’s press to debate “whether he meant to imply that the country would not resist if invaded.” In response, the lower house of the Danish parliament took a defiant stance, passing unanimously a resolution declaring that “all disposable means shall be used if necessary to...protect the realm’s peace and independence.” Norway, meanwhile, “issued a similar proclamation on the same day.” The Scandinavian neutrals may not have heeded Winston Churchill’s call to join the Allies, but at least they seem to be realizing that toughness and resolution are keys to holding off the dictators.
PERSECUTION OF CATHOLICS IN POLAND. The New York Times printed a full transcript Tuesday of the twenty-six-page report by August Cardinal Hlond, Primate of Poland, to Pope Pius XII on Nazi persecution of the church since the German conquest. Well worth reading, if you can make it through without falling ill. Some samples --
“A priest named Brasse has for four weeks been in a concentration camp. A priest named Styczynaki has been thrown out of his home. The Canon Tioczynaki is in a concentration camp...The Bishop Zablocki of Gniesno was shot...At Bydgoszcz nothing certain is known of the fate of the priest Schultz. Probably he has been executed, and the same applies to the priest Casimiro Stepczynski. The Lazarist Vicars Wiorek and Szarek have been shot...Boys of fourteen and under are being deported to Germany, and will probably undergo a concentrated Hitlerian education. Even girls, especially the good-looking ones, are being deported, to the despair of their families....The others -- women and babies, sick and aged -- after days or weeks of martyrdom in concentration camps, and loaded onto cattle trucks...Such journeys in the bitter cold last two to four days. There are dead in almost every car...”
It goes on, in this vein. Twenty-six pages of this. No wonder, as Dorothy Thompson writes Wednesday in her New York Herald Tribune column, that “the difficulty in telling the truth about the Nazis is, and always has been, that the truth is so monstrous that the ordinary human being cannot bring himself to believe it. The greatest advantage that the Nazis have had in this world is the incredulity of the human race.”
CHAOS IN BRITISH TRANSPORTATION. David Darrah reports from London in Tuesday’s Chicago Tribune that British highway and rail traffic has been brought to a virtual halt because of “unmentionable weather conditions” (i.e., the censors won’t allow him to write that a winter storm’s going on). Tieups in delivery of essential supplies have caused shortages of milk, meat, and coal. And if things are even half as bad as Mr. Darrah says, they’re pretty bad --
“Trains which left London and Scotland Saturday still were ‘lost’. Railroad communication between London and Scotland has been cut off and boat services to north Ireland has [sic] been abandoned temporarily. Hundreds of passengers who spent the week-end in snail’s pace travel, have been marooned in trains stranded in various parts of the country and in isolated villages and towns up to 36 hours. One hundred children, along with 400 other passengers, were held up more than 20 hours when their train became stalled. Police and air raid precaution workers organized rescue parties.”
Most significant is the amount of time Hitler gave to denouncing France, in particular Prime Minister Daladier. Previously, the Nazi line had been to blame the war entirely on Britain and to refrain from criticizing France, in hopes of splitting the Allies. But last night Hitler address Daladier directly -- “The whole German people stand against you....[German troops] will give you enlightenment personally. You shall make their acquaintance.” He blamed “French generals” along with Winston Churchill for advocating the destruction of the Reich and reacted to Mr. Churchill’s claim that the British Navy has sunk half of Germany’s U-boats with a bit of humor -- “Germany must be on the verge of complete collapse. I just heard today that we only have three submarines left.”
POOR REVIEWS IN BRITAIN -- AND ITALY. Britain, not surprisingly, has seized on Hitler’s denunciations of France as evidence that the Nazis have abandoned a failed policy. Ralph W. Barnes in the New York Herald Tribune quotes the British authoritative commentary -- “The main lesson to be learned here is that he has at last learned the folly of his previous efforts to separate France from her ally in order to destroy each of them singly and at his leisure.” Intriguing, also, was the estimation in a New York Times dispatch from Rome of Italian reaction -- “they shrugged their shoulders after hearing the speech and forgot about it quickly.” The Times adds that, judging from the number of Hitler’s mentions of Russia, “it must have been hard for [Italians] to avoid thinking that the Berlin-Moscow Axis has now really supplanted the Berlin-Rome Axis.”
SCANDINAVIA WILL DEFEND HERSELF. Time magazine’s current issue observes that “nobody had any more doubt last week that Scandinavia would fight if attacked.” Two Time stories describe why. One tells of the debate in Sweden’s Riksdag on whether to jump into the Finnish war wholeheartedly -- the country’s former foreign minister, Rickard Sandler, revealed the reason he resigned last month was because cautious Prime Minister Hansoon vetoed Sandler’s plan to send an full-fledged expeditionary force of 10,000 men to defend Finland’s Aland Islands from the Red Army. Sandler also stood up in the Riksdag to denounce the government’s neutrality policy as “idiocy.” On the other hand, the Swedish government did take a tough stand in demanding -- and getting -- a formal apology from Stalin for Soviet violations of Swedish airspace.
The other Time dispatch describes a controversy in Denmark over a “pessimistic” New Year’s address by Premier Stauning, which caused Copenhagen’s press to debate “whether he meant to imply that the country would not resist if invaded.” In response, the lower house of the Danish parliament took a defiant stance, passing unanimously a resolution declaring that “all disposable means shall be used if necessary to...protect the realm’s peace and independence.” Norway, meanwhile, “issued a similar proclamation on the same day.” The Scandinavian neutrals may not have heeded Winston Churchill’s call to join the Allies, but at least they seem to be realizing that toughness and resolution are keys to holding off the dictators.
PERSECUTION OF CATHOLICS IN POLAND. The New York Times printed a full transcript Tuesday of the twenty-six-page report by August Cardinal Hlond, Primate of Poland, to Pope Pius XII on Nazi persecution of the church since the German conquest. Well worth reading, if you can make it through without falling ill. Some samples --
“A priest named Brasse has for four weeks been in a concentration camp. A priest named Styczynaki has been thrown out of his home. The Canon Tioczynaki is in a concentration camp...The Bishop Zablocki of Gniesno was shot...At Bydgoszcz nothing certain is known of the fate of the priest Schultz. Probably he has been executed, and the same applies to the priest Casimiro Stepczynski. The Lazarist Vicars Wiorek and Szarek have been shot...Boys of fourteen and under are being deported to Germany, and will probably undergo a concentrated Hitlerian education. Even girls, especially the good-looking ones, are being deported, to the despair of their families....The others -- women and babies, sick and aged -- after days or weeks of martyrdom in concentration camps, and loaded onto cattle trucks...Such journeys in the bitter cold last two to four days. There are dead in almost every car...”
It goes on, in this vein. Twenty-six pages of this. No wonder, as Dorothy Thompson writes Wednesday in her New York Herald Tribune column, that “the difficulty in telling the truth about the Nazis is, and always has been, that the truth is so monstrous that the ordinary human being cannot bring himself to believe it. The greatest advantage that the Nazis have had in this world is the incredulity of the human race.”
CHAOS IN BRITISH TRANSPORTATION. David Darrah reports from London in Tuesday’s Chicago Tribune that British highway and rail traffic has been brought to a virtual halt because of “unmentionable weather conditions” (i.e., the censors won’t allow him to write that a winter storm’s going on). Tieups in delivery of essential supplies have caused shortages of milk, meat, and coal. And if things are even half as bad as Mr. Darrah says, they’re pretty bad --
“Trains which left London and Scotland Saturday still were ‘lost’. Railroad communication between London and Scotland has been cut off and boat services to north Ireland has [sic] been abandoned temporarily. Hundreds of passengers who spent the week-end in snail’s pace travel, have been marooned in trains stranded in various parts of the country and in isolated villages and towns up to 36 hours. One hundred children, along with 400 other passengers, were held up more than 20 hours when their train became stalled. Police and air raid precaution workers organized rescue parties.”
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