The Charlotte News

Friday, May 15, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page tells of Hitler’s urging Japan to attack Vladivostok, as General Simeon Timoshenko’s forces delivered to the Nazi occupiers of Kharkov an unexpectedly intense blow to retake the city, the former Soviet steel manufacturing center within the Donets basin, occupied by the Nazis since late October.

The first four days of fighting, begun May 12, were successful for the Soviets. But the tide would turn on Saturday and become gradually worse over the next week, eventually ending in a rout of the Soviet forces by May 26. Estimates of Soviet dead and prisoners ranged from 200,000 to 250,000 while Nazi losses were only about one-tenth that number.

Meanwhile, the Japanese were busy promoting the peace treaty just ratified, signed in October, between Soviet-controlled Outer Mongolia and Japanese-occupied Manchukuo, implicitly proclaiming thereby Japan’s lack of intent to accede to Hitler’s importuning to open an offensive against Russia.

The reason, of course, for Japan not wanting to do so was two-fold: first, the fear of counter-action in combination by Russia and the Allies, with Vladivostok then opened to use as a base for operations by the Allies against Japan; and, second, its consequent dilution of the troop strength needed otherwise to shore up defenses of the positions just acquired throughout the south Pacific--in Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, the Phillippines, with some fighting still ongoing to capture the remainder of Burma, as well as new incursions from Burma into southern China.

Japan was now concentrating its forces on two fronts, New Guinea and generally throughout the East Indies, and in Burma, to cut off completely any supply route into China via the Burma Road, in an effort to obtain a capitulation to terms from Chiang Kai-Shek after a period of attrition. Thus, Japan did not want to open a new front to its north at Vladivostok, further complicating its already distantly dispersed and thinly extended line of supplies and men.

On the editorial page, Paul Mallon, contrary to reports, speculates that Hitler’s immediate objective in Kerch was not the Caucasus oilfields, but rather to secure his flank to the north in the Ukraine from a Soviet counter-offensive off the Crimea, in preparation for a major assault on the Ukraine. Mr. Mallon reasons that the straits and mountains intervening were too much of a barrier for approach from Kerch into the Caucasus.

"Young Supermen" reports of the complaint in Nazi Germany of the impudence and generally disgusting behavior of the young boys and girls, resulting in the decision to discipline these juvenile ingrates by taking all children over ten years old from school and sending them to work on farms for 8 to 12 hours per day until November. That would imbue to the brats rigid obedience to their elders and properly obeisant respect for Der Fuehrer.

The editorial suggests that the problem was simple: the younger Herrenvolk had learned their disgusting behavior, their impudence, their willingness to lie, cheat, and steal by example of their elders.

Raymond Clapper discusses Wendell Willkie’s challenge to provide a plan for the post-war world to avoid the mistakes of Versailles in the aftermath of World War I. Mr. Clapper offers an analysis of this speech by Willkie in juxtaposition to the one a week earlier by Vice-President Wallace, (the text of which is here), as sage speeches of similar motivation and good will urging similar goals, yet delivered by men of opposing political parties. The irony of this notion should not be lost: Willkie had been a Democrat prior to his run for the presidency as the Republican nominee in 1940, and, as we mentioned, prior to the Hoover years, Wallace had been a Republican, coming from a Republican background in Iowa. Indeed, his father, until his death in 1924, had served as Secretary of Agriculture under Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. Perhaps, the good advice they gave in this regard was best served up in such supremely bi-partisan fashion, and was probably such an effort not occurring merely by happenstance, but likely the result of active orchestration by the White House.

Since "Nazi Home Front", Dorothy Thompson’s piece, and a part of Paul Mallon’s column, each concern Churchill’s May 10 speech in Britain, marking the second anniversary of his replacing Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister, you may tune it in on the shortwave here.

And, reflecting back to the wistful, ornithophilistic letter to the editor of two days earlier from P. R. McCain, a most astute gentleman and scholar of enduringly keen insight to the human condition, we refer you to the last letter he had written, printed in The News November 7.

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