“THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE.” That’s what a Sunday Washington Post headline calls the fighting in northern France, where the German “bulge” in the front lines now extends down from Maubeuge near the Belgian-French border, to St. Quentin in the west, and through Laon to Montmedy in the south. Inside the bulge Nazi heavy tanks, aircraft and infantry are driving -- but where? St. Quentin is seventy-six miles from Paris and eighty miles from the English Channel. John Elliott writes in Monday’s New York Herald Tribune that as of yesterday it was “not clear whether the German high command was aiming for the French capital or for the Channel ports, with the object of separating the Allied forces fighting in Belgium from those in France.”
But on the same Herald Tribune front page a dispatch from Berlin by Ralph W. Barnes says the Nazi attack has definitely swung westward toward the Channel. David Darrah writes in the Chicago Tribune that “for the moment, at least,” Hitler’s armies “are concentrating their main push in a westwardly direction toward the English Channel.” Mr. Darrah writes that the main German effort right now is centered in the area west of Avesnes, Guise, and Vervins. The Germans have thrown a tank corp, comprising some 60,000 troops, into the St. Quentin battle, but French units reinforced by the British are putting up “stiff resistance” and have counterattacked at some points. Still, radio reports this morning say the Allies continue to fall back on the road to Paris and in the St. Quentin region.
THE FRENCH CLAIM A SUCCESS. The most heartening news in days is a French counter-attack which recaptured the towns of Le Cateau and Landrecies on the northern side of the German bulge, along the Oise River. According to a Monday United Press report, seventy-ton French tanks “with blazing cannon” have pushed the Nazis back nine miles in the area, the first German retreat since the offensive began. The U.P. dispatch also says the French advance was made possible by point-blank artillery fire on German tanks from French 75s, the big guns which caused the German military so much grief in the World War.
The only disheartening aspect of this report is that apparently, judging from other news, the breach in the German lines doesn’t appear to be serious enough to stop the Nazi advance in other sectors.
GAMELIN OUT, WEYGAND IN. The biggest casualty of the German break-through in northern France so far is General Gamelin, who was replaced Sunday as commander in chief of the Allies armies by General Weygand. David Darrah writes in the Chicago Tribune that the promotion of Weygand is being trumpeted by Premier Reynaud as a change in war strategy -- “When German troops broke thru the French lines...public opinion was stirred deeply, and the premier promised that to handle the situation ‘new methods and new men’ would be used.” An Associated Press story on Monday says the seventy-three-year-old Weygand “undoubtedly will launch a plan of bold initiative in contrast with Gamelin’s extreme caution.”
It just so happens that the current Life magazine has an expansive cover story on General Weygand, obviously written well in advance of his promotion and focusing on his command of the Allies’ Near East army, which has been estimated elsewhere at a quarter of a million men. Major George Fielding Eliot writes that World War hero Weygand is known as the “Savior of Poland” for driving the Russians back from the gates of Warsaw in 1920 after the Poles were nearing a catastrophic defeat. Now, he has put together a tough army in the Near East, in spite of General Gamelin’s hesitancy -- “The armament and equipment of all these forces is first-rate. There is plenty of mechanization, plenty of modern weapons and ammunition, strong and well-based air forces. As to the latter, General Gamelin is said to have shown some hesitations when confronted with Weygand’s requirements. Weygand insisted he could not accept a command of this sort unless given the tools he needed, and he had his way.” Major Eliot also describes Weygand’s strategy as informed by the doctrine of “attaque, attaque, attaque,” learned from his mentor Marshal Foch.
Weygand could well be the man the Allies desperately need to stop the German flood across northern France. So -- why wasn’t he put in charge there in the first place? Why was he posted to Beirut and put in charge of an army that, at this crucial moment, isn’t doing much of anything?
AN “ALLIED COUNTER-STROKE” ON THE WAY? Major George Fielding Eliot also writes in Monday’s New York Herald Tribune that Prime Minister Churchill’s radio speech on Sunday calling for “total war” could well be inspired by Weygand’s ascension to command. Major Eliot also considers the likelihood of an Allied asasult --
“It is impossible to suppose that Mr. Churchill’s speech...was not inspired in part by Weygand -- or at the very least by Churchill’s knowledge of Weygand’s trend of thought.. Thus we may be sure that a powerful Allied counter-stroke is in preparation, and will be delivered at the time and place Weygand selects. The only thing that could prevent it would be such continuous and violent pressure by the Germans that the sheer need for driving to check them would draw in too many troops to allow a mass of maneuver to be collected. The question, therefore, is whether the Germans can keep going and keep feeding in more troops, more armored fighting vehicles, more planes.”
Major Eliot estimates the French still have “in hand, and unused, two to three armored divisions, the British anywhere from one to three, and the Belgians two ‘light’ divisions containing armored elements.” He says this is enough for a “formidable” armored spearhead, but that it will take time to put these units together and assemble the soldiers to follow them up, “especially when all marches must be made by night, and concealment sought by day from the eyes of German scout pilots.” Is there still time for this?
CHURCHILL PUTS A BRAVE FACE ON IT. I thought Churchill’s speech Sunday offered as much hope as can be reasonably given in light of the Nazi break-through. From the New York Herald Tribune’s transcript on Monday -- “If the French army and our army are well handled, as I believe they will be, and if the French retain that genius in recovery and counter-attack for which they have so long been famous, and if the British Army shows the dogged endurance and solid fighting power of which there have been so many examples in the past, then a sudden transformation of the scene might spring into being....it would be foolish, however, to disguise the gravity of the hour. It would be still more foolish to lose heart and courage or to suppose that well-trained, well-equipped armies numbering three or four millions of men can be overcome in the space of a few weeks, or even months, by a swoop, or raid, of mechanized vehicles, however formidable. We will look forward with confidence to the stabilization of the front in France.”
ATROCITY AT ROTTERDAM. A brief story from the Associated Press Monday gives some ghastly statistics of what the Germans accomplished when they bombed Rotterdam into surrender -- 100,000 civilians killed, one-third of the city gone, buildings over an area of five square miles destroyed. The murderous effects of massive air bombardment, discussed with such worry one year ago, are now reality. And perhaps next week, any of England’s principal cities might be getting the same treatment.
THE FOLLY OF NEUTRALITY. Edwin L. James writes in Sunday’s New York Times that Belgium’s young King Leopold doomed his country by taking Hitler at his word --
“When the historians pen the pages of the present war, they will have to go back four years to make a complete picture of what now has happened in Belgium. In 1936 King Leopold cut loose from his protective alliance with France and reverted to the old neutrality status of Belgium. It was a status which had failed her once, but he thought it better to try again. Germany had promised him not to attack Belgium in a new war and he trusted Germany again. He knows the sad result now. The King refused the suggestions of the British and French, right up to a few months ago, that the Belgian General Staff consult with the General Staffs of London and Paris to work out a plan of defense in case of an attack on Belgium. That, the King said, would be a violation of his perfect neutrality. He refused the aid of the French to build a stronger defense line which would have amounted to an extension of the Maginot Line. He had promised the Germans to be neutral and he would be neutral.”
THE FOLLY OF NEUTRALITY (II). The message of Charles Lindbergh’s national radio address Sunday night sounded like something that King Leopold might have approved of. From the transcript printed in Monday’s Chicago Tribune --
“We need not fear a foreign invasion unless American peoples bring it on through their own quarreling and meddling with affairs abroad....Above all, let us stop the hysterical chatter of calamity and invasion which has been running rife these past few days. It is not befitting to the people who built this nation....If we desire peace, we only need to stop asking for war. No one wishes to attack us, and no one is in a position to do so.”
Who, one might ask, is running around America “asking for war”? Here Colonel Lindbergh turns vague, complaining that “powerful elements in America...desire us to take part.” He does not say who these elements are, but claims they are a “small minority” and hints they are treasonous, alleging that “they seize every opportunity to push us closer to the edge.” Colonel Lindbergh also says flat-out that it’s too late for us to help the Allies, and that it doesn’t matter if the Nazis triumph anyway -- “regardless of which side wins the war, there is no reason...to prevent a continuation of peaceful relationships between America and the countries of Europe.” He fails to note that if Hitler wins, there might be hardly any European countries left to be peaceful with.
THE FOLLY OF NEUTRALITY (III). What Colonel Lindbergh also failed to make clear in his radio talk is that he appears to have little use for the Monroe Doctrine. He favors defense of America’s borders, and only those other nations on the hemisphere that agree to follow his definition of strict neutrality (tough luck, Canada). But Barnet Nover points out in his Washington Post column on Monday that a Nazi victory in Europe could have disastrous consequences for America’s immediate neighbors, and thus for the U.S. too --
“The United States can afford a complacent attitude toward Europe only as long as the European balance of power is not disturbed to the point where it can affect developments overseas. But it is only because the European balance of power has not been upset from the Napoleonic era to the present time that we have been able to enjoy our peace and safety....A victory for Germany would involve a tremendous change in the European balance of power. It would place a good part of South America at the mercy of the conqueror and his allies....Aside from the fact that Fifth Column activities could produce a state or turmoil in more than one country of this hemisphere there is the circumstance that economically many of these countries would be at the mercy of a totalitarian despotism established astride Europe’s prostate democracies. In the event of a German victory Hitler’s salesmen could be as effective in overthrowing pro-United States governments and setting up governments amenable to his will as Hitler’s planes or mechanized troops might be.”
Saturday, May 21, 2016
Thursday, May 19, 2016
Sunday, May 19, 1940
GERMAN BREAK-THROUGH NEAR SEDAN. Tragically, there’s no doubt now that earlier Nazi claims are true -- the Germans have torn open a sixty-two-mile gap in the defensive lines of northern France after ferocious fighting. George Axelsson writes in Saturday’s New York Times that the wedge stretches from “south of Maubeuge to Carignán, southeast of Sedan.” Hitler’s armies are pouring huge tanks supported by low-flying bombers into the gap, say radio bulletins this morning. The radio also reports new German claims that advanced armored units have raced all the way to the outskirts of Rheims, about seventy-five miles from Paris. Some of the Nazis’ fifty divisions poured into the attack appear to be headed south-westward toward Paris, others westward toward the Channel ports. The Associated Press has a story Saturday describing the Germans’ new tanks, “larger and more heavily armed than those which rolled through Poland last September.” Three armored corps, each with 400 of these monsters, are fighting now in the “Meuse salient.”
“GRAVE, BUT NOT DESPERATE.” Ralph Barnes writes in Saturday’s New York Herald Tribune that the Allied retreat is “developing into a rout and debacle,” but he’s quoting claims from German sources. (Oddly, the Washington Post reprint of Mr. Barnes’ story is edited to make the “rout and debacle” remark look more like the reporter’s own judgement). Some statements right now from the Allies themselves are less than reassuring -- I just heard one radio report quoting France’s Premier Reynaud as calling the situation “grave, but it is by no means desperate.”
Saturday’s Herald Tribune also has a reassuring front-page map showing how much more ground the Germans have to cover before they reach the lines of their 1914 advance. But the Nazis have advanced some twelve to fourteen miles into France in the last twenty-four hours, and thirty miles the day before that, the radio says. One starts to wonder, I suppose the way people did in the first anxious months of the World War, just where will be German advance be stopped? And when? It will be stopped, won’t it?
HITLER’S TROOPS TAKE ANTWERP, BRUSSELS. It hasn’t been stopped yet in Belgium, either, where fierce German armor and air attacks on the “Dyle line” have forced what the British War Office calls a “readjustment” westward of the Allied defenses in Belgium. Sigrid Schultz writes in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune that the British have also abandoned Brussels and the university city of Louvain. (Just the day before, Harold Denny wrote in the New York Times of a blistering British assault that had driven momentarily thrown the Germans out of Louvain, despite “terrific attacks” by the Nazis along the whole of the Belgian line.). The Nazis are in Antwerp this morning, after that city’s British and Belgian defenders were flanked by the German seizure of Brussels. Saturday’s Times says the Belgians have moved their capital to the North Sea coastal city of Ostend.
William Shirer noted in his C.B.S. broadcast from Berlin yesterday morning that in 1914 it took the Germans sixteen days to take Brussels, and this time it only took eight. The Germans were boasting Saturday that they’ll be in Paris in another two weeks.
IS THERE HOPE FOR THE ALLIES? If you scour the front pages looking for anything resembling good news on the war, you can find a few tidbits. Saturday’s papers all carry French General Gamelin’s stirring, defiant order of the day (“The watchword today is ‘Conquer or die.’ We must conquer.”) The Associated Press reports Saturday that the French army “unleashed furious counter-attacks today, seeking to draw a hangman’s knot about the ponderous advance of heavy German tanks into northern France.” The New York Herald Tribune’s Edward Angly, traveling with the British Army in Belgium, writes that French officers “seemed serenely confident that the situation in this region today was well in hand....The general feeling was that in his own time and in his own way Gen. Gamelin would take whatever measures were needed to call a halt to the admitted advance of the enemy.”
And one radio report today says that British military men are “heartened” by reports that the German advance is slowing down.
ROOSEVELT CALLS FOR 50,000-PLANE AIR FORCE. The best thing that’s come out of the German offensive is a new, bipartisan determination in the U.S. to make America invulnerable to a Nazi-style lightning attack. President Roosevelt’s emergency arms message to Congress Thursday was one of his best speeches in quite some time, and seems to have done the trick. The President proposed an additional expenditure this year of $1,182,00,000 for preparedness. According to Saturday’s Washington Post, within twenty-four hours of the speech the Senate Military Appropriations Subcommittee had approved a huge chunk of that, a $732,000,000 emergency fund requested for the Army. The subcommittee even threw in an extra $50,000,000 beyond the administration’s request.
John G. Norris reports in Friday’s Post that the President also declared one eye-popping “ultimate objective” for the nation’s air force -- “a total of 50,000 Army and Navy planes and an industry capable of turning out a like number annually.” That would be an air armada far surpassing that of any country in the world. The portion of the requested funds allotted for this, however, will only buy 315 warplanes.
Most heartening, though, is what the Post described as “an unprecedented peacetime defense coalition...behind the President with the pledged support of former President Herbert Hoover, former Gov. Alf E. Landon, of Kansas; Col. Frank Knox, Thomas E. Dewey and Republican leaders in Congress.” Wonder of wonders, even the Chicago Tribune’s editors found something to faintly praise -- “Mr. Roosevelt’s message to congress...may be taken as a welcome indication that at last he is awakening to the situation and its dangers.”
IF ITALY GETS INTO THE WAR... Various reports lately have described Mussolini and the controlled fascist press of Italy as sounding increasingly belligerent in the wake of this spring’s German victories. Felix Morley writes in Saturday’s Washington Post of speculation that the Duce might choose to bring Italy into the war on Germany’s side this coming Thursday, May 23, exactly thirty-five years after Italy’s formal entry into the World War. But Barnet Nover writes in his Post column that Italy’s decision would likely be far-reaching, and potentially catastrophic --
“With Italy in the war, Yugoslavia and Greece and Turkey will be in the war. An Italian move would also probably mean Russian action against Rumania. It would involve Switzerland, for only through possession of the Swiss railroads could there be any truly effective liaison between the axis powers. It would also bring Egypt and the rest of North Africa into the war and whatever Gen. Franco might say about it, Spain, too, would probably become involved.”
Not only would Italy be the match that ignites the Mediterranean tinderbox, says Mr. Nover, but her decision might also have consequences for Japanese aspirations -- “The spread of the European conflict to the Mediterranean would undoubtedly give the more venturesome elements of the Island Empire the urge to carry out the threatened move against the Netherlands East Indies.”
“GRAVE, BUT NOT DESPERATE.” Ralph Barnes writes in Saturday’s New York Herald Tribune that the Allied retreat is “developing into a rout and debacle,” but he’s quoting claims from German sources. (Oddly, the Washington Post reprint of Mr. Barnes’ story is edited to make the “rout and debacle” remark look more like the reporter’s own judgement). Some statements right now from the Allies themselves are less than reassuring -- I just heard one radio report quoting France’s Premier Reynaud as calling the situation “grave, but it is by no means desperate.”
Saturday’s Herald Tribune also has a reassuring front-page map showing how much more ground the Germans have to cover before they reach the lines of their 1914 advance. But the Nazis have advanced some twelve to fourteen miles into France in the last twenty-four hours, and thirty miles the day before that, the radio says. One starts to wonder, I suppose the way people did in the first anxious months of the World War, just where will be German advance be stopped? And when? It will be stopped, won’t it?
HITLER’S TROOPS TAKE ANTWERP, BRUSSELS. It hasn’t been stopped yet in Belgium, either, where fierce German armor and air attacks on the “Dyle line” have forced what the British War Office calls a “readjustment” westward of the Allied defenses in Belgium. Sigrid Schultz writes in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune that the British have also abandoned Brussels and the university city of Louvain. (Just the day before, Harold Denny wrote in the New York Times of a blistering British assault that had driven momentarily thrown the Germans out of Louvain, despite “terrific attacks” by the Nazis along the whole of the Belgian line.). The Nazis are in Antwerp this morning, after that city’s British and Belgian defenders were flanked by the German seizure of Brussels. Saturday’s Times says the Belgians have moved their capital to the North Sea coastal city of Ostend.
William Shirer noted in his C.B.S. broadcast from Berlin yesterday morning that in 1914 it took the Germans sixteen days to take Brussels, and this time it only took eight. The Germans were boasting Saturday that they’ll be in Paris in another two weeks.
IS THERE HOPE FOR THE ALLIES? If you scour the front pages looking for anything resembling good news on the war, you can find a few tidbits. Saturday’s papers all carry French General Gamelin’s stirring, defiant order of the day (“The watchword today is ‘Conquer or die.’ We must conquer.”) The Associated Press reports Saturday that the French army “unleashed furious counter-attacks today, seeking to draw a hangman’s knot about the ponderous advance of heavy German tanks into northern France.” The New York Herald Tribune’s Edward Angly, traveling with the British Army in Belgium, writes that French officers “seemed serenely confident that the situation in this region today was well in hand....The general feeling was that in his own time and in his own way Gen. Gamelin would take whatever measures were needed to call a halt to the admitted advance of the enemy.”
And one radio report today says that British military men are “heartened” by reports that the German advance is slowing down.
ROOSEVELT CALLS FOR 50,000-PLANE AIR FORCE. The best thing that’s come out of the German offensive is a new, bipartisan determination in the U.S. to make America invulnerable to a Nazi-style lightning attack. President Roosevelt’s emergency arms message to Congress Thursday was one of his best speeches in quite some time, and seems to have done the trick. The President proposed an additional expenditure this year of $1,182,00,000 for preparedness. According to Saturday’s Washington Post, within twenty-four hours of the speech the Senate Military Appropriations Subcommittee had approved a huge chunk of that, a $732,000,000 emergency fund requested for the Army. The subcommittee even threw in an extra $50,000,000 beyond the administration’s request.
John G. Norris reports in Friday’s Post that the President also declared one eye-popping “ultimate objective” for the nation’s air force -- “a total of 50,000 Army and Navy planes and an industry capable of turning out a like number annually.” That would be an air armada far surpassing that of any country in the world. The portion of the requested funds allotted for this, however, will only buy 315 warplanes.
Most heartening, though, is what the Post described as “an unprecedented peacetime defense coalition...behind the President with the pledged support of former President Herbert Hoover, former Gov. Alf E. Landon, of Kansas; Col. Frank Knox, Thomas E. Dewey and Republican leaders in Congress.” Wonder of wonders, even the Chicago Tribune’s editors found something to faintly praise -- “Mr. Roosevelt’s message to congress...may be taken as a welcome indication that at last he is awakening to the situation and its dangers.”
IF ITALY GETS INTO THE WAR... Various reports lately have described Mussolini and the controlled fascist press of Italy as sounding increasingly belligerent in the wake of this spring’s German victories. Felix Morley writes in Saturday’s Washington Post of speculation that the Duce might choose to bring Italy into the war on Germany’s side this coming Thursday, May 23, exactly thirty-five years after Italy’s formal entry into the World War. But Barnet Nover writes in his Post column that Italy’s decision would likely be far-reaching, and potentially catastrophic --
“With Italy in the war, Yugoslavia and Greece and Turkey will be in the war. An Italian move would also probably mean Russian action against Rumania. It would involve Switzerland, for only through possession of the Swiss railroads could there be any truly effective liaison between the axis powers. It would also bring Egypt and the rest of North Africa into the war and whatever Gen. Franco might say about it, Spain, too, would probably become involved.”
Not only would Italy be the match that ignites the Mediterranean tinderbox, says Mr. Nover, but her decision might also have consequences for Japanese aspirations -- “The spread of the European conflict to the Mediterranean would undoubtedly give the more venturesome elements of the Island Empire the urge to carry out the threatened move against the Netherlands East Indies.”
Monday, May 16, 2016
Thursday, May 16, 1940
HOLLAND SURRENDERS TO THE GERMANS. After five days of resistance, the Netherlands has been knocked out of the war. A United Press account says the Dutch commander in chief, Henri Gerard Winkelman, asked his troops to lay down their arms “to prevent further bloodshed and annihilation.” Dutch troops and sailors are still giving battle in the southwestern coastal province of Zeeland, and Holland’s overseas empire has pledged to continue the fight. Queen Wilhelmina says that her country’s state of war with Germany continues. But not in Rotterdam, Utrecht, Helden, or other Dutch cities shattered by raids from Nazi dive-bombers since last Friday. According to the Associated Press account, “the Germans had forced the surrender of Rotterdam by furious bombing which had set afire a large part of that great seaport city.”
Radio reports this morning quote the Dutch foreign minister in Paris as estimating his country’s losses at 100,000 troops, or one-quarter of the entire Dutch Army -- a staggering figure if true.
TITANIC BATTLE IN BELGIUM. This morning’s bulletins estimate a total of three million Allied and German troops are now fighting for Belgium. The front page of Wednesday’s New York Times has a useful map giving the clearest indication I’ve seen so far of just where the battle lines are, or were as of yesterday. It runs in a fairly straight line through Belgium, from east of Antwerp down to Louvain and then to Namur and Sedan.
The fighting at the south end of this line on the French border is the most critical. Here, according to G.H. Archambault in Wednesday’s Times, the Germans are trying to breach the Maginot Line with a fierce assault directed at the Meuse River valley between Sedan and the small town of Longwy farther east. A German armored force “accompanied by a swarm of low-flying planes” fought for and took Sedan, which Mr. Archambault emphasizes “stands north of the Maginot Line.” The Nazis have also taken about three-forths of Longwy after bitter campaigning, and have launched attacks also between Longwy and Montmedy. The Associated Press account calls the Meuse River valley “history’s tried and trampled path of invasion,” and says the battle now going on there “may prove the decisive turning point of the war.”
Back in Belgium, another radio report says that the Germans have entered Louvain, a famous university city now reduced to rubble by air and artillery bombardments, but that British forces have stopped the German advance eighteen miles west of Brussels. For now.
IT’S 1914 ALL OVER AGAIN. William Shirer gave a very interesting and descriptive talk on the C.B.S. last night about Germany’s use of the World War “Schlieffen Plan” in her current campaign. He says the Reich press confirmed Wednesday that their army is using a modified version of the plan, which calls for a “swing-door” movement of troops through northern Belgium, then turning left in a large circle past Brussels and toward the French border, outflanking the French forces and trapping them between Paris and the Rhine. A thrust could come at the “top” of the door toward Antwerp, Mr. Shirer reports, or it could come -- as it appears to be now -- with more pressure directed at Sedan.
George Axelsson of the New York Times notes some 1914 similarities in a Tuesday story, such as the battle for Liege, which in 1914 fell to German strategic initiative and new weaponry -- back then, it was the new heavy howitzers. He also anticipates a large battle for Antwerp. It’s for all of this, Mr. Axelsson writes, that the conflict is “beginning to be called a second installment of the World War.”
NEXT STOP -- ANTWERP? Napoleon once called the Belgian port city of Antwerp “a dagger aimed at the heart of England.” Sigrid Schultz quotes this in her Chicago Tribune story on Wednesday, where she identifies several locales as being the “real heart” of Hitler’s objectives for the current offensive. Miss Schultz also mentions Rotterdam, now in Nazi hands, as being only 188 miles from London, “an easy two hour round trip for a bombing plane.” Above all, the French seaport of Calais is a mere 22 miles from British soil and would be another ideal base for an all-out air and submarine attack on Britain, says the Tribune. If that is the case then it would be expected that the main force of the German armies now in Belgium and Holland would drive west-southwestward, instead of due south, toward Paris.
A COALITION GOVERNMENT FOR THE U.S.? Writing from Paris, Dorothy Thompson lets loose a whale of a proposal in her New York Herald Tribune column on Wednesday. She notes that “the gravity of this hour cannot possibly be overstated,” and that the Nazis are trying to force a decision in the war just when the United States is “politically immobilized” and least able to act decisively. Because of this, Miss Thompson suggests that the Republican Party concede the presidential election this year --
“The greatest thing, it seems to me, that the Republican Party could do now for the Nation it has served so often and so magnificently would be to announce, and as quickly as possible, that if the President will accept a third term it will offer no candidate in opposition to him, but will offer, instead, only a Vice Presidential candidate. And...in the interests of the Nation, it might look elsewhere than in the traditional places for a Vice Presidential candidate, and nominate, for Vice President, Wendell Willkie, one of our ablest citizens, a man who most thoroughly represents the most enlightened and modern wing of Republican opinion, who is 100 per cent with Secretary Hull on foreign policy and who, were a change at this time desirable for all, is certainly Presidential timber....The election of Roosevelt plus a Republican ticket would presume a reorganization of the Cabinet to include Republicans – in other words, a Government of national concentration. And I personally believe that ticket would win.”
It’s hard to imagine it really happening, but Miss Thompson’s motives for putting the idea forward deserve a salute -- “From Paris, where one sees events moving with the swiftness of a motorized battalion...it is impossible to think of one’s self as a Republican or a Democrat, or a Socialist or a New Dealer. One thinks of one’s self only as a citizen of the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
AIR POWER WILL WIN THE WAR. This week’s issue of Time magazine quotes a recent commentary in the London Observer by J.L. Garvin, who makes a critical point about the fighting still to come. It’s also startling to note that Mr. Garvin wrote these words before the current Nazi offensive began --
“Britain and France have to fight not only for their own liberties but for their lives. They have to wage that fight and win it during the next few months. It may well be, and it is very likely to be, the most desperate struggle that the world has seen....The Nazis are full of vehement confidence....They are flushed with unlimited dreams of destruction and triumph. They mean to make a giant bid for complete victory by next autumn. The Allies have to meet the full shock of this temper before they can begin to smash it. But they cannot smash it until they possess complete and overwhelming predominance of the flying arm...The truth and force of that view ought to have been brought home to practical imagination long ago by the Polish Blitzkrieg. By the new lessons in Norway the case is proved up to the hilt....The Allied cause demands nothing less than an air supremacy of two to one.”
CHURCHILL IN HIS OWN WORDS. For anyone who didn’t hear Prime Minister Churchill’s brief speech on the radio the other day, here’s the most poignant part of what he said, taken from the transcription in Tuesday’s New York Times. May his government live up to the spirit of these noble remarks --
“I say to the House as I said to ministers who have joined this government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many months of struggle and suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea, and air. War with all our might and with all the strength God has given us, and to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs. Victory in spite of all terrors. Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.”
Radio reports this morning quote the Dutch foreign minister in Paris as estimating his country’s losses at 100,000 troops, or one-quarter of the entire Dutch Army -- a staggering figure if true.
TITANIC BATTLE IN BELGIUM. This morning’s bulletins estimate a total of three million Allied and German troops are now fighting for Belgium. The front page of Wednesday’s New York Times has a useful map giving the clearest indication I’ve seen so far of just where the battle lines are, or were as of yesterday. It runs in a fairly straight line through Belgium, from east of Antwerp down to Louvain and then to Namur and Sedan.
The fighting at the south end of this line on the French border is the most critical. Here, according to G.H. Archambault in Wednesday’s Times, the Germans are trying to breach the Maginot Line with a fierce assault directed at the Meuse River valley between Sedan and the small town of Longwy farther east. A German armored force “accompanied by a swarm of low-flying planes” fought for and took Sedan, which Mr. Archambault emphasizes “stands north of the Maginot Line.” The Nazis have also taken about three-forths of Longwy after bitter campaigning, and have launched attacks also between Longwy and Montmedy. The Associated Press account calls the Meuse River valley “history’s tried and trampled path of invasion,” and says the battle now going on there “may prove the decisive turning point of the war.”
Back in Belgium, another radio report says that the Germans have entered Louvain, a famous university city now reduced to rubble by air and artillery bombardments, but that British forces have stopped the German advance eighteen miles west of Brussels. For now.
IT’S 1914 ALL OVER AGAIN. William Shirer gave a very interesting and descriptive talk on the C.B.S. last night about Germany’s use of the World War “Schlieffen Plan” in her current campaign. He says the Reich press confirmed Wednesday that their army is using a modified version of the plan, which calls for a “swing-door” movement of troops through northern Belgium, then turning left in a large circle past Brussels and toward the French border, outflanking the French forces and trapping them between Paris and the Rhine. A thrust could come at the “top” of the door toward Antwerp, Mr. Shirer reports, or it could come -- as it appears to be now -- with more pressure directed at Sedan.
George Axelsson of the New York Times notes some 1914 similarities in a Tuesday story, such as the battle for Liege, which in 1914 fell to German strategic initiative and new weaponry -- back then, it was the new heavy howitzers. He also anticipates a large battle for Antwerp. It’s for all of this, Mr. Axelsson writes, that the conflict is “beginning to be called a second installment of the World War.”
NEXT STOP -- ANTWERP? Napoleon once called the Belgian port city of Antwerp “a dagger aimed at the heart of England.” Sigrid Schultz quotes this in her Chicago Tribune story on Wednesday, where she identifies several locales as being the “real heart” of Hitler’s objectives for the current offensive. Miss Schultz also mentions Rotterdam, now in Nazi hands, as being only 188 miles from London, “an easy two hour round trip for a bombing plane.” Above all, the French seaport of Calais is a mere 22 miles from British soil and would be another ideal base for an all-out air and submarine attack on Britain, says the Tribune. If that is the case then it would be expected that the main force of the German armies now in Belgium and Holland would drive west-southwestward, instead of due south, toward Paris.
A COALITION GOVERNMENT FOR THE U.S.? Writing from Paris, Dorothy Thompson lets loose a whale of a proposal in her New York Herald Tribune column on Wednesday. She notes that “the gravity of this hour cannot possibly be overstated,” and that the Nazis are trying to force a decision in the war just when the United States is “politically immobilized” and least able to act decisively. Because of this, Miss Thompson suggests that the Republican Party concede the presidential election this year --
“The greatest thing, it seems to me, that the Republican Party could do now for the Nation it has served so often and so magnificently would be to announce, and as quickly as possible, that if the President will accept a third term it will offer no candidate in opposition to him, but will offer, instead, only a Vice Presidential candidate. And...in the interests of the Nation, it might look elsewhere than in the traditional places for a Vice Presidential candidate, and nominate, for Vice President, Wendell Willkie, one of our ablest citizens, a man who most thoroughly represents the most enlightened and modern wing of Republican opinion, who is 100 per cent with Secretary Hull on foreign policy and who, were a change at this time desirable for all, is certainly Presidential timber....The election of Roosevelt plus a Republican ticket would presume a reorganization of the Cabinet to include Republicans – in other words, a Government of national concentration. And I personally believe that ticket would win.”
It’s hard to imagine it really happening, but Miss Thompson’s motives for putting the idea forward deserve a salute -- “From Paris, where one sees events moving with the swiftness of a motorized battalion...it is impossible to think of one’s self as a Republican or a Democrat, or a Socialist or a New Dealer. One thinks of one’s self only as a citizen of the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
AIR POWER WILL WIN THE WAR. This week’s issue of Time magazine quotes a recent commentary in the London Observer by J.L. Garvin, who makes a critical point about the fighting still to come. It’s also startling to note that Mr. Garvin wrote these words before the current Nazi offensive began --
“Britain and France have to fight not only for their own liberties but for their lives. They have to wage that fight and win it during the next few months. It may well be, and it is very likely to be, the most desperate struggle that the world has seen....The Nazis are full of vehement confidence....They are flushed with unlimited dreams of destruction and triumph. They mean to make a giant bid for complete victory by next autumn. The Allies have to meet the full shock of this temper before they can begin to smash it. But they cannot smash it until they possess complete and overwhelming predominance of the flying arm...The truth and force of that view ought to have been brought home to practical imagination long ago by the Polish Blitzkrieg. By the new lessons in Norway the case is proved up to the hilt....The Allied cause demands nothing less than an air supremacy of two to one.”
CHURCHILL IN HIS OWN WORDS. For anyone who didn’t hear Prime Minister Churchill’s brief speech on the radio the other day, here’s the most poignant part of what he said, taken from the transcription in Tuesday’s New York Times. May his government live up to the spirit of these noble remarks --
“I say to the House as I said to ministers who have joined this government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many months of struggle and suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea, and air. War with all our might and with all the strength God has given us, and to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs. Victory in spite of all terrors. Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.”
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)