BRITISH MARCH INTO LIBYA. Britain’s victorious troops in northern Africa haven’t paused for breath after clearing the Italians out of Egypt, according to a United Press dispatch published Monday. Mechanized forces have invaded Libya "through a desert sandstorm to carry the war into Italian-owned territory," says the U.P. Fort Capuzzo, just insider the Libyan border, now flies the Union Jack. The Fascist coastal base of Bardia is already said to be afire and under seize by British warships and bombers. Bardia is ten miles west of the Egyptian border. Italian forces are also reported to be reeling from heavy Royal Air Force attacks on Tobruk, just west of Bardia, and at Tripoli, a full 700 miles west of the front. The U.P. also says the British have taken an astounding 50,000 Italian prisoners in the week-long campaign.
And meanwhile, pressure by Greek troops in southern Albania is said to be caving in the center of the Italian line there, reports A.E. Angelopoulos of the International News Service. There’s speculation the Fascist high command is "preparing for a possible Dunkerque-like retreat through the port of Valona back to Italy."
This amazing collapse of Italian armed force makes one wonder if the Fascists might indeed be completely driven out. The Chicago Tribune notes editorially (and correctly, for a change), that German intervention in the African and Albanian battles might "restore the spirit of victory, but not the Italian pride" and reduce Italy to "a satellite and not a sun." However, "unless Hitler does intervene, Italy may not be able to repair the damages. The spirit of the people isn’t in the war and a bad winter with no mitigating military successes will not inspire them. It is probably futurist speculation to inquire what Hitler would do if Italy were to ask for a negotiated peace, what the Italians themselves, reverting to the king as the head of their government, would do to Mussolini if peace were proposed, and whether the British would want to come to terms with Mussolini or would prefer to keep him as a Nazi liability."
THE FOOD CONTROVERSY. David Anderson writes in Sunday’s New York Times that Britons are worried about proposals circulating in the U.S. to provide humanitarian shipments of food to Nazi-occupied countries in Europe. It’s a troubling question in both countries. Shouldn’t we try to do what we can to save starving civilian populations this winter, especially since Britain’s war policies are in part responsible for Europe’s food shortages? The answer isn’t an easy one, in light of the fact that Germany can appropriate foodstuffs from relief ships and convert them to military supplies, such as potatoes to alcohol, which could widely be used as a substitute for fuel oil. Also --
"What nettles the British people as much as anything is the futility, as they see it, of the argument. The situation of France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway varies only in degree. Their plight may be desperate before the war is over, but the fault is seen clearly as Germany’s, since the food problem confronting them hinges mainly on the matter of distribution....No one denies that the motive is a good one, but all declare that it is based upon ‘misguided idealism’ at a time when ‘common sense’ can alone be trusted to save their country and they feel the United States as well....The blockade imposed by the British Navy is directed primarily at cutting off raw materials, oil, etc. It is not dictated by humanitarianism, but by the way the cards fall. The food blockade of Europe is a secondary factor."
Britain herself is getting by, writes Mr. Anderson, but not particularly well -- "The British housewife is now obliged to get along with a quarter pound of bacon per person per week, which will be cut so that the present three weeks’ supply stretches over four weeks. The sugar ration stands at a half pound, which is four ounces less than that of last Christmas. All fruits except oranges have been crossed off the import list."
DOES HE KNOW SOMETHING WE DON’T? Bruce Pinter reports in Monday’s New York Herald Tribune on President Roosevelt’s ominous farewell to the patients of the Warm Springs Foundation. After the visit with polio patients there on Sunday, the President vowed to spend two weeks with them next March "if the world survives." This was the same place where, just over eighteen months ago, F.D.R. concluded a customary visit to the Foundation by promising he’d be back in the fall, "if we don’t have a war." Isolationists made a lot of hay out of the President’s use of the first plural pronoun.
But there was a war in the fall. Will there still be a world next March?
Saturday, December 17, 2016
Thursday, December 15, 2016
Sunday, December 15, 1940
FRENCH "COUP" FAILS, LAVAL FIRED. The radio news this morning offers sketchy reports of government upheaval in Vichy France, with the big loser said to be the archly pro-Nazi foreign minister, Pierre Laval. Neutral correspondents are hearing despite strictest censorship that M. Laval plotted to get the country’s "leader", Marshal Petain, moved from Vichy to Paris, as the Marshal desires. Once the Petain regime was set up in Paris, the story goes, Laval would have declared himself the head of a new government, seizing power over all of unoccupied France. He might have even gone to the extent of declaring war on Britain, something the Germans would be very happy to see. But for now, Laval frets under house arrest at his estate just outside Vichy, watched by members of France’s fascist-style elite police corp.
I’ve heard little speculation so far as to just what this means. I suppose optimists might call it another reflection of the current wave of Axis setbacks in the war. Surely Marshal Petain would be vehemently opposed to a weakened France entering the war on Germany’s side, especially with Nazi victory more uncertain than ever. But I can’t believe that Hitler would sit idly by and let Laval, one of his more useful puppet statesmen, be treated so shabbily when Germany holds all the cards in this part of Europe.
TODAY’S ITALIAN DEFEATS (III). A dispatch from Rome in Saturday’s New York Herald Tribune says that the Fascist press has been quietly preparing Italians for some big, bad news. Readers of independent newspapers already know what it is -- Britain has abruptly, rudely, violently thrown the Italians out of western Egypt, in just a few days’ time. Not only has the Italian Army’s seventy-five-mile march eastward to Sidi Barrani been completely wiped out, but some reports say this morning that the British have also just taken Fort Capuzzo, just inside Libya. According to Phillip S. Tayler of United Press, five Italian divisions totally about 75,000 men were all but cut off from Libya by a fierce British naval assault on Solum, just inside Egypt. The Italians’ food and oil supplies were seized by British troops attacking from the desert south, and they fought a desperate rear-guard action to escape encirclement. But many of them quit in the end -- the Associated Press reports the British Army has taken over 40,000 Fascist prisoners in this brief blitz campaign.
Herbert L. Matthews says in effect in Saturday’s New York Times that Mussolini’s regime is pathetically blaming "defeatists" for reverses on the battlefield. The Times’ story quotes one Italian newspaper as raging against "frequenters of bars, salons and banquets who listen to the British radio." Ludicrously, the Rome radio warns, in a broadcast monitored by C.B.S., that British troops had better watch out or they’ll make the Italian Army mad -- "The Italian is a light-hearted and easy-going fellow until he is aroused. Sometimes what he needs is just a little slap, then he stands up and fights to a finish, and the more blows the more dangerous he becomes. The British ought to remember this." Scary, eh?
Those easy-going fellows on the Albanian front have lost yet another battle against the Greeks, being forced to give up Porto Palermo. The city’s Fascist defenders are now under heavy bombardment as they retreat thirty miles northward toward Valona, Albania’s second-biggest port. There, Italian cargo ships, also under near-continuous bomber attack, wait to evacuate what’s left of their army. The only troubling sign in all this for the Greeks is a note in Sam Brewer’s account, in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune, of how the Greeks pushed the Italian Army out of Greek territory. Mr. Brewer writes -- "Among the Greek troops there is a shortage of blankets and warm clothing. The men are now going on short rations because of the shortage in trucks and seven days of heavy rains, which make transportation all the more difficult."
TWO VIEWS ON OUR "SLUMP." If you don’t want to get depressed about the state of the war and the status of national preparedness, don’t read this week’s Time magazine article on the subject --
"The prevailing mood in Washington was gloom. Apprehensively the country read the Washington columnists, whose reports of U.S. defense preparations read last week like the opening chapters of so many ghost stories. ‘We are in a pause,’ gloomed Columnist Ray Clapper (Scripps-Howard). ‘Slump,’ wailed Columnist Dorothy Thompson (New York Herald Tribune), who printed reports that the President is in a ‘down’ mood....Lifting censorship revealed England harder-hit than most had realized. Reports came, true or false, that Nazi Germany’s war-making capacity was actually increasing, and increasing faster than that of Great Britain and the U.S. put together. Japan teetered at the edge of a war plunge into the rich islands of the Western Pacific. England was running out of merchant ships, its very life line to the food, supplies, war materials of the U.S.....When would U.S. capacity be great enough to meet any defense task? The soonest possible date was late autumn 1941 -- ten months. Many men believed Hitler would try for a knockout blow of England in April. Between Hitler’s April and America’s October stretched a hell-to-pay period that no man could foresee, that few dared to contemplate."
Chilling thoughts, those. But a New York Herald Tribune editorial says our attack of the blues is a thing of the past, and they credit Hitler’s speech last week with administering a pick-me-up to the U.S. – "The slump into which many Americans fell after the election is unquestionably over....It is, primarily, events which have caused this revival of courage and common sense. In the first rank must be placed Mr. Hitler’s own self-revelation. In this latest utterance Der Fuehrer made it clear beyond any possibility of doubting that he is fighting not just England but the whole democratic world, including , specifically, the United States. Words could not make the challenge clearer. The pleasant theory that after the Nazis have conquered England this country could strike hands with them and do business comfortably in their world received a rude and final rejection in this speech....It happens that here and now the best chance of keeping this country out of war is to aid Great Britain to the limit and with all speed."
I’ve heard little speculation so far as to just what this means. I suppose optimists might call it another reflection of the current wave of Axis setbacks in the war. Surely Marshal Petain would be vehemently opposed to a weakened France entering the war on Germany’s side, especially with Nazi victory more uncertain than ever. But I can’t believe that Hitler would sit idly by and let Laval, one of his more useful puppet statesmen, be treated so shabbily when Germany holds all the cards in this part of Europe.
TODAY’S ITALIAN DEFEATS (III). A dispatch from Rome in Saturday’s New York Herald Tribune says that the Fascist press has been quietly preparing Italians for some big, bad news. Readers of independent newspapers already know what it is -- Britain has abruptly, rudely, violently thrown the Italians out of western Egypt, in just a few days’ time. Not only has the Italian Army’s seventy-five-mile march eastward to Sidi Barrani been completely wiped out, but some reports say this morning that the British have also just taken Fort Capuzzo, just inside Libya. According to Phillip S. Tayler of United Press, five Italian divisions totally about 75,000 men were all but cut off from Libya by a fierce British naval assault on Solum, just inside Egypt. The Italians’ food and oil supplies were seized by British troops attacking from the desert south, and they fought a desperate rear-guard action to escape encirclement. But many of them quit in the end -- the Associated Press reports the British Army has taken over 40,000 Fascist prisoners in this brief blitz campaign.
Herbert L. Matthews says in effect in Saturday’s New York Times that Mussolini’s regime is pathetically blaming "defeatists" for reverses on the battlefield. The Times’ story quotes one Italian newspaper as raging against "frequenters of bars, salons and banquets who listen to the British radio." Ludicrously, the Rome radio warns, in a broadcast monitored by C.B.S., that British troops had better watch out or they’ll make the Italian Army mad -- "The Italian is a light-hearted and easy-going fellow until he is aroused. Sometimes what he needs is just a little slap, then he stands up and fights to a finish, and the more blows the more dangerous he becomes. The British ought to remember this." Scary, eh?
Those easy-going fellows on the Albanian front have lost yet another battle against the Greeks, being forced to give up Porto Palermo. The city’s Fascist defenders are now under heavy bombardment as they retreat thirty miles northward toward Valona, Albania’s second-biggest port. There, Italian cargo ships, also under near-continuous bomber attack, wait to evacuate what’s left of their army. The only troubling sign in all this for the Greeks is a note in Sam Brewer’s account, in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune, of how the Greeks pushed the Italian Army out of Greek territory. Mr. Brewer writes -- "Among the Greek troops there is a shortage of blankets and warm clothing. The men are now going on short rations because of the shortage in trucks and seven days of heavy rains, which make transportation all the more difficult."
TWO VIEWS ON OUR "SLUMP." If you don’t want to get depressed about the state of the war and the status of national preparedness, don’t read this week’s Time magazine article on the subject --
"The prevailing mood in Washington was gloom. Apprehensively the country read the Washington columnists, whose reports of U.S. defense preparations read last week like the opening chapters of so many ghost stories. ‘We are in a pause,’ gloomed Columnist Ray Clapper (Scripps-Howard). ‘Slump,’ wailed Columnist Dorothy Thompson (New York Herald Tribune), who printed reports that the President is in a ‘down’ mood....Lifting censorship revealed England harder-hit than most had realized. Reports came, true or false, that Nazi Germany’s war-making capacity was actually increasing, and increasing faster than that of Great Britain and the U.S. put together. Japan teetered at the edge of a war plunge into the rich islands of the Western Pacific. England was running out of merchant ships, its very life line to the food, supplies, war materials of the U.S.....When would U.S. capacity be great enough to meet any defense task? The soonest possible date was late autumn 1941 -- ten months. Many men believed Hitler would try for a knockout blow of England in April. Between Hitler’s April and America’s October stretched a hell-to-pay period that no man could foresee, that few dared to contemplate."
Chilling thoughts, those. But a New York Herald Tribune editorial says our attack of the blues is a thing of the past, and they credit Hitler’s speech last week with administering a pick-me-up to the U.S. – "The slump into which many Americans fell after the election is unquestionably over....It is, primarily, events which have caused this revival of courage and common sense. In the first rank must be placed Mr. Hitler’s own self-revelation. In this latest utterance Der Fuehrer made it clear beyond any possibility of doubting that he is fighting not just England but the whole democratic world, including , specifically, the United States. Words could not make the challenge clearer. The pleasant theory that after the Nazis have conquered England this country could strike hands with them and do business comfortably in their world received a rude and final rejection in this speech....It happens that here and now the best chance of keeping this country out of war is to aid Great Britain to the limit and with all speed."
Monday, December 12, 2016
Thursday, December 12, 1940
HITLER CALLS FOR A FINISH FIGHT. Hitler gave a radio speech from a suburban Berlin munitions plant Tuesday, and he laid it on the line -- the world isn’t big enough for the Nazis and the democracies. Or, as C. Brooks Peters put it in his New York Times account Wednesday, "when the Fuehrer had finished, the inescapable conclusion was that in his opinion the only possible terminus to the present conflict between democratic capitalism and totalitarian ‘socialism’ could from the very nature of the struggle be found in the vanquishment of one of the contending systems." Significantly, in discussing "democracy" Hitler equated the United States with Britain, and according to the Associated Press translation, he didn’t leave much room for neutrality -- "we will defeat the entire world."
The Chicago Tribune, on the other hand, cites a different cabled translation which rendered Hitler’s incendiary phrase in relatively milder terms -- "I can beat any other power in the world." Who’s to say whether this is an honest difference in transcription, or another example of the isolationists’ late habit of putting the words and deeds of fascist dictators in a kindlier light. But Sigrid Schultz’s coverage of the speech in Wednesday’s Tribune grasps the main point well -- "To an American listener the striking feature of Hitler’s speech was that for the first time he mentioned England and America in the same breath....He ridiculed America, which despite her wealth, he said, has 10,000,000 to 13,000,000 unemployed year after year."
TODAY’S ITALIAN DEFEATS (II). Can it get worse for Mussolini? Definitely, yes. Not so much in Greece, although an Associated Press dispatch from Tuesday reports that "the entire Italian right wing behind the Greek-occupied port of Porto Edda has been put to flight." But the big news this week is in Egypt, where an Italian invasion army that marched seventy miles eastward from Libya earlier this fall has languished after taking the port of Sidi Barrani. The Fascists were said to be making elaborate preparations to continue their drive, with Alexandria the goal. Now they are cut off from troops and supplies in their rear -- by a line of British troops which, according to an A.P. story Wednesday, marched 75 miles northwestward from positions in the interior of Egypt and fought their way through surprised Italian troops to the Mediterranean, between Sidi Barrani and Buqbuq.
The A.P. describes the British army in Egypt as "applying in the desert wastes the very tactics of extraordinary speed and shock used by the Germans in the blitzkrieg of the west." The Italian press doesn’t describe it at all -- according to Herbert L. Matthews in Wednesday’s New York Times, Italian war communiques haven’t yet uttered an official peep on the subject. However, newspapers in Italy are talking about the need to administer "beatings" to ordinary Italians who read Swiss newspapers to find out just what’s going on, says the Times.
ITALY’S SOLUTION – QUIT THE AXIS. In his New York Herald Tribune column Tuesday, Walter Lippmann argues that the Mussolini regime has one chance of saving Italy. It is to withdraw from the tripartite pact --
"The Italians are the chief example in this war of a people who have more to fear from their nominal partners than from their avowed enemies. For the defeat of Italy by Great Britain and her allies would leave Italy intact, would preserve Italy as an independent power in the Mediterranean, as an influence in the Balkans and Central Europe, and with some kind of colonial empire in Africa. But the victory of Germany would certainly put an end to Italian independence and would surely mean the loss to Germany of the territory which Italy won from Austria in the other war....They will be absolutely defenseless against anything Hitler chooses to ask of them, and they know quite well that the Tyrol is Germany territory, Trieste is a German city, and the dominion of the Balkans and Turkey and the Middle East is an essential part of the ancient pan-German ambition."
Thus, Mr. Lippmann writes, Italy must hope for the defeat of her own ally -- "The dilemma of Italy is that the Fascist regime and her internal economy will be ruined if Germany loses the war, whereas Italian independence, the territorial integrity of Italy and her empire, will be destroyed if Germany wins the war. There is no way out of this dilemma unless Italy is able to leave the Axis before there is a decision – that is to say, before Hitler wins or loses the war against Great Britain. But as long as Hitler has an immense unemployed army, Italy cannot leave the Axis. The time to leave it will have arrived only when, with Britain in firm control of the sea and with a growing air power, the Hiterlian empire begins to disintegrate as Napoleon’s did and a continental coalition comes into being against him."
BRITAIN’S OPPORTUNITY IN AFRICA. So far, the British attacks on Italian positions in Egypt are officially characterized as a "great raid," not the start of an offensive. But the attacks are large enough to have bagged 4,000 Italian prisoners, and Washington Post columnist Barnet Nover writes that it might lead to a much bigger victory for the British --
"The next days and weeks will reveal the nature and effectiveness of the British drive in western Egypt. If it is at all successful it may bear results way out of proportion to the numbers of troops involved. By forcing an indefinite postponement of the Fascist drive toward Suez it would enable the British to increase their assistance to Greece, and thus make it more difficult for Italy to recoup her losses in that theater of war. Mussolini must now realize, as he could never have done when he so lightheartedly ordered his legions into Greece, the full magnitude of the risk he took by creating a second front for the Italians, particularly since the more distant front was at the mercy of sea power. He undoubtedly calculated that Greek resistance would be speedily overcome and the consequent victory would make it possible for him to turn his full attention toward the British in Egypt. That calculation proved disastrously wrong. His failures in Greece now imperil the Italian position in East Africa. The increased pressure which the British now appear to be putting on the Fascist forces in that area may, in turn, make the Italian task in the Balkans more difficult. Between them the Greeks and the British are now in a position to put through a squeeze play which, if it succeeds, will greatly increase the cup of misery which the Duce is now being forced to drink."
The Chicago Tribune, on the other hand, cites a different cabled translation which rendered Hitler’s incendiary phrase in relatively milder terms -- "I can beat any other power in the world." Who’s to say whether this is an honest difference in transcription, or another example of the isolationists’ late habit of putting the words and deeds of fascist dictators in a kindlier light. But Sigrid Schultz’s coverage of the speech in Wednesday’s Tribune grasps the main point well -- "To an American listener the striking feature of Hitler’s speech was that for the first time he mentioned England and America in the same breath....He ridiculed America, which despite her wealth, he said, has 10,000,000 to 13,000,000 unemployed year after year."
TODAY’S ITALIAN DEFEATS (II). Can it get worse for Mussolini? Definitely, yes. Not so much in Greece, although an Associated Press dispatch from Tuesday reports that "the entire Italian right wing behind the Greek-occupied port of Porto Edda has been put to flight." But the big news this week is in Egypt, where an Italian invasion army that marched seventy miles eastward from Libya earlier this fall has languished after taking the port of Sidi Barrani. The Fascists were said to be making elaborate preparations to continue their drive, with Alexandria the goal. Now they are cut off from troops and supplies in their rear -- by a line of British troops which, according to an A.P. story Wednesday, marched 75 miles northwestward from positions in the interior of Egypt and fought their way through surprised Italian troops to the Mediterranean, between Sidi Barrani and Buqbuq.
The A.P. describes the British army in Egypt as "applying in the desert wastes the very tactics of extraordinary speed and shock used by the Germans in the blitzkrieg of the west." The Italian press doesn’t describe it at all -- according to Herbert L. Matthews in Wednesday’s New York Times, Italian war communiques haven’t yet uttered an official peep on the subject. However, newspapers in Italy are talking about the need to administer "beatings" to ordinary Italians who read Swiss newspapers to find out just what’s going on, says the Times.
ITALY’S SOLUTION – QUIT THE AXIS. In his New York Herald Tribune column Tuesday, Walter Lippmann argues that the Mussolini regime has one chance of saving Italy. It is to withdraw from the tripartite pact --
"The Italians are the chief example in this war of a people who have more to fear from their nominal partners than from their avowed enemies. For the defeat of Italy by Great Britain and her allies would leave Italy intact, would preserve Italy as an independent power in the Mediterranean, as an influence in the Balkans and Central Europe, and with some kind of colonial empire in Africa. But the victory of Germany would certainly put an end to Italian independence and would surely mean the loss to Germany of the territory which Italy won from Austria in the other war....They will be absolutely defenseless against anything Hitler chooses to ask of them, and they know quite well that the Tyrol is Germany territory, Trieste is a German city, and the dominion of the Balkans and Turkey and the Middle East is an essential part of the ancient pan-German ambition."
Thus, Mr. Lippmann writes, Italy must hope for the defeat of her own ally -- "The dilemma of Italy is that the Fascist regime and her internal economy will be ruined if Germany loses the war, whereas Italian independence, the territorial integrity of Italy and her empire, will be destroyed if Germany wins the war. There is no way out of this dilemma unless Italy is able to leave the Axis before there is a decision – that is to say, before Hitler wins or loses the war against Great Britain. But as long as Hitler has an immense unemployed army, Italy cannot leave the Axis. The time to leave it will have arrived only when, with Britain in firm control of the sea and with a growing air power, the Hiterlian empire begins to disintegrate as Napoleon’s did and a continental coalition comes into being against him."
BRITAIN’S OPPORTUNITY IN AFRICA. So far, the British attacks on Italian positions in Egypt are officially characterized as a "great raid," not the start of an offensive. But the attacks are large enough to have bagged 4,000 Italian prisoners, and Washington Post columnist Barnet Nover writes that it might lead to a much bigger victory for the British --
"The next days and weeks will reveal the nature and effectiveness of the British drive in western Egypt. If it is at all successful it may bear results way out of proportion to the numbers of troops involved. By forcing an indefinite postponement of the Fascist drive toward Suez it would enable the British to increase their assistance to Greece, and thus make it more difficult for Italy to recoup her losses in that theater of war. Mussolini must now realize, as he could never have done when he so lightheartedly ordered his legions into Greece, the full magnitude of the risk he took by creating a second front for the Italians, particularly since the more distant front was at the mercy of sea power. He undoubtedly calculated that Greek resistance would be speedily overcome and the consequent victory would make it possible for him to turn his full attention toward the British in Egypt. That calculation proved disastrously wrong. His failures in Greece now imperil the Italian position in East Africa. The increased pressure which the British now appear to be putting on the Fascist forces in that area may, in turn, make the Italian task in the Balkans more difficult. Between them the Greeks and the British are now in a position to put through a squeeze play which, if it succeeds, will greatly increase the cup of misery which the Duce is now being forced to drink."
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