MUSSOLINI DECIDES -- IT’S WAR. The biggest story last night and this morning on the radio, even bigger than the latest Nazi advances in France, is Italy’s declaration of war on the Allies. Mussolini made the announcement himself Monday evening from his balcony at Rome’s Piazza Venezia, pledging his fascists to fight “the plutocratic and reactionary democracies of the West.” Judging what newsmen have been saying for days now, apparently the Duce has decided that France and Britain are just about finished, and a Nazi victory is only weeks away.
The funny thing is, for all the fascist bellicosity of the last eighteen hours, there aren’t any reports yet of actual fighting by the Italians. A Berlin report last night claimed Italy had attacked the French Riviera, but the local radio says this morning that story is “unsupported.” About the only thing Mussolini has done so far is to land Italian troops on two islands off the Yugoslav coast, Zara and Lagosta. But it’s no invasion -- both islands already belong to Italy.
FRENCH GOVERNMENT FLEES PARIS. There’s plenty of fighting to be had in northern France, and judging from this morning’s bulletins it’s all going badly for the Allies. German tanks have penetrated into the “Paris region,” though the main battle line is still thirty-five miles north of the city. The government has fled to Tours, some 150 miles south. Several Paris newspapers have ceased publication. A Ministry of Information communique says that Premier Reynaud has gone to “join the French armies.” Another report says that the Nazis are bombing the French capital, for the second time in a week.
The map on the front page of Monday’s New York Times shows why Paris is in such peril. German armored forces have pushed a deep wedge into the left side of the French defenses, near the Channel. They’ve sent advance units all the way south to the banks of the Seine, at Point de l’Arche, and into the suburbs of Rouen. In the center, the Nazis are crossing the Aisne River in force and are now south of Soissons and near Chateau-Thierry, scene of a critical victory by American troops in the World War. (An interesting map inside the New York Herald Tribune shows the Nazi advance toward Paris with New York area place-names inserted to show how close the battle line now is to the capital. The map shows that if Paris were New York, the German advance would as of Monday be south of New Haven and almost to the north shore of Long Island. And it’s gotten closer to Paris since then.)
A “DEATH BLOW” TO FRANCE? Sigrid Schultz writes in Monday’s Chicago Tribune that the Germans are now calling this attack a “death blow.” They also say the battle is raging across a 200-mile front. According to G.H. Archambault in Monday’s New York Times, Hitler isn’t holding anything back now, and the numbers involved are staggering -- “By 10 o’clock on this Sunday morning, with the June sun torrid in a speckless sky, it had become known generally that the Germans had thrown at their forces into the fight -- nearly 100 divisions, not far from 2,000,000 men, and this in addition to all their armored units.”
What’s especially frightening about this is that, although the Monday press accounts indicate that German attacks are being checked here and there, nobody’s talking about where the German advance might definitely be stopped, and how the break-throughs will be contained. John Elliott of the New York Herald Tribune cites a French War Ministry spokesmen as saying that “the loss of territory was not important if thereby the enemy was worn down.” But judging from the first five days of this battle, it looks like the poilus who are being worn down, not the Germans.
NORWAY SURRENDERS. Not that it matters too much right now, but the papers splashed Norway made across their front pages one last time on Monday -- to report the capitulation of what remains of the kingdom to German occupiers. A combination of Norwegian, British, and French troops had continued resistance above the Arctic Circle, and last month the Allies even scored a victory of sorts, driving a small Nazi force out of the ore port of Narvik. But according to a Monday Associated Press report, King Haakon has announced the Norwegians “cannot go on fighting in north Norway” and has fled with his government to England.
IF ONLY FRANCE CAN HOLD ON. Major George Fielding Eliot’s Monday article in the New York Herald Tribune arouses a flicker of hope that if France can – somehow – hold on through these bitter days and buy some time, she might make herself impregnable to further Nazi attack --
“Time is the enemy of Germany. Germany must win in the field before time weakens her at home and arms her foes against her. It is the French Army which she must beat. The Allied navies are a long-range threat...The Allied air forces can do no more than hold their own, if that; they can do nothing if deprived of bases in France and the British Isles. Britain has no army worth speaking of, because a succession of British governments dared not ask the people to bear the burdens of military service, and what army there was has been temporarily put out of action. The French Army, weakened as it is by the losses of the Meuse-Flanders battles, is the most dangerous enemy to Germany at this moment. That is why Germany is straining every nerve to destroy it or neutralize it....There is no time to waste. France has millions of fully trained reserves, more than Germany; more also of officers and non-commissioned officers; and she has the greatest military commander of modern times, Gen. Weygand. He needs equipment, and he needs time. Give him a breathing space, take from him but for a few short weeks the pressure of imminent peril, and he will forge a military instrument that Germany cannot hope to destroy. Give him time to do that, and...the Allies have won the war.”
ROOSEVELT’S “TWO FAULTS.” Last week’s issue of Life magazine had a transcription of editor Henry R. Luce’s radio talk on preparedness which was carried on the N.B.C. Blue network three weeks ago. With bend-over-backwards courtesy, he describes the two flaws in President Roosevelt’s makeup which must be overcome as we face the difficult work ahead --
“The arming of America must fully get under way now under the leadership of our President. Franklin Roosevelt is in many respects a very great leader. But he has his faults. Who hasn’t? There are two faults -- two of the defects of his virtues perhaps -- which we want him to guard against now. One fault is his tolerance of incompetent people. A very nice fault – but one we cannot afford just now. The other fault is his intolerance of extremely able people who don’t happen to agree with him. During the last few years Franklin Roosevelt hasn’t got on at all well with most of our ablest industrialists. It may have been their fault or it may have been his. Never mind. Today we need the services of the ablest industrialists in America for the most efficient arming of America.”
Mr. Luce recommended setting up a “really non-partisan War Industries Board,” which the President has since established.
Last week’s Life also offers -- most poignantly in light of today’s news –- an eight-page spread of beautiful color photos of Paris.
WAR NEWS BOOSTS THIRD TERM. I missed this item in last Wednesday’s Washington Post, but a new Gallup poll indicates that the shock of the Nazi offensive could prove a huge boost to the President’s chances for a third term -- if he wants it. Dr. Gallup writes that the latest third-term survey, taken this month, shows 57% saying they’d vote for the President this fall, and 43% who’d vote against him. This is almost a complete turnaround from the poll on this question taken just before the war started -- in that one, the numbers were 40% for a third term, 60% opposed. Gallup’s been taking polls on the third term for over a year, and up until recently they’ve shown a majority against it. As recently as April, a minority (47%) favored another term for the President.
Nor surprisingly, Dr. Gallup sees a direct cause-and-effect relationship between third term sentiment and the war. He expects it to continue -- An intensification in the emergency abroad would, in all likelihood, tend to increase third term sentiment, while a lessening of the crisis would likely cause sentiment to continue leveling off or to drop back to where it was before the Nazi blitzkrieg.” (One wonders how many isolationists would be screwy enough to consider a German victory “a lessening of the crisis,” on the grounds that it would end the war.)
On the other hand, it surely doesn’t hurt President Roosevelt that another Gallup poll indicates 79% of Americans feel he’s doing a “good job” of handling the war crisis.
DEWEY OR TAFT? OR NEITHER? In Sunday’s Washington Post, columnist Mark Sullivan doesn’t see any clear leads on what will happen at the Republican Convention in five weeks --
“The outcome of the Republican National Convention is almost as uncertain as if no primary had been held; almost as uncertain as if the 1,000 delegates were meeting spontaneously, without previous instruction or commitment. True, Mr. Dewey will have something like three hundred votes on the first ballot, and Mr. Taft something like the same. But in both cases this means little. Either may be nominated -- but also neither may be nominated. Neither has in sight the 200 or so additional delegates necessary to carry him to the 501 which would be a majority....It is a fact, and a significant fact, suggestive of what may happen, that neither of the two leaders, neither Mr. Dewey nor Mr. Taft, ever had the nomination clinched. Neither ever achieved such an impression on the country as made his nomination inevitable. This condition existed from the beginning. It became intensified about May 10. That was the date of the German blitzkrieg into Holland and Belgium -- which event affected much more than the fate of those unhappy countries.”
Mr. Sullivan says the blitzkrieg upset Republican plans for a 1940 campaign based on domestic issues, and created a “changed mood” among the G.O.P. that has opened the way for the emergence of dark horse candidates. He names one -- “A sign of the changed condition is the attention attracted by Wendell Willkie. He was a late entrant. If his strength depended upon delegates accumulated in primaries, he would have practically nothing. Yet in public attention he grows almost sensationally. It is not that this necessarily means much at the convention. But it is clear that if the country and the party had been strongly impressed by any other aspirant, t here would not have been this turning to Mr. Willkie.”
Saturday, June 11, 2016
Thursday, June 9, 2016
Sunday, June 9, 1940
NAZIS ARE 48 MILES FROM PARIS. Today is the fourth day of what some newspapermen now call the Battle of France. Once again, the headlines are full of hope (the banner of Saturday’s New York Herald Tribune reads, “French Lines Still Hold Firm”). But the bulletins make things sound worse this morning. It’s clear from radio reports that after fierce fighting the French have been pushed back from the so-called “Weygand Line” on a sixty-mile front along the Somme and Aisne Rivers, as one million German troops and 3,500 tanks bear down on the Allies in the greatest mechanized assault in history. The center of the thrust has reached the region of Roye and Noyon, 48 miles north of Paris. Also, German tanks are said to have broken through the Channel flank of the French defense at Forges-lex-Eaux, but the Allies are trying to disperse this advance with repeated air assaults by the R.A.F.
One radio report quotes a correspondent as saying German casualties are “appalling.” But Hitler obviously doesn’t care. The Nazis are employing no crafty strategy here -- just what G.H. Archambault in Saturday’s New York Times calls an attempt to “break through French resistance by sheer weight of metal wherever it is deemed possible.” The Germans aren’t publicly making any extravagant claims of victory as of yet. But Sigrid Schultz writes from Berlin in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune that German military experts exude “a growing confidence that the conquest of Paris is but a matter of days.”
We’re nearing a pivotal hour in the European war. It’s a good time to say a prayer for France.
“WEYGAND WEB” SLOWS THE GERMANS. Saturday’s Washington Post has a front-page map showing the defense-of-depth employed by Allied Commander-in-Chief Weygand to keep the Nazis from smashing the Somme-Aisne defense line. It shows a “zone of defensive positions and tank traps” that extends from the front lines all the way south to the Seine and Marne rivers, some sixty miles or so. This “web” appears to be making the Nazis pay a heavy price for their gains.
According to a Saturday Associated Press story, the French high command claims to have “wiped out” every German who crossed the Aisne River east of Soissons, and also to have destroyed some 400 Nazi tanks. This is about a fifth of the number of tanks the Germans started the latest offensive with. And William Shirer said last night in his C.B.S. broadcast that the German press admits that small contingents of French colonial colored troops are fighting with “unbelievable tenacity” in what sounds like guerilla-style campaigning behind the leading edge of the German advance.
The French claim that their efforts held the Germans to just “local gains” in the first three days of the offensive. But it’s been anything but easy. G.H. Archambault’s New York Times account puts it this way -- “When it comes to describing the fighting, adjectives fail -- even superlatives cannot convey any impression of the reality....Hellish is the only word -- manning machine guns and cannon in sweltering heat, stripped to the waist and bathed in perspiration, and firing, ever firing, at the advancing hordes.”
ITALY STILL WAVERING? This week-end there’s another story speculating that Italy might not want to get into the war after all -- at least just yet. This time it’s Sonia Tomara writing from Paris in the New York Herald Tribune, who passes along reports in the French press suggesting that new talks between France and Italy might be possible after all. Mussolini is said to be “impressed” by President Roosevelt’s personal messages to him, and by the notion that Italy’s entry into the war would bring the U.S. closer to the Allies, says Paul Gentizon, the Rome correspondent for Le Temps. Although “French diplomatic circles still believe that Italy will strike at France if Mussolini is sure of Germany’s victory,” Miss Tomara gives four reasons the Duce might decide against war --
“First, America’s pressure on Mussolini to not to allow the conflict to spread to the Mediterranean. ‘The situation in the Mediterranean could take on an entirely new aspect if some American cruisers dropped anchor at Gilbraltar,’ [Gentizon] wrote today....Second, the splendid resistance of the Allied troops in Flanders and now on the Somme and Aisne Rivers. ‘Il Duce apparently thinks that Germany failed to find the solution it had sought in Flanders or in France, and that the hour has therefore not yet come for Italy to intervene. The Italian enigma is much more complex than some had imagined. It may not be solved until the end of the formidable battle raging in France,’ Gentizon wrote. Third, the change in Premier Paul Reynaud’s cabinet, from which he eliminated Edouard Daladier, the man who once said France would never give anything to Italy....Fourth, Mussolini’s wavering in setting fire to the Mediterranean basin is attributed by some French diplomats and writers to the complex situation in this part of the world. It is pointed out that war between the great Mediterranean powers might arouse the Arab world, cause an eruption of the Balkan volcano and finally bring intervention of the Soviet Union in the Mediterranean – an intervention Il Duce has always dreaded.”
WOULD CONCESSIONS HELP? Miss Tomara adds in her New York Herald Tribune story that the French government’s firing of Daladier “was followed by an obviously conciliatory gesture which Reynaud made in last night’s radio speech. ‘There is no nation,’ he said, ‘with whom France could not settle by peaceful means any divergence of interests.’” This sounds like the French might be willing to listen, or perhaps even assent, to some of Italy’s demands for concessions in certain French colonies, such as Djibouti and Tunisia.
Would it be worth colonial concessions to keep Italy from fighting alongside the Nazis? I’d say the answer is an unqualified “no.” There’s no reason to believe appeasement would work with Mussolini any more than it did with Hitler. Besides, as Miss Tomara’s diplomatic sources point out, Italy will jump into the war if German victory looks certain. It’s hard to see how all the concessions in the world would stop Mussolini from joining the fight in that event -- or how a French refusal to make concessions would prod the Duce into war if a Nazi triumph appeared to be in doubt.
A PAIR OF OPTIMISTIC NOTES. After listening to this morning’s worrying radio reports, it’s a tonic to read the editorials in the current number of the New Republic. There, it’s suggested that reports of recent Nazi victories shouldn’t be considered reason to consider the Allies down for the count. There’s a lot going on that we don’t know about, the editors say --
“It is not just whistling in the dark to point out that while the way the war is going at present looks as bad as possible for the Allies, there could be a startling overturn within a short time. The first thing to remember is that, just as we have been told only part of the truth ever since the war began, now at its crisis even less is being revealed. Censorship on both sides is worked overtime...An advancing army always seems more invincible to the civilian than it does to the trained and veteran commanders at the top What may look like a confused rout on the surface doubtless assumes a more intelligible form on the general headquarters maps.”
Morever, the New Republic claims hopefully that the Nazis might actually have given up their best chance of winning the war by gambling on an all-out offensive -- “A successful defensive struggle, in which German armies never set foot on French soil, might have meant Hitler’s victory in the long run, if it gave him time to organize Balkan and Soviet resources. A war of movement such as has developed is the only kind that offers an opportunity for the phase of warfare at which the French are past masters – a great counter-offensive that can turn apparent defeat into victory. Moreover, it uses up German resources much more rapidly than a stalemate....It is just what the more aggressive military men in both France and England wanted him to attempt.”
IS THE “FIFTH COLUMN MENACE” EXAGGERATED? Barnet Nover thinks so, and explains why in his Washington Post column on Friday. Americans panicking about fifth columnists in our midst, he writes, forget that there are four other columns as well, and their dirty work is what matters most --
“If the battle raging along the Somme and the Aisne rivers in France results in a German defeat or even a stalemate which will give the Allies the time they so desperately need to equal Germany in mechanized equipment and air power, no nation in this hemisphere will have to worry about its fifth column. But if the opposite proves true, if the French army is smashed and Hitler triumphs, action against fifth column elements will obviously not be enough to preserve the internal stability and protect the external security of American countries. A healthy body does not mean, physicians tell us, a body free of germs. The microbes of a hundred diseases lurk constantly in every constitution, however robust. But these microbes only become a danger when resistance is weakened.”
One radio report quotes a correspondent as saying German casualties are “appalling.” But Hitler obviously doesn’t care. The Nazis are employing no crafty strategy here -- just what G.H. Archambault in Saturday’s New York Times calls an attempt to “break through French resistance by sheer weight of metal wherever it is deemed possible.” The Germans aren’t publicly making any extravagant claims of victory as of yet. But Sigrid Schultz writes from Berlin in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune that German military experts exude “a growing confidence that the conquest of Paris is but a matter of days.”
We’re nearing a pivotal hour in the European war. It’s a good time to say a prayer for France.
“WEYGAND WEB” SLOWS THE GERMANS. Saturday’s Washington Post has a front-page map showing the defense-of-depth employed by Allied Commander-in-Chief Weygand to keep the Nazis from smashing the Somme-Aisne defense line. It shows a “zone of defensive positions and tank traps” that extends from the front lines all the way south to the Seine and Marne rivers, some sixty miles or so. This “web” appears to be making the Nazis pay a heavy price for their gains.
According to a Saturday Associated Press story, the French high command claims to have “wiped out” every German who crossed the Aisne River east of Soissons, and also to have destroyed some 400 Nazi tanks. This is about a fifth of the number of tanks the Germans started the latest offensive with. And William Shirer said last night in his C.B.S. broadcast that the German press admits that small contingents of French colonial colored troops are fighting with “unbelievable tenacity” in what sounds like guerilla-style campaigning behind the leading edge of the German advance.
The French claim that their efforts held the Germans to just “local gains” in the first three days of the offensive. But it’s been anything but easy. G.H. Archambault’s New York Times account puts it this way -- “When it comes to describing the fighting, adjectives fail -- even superlatives cannot convey any impression of the reality....Hellish is the only word -- manning machine guns and cannon in sweltering heat, stripped to the waist and bathed in perspiration, and firing, ever firing, at the advancing hordes.”
ITALY STILL WAVERING? This week-end there’s another story speculating that Italy might not want to get into the war after all -- at least just yet. This time it’s Sonia Tomara writing from Paris in the New York Herald Tribune, who passes along reports in the French press suggesting that new talks between France and Italy might be possible after all. Mussolini is said to be “impressed” by President Roosevelt’s personal messages to him, and by the notion that Italy’s entry into the war would bring the U.S. closer to the Allies, says Paul Gentizon, the Rome correspondent for Le Temps. Although “French diplomatic circles still believe that Italy will strike at France if Mussolini is sure of Germany’s victory,” Miss Tomara gives four reasons the Duce might decide against war --
“First, America’s pressure on Mussolini to not to allow the conflict to spread to the Mediterranean. ‘The situation in the Mediterranean could take on an entirely new aspect if some American cruisers dropped anchor at Gilbraltar,’ [Gentizon] wrote today....Second, the splendid resistance of the Allied troops in Flanders and now on the Somme and Aisne Rivers. ‘Il Duce apparently thinks that Germany failed to find the solution it had sought in Flanders or in France, and that the hour has therefore not yet come for Italy to intervene. The Italian enigma is much more complex than some had imagined. It may not be solved until the end of the formidable battle raging in France,’ Gentizon wrote. Third, the change in Premier Paul Reynaud’s cabinet, from which he eliminated Edouard Daladier, the man who once said France would never give anything to Italy....Fourth, Mussolini’s wavering in setting fire to the Mediterranean basin is attributed by some French diplomats and writers to the complex situation in this part of the world. It is pointed out that war between the great Mediterranean powers might arouse the Arab world, cause an eruption of the Balkan volcano and finally bring intervention of the Soviet Union in the Mediterranean – an intervention Il Duce has always dreaded.”
WOULD CONCESSIONS HELP? Miss Tomara adds in her New York Herald Tribune story that the French government’s firing of Daladier “was followed by an obviously conciliatory gesture which Reynaud made in last night’s radio speech. ‘There is no nation,’ he said, ‘with whom France could not settle by peaceful means any divergence of interests.’” This sounds like the French might be willing to listen, or perhaps even assent, to some of Italy’s demands for concessions in certain French colonies, such as Djibouti and Tunisia.
Would it be worth colonial concessions to keep Italy from fighting alongside the Nazis? I’d say the answer is an unqualified “no.” There’s no reason to believe appeasement would work with Mussolini any more than it did with Hitler. Besides, as Miss Tomara’s diplomatic sources point out, Italy will jump into the war if German victory looks certain. It’s hard to see how all the concessions in the world would stop Mussolini from joining the fight in that event -- or how a French refusal to make concessions would prod the Duce into war if a Nazi triumph appeared to be in doubt.
A PAIR OF OPTIMISTIC NOTES. After listening to this morning’s worrying radio reports, it’s a tonic to read the editorials in the current number of the New Republic. There, it’s suggested that reports of recent Nazi victories shouldn’t be considered reason to consider the Allies down for the count. There’s a lot going on that we don’t know about, the editors say --
“It is not just whistling in the dark to point out that while the way the war is going at present looks as bad as possible for the Allies, there could be a startling overturn within a short time. The first thing to remember is that, just as we have been told only part of the truth ever since the war began, now at its crisis even less is being revealed. Censorship on both sides is worked overtime...An advancing army always seems more invincible to the civilian than it does to the trained and veteran commanders at the top What may look like a confused rout on the surface doubtless assumes a more intelligible form on the general headquarters maps.”
Morever, the New Republic claims hopefully that the Nazis might actually have given up their best chance of winning the war by gambling on an all-out offensive -- “A successful defensive struggle, in which German armies never set foot on French soil, might have meant Hitler’s victory in the long run, if it gave him time to organize Balkan and Soviet resources. A war of movement such as has developed is the only kind that offers an opportunity for the phase of warfare at which the French are past masters – a great counter-offensive that can turn apparent defeat into victory. Moreover, it uses up German resources much more rapidly than a stalemate....It is just what the more aggressive military men in both France and England wanted him to attempt.”
IS THE “FIFTH COLUMN MENACE” EXAGGERATED? Barnet Nover thinks so, and explains why in his Washington Post column on Friday. Americans panicking about fifth columnists in our midst, he writes, forget that there are four other columns as well, and their dirty work is what matters most --
“If the battle raging along the Somme and the Aisne rivers in France results in a German defeat or even a stalemate which will give the Allies the time they so desperately need to equal Germany in mechanized equipment and air power, no nation in this hemisphere will have to worry about its fifth column. But if the opposite proves true, if the French army is smashed and Hitler triumphs, action against fifth column elements will obviously not be enough to preserve the internal stability and protect the external security of American countries. A healthy body does not mean, physicians tell us, a body free of germs. The microbes of a hundred diseases lurk constantly in every constitution, however robust. But these microbes only become a danger when resistance is weakened.”
Monday, June 6, 2016
Thursday, June 6, 1940
GERMANY RENEWS THE OFFENSIVE. This morning’s radio reports say the reinforced German armies in France are attacking French defensive positions along a 125-mile front bounded by the Somme and Aisne Rivers. The German high command claims Nazi troops have crossed the Somme at several points between Abbeville and Sedan. But French reports claim that German armored spearheads were “trapped in a new system of defense” created by General Weygand and have been annihilated.
C.B.S.’s William Shirer broadcast last night from Berlin that the new German drive seems to be coming from the right flank, hitting the French on the left. This, he said, would be a reversion to the old Schlieffen plan. If this is the case, then the Nazi armies involved in the new attack would swing down in a wide circle, striking at Paris from the northwest. But Mr. Shirer admits “we were all fooled last time on German strategy, and I’m not going to say any more.”
The Germans are not being bashful. Hitler’s order for the day on Wednesday, according to the United Press, proclaimed that “beginning today, the Western Front goes into action again....The battle will be carried to the annihilation of the enemies in power in Paris and London.”
ITALY MOBILIZES, THEN DELAYS. It’s been reported for days now that Italian entry into the war is now considered inevitable, and that it will happen very soon. But it still hasn’t happened. Herbert Matthews writes in Wednesday’s New York Times that Italy’s Council of Ministers met Tuesday and “passed a series of war measures without, however, disturbing Italy’s precarious balance on the edge of intervention.” Mr. Matthews describes the entire nation as living through a series of ups and downs reflecting “hesitancy in the highest quarters” over a decision for war. Mussolini has been on the verge of deciding several times, but then has postponed it.
President Roosevelt’s lobbying to keep Italy out of the war might be influencing the Italians. Chesly Manly in the Chicago Tribune cites “a high administration source” as disclosing that Italo-American negotiations have been going on now for two weeks and are continuing. In at least one instance, Roosevelt and the Duce have spoken directly by trans-Atlantic telephone, the Tribune reports. But if it’s true what Mussolini is demanding in return for continued nonbelligerency (a French turnover of Tunis, other French colonial possessions, and parts of France itself to Italy), these negotiations surely won’t go anywhere.
The Times story doesn’t make any such claims, but does report that President Roosevelt has made as-yet-undisclosed “concrete proposals” to Mussolini.
“WE SHALL NEVER SURRENDER.” If Hitler has any smug notions about Britain crumbling in the face of Nazi pressure, without giving battle, let him pay heed to Prime Minister Churchill’s speech to the House of Commons Tuesday, as recorded in Wednesday’s New York Times --
“We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France; we shall fight on the seas and oceans; we shall fight with growing strength and confidence in the air; we shall fight on beaches; we shall fight on landing grounds; we shall fight in fields, streets, and hills. We shall never surrender and even if – which I do not for a moment believe -- this island or a large part of it is subjugated or starving, then our empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, will carry on the struggle until in God’s good time the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the liberation and rescue of the old.”
As Raymond Daniell in the Times’ front-page story, “These were brave and prescient words, uttered by a man in whose veins flows British and American blood....None who heard the Prime Minister, who foresaw it all and warned the nation and the world where appeasement was leading, could doubt the dire extremity in which this country found itself today, with no effective Allies save France, which lies partly under the invader’s boot, and with Italy threatening the lifelines of the British Empire in the Mediterranean.”
Meanwhile, Edward Angly in the New York Herald Tribune says Churchill was “at the top of his eloquent form” in the speech. The entire transcript is well worth reading.
A PLEA FOR AID? Characteristically, the Chicago Tribune story, by Joseph Cerutti, paints the Churchill speech in a more sinister light, describing it as an “appeal for American aid” and a call for the U.S. to “discard her neutrality” in the wake of the Flanders debacle. Huh? There’s a difference between an “appeal” and an expression of faith and hope. This speech was definitely the latter. And in any case, the Prime Minister did make it clear that Britain would fight “if necessary for years; if necessary, alone.” To twist these gallant words into a plea for the U.S. to bail out a faltering British and French cause is a misdeed that could be called...sinister.
“WARS ARE NOT WON BY EVACUATIONS.” It’s a good thing, too, that Churchill put the Dunkerque evaluation in perspective. Earlier this week the British press began crowing about the Allies’ success in rescuing the British Expeditionary Force as if it were a major victory of some kind. Anthony Eden’s remarks earlier in the week were along these lines, too. It is exactly the tone that Chamberlain used in his last days in office when he ludicrously claimed the Germans, after utterly thrashing the Allies in two-weeks of fighting in Norway, hadn’t yet “won” anything there. But Churchill didn’t mince words Tuesday and portrayed Dunkerque in just the right respect --
“We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations....our thankfulness at the escape of our army with so many men, and the thankfulness of their loved ones, who passed through an agonizing week, must not blind us to the fact that what happened in France and Belgium is a colossal military diaster....We must expect another blow to be struck almost immediately at us or at France.”
FINAL TALLY IN FLANDERS. The Churchill speech puts the total number of Allied soldiers rescued at Dunkerque at 335,000 men. According to the New York Herald Tribune, British losses in the Flanders fighting totalled over 30,000 troops killed, wounded, or missing. The Allies claim the Germans lost half a million soldiers in the fighting, but the German high command lists its casualties at about 65,000 killed, wounded, and missing.
C.B.S.’s William Shirer broadcast last night from Berlin that the new German drive seems to be coming from the right flank, hitting the French on the left. This, he said, would be a reversion to the old Schlieffen plan. If this is the case, then the Nazi armies involved in the new attack would swing down in a wide circle, striking at Paris from the northwest. But Mr. Shirer admits “we were all fooled last time on German strategy, and I’m not going to say any more.”
The Germans are not being bashful. Hitler’s order for the day on Wednesday, according to the United Press, proclaimed that “beginning today, the Western Front goes into action again....The battle will be carried to the annihilation of the enemies in power in Paris and London.”
ITALY MOBILIZES, THEN DELAYS. It’s been reported for days now that Italian entry into the war is now considered inevitable, and that it will happen very soon. But it still hasn’t happened. Herbert Matthews writes in Wednesday’s New York Times that Italy’s Council of Ministers met Tuesday and “passed a series of war measures without, however, disturbing Italy’s precarious balance on the edge of intervention.” Mr. Matthews describes the entire nation as living through a series of ups and downs reflecting “hesitancy in the highest quarters” over a decision for war. Mussolini has been on the verge of deciding several times, but then has postponed it.
President Roosevelt’s lobbying to keep Italy out of the war might be influencing the Italians. Chesly Manly in the Chicago Tribune cites “a high administration source” as disclosing that Italo-American negotiations have been going on now for two weeks and are continuing. In at least one instance, Roosevelt and the Duce have spoken directly by trans-Atlantic telephone, the Tribune reports. But if it’s true what Mussolini is demanding in return for continued nonbelligerency (a French turnover of Tunis, other French colonial possessions, and parts of France itself to Italy), these negotiations surely won’t go anywhere.
The Times story doesn’t make any such claims, but does report that President Roosevelt has made as-yet-undisclosed “concrete proposals” to Mussolini.
“WE SHALL NEVER SURRENDER.” If Hitler has any smug notions about Britain crumbling in the face of Nazi pressure, without giving battle, let him pay heed to Prime Minister Churchill’s speech to the House of Commons Tuesday, as recorded in Wednesday’s New York Times --
“We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France; we shall fight on the seas and oceans; we shall fight with growing strength and confidence in the air; we shall fight on beaches; we shall fight on landing grounds; we shall fight in fields, streets, and hills. We shall never surrender and even if – which I do not for a moment believe -- this island or a large part of it is subjugated or starving, then our empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, will carry on the struggle until in God’s good time the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the liberation and rescue of the old.”
As Raymond Daniell in the Times’ front-page story, “These were brave and prescient words, uttered by a man in whose veins flows British and American blood....None who heard the Prime Minister, who foresaw it all and warned the nation and the world where appeasement was leading, could doubt the dire extremity in which this country found itself today, with no effective Allies save France, which lies partly under the invader’s boot, and with Italy threatening the lifelines of the British Empire in the Mediterranean.”
Meanwhile, Edward Angly in the New York Herald Tribune says Churchill was “at the top of his eloquent form” in the speech. The entire transcript is well worth reading.
A PLEA FOR AID? Characteristically, the Chicago Tribune story, by Joseph Cerutti, paints the Churchill speech in a more sinister light, describing it as an “appeal for American aid” and a call for the U.S. to “discard her neutrality” in the wake of the Flanders debacle. Huh? There’s a difference between an “appeal” and an expression of faith and hope. This speech was definitely the latter. And in any case, the Prime Minister did make it clear that Britain would fight “if necessary for years; if necessary, alone.” To twist these gallant words into a plea for the U.S. to bail out a faltering British and French cause is a misdeed that could be called...sinister.
“WARS ARE NOT WON BY EVACUATIONS.” It’s a good thing, too, that Churchill put the Dunkerque evaluation in perspective. Earlier this week the British press began crowing about the Allies’ success in rescuing the British Expeditionary Force as if it were a major victory of some kind. Anthony Eden’s remarks earlier in the week were along these lines, too. It is exactly the tone that Chamberlain used in his last days in office when he ludicrously claimed the Germans, after utterly thrashing the Allies in two-weeks of fighting in Norway, hadn’t yet “won” anything there. But Churchill didn’t mince words Tuesday and portrayed Dunkerque in just the right respect --
“We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations....our thankfulness at the escape of our army with so many men, and the thankfulness of their loved ones, who passed through an agonizing week, must not blind us to the fact that what happened in France and Belgium is a colossal military diaster....We must expect another blow to be struck almost immediately at us or at France.”
FINAL TALLY IN FLANDERS. The Churchill speech puts the total number of Allied soldiers rescued at Dunkerque at 335,000 men. According to the New York Herald Tribune, British losses in the Flanders fighting totalled over 30,000 troops killed, wounded, or missing. The Allies claim the Germans lost half a million soldiers in the fighting, but the German high command lists its casualties at about 65,000 killed, wounded, and missing.
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