ITALY BELIEVES THERE’S A BASIS FOR PEACE. Radio reports last night and this morning on the surprise Hitler-Mussolini conference at the Brenner Pass indicate the Italians are trying to get the Nazis to modify their conditions for peace. A Vatican source says that the Allies have rejected an eleven-point German peace plan, but Italy wants to persuade Hitler to modify his terms. The Italians claim Mussolini’s persuasive powers have delayed a Nazi “great offensive” against the Allies that would put a negotiated settlement beyond reach. Reportedly, the Duce was in “good humor” after the meeting, which some correspondents believe means that a basis for further peace discussions was found.
Prior to this meeting of the Axis partners, the first in eighteen months, reporters seemed to think it portended especially dramatic news. Guido Enderis writes in Monday’s New York Times that it was “expected to be a momentous consultation” and “opinion in neutral diplomatic quarters inclines to attach extraordinary importance to it.” Sigrid Schultz uses “momentous” in her Chicago Tribune story as well. It’s said that the conference was intended to clarify the conditions under which Italy would declare war on Britain and France, as well as to help cement the Axis into more of a Berlin-Rome-Moscow alliance. The New York Herald Tribune quotes a German propaganda outlet as explaining that the “young nations” are building a “new Europe” in preparation for the coming victory over Britain.
WHY IS WELLES STILL IN ROME? The “peace mission” or “fact-gathering mission” (take your pick) of Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles was wiped from the front pages over the last week by (1) the Finnish capitulation, and (2) reports that Hitler strongly rebuffed any peace possibility during the Secretary’s visit to Berlin. The Welles visits to London and Paris got little notice in the press. But since then Secretary Welles has returned to Rome for a second time and spoken at length with Pope Pius, who is said to be a strong advocate of U.S. mediation to end the war. And as of yesterday, the Secretary was waiting to meet with Mussolini for a second time.
This is once again feeding British fears, as described in a Sunday New York Herald Tribune article by Frank R. Kelly, that “a gigantic ‘peace offensive’ is about to be launched by Germany and...Mr. Welles, and ultimately Mr. Roosevelt, will be taken in by it.” The influential British journal Time & Tide paints Secretary Welles as a rube -- “Those who have seen most of him are a little disturbed. They expected to find a man of the world. They have met a completely true-to-type American and there is nothing more typically American than the United States citizen who comes here with a neatly-made framework of ideas into which all the facts he gathers when over here slot slickly into place.”
MORE PEACE PORTENTS? The Chicago Tribune’s Walter Trohan sees the Hitler-Mussolini conference as one of a number of developments which might portend a major effort to end the war soon. “Peace advocates argued that the timing of a peace move is perfect,” he writes in Monday’s editions. “They pointed to the opening of Holy Week on St. Patrick’s Day, the pope’s anticipated Easter week plea and the second visit of...Welles to Rome.”
But Mr. Trohan adds, “There is no indication that Great Britain and France would be willing to accept any program in which Germany has a dictatorial hand.” That’s putting it mildly. The Anglo-French allies have been inconstant in any number of ways, but not about this. If Chamberlain and Daladier were to suddenly turn around and even consider a peace deal that would leave Hitler in power and in possession of even some of his conquests, it would be the story of the century -- not to mention a disaster for civilized Europe. Could it happen? Almost surely not. The Allies have lately been so insistent on this point that it can’t be imagined how they could go back on their word. But then, given the way Chamberlain has behaved in the past, one has to retain the word “almost.”
BUT SIGNS OF A SPRING OFFENSIVE, TOO. Sunday’s Washington Post contains a piece by Associated Press correspondent Louis Lochner listing eight points pointing to an “early spring offensive” by the Germans. Among them --
“On all sides, one hears from German friends and acquaintances that men on furlough have been drafted again; that new classes are being called up; that new recruits are being put through the paces with all the evidence of hurry to ship them westward...Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels early in February summoned to Berlin all officials in charge of the propaganda sub-offices....It seemed obvious to neutral observers that Goebbels, who had just completed an extended visit to the Western front, was using the lull before the real storm breaks to instruct his young men as to how to handle the propaganda during the months ahead.”
Mr. Lochner also says an A.P. man got an interesting reply during a discussion with a member of the German high command’s press department staff. To the A.P.’s complaints of delays in the servicing of military news, due to the various public relations offices involved, the German replied, “All this will stop automatically in a few weeks. Then arms alone will speak, and the press department of the supreme high command alone will have anything to say.”
Saturday, March 19, 2016
Thursday, March 17, 2016
Sunday, March 17, 1940
DALADIER WINS CONFIDENCE VOTE, BUT... If there’s anything good coming out of Finland’s capitulation to Russia, it’s that the Finnish disaster could be opening French eyes a bit to how desultory Allied strategy has become. On the other hand, there’s not a lot of indication that the French plan to actually do anything about it -- yet.
The French Senate met in secret session on Thursday and Friday, prompted by what P.J. Philip in the New York Times described as “the failure of the Allies to give timely and effective aid to Finland.” But Mr. Philip adds that the agenda covered a lot more than Finland -- “the organization of the command of both land and air forces in France, the war policy of the government, its diplomatic action, the activity of Hitler’s Communist agents and the reasons why the League of Nations had not been called on to do something about the sinking of neutral ships.”
Premier Daladier easily survived a confidence vote, 240-0, but there were 60 abstentions. Further, the Associated Press reports from Paris that Daladier may be forced to give up his War Portfolio and all his other cabinet posts save the premiership. Former Premier Laval led the criticism at Thursday’s session, and on Friday it was disclosed that large quantities of the war materials which the Allies had donated to Finland were still sitting on railroad sidings in Norway and Sweden, far away from the now-defeated Finns. But in the end, the Senate voted confidence in the government to prosecute the war “with growing energy.” One can only hope there are some concrete plans, as yet undisclosed, as to how that’s going to be put into practice.
A GROWING U.S.-BRITISH RIFT? “Protect us from a German victory and an American peace.” That’s a comment heard in London by C.B.S. correspondent Edward Murrow, and quoted on one of his recent radio talks. Mr. Murrow spoke at length the other night on British suspicions that the U.S. is permitting arms sales to the Allies not out of sympathy for the Anglo-French cause, but instead to turn a tidy profit. They point out that for all the American expressions of support for Finland, the Roosevelt administration allowed increasing sales of war supplies to Soviet Russia -- this in spite of Secretary of State Hull’s declaration of a “moral embargo” on Stalin’s regime.
The British claim to be “never quite sure just what an American move or statement means,” says Mr. Murrow. And Britons are skeptical of President Roosevelt’s motives in sending Under Secretary Welles across Europe on an alleged peace mission. They assert that a negotiated peace with Hitler would be nothing but a “supercolossal Munich,” and recall how much Americans criticized Prime Minister Chamberlain for the Czech agreement. And there’s Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy’s allegedly gloomy assessment of Allied chances in the war, which Mr. Murrow says is another target of British resentment.
According to last night’s broadcast by C.B.S.’s Berlin reporter, William Shirer, the German official news agency DNB has put out a gleeful dispatch concerning Ambassador Kennedy for foreign consumption. The story was put together from reports abroad to the effect that the Ambassador was in “disfavor” among officials of the Chamberlain government, for his report to President Roosevelt taking a “dark view” of Allies’ chances in this war. (Time magazine reported last week that Mr. Kennedy placed Germany’s chances of winning the war at 55-45).
THE U.S. IS AT FAULT, NOT THE ALLIES. As the New York Herald Tribune reports in Friday’s editions about the half a million Finns made homeless by the Russian takeover of territories ceded under the peace agreement, columnist Dorothy Parker complains that their woes are due not to inaction by the Allies, but the unwillingness of the U.S. to offer serious help --
“The greatest neutral in the world, supported by the overwhelming sympathies of its own population, refused to do anything of any vital importance to aid neutral Finland. Congressional debate greatly encouraged the Russians and the Germans to believe that no matter what happened, the United States would not even risk a really useful dollar....Mr. Roosevelt this morning (Thursday) praises the valor of the Finns and says, ‘The ending of this war does not yet clarify the inherent right of small nations to the maintenance of their integrity.’ This column differs with the President. Whatever is proved or not proved, the position of small nations in the world as it is at present is clarified. They have no position.”
With much bitterness, Miss Thompson sees a bright spot -- “Wall Street regards this as a great Russian-German victory. It is betting that the Germans and/or the Russians will win the war. This fact greatly encourages this column, which was also very depressed concerning the larger issues. For Wall Street’s betting has been so uniformly wrong in the last six years that its defeatism over the Allies ought to make stocks go up in London and Paris. Wall Street was betting in June that there was not going to be any war.”
The French Senate met in secret session on Thursday and Friday, prompted by what P.J. Philip in the New York Times described as “the failure of the Allies to give timely and effective aid to Finland.” But Mr. Philip adds that the agenda covered a lot more than Finland -- “the organization of the command of both land and air forces in France, the war policy of the government, its diplomatic action, the activity of Hitler’s Communist agents and the reasons why the League of Nations had not been called on to do something about the sinking of neutral ships.”
Premier Daladier easily survived a confidence vote, 240-0, but there were 60 abstentions. Further, the Associated Press reports from Paris that Daladier may be forced to give up his War Portfolio and all his other cabinet posts save the premiership. Former Premier Laval led the criticism at Thursday’s session, and on Friday it was disclosed that large quantities of the war materials which the Allies had donated to Finland were still sitting on railroad sidings in Norway and Sweden, far away from the now-defeated Finns. But in the end, the Senate voted confidence in the government to prosecute the war “with growing energy.” One can only hope there are some concrete plans, as yet undisclosed, as to how that’s going to be put into practice.
A GROWING U.S.-BRITISH RIFT? “Protect us from a German victory and an American peace.” That’s a comment heard in London by C.B.S. correspondent Edward Murrow, and quoted on one of his recent radio talks. Mr. Murrow spoke at length the other night on British suspicions that the U.S. is permitting arms sales to the Allies not out of sympathy for the Anglo-French cause, but instead to turn a tidy profit. They point out that for all the American expressions of support for Finland, the Roosevelt administration allowed increasing sales of war supplies to Soviet Russia -- this in spite of Secretary of State Hull’s declaration of a “moral embargo” on Stalin’s regime.
The British claim to be “never quite sure just what an American move or statement means,” says Mr. Murrow. And Britons are skeptical of President Roosevelt’s motives in sending Under Secretary Welles across Europe on an alleged peace mission. They assert that a negotiated peace with Hitler would be nothing but a “supercolossal Munich,” and recall how much Americans criticized Prime Minister Chamberlain for the Czech agreement. And there’s Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy’s allegedly gloomy assessment of Allied chances in the war, which Mr. Murrow says is another target of British resentment.
According to last night’s broadcast by C.B.S.’s Berlin reporter, William Shirer, the German official news agency DNB has put out a gleeful dispatch concerning Ambassador Kennedy for foreign consumption. The story was put together from reports abroad to the effect that the Ambassador was in “disfavor” among officials of the Chamberlain government, for his report to President Roosevelt taking a “dark view” of Allies’ chances in this war. (Time magazine reported last week that Mr. Kennedy placed Germany’s chances of winning the war at 55-45).
THE U.S. IS AT FAULT, NOT THE ALLIES. As the New York Herald Tribune reports in Friday’s editions about the half a million Finns made homeless by the Russian takeover of territories ceded under the peace agreement, columnist Dorothy Parker complains that their woes are due not to inaction by the Allies, but the unwillingness of the U.S. to offer serious help --
“The greatest neutral in the world, supported by the overwhelming sympathies of its own population, refused to do anything of any vital importance to aid neutral Finland. Congressional debate greatly encouraged the Russians and the Germans to believe that no matter what happened, the United States would not even risk a really useful dollar....Mr. Roosevelt this morning (Thursday) praises the valor of the Finns and says, ‘The ending of this war does not yet clarify the inherent right of small nations to the maintenance of their integrity.’ This column differs with the President. Whatever is proved or not proved, the position of small nations in the world as it is at present is clarified. They have no position.”
With much bitterness, Miss Thompson sees a bright spot -- “Wall Street regards this as a great Russian-German victory. It is betting that the Germans and/or the Russians will win the war. This fact greatly encourages this column, which was also very depressed concerning the larger issues. For Wall Street’s betting has been so uniformly wrong in the last six years that its defeatism over the Allies ought to make stocks go up in London and Paris. Wall Street was betting in June that there was not going to be any war.”
Monday, March 14, 2016
Thursday, March 14, 1940
FINNS ACCEPT A BITTER PEACE DEAL. Soviet Premier Molotov and Finnish Premier Ryti signed a peace agreement yesterday in Moscow. So, after 105 days, the Russo-Finnish war ends, on terms highly favorable to Soviet Russia -- and significantly harsher than what the Russians demanded last autumn. In effect, the Finnish government has agreed to hand over the bulk of her natural defenses to the invaders, leaving the country open to full Soviet conquest at a later time of Stalin’s choosing. An Associated Press report lists the terms as follows --
(1) all of the Karelian Isthmus, including the major city of Viipuri;
(2) possession of Lake Ladoga, including territory on the lake’s northwestern shores;
(3) a huge slice of territory in northeastern Finland, including the city of Kuolajarvi, located about 35 miles west of the old border;
(4) a thirty-year lease on the naval base at Hanko in the Baltic, part of the Sredni and Rybachi peninsulas in the far north, and selected islands in the Gulf of Finland.
The Finns are allowed to keep their arctic port of Petsamo -- as long as they don’t keep any warships, warplanes, or submarines in the area. They also must allow the Russians to build a railroad across Finland’s “waist” and grant Russia duty-free access to Norway. Harold Callender writes in Wednesday’s New York Times that it’s “a terrific blow to Finland and to the Allies,” and he’s right.
DICTATORS ARE HAPPY, DEMOCRATS GLOOMY. In London, according to the United Press, “it was widely felt that the heroic Finnish struggle had been for nothing.” The Chicago Tribune’s man in Helsinki, Donald Day, says the people there are “shocked and bewildered” at the news -- as well as angry at the Allies and the U.S. for being slow to rally to the Finnish side these past three months. James Reston of the New York Times reports that British officials believe “this peace...is almost certain to increase the Russo-German domination over Scandinavia and close Germany’s northern flank to the Allies and have political repercussions detrimental to Great Britain and France in Russia and the Balkans whereto emphasis in the war is now likely to turn.”
C. Brooks Peters writes in another Times story that the Germans see plenty of benefit in the peace agreement, in that it will “free the warring Third Reich from the imminent danger of a second front...and discredit Franco-British diplomacy.” An official comment by the German foreign ministry taunted the Allies -- “Neutrals will undoubtedly take notice of the Finnish example as well as the bad faith demonstrated in Chamberlain’s and Daladier’s recent speeches. The Finns had three months to think it over while waiting for Allied help which never came, just as it failed to materialize in Abyssinia, Czecho-Slovakia, Albania, and Poland.”
COULD THE FINNS HAVE FOUGHT ON? An Associated Press story carries Premier Daladier’s claims that the Anglo-French had 50,000 soldiers “ready to sail on a moment’s notice” to fight the Russians if Finland had decided to continue the war. All Finland had to do was make a formal request for them. Naturally that raises the question -- where were Daladier and Chamberlain two months ago, when such a dramatic intervention could have made a difference? Why didn’t the Allies, as the Chicago Tribune asks, threaten to bomb the Baku oilfields in response to the Soviet aggression? Instead it might be recalled, painfully for those of us who sympathize with the Allied cause, that British officials told the press in early December of their desire to not let the Finnish war rupture Anglo-Soviet relations.
Additionally, the Finns can be forgiven if they note bitterly that Daladier mentioned sending 50,000 troops only after the peace agreement had been signed. A pretty safe pledge, that, and typical of the oh-so-cautious Allied approach to the northern war.
THE TIMES WISHES UPON A STAR. Have the editors of the New York Times been taking their cues from Walt Disney’s new Pinnochio picture? Their editorial on Finland’s capitulation is chock-full of wishful thinking and straw-grasping (“Hard as the terms are, at least they call for a truce to fighting.”). The Times rejects arguments that the peace deal is necessarily another Munich, and that the Russians will bolshevize the rest of Finland within a few months --
“At least Russia now knows the sort of resistance she will face if ever she attempts another invasion of Finland. She knows, also, that another such attempt will in all likelihood involve her in war not only with Finland but with France and Britain. For it is now clear, from M. Daladier’s remarkable disclosures to the French Chamber yesterday, how far the Allies were ready to go to bring help to Finland.”
The lack of logic is dumfounding. The Times editors surely know, or should know, that the reason Finland was able to offer the “sort of resistance” she did had much to do with fighting from well-fortified defensive positions. All of those defensive positions are now in Soviet hands. Like the Czechs, the Finns have been pushed back into defending territory where it is much harder to make a stand. And they do so with over 100,000 of their soldiers having been killed or wounded in the Karelian battles. And as far as Allied help goes -- if it took Britain and France three months to offer significant help when the Finns fought like lions, and often successfully, how much more would the Allies hesitate when the Russians break through the new, weakened Finnish lines quickly and are well on their way to Helsinki within a couple of weeks of a new invasion?
Sadly, there can be no doubt about it -- Finland will be Red before the end of this year. Stalin will probably not wait that long to find a pretext for starting up the war again. This “peace” is merely a pause.
(1) all of the Karelian Isthmus, including the major city of Viipuri;
(2) possession of Lake Ladoga, including territory on the lake’s northwestern shores;
(3) a huge slice of territory in northeastern Finland, including the city of Kuolajarvi, located about 35 miles west of the old border;
(4) a thirty-year lease on the naval base at Hanko in the Baltic, part of the Sredni and Rybachi peninsulas in the far north, and selected islands in the Gulf of Finland.
The Finns are allowed to keep their arctic port of Petsamo -- as long as they don’t keep any warships, warplanes, or submarines in the area. They also must allow the Russians to build a railroad across Finland’s “waist” and grant Russia duty-free access to Norway. Harold Callender writes in Wednesday’s New York Times that it’s “a terrific blow to Finland and to the Allies,” and he’s right.
DICTATORS ARE HAPPY, DEMOCRATS GLOOMY. In London, according to the United Press, “it was widely felt that the heroic Finnish struggle had been for nothing.” The Chicago Tribune’s man in Helsinki, Donald Day, says the people there are “shocked and bewildered” at the news -- as well as angry at the Allies and the U.S. for being slow to rally to the Finnish side these past three months. James Reston of the New York Times reports that British officials believe “this peace...is almost certain to increase the Russo-German domination over Scandinavia and close Germany’s northern flank to the Allies and have political repercussions detrimental to Great Britain and France in Russia and the Balkans whereto emphasis in the war is now likely to turn.”
C. Brooks Peters writes in another Times story that the Germans see plenty of benefit in the peace agreement, in that it will “free the warring Third Reich from the imminent danger of a second front...and discredit Franco-British diplomacy.” An official comment by the German foreign ministry taunted the Allies -- “Neutrals will undoubtedly take notice of the Finnish example as well as the bad faith demonstrated in Chamberlain’s and Daladier’s recent speeches. The Finns had three months to think it over while waiting for Allied help which never came, just as it failed to materialize in Abyssinia, Czecho-Slovakia, Albania, and Poland.”
COULD THE FINNS HAVE FOUGHT ON? An Associated Press story carries Premier Daladier’s claims that the Anglo-French had 50,000 soldiers “ready to sail on a moment’s notice” to fight the Russians if Finland had decided to continue the war. All Finland had to do was make a formal request for them. Naturally that raises the question -- where were Daladier and Chamberlain two months ago, when such a dramatic intervention could have made a difference? Why didn’t the Allies, as the Chicago Tribune asks, threaten to bomb the Baku oilfields in response to the Soviet aggression? Instead it might be recalled, painfully for those of us who sympathize with the Allied cause, that British officials told the press in early December of their desire to not let the Finnish war rupture Anglo-Soviet relations.
Additionally, the Finns can be forgiven if they note bitterly that Daladier mentioned sending 50,000 troops only after the peace agreement had been signed. A pretty safe pledge, that, and typical of the oh-so-cautious Allied approach to the northern war.
THE TIMES WISHES UPON A STAR. Have the editors of the New York Times been taking their cues from Walt Disney’s new Pinnochio picture? Their editorial on Finland’s capitulation is chock-full of wishful thinking and straw-grasping (“Hard as the terms are, at least they call for a truce to fighting.”). The Times rejects arguments that the peace deal is necessarily another Munich, and that the Russians will bolshevize the rest of Finland within a few months --
“At least Russia now knows the sort of resistance she will face if ever she attempts another invasion of Finland. She knows, also, that another such attempt will in all likelihood involve her in war not only with Finland but with France and Britain. For it is now clear, from M. Daladier’s remarkable disclosures to the French Chamber yesterday, how far the Allies were ready to go to bring help to Finland.”
The lack of logic is dumfounding. The Times editors surely know, or should know, that the reason Finland was able to offer the “sort of resistance” she did had much to do with fighting from well-fortified defensive positions. All of those defensive positions are now in Soviet hands. Like the Czechs, the Finns have been pushed back into defending territory where it is much harder to make a stand. And they do so with over 100,000 of their soldiers having been killed or wounded in the Karelian battles. And as far as Allied help goes -- if it took Britain and France three months to offer significant help when the Finns fought like lions, and often successfully, how much more would the Allies hesitate when the Russians break through the new, weakened Finnish lines quickly and are well on their way to Helsinki within a couple of weeks of a new invasion?
Sadly, there can be no doubt about it -- Finland will be Red before the end of this year. Stalin will probably not wait that long to find a pretext for starting up the war again. This “peace” is merely a pause.
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