TROUBLE IN THE BALKANS. The Germans continue to bomb and strafe Britain, but the real drama in the war this week appears to be building in southeastern Europe. The Associated Press reports that Yugoslav Prime Minister Cvetkovic is defiantly rebuffing German and Italian demands that Yugoslavia abandon her neutrality and grant the Axis military concessions. The A.P. quotes the Prime Minister as saying that his country "was created in blood and only that way can territory be taken away from her." Meanwhile, the Chicago Tribune’s Monday banner headline screams, "Red Troops Mass On Danube," and the accompanying story talks of "almost feverish military activity" by Soviet officers in the Russian-held Rumanian town of Cernauti. Radio reports say this morning that Turkey has ordered her nationals out of Rumania by Nov. 1 and is pledging aid to Greece in case the Greeks are attacked.
The European war is looking more and more like a brush fire spreading out of control. And all the U.S. can do about it is give as much help as possible to Britain. But the British are helpless as well if Hitler and Mussolini now decide they want to blow up the Balkan states.
WHAT’S HITLER UP TO IN RUMANIA? A New York Herald Tribune editorial Monday speculates on the possibilities --
"If Germany plans an offensive Rumania would furnish a base for operations in several directions. Direct pressure could be exerted on Yugoslavia. This might please Italy, and contribute to a further co-ordination of the Balkans under the Axis, but would have little immediate effect on the real war against Great Britain. Or the assistance of Bulgaria might be secured for an attack on Greece or Turkey. Success in this quarter would place the Axis in complete control of the northeastern shores of the Mediterranean, and enable them to strike through Syria and Palestine toward Suez at the same time that Marshal Graziani was attacking Egypt from the west. A drive through Turkey, moreover, might be the opening wedge in an attack on the Irak oil fields."
But the Herald Tribune editors are dubious about all of those options -- "These are grandiose conceptions, bristling with military and geographical difficulties. For one thing, a German attack on Turkey would be the most flagrant insult that Hitler could offer to his comrade in the Kremlin. A strong power at the Dardanelles is the last thing the Russians wish to see – unless that power is Russia. Morever, to take on several new, if not particularly strong opponents in a terrain ill suited for mechanized warfare, does not seem a good risk for Germany in view of the relatively small stakes involved. The Nazis would be taking a roundabout and dangerous course to attack the British Empire in an area which is undoubtedly important, but not vital."
GERMANY WILL LIKELY GO FOR BROKE. What the Herald Tribune editors forget is that Hitler is, in columnist Barnet Nover's words, "a man in a hurry." Since the R.A.F. is now making a land invasion of Britain much costlier than anticipated, and perhaps impossible, the Fuehrer appears to be turning to a policy of strangling the British Empire by cutting off her oil and access to strategic ports and waterways. He doesn’t take Russia’s military seriously -- and considering the relative performance of the Red Army and the Reichswehr this past year, he’s probably right to discount the Soviets. Stalin knows he can’t risk a war with Hitler, and will stay on the sidelines, even if he has to swallow his pride. So, the Germans will almost surely launch an assault this fall on the Suez Canal and the oil regions of the Near East. The scariest thing about such a strategy is that Germany’s potential adversaries -- principally Turkey, Russia, Yugoslavia -- are disunited and in a position to be picked off or cowed into neutrality one by one. It’s a situation very much like the Western Front last winter, and we know how that turned out.
GERMAN-RUSSIAN RELATIONS GOING DOWNHILL. On the other hand, a remarkable piece by C.L. Sulzberger in Sunday’s New York Times indicates just how much things have soured between Hitler and Stalin. The Times story says that Germany has decided to Nazify the Balkans, but a "nervous" Russia is indicating she won’t surrender her own expansionist aspirations in Europe, and won’t sit still for Germany to become a "far more immediate threat" to Soviet security interests in southeastern Europe --
"Behind the facade of friendship the struggle continues in the lands the Axis and Soviet systems encircle. While the Kremlin placates the Reich, Rumania, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria are flooded with [Soviet] pamphlets attacking German and Italian imperialism and making no mention of the British. The Italians talk of the Russian menace. The Germans boast that when the day comes the Reichswehr will go through the Soviet Army ‘as a knife cuts a potato.’"
What’s really startling in all this is the casual manner in which the region’s diplomats now anticipate a war between the two giant dictatorships -- "Ever since the Vienna 'Diktat' and the Cralova corollary which further mutilated Rumania for the sake of Bulgaria many Balkan statesmen have been convinced that a Russo-German struggle was imminent. Count Czaky, Foreign Minister of Hungary, told the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee that Hungary must prepare soon for 'a possible blood sacrifice.' All sorts of rumors kept issuing from harassed Rumania about frontier incidents along the Pruth. It is now more than ever clear that the first Russian soldier overstepping the Soviet’s present limits in Central Europe would be looked on as a trespasser on the Reich’s territory and the war would be on."
Saturday, October 15, 2016
Thursday, October 13, 2016
Sunday, October 13, 1940
NAZIS MOVE INTO RUMANIA. Rumania has been moving ever-closer to Axis domination -- the already-supplicant King Carol was overthrown last month in favor of a military regime under General Antonescu, who in the New Republic's words has been "trying to out-Hitler Hitler" in restrictions on Jews and stamping out political rights. And now, as C.L. Sulzberger reports in Saturday’s New York Times, German troops and warplanes are now rushing into Rumania, as the nation’s dwindling British colony prepares to pull out of the country completely. The United Press says that over 20,000 Nazi "training" troops have seized strategic positions throughout the country.
Ostensibly the German move is prompted by Rumania’s request that the Axis intervene to resolve continuing tensions along the new, German-decreed borders between Rumania and Hungary. No one believes this, of course, but hats off to the Turkish government for having the nerve to say so in plain language. According to the Associated Press, the official Turkish radio carried a statement Friday which solidified Turkey’s status as a non-belligerent ally of Britain and made it clear the Turks had no qualms about turning belligerent if the Nazi move into Hungary turns out to be a prelude to a German attack through Turkey and Syria --
"If it is the German intention to penetrate Egypt in this direction they surely know this road is not easy...This road across Anatolia is guarded by 2,000,000 bayonets. Such a move on Germany’s part would create many political complications and meet with very strong resistance."
It looks increasingly like the focus of the war for the next few months is going to shift from the British Isles to southeastern Europe, the Near East, and north Africa. And if Hitler wins the battles shaping up in those realms, he might in time gain such an economic stranglehold on the British Empire that an invasion of England would not even be needed to subdue his last great enemy.
WILLKIE LOOKS TO THE "FINAL DRIVE." Philip Kinsley tries to be upbeat in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune about Wendell Willkie’s prospects in the remainder of the campaign --
"Wendell L. Willkie enters the final weeks of the Presidential race confident that his cause will win altho aware that at present the states with big blocks of electoral votes are about evenly divided. The swing, particularly in the industrial centers, has began, he thinks, toward the Republican ticket, as a result of his constant preaching against the future financial insecurity of the New Deal methods as applied to social security and other labor gains on the books."
I’d love to know of any surveys where the Tribune is finding any "big blocks" of electoral votes "evenly divided" -- the last Gallup poll showed President Roosevelt ahead in forty-one states with a total of 499 electoral votes.
JAPAN QUIETS THE WAR TALK. Barnet Nover notes in his Washington Post column Friday that soon after Japanese newspapers thundered about the "inevitability" of war with America in the wake of the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo pact, Foreign Minister Matsuoka is holding out "something resembling an olive branch" to the U.S. There are some sound reasons for these second thoughts in Tokyo, Mr. Nover writes --
"If the United States and Great Britain should decide to place a complete embargo on all exports to and imports from Japan, the country’s industrial plant, and by the same token her war-making capacity, would soon be forced to operate at a very reduced pace. There would be no pig iron and petroleum from the United States, no nickel and lead from Canada, no wool from Australia, no tin and rubber from Malaya. no cotton and phosphate rock from Egypt. Her peace-time industries would, at the same time, be deprived of an overwhelming percentage of the markets still open to them....A war by Japan against the United States and Great Britain would have to be won speedily, before the island empire’s supplies began to run out."
Mr. Nover acknowledges that a program of economic sanctions against Japan by the U.S. and Britain might lead to "a Japanese attack on the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, Hongkong and the International Settlement in Shanghai. Such a possibility must be taken into account. But even if Japan came into full and unhampered possession of those areas, and she could not do so without a struggle, the Japanese problem of supplies would remain extremely serious....There is no desire in this country to go to war with Japan. But there appears also to be no intention of allowing ourselves to be intimidated. This fact, apparently, has begun to trickle into the consciousness of the powers-that-be at Tokyo. That is why yesterday’s bellowing has been followed by today’s cooing."
BOMB SHELTER MANNERS. According to Larry Rue in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune, authorities in Birmingham, England, have drawn up a code of manners for behavior in air raid shelters. Mr. Rue writes that the city has banned from the shelters "singing, shouting, scattering of litter and people who drink too freely or bring countless cats with them."
Ostensibly the German move is prompted by Rumania’s request that the Axis intervene to resolve continuing tensions along the new, German-decreed borders between Rumania and Hungary. No one believes this, of course, but hats off to the Turkish government for having the nerve to say so in plain language. According to the Associated Press, the official Turkish radio carried a statement Friday which solidified Turkey’s status as a non-belligerent ally of Britain and made it clear the Turks had no qualms about turning belligerent if the Nazi move into Hungary turns out to be a prelude to a German attack through Turkey and Syria --
"If it is the German intention to penetrate Egypt in this direction they surely know this road is not easy...This road across Anatolia is guarded by 2,000,000 bayonets. Such a move on Germany’s part would create many political complications and meet with very strong resistance."
It looks increasingly like the focus of the war for the next few months is going to shift from the British Isles to southeastern Europe, the Near East, and north Africa. And if Hitler wins the battles shaping up in those realms, he might in time gain such an economic stranglehold on the British Empire that an invasion of England would not even be needed to subdue his last great enemy.
WILLKIE LOOKS TO THE "FINAL DRIVE." Philip Kinsley tries to be upbeat in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune about Wendell Willkie’s prospects in the remainder of the campaign --
"Wendell L. Willkie enters the final weeks of the Presidential race confident that his cause will win altho aware that at present the states with big blocks of electoral votes are about evenly divided. The swing, particularly in the industrial centers, has began, he thinks, toward the Republican ticket, as a result of his constant preaching against the future financial insecurity of the New Deal methods as applied to social security and other labor gains on the books."
I’d love to know of any surveys where the Tribune is finding any "big blocks" of electoral votes "evenly divided" -- the last Gallup poll showed President Roosevelt ahead in forty-one states with a total of 499 electoral votes.
JAPAN QUIETS THE WAR TALK. Barnet Nover notes in his Washington Post column Friday that soon after Japanese newspapers thundered about the "inevitability" of war with America in the wake of the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo pact, Foreign Minister Matsuoka is holding out "something resembling an olive branch" to the U.S. There are some sound reasons for these second thoughts in Tokyo, Mr. Nover writes --
"If the United States and Great Britain should decide to place a complete embargo on all exports to and imports from Japan, the country’s industrial plant, and by the same token her war-making capacity, would soon be forced to operate at a very reduced pace. There would be no pig iron and petroleum from the United States, no nickel and lead from Canada, no wool from Australia, no tin and rubber from Malaya. no cotton and phosphate rock from Egypt. Her peace-time industries would, at the same time, be deprived of an overwhelming percentage of the markets still open to them....A war by Japan against the United States and Great Britain would have to be won speedily, before the island empire’s supplies began to run out."
Mr. Nover acknowledges that a program of economic sanctions against Japan by the U.S. and Britain might lead to "a Japanese attack on the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, Hongkong and the International Settlement in Shanghai. Such a possibility must be taken into account. But even if Japan came into full and unhampered possession of those areas, and she could not do so without a struggle, the Japanese problem of supplies would remain extremely serious....There is no desire in this country to go to war with Japan. But there appears also to be no intention of allowing ourselves to be intimidated. This fact, apparently, has begun to trickle into the consciousness of the powers-that-be at Tokyo. That is why yesterday’s bellowing has been followed by today’s cooing."
BOMB SHELTER MANNERS. According to Larry Rue in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune, authorities in Birmingham, England, have drawn up a code of manners for behavior in air raid shelters. Mr. Rue writes that the city has banned from the shelters "singing, shouting, scattering of litter and people who drink too freely or bring countless cats with them."
Monday, October 10, 2016
Thursday, October 10, 1940
THE BIGGEST RAIDS ON BRITAIN YET. A hundred districts in Britain hit with bombs, including thirty in London, according to the Associated Press. Robert F. Post of the New York Times calls it the capital’s "worst day of the war." He says the Midlands and Liverpool were also heavily hit. The Times story adds that "the almost continuous assault, coming on the heels of Monday night’s longest alert to date, when buildings all over the metropolis crashed, added up to what was regarded as certainly one of the most destructive periods in the siege of London." So much for the talk of last week of a "lull" in the bombing, the invasion being called off, etc. The British Isles are still very much in danger.
On the other hand, Edward Murrow said in his latest talk from London on C.B.S. that the shower of explosives, oil bombs and incendiaries didn’t have the devastating effect that Germans were hoping for -- "what a puny effort is this to burn a great city." He paid special tribute to London’s firemen, a hundred of whom have given their lives in the past month to make possible a routine phrase in the morning’s war communiques --"All the fires were quickly brought under control."
A "GENERAL CRISIS" IN THE FAR EAST? As expected, the British have announced plans to re-open the Burma road on Oct. 18. In contrast to an earlier warning in a Tokyo newspaper that doing so would lead to war, Hugh Byas reports in Wednesday’s New York Times that the Japanese press "in unanimous chorus finds the reopening of the Burma road just what had been expected and minimizes its effects." The Roosevelt Administration, on the other hand, appears to be playing things up -- Secretary of State Hull has advised the 16,000 Americans living in the Far East to leave immediately. Britain’s ambassador to the U.S., Lord Lothian, has been ordered to cancel a planned leave, and explained to the press his superiors believe "there might be a general crisis" involving Japan. Wilfrid Fleisher of the New York Herald Tribune says the Japanese are blaming the U.S. and Britain more or less co-equally, which means that in a crisis the two English-speaking nations will be treated as a formal alliance, even though they’re not. Not yet, anyway.
The Chicago Tribune goes farther than the Japanese press -- it blames the Roosevelt Administration entirely for the prospect of a Far East crisis. Hardly have the Tribune’s isolationist rantings been crazier than in Wednesday’s editions, where Walter Trohan’s front-page "news" story begins with these words -- "Government officials moved on many fronts today to bring what they described as the ‘far eastern crisis’ nearer, recalling that election day is less than a month away." The headline -- "New Deal Stirs Up ‘War Crisis’ Over Far East." Considering this is the news coverage, you can guess how incendiary the editorial is. And incendiary it is -- "If the Japanese yield before his belligerent acts and threats, Mr. Roosevelt will have a diplomatic victory to place before the voters on election day. If the Japanese show no signs of yielding he will he will hope to have whipped up the war fever in this country and that, so he reckons, will help him also....for the furthering of his ambition to be the first President ever elected to a third term, is deliberately risking a war against a power with which we have had profitable commercial relations."
There you have it. Not a word about Japan’s years of aggression in China, her threats against Indo-China and the Dutch East Indies, or what it would mean to U.S. security to have a Hitler ally running virtually the entire Far East. The shameful thing, to the Tribune, is that the President has ruined our "profitable commercial relations" with a fascistic empire, i.e., we’re no longer selling them the bullets they require to commit their murders. Do even the most primitive notions of morality have any place in the worldview of the isolationist crowd?
NO SURPRISE HERE. From the United Press on Friday --
"Japanese authorities indicated today that they might demand additional airdromes in Indo-China and a ‘credit loan’ to the Japanese army to support Japanese forces in the country. French officials asserted that the Japanese were overstepping the original terms of the agreement, which gave them airports in Indo-China and facilities for garrisoning troops, and said that the Japanese seemed aiming at bringing all of Tonking, the northern part of Indo-China, under their control. The Japanese already have concentrated forty airplanes at Hanoi and a garrison estimated at 600 mechanized troops. They are stringing military communication lines through Hanoi streets and have laid a cable in Haiphong harbor."
Doubtless Senator Nye or Senator Knutson will tell us that this, too, is all the Administration’s fault.
DOROTHY THOMPSON ENDORSES ROOSEVELT. It’s no doubt causing a stir among the readership of the "arch-Republican" New York Herald Tribune that Miss Thompson bolted ranks and endorsed President Roosevelt in her column Wednesday --
"The President can be a very great man in times of emergency. He was a great man in 1933, and he has been a great man since the overwhelming crisis in June. He has met that crisis, that swift and dangerous disaster, with speed, timing, and immense courage. He is the first President in our whole history to dare to call for conscription in the midst of an election campaign. In that he threw his political career into the scales. If some of Mr. Willkie’s partisans...have their way, this issue of life or death importance to the Nation will yet be exploited against the President and against our common safety....[The President] possesses the greatest single asset that any leader of a democratic state can have in a crisis like this – the confidence of the rank and file of workers that he will not use conscription and defense to betray democracy itself and destroy their freedom. Mr. Willkie might also in time come to have that confidence. I think he would. But he does not have it now. He would have to win it, and in winning it some of his supporters would be his greatest liability. Roosevelt has it, and time is of the essence."
On the other hand, Edward Murrow said in his latest talk from London on C.B.S. that the shower of explosives, oil bombs and incendiaries didn’t have the devastating effect that Germans were hoping for -- "what a puny effort is this to burn a great city." He paid special tribute to London’s firemen, a hundred of whom have given their lives in the past month to make possible a routine phrase in the morning’s war communiques --"All the fires were quickly brought under control."
A "GENERAL CRISIS" IN THE FAR EAST? As expected, the British have announced plans to re-open the Burma road on Oct. 18. In contrast to an earlier warning in a Tokyo newspaper that doing so would lead to war, Hugh Byas reports in Wednesday’s New York Times that the Japanese press "in unanimous chorus finds the reopening of the Burma road just what had been expected and minimizes its effects." The Roosevelt Administration, on the other hand, appears to be playing things up -- Secretary of State Hull has advised the 16,000 Americans living in the Far East to leave immediately. Britain’s ambassador to the U.S., Lord Lothian, has been ordered to cancel a planned leave, and explained to the press his superiors believe "there might be a general crisis" involving Japan. Wilfrid Fleisher of the New York Herald Tribune says the Japanese are blaming the U.S. and Britain more or less co-equally, which means that in a crisis the two English-speaking nations will be treated as a formal alliance, even though they’re not. Not yet, anyway.
The Chicago Tribune goes farther than the Japanese press -- it blames the Roosevelt Administration entirely for the prospect of a Far East crisis. Hardly have the Tribune’s isolationist rantings been crazier than in Wednesday’s editions, where Walter Trohan’s front-page "news" story begins with these words -- "Government officials moved on many fronts today to bring what they described as the ‘far eastern crisis’ nearer, recalling that election day is less than a month away." The headline -- "New Deal Stirs Up ‘War Crisis’ Over Far East." Considering this is the news coverage, you can guess how incendiary the editorial is. And incendiary it is -- "If the Japanese yield before his belligerent acts and threats, Mr. Roosevelt will have a diplomatic victory to place before the voters on election day. If the Japanese show no signs of yielding he will he will hope to have whipped up the war fever in this country and that, so he reckons, will help him also....for the furthering of his ambition to be the first President ever elected to a third term, is deliberately risking a war against a power with which we have had profitable commercial relations."
There you have it. Not a word about Japan’s years of aggression in China, her threats against Indo-China and the Dutch East Indies, or what it would mean to U.S. security to have a Hitler ally running virtually the entire Far East. The shameful thing, to the Tribune, is that the President has ruined our "profitable commercial relations" with a fascistic empire, i.e., we’re no longer selling them the bullets they require to commit their murders. Do even the most primitive notions of morality have any place in the worldview of the isolationist crowd?
NO SURPRISE HERE. From the United Press on Friday --
"Japanese authorities indicated today that they might demand additional airdromes in Indo-China and a ‘credit loan’ to the Japanese army to support Japanese forces in the country. French officials asserted that the Japanese were overstepping the original terms of the agreement, which gave them airports in Indo-China and facilities for garrisoning troops, and said that the Japanese seemed aiming at bringing all of Tonking, the northern part of Indo-China, under their control. The Japanese already have concentrated forty airplanes at Hanoi and a garrison estimated at 600 mechanized troops. They are stringing military communication lines through Hanoi streets and have laid a cable in Haiphong harbor."
Doubtless Senator Nye or Senator Knutson will tell us that this, too, is all the Administration’s fault.
DOROTHY THOMPSON ENDORSES ROOSEVELT. It’s no doubt causing a stir among the readership of the "arch-Republican" New York Herald Tribune that Miss Thompson bolted ranks and endorsed President Roosevelt in her column Wednesday --
"The President can be a very great man in times of emergency. He was a great man in 1933, and he has been a great man since the overwhelming crisis in June. He has met that crisis, that swift and dangerous disaster, with speed, timing, and immense courage. He is the first President in our whole history to dare to call for conscription in the midst of an election campaign. In that he threw his political career into the scales. If some of Mr. Willkie’s partisans...have their way, this issue of life or death importance to the Nation will yet be exploited against the President and against our common safety....[The President] possesses the greatest single asset that any leader of a democratic state can have in a crisis like this – the confidence of the rank and file of workers that he will not use conscription and defense to betray democracy itself and destroy their freedom. Mr. Willkie might also in time come to have that confidence. I think he would. But he does not have it now. He would have to win it, and in winning it some of his supporters would be his greatest liability. Roosevelt has it, and time is of the essence."
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