ANOTHER WEEK, ANOTHER ITALIAN SETBACK. The mountains and narrow gorges of southern Albania are rough going in peacetime, let alone for armies in the middle of a war. Yet still the Greeks advance, and still the Italians retreat. And surrender, too -- this morning’s radio news says another 5,000 ascist soldiers have given up to Greek mountain troops, as the center of the Italian defense line appears to have collapsed. C.L. Sulzberger writes in Monday’s New York Times on the Greek Army’s seizure of Pogradetz and a new Greek advance toward the sea. Pogradetz is well inside western Albania, near the border with Yugoslavia, and its conquest would seem to open the way for Greece’s military to march on Elbasani, which is only twenty miles south of the Albanian capital, Tirana. But the route goes through numerous snow-covered mountains and won’t be traveled quickly, even if Italian resistance continues to crumble.
The Associated Press carries conflicting reports on whether Italian counter-attacks have had any success at stopping the Greek advance, but the Greeks don’t seem worried. And the A.P. has a galling story about Italian propaganda -- the Fascists, who in Greece have been as callous as the Nazis and Soviets at using air power to terror-bomb civilians, have denounced Greek soldiers’ use of bayonets as "a barbarous form of warfare which shows a nation is uncivilized." That Mussolini, he’s such a card.
HITLER’S HAPPY WITH ITALY’S MISERY. A usually reliable reporter offers a startling explanation of just why Germany hasn't sent troops, tanks, and planes to rescue Mussolini from his Greek debacle -- the Germans are secretly happy about it! It seems that Mussolini’s humiliation is viewed as helping to accomplish Nazi political goals elsewhere. Sounds like a big load of sour grapes to me, but Sigrid Schultz of the Chicago Tribune is one of the few genuine news correspondents still writing from Berlin, and she has lots of sources inside the Reich government. So, it’s plausible that Nazi officials really believe this. For what it’s worth here’s the explanation, as relayed by Miss Schultz in Monday’s editions --
"This news [of Greek victories] is received with evidence of satisfaction by quite a number of Germans, who assert that Premier Mussolini started the Greek campaign without Adolf Hitler’s approval. Il Duce felt, these Germans say, that in axis negotiations with Marshal Petain and Vice Premier Pierre Laval of France, the Germans had not insisted energetically enough on big spoils for Italy. Therefore, Mussolini set out to take the points he wanted in Greece. The difficulties he is experiencing, the Germans believe, will make him more ready to accept the German suggestions about the future peace treaty with France. Diplomats understand the draft for this treaty is finished, and Laval and his friends, it is said, hope to be able to induce Marshal Petain to accept the German terms for a ‘definite peace’ between the two countries."
IS JAPAN SEEKING PEACE? Writing from Tokio, Joseph Newman passes along in Monday’s New York Herald Tribune a new round of Japanese claims that they aren’t looking for war with the U.S. -- "Informed naval circles said today the Japanese navy will not disturb the present situation in the Orient unless there occurs an unforeseen incident....[This view] conforms with the government’s mild foreign policy which slowly and cautiously is being disclosed through the apparently challenging attitude of Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka during his first few days in office....Occasional outbursts against America or Britain in the press by government officials are not to be over-emphasized."
On the surface that sounds hopeful, along with the appointment last week of the accommodationist Admiral Nomura as new Japanese ambassador to Washington. But Hugh Byas writes in Sunday’s New York Times that, while Nomura’s appointment may have "relieved the immediate danger" of a U.S.-Japanese showdown, it’s questionable whether Nomura, or any specific Matsuoka-inspired moves toward compromise, can settle the Far East crisis in the face of Japan’s implacably pro-Axis military leadership --
"There is no question that American friendship would be far more acceptable to the majority of the Japanese people than German friendship. Until the alliance with Germany was actually made some important elements here believed that a way out of the China war should be sought in some compromise America could facilitate. Foreign Minister Matsuoka finds himself compelled to play a game requiring superhuman dexterity. Can he revive the idea of a moderate peace with China to which America could contribute? Can he rewrite the Greater East Asia program into one in which Japan will build her prosperity in that sphere without invasion or menaces? In view of what has been happening in the last ten years, including the dissolution of political parties and the organization of the nation on a footing of perpetual mobilization, it is difficult to see what any Foreign Minister can do except play for time."
Saturday, December 3, 2016
Thursday, December 1, 2016
Sunday, December 1, 1940
CHAOS ENGULFS RUMANIA. It’s hard to tell from the week-end papers what exactly is going on in Rumania, but as best I can figure it seems to be an embryonic civil war. The strange part is that both sides of this conflict are in Hitler’s pocket. A Fascist militia, the Iron Guard, is said by the United Press to be fighting in several cities with units of the Rumanian Army. At Ploesti, in the heart of the oil fields, the Guardists have murdered some 2,000 Jews and leftists, reports the U.P. German government sources show no loyalty to Rumanian dictator General Antonescu, even though he has expressed support for the Reich and signed Rumania over to the Axis camp just last month. Now, the Nazis say the General’s authority has virtually broken down. In desperation, the government has ordered several Rumanian Army units to march to Bucharest, where street fighting has killed at least sixty-seven so far.
It’s anyone’s guess exactly how this is all going to come out, but it’s hard to see anyone "winning" in Rumania other than Hitler. He probably doesn’t want to rule directly over the Magyar kingdom, since that might distract his armies from more important duty elsewhere in the Balkans. But since virtually all of the participants in these chaotic battles look to the Nazis for support, there’s little doubt that Germany will be able to continue her "background rule" in Rumania once this mess is settled.
IS A NEGOTIATED PEACE POSSIBLE? Last Wednesday the Chicago Tribune, which has championed the idea of a compromise peace throughout this war, editorialized on the subject again to contend there can be no military solution ("If a present day peace cannot be obtained by any possible compromises it must also be said that there is no more prospect of reaching a favorable decision by arms."). Meanwhile, a series of articles written for the Scripps-Howard papers by Ludwell Denny claims there is an underground clamor in Europe for a negotiated settlement. This is supposedly being blocked by the stubbornness of Prime Minister Churchill and the Roosevelt Administration, but Mr. Denny adds that "conditions may change."
Such a peace would be an unprecedented horror for the United States, not to mention Britain, and nobody’s said it better this past week than New York Herald Tribune columnist Dorothy Thompson, writing in Friday’s editions --
"The negotiated ‘peace’...would deprive the United States of the only friend and ally we have in the world. The Churchill government would fall. Hitler would not make peace with Churchill, even if Churchill would. Not once in his whole lifetime has Hitler carried on a campaign against a personality with whom he hoped to cooperate. When he wanted to subjugate Czecho-Slovakia he turned the press and radio loose on the man he first wanted to eliminate: Benes. Before that, he had done the same thing with Schuschnigg. It is significant that never, not once, did he, or has he personally attacked Stalin. But over and over again he has attacked Churchill and Roosevelt. He wants the elimination of these two men and the policies they represent. The resignation of Churchill would be as essential to peace negotiations as was the resignation of the men above named. Churchill would have to be followed by a pro-Nazi government. A pro-Nazi government in England, entering into a ‘junior partnership’ with the Third Reich, would not make peace in the world. It would further pursue the war. And the moment such a ‘peace’ were settled the United States of America would be in the most hideous danger imaginable. For that moment would be the one in which Japan would enter as actively into the Axis partnership as Italy entered it with the defeat of France."
Miss Thompson’s prescription is bleak, but prudent -- "The only possible hope for the United States to avoid the worst catastrophe in the history of the Nation is to abandon all wishful thinking and realize that we must not allow Britain to lose the war. This does not even mean that we can guarantee that she, or even we, can win it. It means that there will be no peace except a peace which leaves us together -- Britain and America -- in a more powerful world position than it does the Axis."
JAPAN’S LOUSY AIR FORCE. The Greeks continue their advance into Albania, revealing Fascist Italy’s military weaknesses for all the world to see. And the New Republic’s T.R.B. column strikes a hopeful note of a different sort this week -- lobbyists in the nation’s capital pumping for greater aid to China make a convincing case that Japanese air power is the "softest spot" of the Axis. Japanese planes, the argument goes, would be chased from the skies if the U.S. and British air forces worked together to donate a number of "semi-obsolete planes" to Chiang Kai-shek’s military --
"The partisans of China make three points. The first is a familiar one that the Japanese, as a race, are bad airmen, awkward, slow, clumsy. This has a mystic sound, but it is abundantly attested to by foreign military observers. Second, there is every reason to think that Japanese fighting aircraft, in design, are some two years behind those of other major powers. Finally, although Japan may have succeeded in putting aside a store of high-test American aviation gasoline, thise reserve must be small, and, in active fighting, would be quickly exhausted." Chiang’s aviators, say the pro-China crowd, could with a modest number of planes "sweep Japan’s aviation from the skies and carry the attack to her home islands," halting Japan’s push southward toward the Dutch East Indies and Singapore.
Prior to now I would have dismissed this kind of talk as giddily over-optimistic, but with Italy’s recent reverses in the eastern Mediterranean, and Japan's ongoing stalemate in China, it’s at least possible to believe that the warmongering braggadocio of Japanese military leaders might not be backed up by nearly as much power as they imagine it to be.
It’s anyone’s guess exactly how this is all going to come out, but it’s hard to see anyone "winning" in Rumania other than Hitler. He probably doesn’t want to rule directly over the Magyar kingdom, since that might distract his armies from more important duty elsewhere in the Balkans. But since virtually all of the participants in these chaotic battles look to the Nazis for support, there’s little doubt that Germany will be able to continue her "background rule" in Rumania once this mess is settled.
IS A NEGOTIATED PEACE POSSIBLE? Last Wednesday the Chicago Tribune, which has championed the idea of a compromise peace throughout this war, editorialized on the subject again to contend there can be no military solution ("If a present day peace cannot be obtained by any possible compromises it must also be said that there is no more prospect of reaching a favorable decision by arms."). Meanwhile, a series of articles written for the Scripps-Howard papers by Ludwell Denny claims there is an underground clamor in Europe for a negotiated settlement. This is supposedly being blocked by the stubbornness of Prime Minister Churchill and the Roosevelt Administration, but Mr. Denny adds that "conditions may change."
Such a peace would be an unprecedented horror for the United States, not to mention Britain, and nobody’s said it better this past week than New York Herald Tribune columnist Dorothy Thompson, writing in Friday’s editions --
"The negotiated ‘peace’...would deprive the United States of the only friend and ally we have in the world. The Churchill government would fall. Hitler would not make peace with Churchill, even if Churchill would. Not once in his whole lifetime has Hitler carried on a campaign against a personality with whom he hoped to cooperate. When he wanted to subjugate Czecho-Slovakia he turned the press and radio loose on the man he first wanted to eliminate: Benes. Before that, he had done the same thing with Schuschnigg. It is significant that never, not once, did he, or has he personally attacked Stalin. But over and over again he has attacked Churchill and Roosevelt. He wants the elimination of these two men and the policies they represent. The resignation of Churchill would be as essential to peace negotiations as was the resignation of the men above named. Churchill would have to be followed by a pro-Nazi government. A pro-Nazi government in England, entering into a ‘junior partnership’ with the Third Reich, would not make peace in the world. It would further pursue the war. And the moment such a ‘peace’ were settled the United States of America would be in the most hideous danger imaginable. For that moment would be the one in which Japan would enter as actively into the Axis partnership as Italy entered it with the defeat of France."
Miss Thompson’s prescription is bleak, but prudent -- "The only possible hope for the United States to avoid the worst catastrophe in the history of the Nation is to abandon all wishful thinking and realize that we must not allow Britain to lose the war. This does not even mean that we can guarantee that she, or even we, can win it. It means that there will be no peace except a peace which leaves us together -- Britain and America -- in a more powerful world position than it does the Axis."
JAPAN’S LOUSY AIR FORCE. The Greeks continue their advance into Albania, revealing Fascist Italy’s military weaknesses for all the world to see. And the New Republic’s T.R.B. column strikes a hopeful note of a different sort this week -- lobbyists in the nation’s capital pumping for greater aid to China make a convincing case that Japanese air power is the "softest spot" of the Axis. Japanese planes, the argument goes, would be chased from the skies if the U.S. and British air forces worked together to donate a number of "semi-obsolete planes" to Chiang Kai-shek’s military --
"The partisans of China make three points. The first is a familiar one that the Japanese, as a race, are bad airmen, awkward, slow, clumsy. This has a mystic sound, but it is abundantly attested to by foreign military observers. Second, there is every reason to think that Japanese fighting aircraft, in design, are some two years behind those of other major powers. Finally, although Japan may have succeeded in putting aside a store of high-test American aviation gasoline, thise reserve must be small, and, in active fighting, would be quickly exhausted." Chiang’s aviators, say the pro-China crowd, could with a modest number of planes "sweep Japan’s aviation from the skies and carry the attack to her home islands," halting Japan’s push southward toward the Dutch East Indies and Singapore.
Prior to now I would have dismissed this kind of talk as giddily over-optimistic, but with Italy’s recent reverses in the eastern Mediterranean, and Japan's ongoing stalemate in China, it’s at least possible to believe that the warmongering braggadocio of Japanese military leaders might not be backed up by nearly as much power as they imagine it to be.
Monday, November 28, 2016
Thursday, November 28, 1940
THE TWO FACES OF JAPAN. A couple of stories in the New York Times highlight the conflicting currents of foreign policy in the Japanese Empire. Tuesday’s paper reports on the choice of Admiral Nomura as Japan’s next ambassador to Washington -- he’s summed up as "a straightforward man with moderate political views," whose appointment "indicates that the Konoye cabinet desires to prevent Japan’s relations with the United States from deteriorating further." The report, filed from Tokyo, says the Nomura appointment "gives great satisfaction to all who want to avoid a break with the United States, and those Japanese who deplore the policy which aligned Japan with the Axis welcome it warmly." Admiral Nomura, we are told, believes that Japan’s diplomacy toward the U.S. "should follow the middle of the road."
Sounds good. But contrast that promising development with one relayed in a story by James B. Reston in Wednesday’s Times -- "Japan...has made a new series of demands for air and naval bases in French Indo-China – bases which if strongly equipped would enable the Japanese to bomb Singapore from the Asiatic mainland and threaten the passage of United States rubber and tin supplies through the Malay Peninsula through the South China Sea." Above all, the Japanese are demanding control of Saigon, Indo-China’s administrative capital and a major naval base. They already have some troops and officials there, which I believe violates their previous agreement with French officials -- it appears now the French are powerless to stop Japan’s military from proceeding as it wishes.
However moderate Ambassador Nomura is, he’ll have a tough time convincing the Roosevelt Administration that Japan sincerely wants peace and, more importantly, has a government that is able to rein in its military men, who seem to be running their own foreign policy. But according to Wilfrid Fleisher in last Saturday’s New York Herald Tribune, there doesn’t seem to be much at all "moderate" inside the new Japan. Mr. Fleisher, who spent nine years reporting for the Herald Tribune in Tokio, says that Premier Konoye’s "new national structure" is a blueprint for a Nazi-style totalitarian dictatorship, and that "serious dissension" in political circles isn’t a reason for hope – "Signs of unrest are apparent in many quarters. But...the differences lie between factions of extremists. There is no possibility of any return to liberalism for a long and indeterminate period."
JAPAN’S MILITARY SEES WAR WITH U.S. If Wilfrid Fleisher’s New York Herald Tribune report provokes concern, a story in the current issue of Time magazine is downright alarming. It quotes extensively from a recent interview with Japanese military officials in the popular magazine Hinodé ("Rising Sun"). The statements are nothing if not straightforward.
The interviewer asks, "How will Greater East Asia be accomplished?," and Admiral Takahashi, former commander-in-chief of the Japanese fleet, responds -- "It will be constructed in several stages. In the first stage, the sphere that Japan demands includes Manchukuo, China, Indo-China, Burma, Straits Settlements, Netherlands Indies, New Caledonia, New Guinea, many islands in the West Pacific, Japan’s mandated islands and the Philippines. Australia and the rest of the East Indies can be included later." There’s no mention of the little detail that the U.S. currently owns, and defends, the Philippines.
But the interviewer gets to that -- a later question is "When will Japan and America fight?" Vice Admiral Hamada answers -- "America’s participation in the European war will automatically involve Japan.....Statesmen will try to prevent such a calamity, but the circumstances are beyond their control. There can be no settlement until Japan and America have a showdown."
Well, that’s certainly reassuring. The interviewer follows up with, "Does that mean that Japan has completed preparations for war with the United States?" A minor officer is left to reply -- "We won’t answer that one. We simply smile."
A BALKAN ATTACK BY THE NAZIS? NEVER MIND. After days and days of stories in the papers intimating that Hitler was about to launch a major offensive in the Balkans, Allen Raymond writes from Rome in Wednesday’s New York Herald Tribune that it’s probably not going to happen anytime soon, after all. "Tension in Rome over a possible imminent spread of war in the Balkans...has passed suddenly," he reports. The reasons -- no sign of any agreement soon over the status of Bulgaria, and the fact that Turkey is "armed to the teeth and moving fresh divisions toward the Bulgarian border." And the earlier reports that the Bulgarian premier and foreign minister were hastening to Berlin this week turned out to be false, although King Boris did meet twice with a high Soviet official in Sofia.
It all adds up to one thing, in Mr. Raymond’s words -- "The long-predicted Axis drive toward Britain’s oil sources in the Near East appears stymied for the moment, as the press of Rome tells how British intrigues to spread the war have been blocked by Axis diplomacy." On the other hand, it should be noted that this news comes from Italy, which otherwise seems determined to prove herself insane -- "Italy...though admitting Greek advances on Albanian soil, expects to push the Greek campaign to a victorious conclusion without any aid from German armed forces." That Mussolini's a real card.
Sounds good. But contrast that promising development with one relayed in a story by James B. Reston in Wednesday’s Times -- "Japan...has made a new series of demands for air and naval bases in French Indo-China – bases which if strongly equipped would enable the Japanese to bomb Singapore from the Asiatic mainland and threaten the passage of United States rubber and tin supplies through the Malay Peninsula through the South China Sea." Above all, the Japanese are demanding control of Saigon, Indo-China’s administrative capital and a major naval base. They already have some troops and officials there, which I believe violates their previous agreement with French officials -- it appears now the French are powerless to stop Japan’s military from proceeding as it wishes.
However moderate Ambassador Nomura is, he’ll have a tough time convincing the Roosevelt Administration that Japan sincerely wants peace and, more importantly, has a government that is able to rein in its military men, who seem to be running their own foreign policy. But according to Wilfrid Fleisher in last Saturday’s New York Herald Tribune, there doesn’t seem to be much at all "moderate" inside the new Japan. Mr. Fleisher, who spent nine years reporting for the Herald Tribune in Tokio, says that Premier Konoye’s "new national structure" is a blueprint for a Nazi-style totalitarian dictatorship, and that "serious dissension" in political circles isn’t a reason for hope – "Signs of unrest are apparent in many quarters. But...the differences lie between factions of extremists. There is no possibility of any return to liberalism for a long and indeterminate period."
JAPAN’S MILITARY SEES WAR WITH U.S. If Wilfrid Fleisher’s New York Herald Tribune report provokes concern, a story in the current issue of Time magazine is downright alarming. It quotes extensively from a recent interview with Japanese military officials in the popular magazine Hinodé ("Rising Sun"). The statements are nothing if not straightforward.
The interviewer asks, "How will Greater East Asia be accomplished?," and Admiral Takahashi, former commander-in-chief of the Japanese fleet, responds -- "It will be constructed in several stages. In the first stage, the sphere that Japan demands includes Manchukuo, China, Indo-China, Burma, Straits Settlements, Netherlands Indies, New Caledonia, New Guinea, many islands in the West Pacific, Japan’s mandated islands and the Philippines. Australia and the rest of the East Indies can be included later." There’s no mention of the little detail that the U.S. currently owns, and defends, the Philippines.
But the interviewer gets to that -- a later question is "When will Japan and America fight?" Vice Admiral Hamada answers -- "America’s participation in the European war will automatically involve Japan.....Statesmen will try to prevent such a calamity, but the circumstances are beyond their control. There can be no settlement until Japan and America have a showdown."
Well, that’s certainly reassuring. The interviewer follows up with, "Does that mean that Japan has completed preparations for war with the United States?" A minor officer is left to reply -- "We won’t answer that one. We simply smile."
A BALKAN ATTACK BY THE NAZIS? NEVER MIND. After days and days of stories in the papers intimating that Hitler was about to launch a major offensive in the Balkans, Allen Raymond writes from Rome in Wednesday’s New York Herald Tribune that it’s probably not going to happen anytime soon, after all. "Tension in Rome over a possible imminent spread of war in the Balkans...has passed suddenly," he reports. The reasons -- no sign of any agreement soon over the status of Bulgaria, and the fact that Turkey is "armed to the teeth and moving fresh divisions toward the Bulgarian border." And the earlier reports that the Bulgarian premier and foreign minister were hastening to Berlin this week turned out to be false, although King Boris did meet twice with a high Soviet official in Sofia.
It all adds up to one thing, in Mr. Raymond’s words -- "The long-predicted Axis drive toward Britain’s oil sources in the Near East appears stymied for the moment, as the press of Rome tells how British intrigues to spread the war have been blocked by Axis diplomacy." On the other hand, it should be noted that this news comes from Italy, which otherwise seems determined to prove herself insane -- "Italy...though admitting Greek advances on Albanian soil, expects to push the Greek campaign to a victorious conclusion without any aid from German armed forces." That Mussolini's a real card.
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