The Charlotte News

Monday, November 9, 1942

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The big news on the front page of the day was the landing of the Allied Expeditionary Force, Operation Torch, 75,000 strong, at North African ports at Casablanca and north and south of it in Morocco, and at Oran and Algiers in Algeria. The map relays the story in terms of both the locations of the landings and the intent of the force, to push from the west Rommel's forces into a vise with the other jaw formed by the British Eighth Army, already for the previous 17 days forcing Rommel's panzer divisions back to the west from the summer stand-off position before El Alamein, and to serve as a launching pad for an invasion of Italy. The map indeed reads as history before the history was made. All had suddenly become quite apparent for the course of the war to come in Europe.

After sailing directly from the United States to the congregation point at Gibraltar, the force landing in the west at Casablanca was comprised of the U.S. 2nd Armored Division and the 3rd and 9th U.S. Infantry Divisions, altogether 35,000 troops, under the command Maj.-General George Patton. Sailing from Britain to Gibraltar, U.S. Maj.-General Lloyd Fredenhall led the 18,500 troops of the 509th U.S. Parachute Division and the 1st U.S. Infantry and 1st U.S. Armored Divisions landing at Oran. British Lt.-General Kenneth Anderson led the 20,000 troops of the British 78th Infantry Division and the U.S. 34th Infantry Division, supported by two British commando units, landing at Algiers.

Each of the invasionary forces were supported by naval units off the coasts, Rear Admiral Henry Hewitt supporting the landing of Patton's forces, British Commodore Thomas Troubridge supporting Fredenhall's forces, and British Vice-Admiral Sir Harold Burrough supporting the forces under Anderson.

The object of Anderson's arm was to reach into Tunisia and quickly secure Tunis from the Axis.

The landings actually began in the west before daybreak on Sunday and met with heavy Vichy resistance, prompting naval and air support. Safi, Port Lyautey, and Fedala had surrendered by Sunday afternoon. By Tuesday, Casablanca was surrounded and surrendered to Allied control.

Oran surrendered on this date, Monday. A pre-planned coup in Algiers by French Resistance fighters had paved the way for the landings there on Sunday. Consequently, fighting was relatively light and the city surrendered on Sunday evening.

As the invaded countries were under the control of Vichy, Secretary of State Hull announced the formal break of diplomatic relations with Vichy, something foreseeable since Vichy was formed as a puppet government of the Reich in the wake of the fall of France to Germany in June, 1940. It had been delayed only to afford a listening post for the Allies to glean some idea of Axis planning as well its concerns and beliefs about Allied movement, enabling therefore knowledgeable counter-intelligence to take place. That raison d'être for continued diplomatic relations was considered no longer necessary.

President Roosevelt had sent a message to Marshal Petain, appealing to his past friendship to the Allies in World War I, imploring his cooperation in standing down Vichy resistance to the invasion of North Africa. The President indicated that Italy and Germany had been planning to take over the countries and that the only goal of the United States and Great Britain was to liberate the French protectorates from the Axis grip and to liberate France as well from its occupation and role as Nazi satrapy.

The President had also sent a message to the Bey of Tunisia, also a French protectorate, asking permission for the Allies to traverse the country in order to intercept the land forces of Rommel.

Axis forces began flowing into Tunisia on this date, unopposed by the French military forces.

Meanwhile, Rommel's forces continued their retreat, now cramming the coast roads into Libya, into the Halfaya Pass, heading for Tobruk. Left behind by the thousands were their Italian comrades in arms, abandoned to the dry sands and sure death or capture by the Allies. The Italians hopelessly laid down their arms and gave up for a precious drink of water.

Eventually, Tunisia would prove the mousetrap for Rommel's fleeing forces, out of room to flee anywhere else, locked in by the sea on the north and the desert wilderness to the south, and the Allies on the east and the Allies on the west. But that was still a few months hence.

The assumption from Berlin that Admiral Darlan, head of the French navy in North Africa, sent to secure Dakar, had been taken into custody was correct. French Resistance forces had arrested him as he visited Algiers on November 8. After talks with the Allied command, he was persuaded, along with arrested General Juin, to command the surrender of Vichy forces in Algeria on November 11 in exchange for being given the position of High Commissioner of French forces in North and West Africa, a conciliation which General Eisenhower accepted as fit terms of surrender.

His post as High Commissioner, however, was short lived. On Christmas Eve, a member of the French Resistance would secretly gain entry to Darlan's headquarters and dispatch him. British intelligence complicity in the act was suspected as well.

Perhaps, Monsieur Rick, reported to have joined the French Resistance after being forced to give up his saloon to Ferrari back in the previous December and moving underground with the deposed head of the local gendarmes, Louis, also was involved.

In any event, it is reported with some credulity that upon General Patton's arrival on the beaches, reprised a couple of times to achieve the proper effect for the newsreels, Rick strode out on the sands to meet him, smiled a becoming grin, and simply said, "Here's lookin' at you, kid."

"The Beginning of the End" on the editorial page lays out in detail why the move by the Allies was so important, both in terms of what it immediately accomplished and what it provided the potential to accomplish, and its ancillary benefit to the Russians of inevitably working to draw off Nazi troops from the Russian front to shore up now threatened southern France, Italy, Greece and the Balkans, while eventually having the potential to clear the Mediterranean of Axis threat and providing thereby a way by which, through the Dardanelles, the Russians could be supplied via a southern route, while also freeing British troops stationed in Iran as a concentrated defensive back force against loss of Alexandria and the Suez Canal.

Raymond Clapper adds to the analysis in his column as well.

"Saddest Day" set forth the plight of the Italian soldier fighting under Rommel, the once proud legion of Rome now reduced to rag-tag castoffs left to surrender in the desert, a fitting symbolic end to the alliance with the Nazi.

As Paul Mallon speculates both positively and negatively about the future of the Democrats and FDR, should he seek a fourth term in 1944, and what it portended for the Republicans should the war be won in the meantime, the Republicans, feeling heady after the significant gain in the Senate and near takeover of the House, had let loose with a cannonade of open objection for the Administration, as excerpted from The Congressional Record of the previous week, a particularly vilifying form of criticism which had not been heard openly since before Pearl Harbor.

Representative Harold Knutson of Minnesota let loose with his salvo, suggesting certain experimentation of the New Deal could only be compared with Communist Russia for its totalitarian aims. (Where have we heard that one before--and more recently--from Republicans?)

Fiscally conservative Congressman Robert Rich of Pennsylvania saw the victory as one harbinging a return to Jeffersonian democracy, that is a cry for smaller government, an urge to the Administration to take less of a role in domestic affairs and prosecute the war, presumably, with a light hand on the throttle --as Herbert Hoover had been advocating prior to Pearl Harbor. Mr. Rich yielded the floor to one of his Democratic colleagues, but quickly hauled it back when the Democrat had the unmitigated temerity to begin speaking of how the Democrats had only cleaned up the mess created by the Republicans under Mr. Hoover. To such preposterous bombast, Representative Rich had not a word but his nonplussage at such a display of gall and spiteful pertinacity of such a Donkey in the face of the country's obvious coming home once again to the Grand Ole Party--and the Olde Deal. A world war, after all, could be fought and won with a small government, couldn't it? Couldn't the automakers and the shipping magnates, such as Henry Kaiser, the airplane builders, such as Mr. Hughes, build the ships and planes and tanks themselves voluntarily without any government intervention, taking a nice, comfortable, yet not greedy, profit, just enough to sustain growth and future production, and wage the war against old Hitler and Tojo and win, without Mr. Roosevelt's interference in the matter?

Why, of course. Recent history had shown it so.

Senator McNary of Oregon joined the chorus, suggesting that the signal decree of the day was being sent from far and wide across the country: No more "wastage". Send the government home to work in war industry. That would get the job done.

Translated into Southern-speak, his peroration actually went something, more to the point, like this:

"Now, look heya. We got us some Jew-boys, heya, in Washin'ton makin' us all lots of trouble up heya, outside agitatas comin' in heya tellin' us what to do, Communist-inspi'ed, against us good Christian White folk who settled this heya country of ouwas, and, who, incidentally, take good caya of ouwa nigra brothas, despite all the calumny to the contrary pu'veyed by the Jew-boys heya in Washin'ton. And the soona ya'll quit this Communistic nonsense and come on down heya and listen to the good Christian folk and stop listenin' to all these Jew-boys, heya, and de nigra-lovas, de betta off civilization will be.

"Now, if ya'll don't like it, we heya in the Congress of the U-nited States, duly elected as such by ouwa constituents back home, de good Christian white folks, might just have us a mind now to join with ouwa Republican friends across de aisle who now we shall see in January in large' numbas than in recent mem'ry because of this Jew-boy takeove', and do what should have been done 'long time ago, somethin' which, by the 'lection results, heya, the Amer'can people will join us wholehea'tedly in doin', that is impeachin' the President of the U-nited States and removin' these Frankfu'ta bureaucrats from the Su-preme Cou't. This is ouwa powa, and don't you fo'get it. If we want to find somethin' on ye, we su'e will find somethin' on ye--faw us good Christian white folk were raised with the Biblical injunction and knowledge than no one is innocent but by the blood of the Lamb, which means the sacrifice--if you a'e goin' to take away ouwa White Christian her'tage with this Jew-boy, nigra, Communistic conglomeration of nonsense that nobody with any civil education could even unde'stand if you were to bothe' to try to read it. Sine die."

Perhaps, however, with today's headlines, and the long awaited second front finally opened toward the European battle plain, the party-line victory talk and typewriter strategies and Congressional pulpitude in celebration of the election results would again subside for awhile--but only for awhile.

Congratulations are in order, incidentally, for the Democratic House of 2009, in its passage Saturday of the first comprehensive health care bill in the nation's history, after numerous failed attempts at it since the New Deal, all held up by just the same sort of negativism and carping at government bureaucracy and over-spending, as the defense budget, then of necessity, catapulted itself out the roof, as characterized the political climate of 1942.

But, no sooner than the votes were counted, the damper to the celebration was rumbling out of the Senate, notably from Senator Lieberman, who is threatening filibuster unless the public option is removed from the bill. We hope that Senator Lieberman will consult the polls of the people on the issue before resorting to the extraordinary brake on history afforded by filibuster, especially one waged against a bill of his own former party, a bill to bring about human progress in the country.

Nothing of the kind, with that sort of pervasive impact on the people of the country weighing in the balance, has been threatened since 1964 and the attempted filibuster of the Civil Rights Bill. At that time, Senator Lieberman, we recall, then a young man not yet in formal public service, not only supported the bill but risked his life and scalp on the Freedom Rides through the South in support of the right of every citizen to exercise the franchise. We hope that, in the end, the spirit of that historic example will prevail with the Senator and that he will thus heed the advice and consent of the majority of the American people on the issue, and not compromise to large vested interests in cold, profit-motivated insurance companies to block passage of a Senate bill which will have the broad-sweeping impact that the public option will carry with it.

While there is no limit on the use of filibuster as a tool, we think it ought be reserved to prevent despotic action, unpopular action, a gross abuse of power by the Congress. It should not be used to block progress which the people overwhelmingly favor, only to give vent to a small, well-financed minority, which happens to have a disproportionate voice in American life relative to its representatives' actual numbers.

If filibuster is so used to block progress, it is going to be business as usual, and America will remain the only civilized nation without comprehensive healthcare--something which actually befits the level of democracy evident in the country, and perhaps, therefore, in some respects it is a business which the country deserves, as set in high relief at least by the polling methods brought to light in the election of 2000 in Florida--that is that it is not too far from being a third world republic, one tending toward corporate syndicalism, the foundation pin for fascism, as Mussolini put into practical modern application the philosophy.

Well, you can judge by the fact that the trains ran on time in Italy, as well all the other rosy things which occurred there, right up to and after the surrender in the desert of the abandoned Italian troops left to die by their Nazi commander, Erwin Rommel, during his retreat across North Africa, just what the fruits of such continuous endeavor in the direction of corporate syndicalism are apt to be to any society persistent in providing allegiance and reverence, not to democracy and the worth of the individual, but rather to the corporation and its usually accompanying philosophy when not restrained by an active government. Hitler believed in that corporate solution, too, the only difference being that in his system the corporation was the state.

But leave the corporation unrestrained long enough, and, for all intents and purposes, it becomes the state.