The Charlotte News
Monday, June 15, 1942
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page of this date tells of the Russian fleet’s bombarding the German forces to relieve the besieged land forces of the Soviet Army at Sevastopol on the Crimea. The Nazis had secured the Kerch Peninsula on the eastern tip of the Crimea for the time being in May. This action at Sevastopol was part of a continuing siege of the vital Russian port city on the Black Sea which had begun at the end of October.
The primary object, as the caption under the map indicates, was to cut the Black Sea route off from the rest of Russia, interdicting a critical supply route. With Kerch and Sevastopol cut off, the Russian Navy would be hampered in protecting merchant ships moving north oil and other critical supplies from the westerrn shores of the Caucasus, as well as, moreover, preventing Allied supplies from reaching Russia from the Mediterranean. Allied supplies were coming primarily from the north, at Murmansk and Archangel, but those ports were 2,000 miles away from the southern fronts. A clear supply lane from the south was needed by Russia as well.
An article indicates that 265 merchant and Navy ships had been sunk off the coast of the United States, in waters off Canada, in the Caribbean, and the Gulf of Mexico since December 7, 14 in the previous week. About half, 128, had been sunk off the coast of the United States. Meanwhile, the Nazis were threatening to increase their U-boat patrols.
The British continued to battle Rommel’s forces in Libya, now well into the summer desert heat, an unexpected turn from just a few weeks earlier when predictions were that action in that theater would have to cease by early June because of the high temperatures.
On the editorial page, Dorothy Thompson elucidates in psychological terms the "epidemic madness" within Nazi Germany. She recommends a book by young Peter Viereck, son of the convicted Nazi agent, George Sylvester Viereck. The book, Metapolitics, she indicates, explains the source of the madness.
It might have instead been called, "Metapsychosis", that is the psychic action of one mind upon another. In Nazi Germany, such psychotic tendencies had indeed reached pandemic proportion and were as communicable as any flu virus. As Ms. Thompson points out, the actions reported from Czechoslovakia in the wake of the attack on Reinhard Heydrich were nothing short of the manifestations of clinical paranoia. When the government itself is committing mass murder, the psychosis spreads quickly within a society.
Of course, the problem had begun a decade earlier. After Hitler came to power, the masses largely came to him, suspending their own collective conscience to the will of one man, entrusting to him the godlike powers of judgment over life and death, all so that nationalistic pride in Germany and an Aryan people might flourish to become Germania, the realization of total world power, determining the future of mankind with Aryan superiority, eliminating all dissenters and non-Aryans, ultimately, all non-German Aryans, finally, all Aryans who were not psychotic also.
While the Nazis only accumulated in their original election to power a plurality, about one-third of the vote, the compromise to provide Hitler the Chancellory to prevent the dratted Social Democrats from achieving power, while Hindenburg and the ruling military clique of Prussian Junkers believed they could manipulate him to their own will, proved the critical error in judgment which enabled the Nazis to thrive, and finally seize dictatorial power through the continuing thuggery which had come to characterize their party throughout its popular rise in the twenties after the Beer Hall Putsch. Now, by and large, the German population, excluding the Jewish population and some of the intellectuals and clergy, such as Martin Niemoeller, were as obeisant children following the paterfamilias, to whom they had relinquished total power over them, relieving them of the duty to think for themselves.
Yet, based on the rumblings coming from Germany in recent months, after the increased bombing by the RAF since the previous summer at the start of the Russian offensive, and with the dismal late fall and winter in Russia which had taken such a huge toll of the best German troops, all was not well in the Fatherland. Morale was at its lowest ebb since the beginning of the war and disaffection with the Nazis was evident.
While the younger Viereck's work is not available online, save an article published in Atlantic Monthly in April, 1940, there are works by the father. Sample from his book of poetry, The Book of Armageddon, written between 1914 and 1916, is "Wilhelm II Prince of Peace", an ode to his own putative illegitimate grandfather:O Prince of Peace, O Lord of War,
Unsheath thy blade without a stain,
Thy holy wrath shall scatter far
The bloodhounds from thy country's lane!Into thy hand the sword is forced
By traitor friend and traitor foe,
On foot, on sea, and winged and horsed,
The Prince of Darkness strikes his blow.Crush thou the Cossack arms that reach
To plunge the world into the night!
Save Goethe's vision, Luther's speech,
Thou art the Keeper of the Light!When darkness was on all the lands,
Who kept God's faith with courage grim?
Shall He uphold His country's hands,
Or tear her members, limb from limb?God called the Teuton to be free,
Free from Great Britain's golden thrall,
From guillotine and anarchy,
From pogroms red and whips that fall.May thy victorious armies rout
The yellow hordes against thee hurled,
The Czar whose sceptre is the knout,
And France, the harlot of the world!But thy great task will not be done
Until thou vanquish utterly
The Norman sister of the Hun,
England, the Serpent of the Sea.The flame of war her tradesmen fanned
Shall yet consume her, fleet and field:
The star of Frederick guide thy hand,
The God of Bismarck be thy shield!Against the fell Barbarian horde
Thy people stand, a living wall;
Now fight for God's peace with thy sword,
For if thou fail, a world shall fall!
"Danger Zone", in the editorial column, recommends holding the entire German population accountable after the war for the bestial results now bestriding the world, pointing out, appropriately, that not merely Hitler and his few top henchmen, while popularly taking the brunt of American ill will, as only 6% blamed the German people, but the people themselves bore equal responsibility for the war and its "total war" method of prosecution, as the government obviously could not function without broad popular support. The piece recommends therefore the meting of severe penalties to the German civilian population after the war such that the recurring war mentality besetting Germany, from Bismarck through the Kaiser to Hitler, for the previous 80 years, would be eradicated never to surface again. It would be done, with the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal, with the partitioning of Germany, the Western Allies becoming temporary governors of the western sector and Russia, the east.
Whether the partitioning was altogether a just result, especially with respect to East Germany, no one may say. Obviously, Russia and the Warsaw Pact countries had lost a lot more to Germany during the war than had either Great Britain, France, the United States or the other NATO bloc countries. Its natural feelings toward exaction of vengeance therefore must be understood in that context. Regardless, it is the case that Germany has not again waged war in these last 64 years and has remained a beacon of peace for the world.
After cogitating on all of that, incidentally, including the 2005 piece on, and the 1940 piece by, the now-deceased Peter Viereck from Atlantic Monthly, one might then read Cash's post-Munich November, 1938 book-page piece, "Now, What Is A Liberal?" Cash cites Sherman Minton as one example of how the Administration, for all its liberalism, had nevertheless coddled politically sympathetic politicians whose policies were antithetical to liberal traditions, in Minton's case, his having proposed a bill to make it criminal to publish a "known untruth". President Truman subsequently appointed Senator Minton to the Supreme Court. Yet, in the 2005 Atlantic Monthly piece, Truman is reported to have been astonished in 1956 to find Adlai Stevenson, endorsed by Peter Viereck, as a "self-proclaimed conservative" running on the Democratic ticket, and of course, that was for the second straight time. To describe Adlai Stevenson as a conservative would come as a shock not only to neo-conservatives, with whom Professor Viereck apparently found little common ground, especially with the religious fundamentalist and anti-humanist aspects of neo-conservativism, but conservatives of the 1950's as well, who thought Stevenson was just slightly to the right of being pink. (Recall the right-wing booing and shoving of him in Dallas in October, 1963, calling him a Communist-sympathizer, bearing in mind that those who did the shoving were not so much conservatives as just plain nuts.) Moreover, it would shock most liberals who found a great deal of common ground with Stevenson."Stay Home" has a suggestion to curb the use of scarce rubber and gas: buy some sand, throw a little salt over your face, hook up an electric fan, toss some suntan oil about, and lie out on the thusly constructed faux beach in your backyard. Probably wasn’t a bad suggestion also for the facts that at the coast no one could use headlights at night within five miles of the beach and that the speed limit had been reduced to a crawling 15 mph. Besides, while lying out there, by the reports, one was like as not to get errant flak off the U-boats patrolling within sight of the coastline.
For mountain lovers, the editorial has yet other suggestions. For the outdoorsmen, a romp through the nearest lot of weeds. Bring your own mosquitoes.
But, then, with all the old worn tires lying about, now being collected and turned in, the breeder reservoirs for them were fast disappearing. It just wouldn't be the same.
Hot town, summer in the city...
Framed Edition
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