Tuesday, January 23, 1945

The Charlotte News

Tuesday, January 23, 1945

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Seventh Armored Division of the First Army fought house to house in St. Vith after entering at dawn, as the remnants of three German armies fled eastward, emptying the last of the Bulge. The fall to the Americans of St. Vith, defended only by German rearguards, was imminent.

West of St. Vith, the 30th Infantry Division neared Maldange and Braunlauf, as the 84th Division moved a mile and a half east of Beho. Major General Matthew Ridgeway's 18th Airborne Corps, positioned northeast of St. Vith, was having trouble keeping up with the fast pace of the German retreat.

An Army lieutenant from Charlotte, observing the evacuation, was quoted as saying that the Germans were using all roads available to effect their escape, "[B]ut at the rate things are going, if they're going to retreat much further, we'll have to furnish the transportation."

The Third Army closed against the Siegfried Line opposite the Our River, at the boundary of Germany and Luxembourg.

The Seventh Army continued to encounter stiff enemy resistance north of Strasbourg. An American force which had held a pocket below the Maginot Line in Alsace had been forced to surrender, and only two soldiers of the unit had made it back to Seventh Army lines.

Two hundred American heavy bombers, accompanied by a hundred escorts, struck the railyards of Neuss on the western edge of the Ruhr. Neuss had also been attacked the previous day by the Ninth Air Force. The RAF the night before had sent 500 heavy bombers against various unspecified targets in Germany.

The previous day's final toll of enemy heavy equipment destroyed or disabled was 4,158 pieces; the tally for this date appeared to be even higher, as clear skies permitted unobstructed bombing along the front.

The Russian pincers in East Prussia were within 22 miles of snapping shut on thirty German divisions, cutting the region in two. Moscow confirmed that the Russians had moved to within 24 miles of Konigsberg, capturing Lablau, and were but 50 miles southeast from Danzig in the Polish Corridor. The Russians confirmed capture of Bydgoszcz and Bromberg, both at the entrance to the Corridor. Ortelsburg and Willenburg in East Prussia were also captured.

German reports stated that the Russians had entered Poznan in Poland, 137 miles from Berlin, and were engaging in street fighting. Berlin radio had already stated that the fall of Poznan would be indicative of a critical threat to the German capital.

German radio also indicated a breakthrough by the Russians at Namslau in German Silesia, engaging the defenses of Breslau and driving also on Oppeln, possibly having already reached the Oder River.

Berlin stated that Heinrich Himmler had been dispatched to the Eastern Front to insure that orders were immediately executed to try to stem the Russian onslaught.

By Monday, the Sixth Army had moved to within 54 airline miles of Manila and to within 11 miles of Clark Airfield on Luzon in the Philippines. The 37th and 40th Divisions, moving almost as fast as the supply trucks could travel, gained, respectively, eleven and thirteen miles, moving through Capas and Santa Monica toward Manila. These units were battle-hardened, having fought on Guadalcanal, Bougainville, New Britain, and New Guinea. They had not been involved in the heavy fighting for Leyte during the fall.

A separate push along the west coast of Luzon toward Bataan had reached Infanta on Dasol Bay.

B-29's of the 21st Bomber Command out of Saipan, flying their first mission under the new command of General Curtis LeMay, attacked industrial targets on Honshu in Japan. General LeMay promised increased, relentless bombing of the Japanese home islands until the enemy decided it had suffered enough; he would not break that promise. Tokyo radio contended that 70 B-29's had struck Nagoya in a raid lasting two hours.

More attacks by American planes took place on both Formosa and Okinawa. The planes involved in the attack on Formosa had originated from the newly acquired Lingayen airbase on Luzon. The Saturday raid on Formosa had destroyed 140 enemy planes and damaged another hundred, though resulting also in damage to a major American warship, not identified. It was the first report of any major loss by the Navy during the prior two months of raids in the area of Formosa and Indo-China. Two enemy ships were left burning at Takao naval base.

A well-informed source in London explained that one of the most important questions to be determined by the upcoming Big Three conference, soon to start in the then undisclosed locus of Yalta on the Crimea, was the political and economic status to be accorded Germany after the war. It was reported that the American delegation to the conference favored international administration of the Rhineland industrial areas.

The President had, the day before, disembarked from Newport News, Va., on his voyage to the historic conference, first heading to Malta to meet with Prime Minister Churchill, beginning February 2, to plan the final strategy for defeat of Germany. The meeting would be preceded by three days of conference between the British and American Allied Chiefs of Staff.

In the Senate, opposition had mounted to the nomination of former Vice-President Henry Wallace to be the new Secretary of Commerce to replace Jesse Jones, the aging Secretary from Texas who had been asked by the President to step aside. A move was afoot to strip the position of its lending authority, to deprive Mr. Wallace of power. Hearings were set to proceed on that point.

An Army private from Neptune, N.J., was said to be having trouble at his sleeping quarters in Britain. He snored too loudly, kept the other soldiers awake, so much so that he had to be assigned alone to his own 38-bed hut, then to a soundproofed private room. Sympathetic Britons were offering their own homes as alternatives. The private suspected that they were in it for the novelty.

On the editorial page, "Payoff for Henry" comments on the appointment of former Vice-President Wallace to the position of Secretary of Commerce. Given the progressive idealism characterizing Mr. Wallace, it suggested that the New Deal was not dead after all.

Business was not pleased with the appointment. Outgoing Secretary Jones had snarled that a man without business and financial background could not perform well in the position.

The Secretary-designate's image as the provider of "milk for Hottentots"—deriving from his "common-man" speech of May, 1942 in which he had recommended that curing global hunger, a source of Fascism, would necessitate insuring provision of an adequate diet to everyone on earth, coupled with a statement of his personal habit of drinking a quart of milk per day—had cast him in the eyes of many as an impractical dreamer, ill-suited to the necessary practicalities and compromises of government.

Mr. Wallace had been closely associated with agricultural issues, his father having been President Coolidge's Secretary of Agriculture, and he, himself, having been head of the Agirculture Department during the first eight years of the Roosevelt Administration. In 1915, he had constructed the first corn-hog ratio chart.

During the war, in addition to his duties as Vice-President, he had headed the Board of Economic Warfare, fighting in that position with Jesse Jones, contending that the latter had not properly performed his job, failed to provide adequate synthetic rubber, failed to stockpile enough tin and other vital war materials, despite warnings of shortages.

Mr. Jones had run the Commerce Department on a conservative model, pleasing to business. Mr. Wallace was convinced that the post-war environment could not tolerate such a limited role of government.

In the end, given President Roosevelt's statement that he had provided the job to Mr. Wallace out of consideration for loyalty during the campaign, despite Mr. Wallace having been dumped from the ticket, it appeared that the appointment was political payoff rather than one where the appointee well fit the position. Given that the President wanted 60 million jobs created in the post-war economy, it did not appear as necessarily a propitious move.

"How Long, Now?" observes the war on both fronts, closing in ever tighter on Germany itself, the Russians now entering German Silesia, moving through East Prussia, and into Western Poland apace, while the Germans had been driven back to the Siegfried Line in the West.

It was the sixth winter of war in Germany and, with their factories largely in ruin, their coal mines of Silesia now threatened, it promised to be long, cold, and bitter for Germans.

Yet, still, predicts the piece, they would likely stubbornly hold to the bitter end, and much fighting therefore yet lay ahead before the inevitable surrender would be exacted.

"Kinging Ain't Good" suggests that Mark Twain's quote, "The King business isn't what it used to be," was apt for the times.

Peter of Yugoslavia had contested with Churchill the proposed regency in his stead. The Prime Minister had warned that the King should accept the status or be completely deposed. He had accepted, but it was unlikely that Yugoslavia would ever accept his rule again.

George of Greece, Zog of Albania, Michael of Rumania, seven-year old Simeon of Bulgaria, Haakon of Norway, Wilhelmina of Holland, and Gustav of Sweden would likely remain acceptable to their people, but largely consigned to ceremonial positions subject to their behavior.

The House of Savoy might yet find vitality in Italy, but eternally under the vigilant eyes of wary and critical Italians.

Leopold of Belgium was in Nazi custody.

World War I had ended the thrones of the Hohenzollerns, the Habsburgs, the Ottomans, and, following the war, Spain's Bourbons.

The only safe crown in Europe, concludes the editorial, was that of the Windsors.

"Wages, Etc." comments on the low wages and poor working conditions proliferating in the textile industry, a situation recently commented upon by Josephus Daniels. Mr. Daniels merely restated a position he had articulated at the turn of the century; for those conditions, while substantially improved, child labor having been eliminated, the work week shortened considerably, the mill town becoming a thing of the past, wages raised 100 percent in the previous fifteen years in the area around Charlotte, nevertheless still persisted: the industry was the lowest paid in the nation, and North Carolina's textile industry lower paid than those of neighboring states. And, many of the atavistic conditions plaguing the industry yet continued.

Drew Pearson tells of his visit with veterans at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, that they exuded an indomitable spirit, despite the wounds which many exhibited, some missing arms or legs. They displayed political curiosity, wanted to know of the new millionaire appointees to the State Department, of the violently suppressed rebellion in Greece, showing general concern that their sacrifices for establishment of democracy and freedom would be betrayed by post-war imperialism.

Mr. Pearson came away from the meeting with the idea that it would be sound advice to place on the peace council after the war at least one American veteran. They might do a lot better than had the old men at the end of World War I in constructing that tenuously emasculate and eventually shredded peace.

Prime Minister Churchill could not divorce himself from his warrior past in defense of the Empire in constructing the peace thus far. He had told General Ronald Scobie in Greece to "treat Athens as a conquered city". So, the soldiers, fresh from battle, if so included, could set a new and creative tone to the construction of the post-war world.

Mr. Pearson next discusses the inordinate amount of time being spent by new Secretary of State Edward Stettinius in improving his press relations. Privately, many observers were commenting that if he spent as much time engaged in improving foreign relations with Greece, Italy, and Belgium, the press relations would take care of themselves.

Yet, the new Secretary was willing to listen openly to criticism, had heard an earful of it, aimed at the Department, from Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes, who complained that he had, since the days before the Munich Pact in 1938, sought to prevent shipments of arms to Germany, as well helium for their zeppelins. He had also opposed the State Department policy which had allowed shipments of oil and scrap iron to Japan right through July, 1941, terminated only by Japan's occupation of French Indo-China.

Former Ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew defended the State Department by asserting that he, too, had sought to persuade the President to cut off Japan's shipments of oil and scrap iron.

Mr. Ickes, however, had interjected a rhetorical question to new Assistant Secretary of State James Dunn, asking him where he had stood on the question of lifting the embargo of arms to Loyalist Spain to fight Franco, armed by the Axis. Mr. Dunn had sat in silence.

Samuel Grafton contrasts the competing views between Britons and Americans as to each country's status coming out of the war. Americans generally held the opinion that the British diplomats were a good deal smarter than their American counterparts and would be able to obtain from the peace table a much more favorable position therefore in world affairs than would the United States. Only American intellectuals saw the British as bumblers in diplomatic efforts.

Yet, Prime Minister Churchill, himself, had recently suggested before Commons that it was America, with its largest Navy in the world, the greatest air fleet in the world, and its possession of virtually all of the gold of the world, which represented power politics. Britain, by contrast, had been reduced by the war to a beggar nation.

Mr. Grafton suggests that America might take heed of the British concerns that American power had grown so great during the war that in the aftermath it could cause Britain to be reduced to a tertiary economic power. To avoid this result would necessitate providing reassurance economically to Britain, unlike the position taken at the recent Chicago International Civil Aviation Conference, at which the United States had favored a policy of open competition for airways, while Britain had wanted assigned international routes based on the amount of passenger traffic which an individual nation placed in the air, assuring thereby a preeminent place for Britain in international civil aviation.

Americans often were heard to carp that America was doing all of the fighting and dying to save Britain from the clutches of Germany, much as the same cry had gone up in the wake of World War I, but that Britain always emerged from the fighting in a stronger position than did America. Mr. Grafton challenges the perception and urges consideration of Britain's point of view in the matter.

Dorothy Thompson discusses the different conceptions held by the West and Russia of "unconditional surrender" as applied to Germany. The Soviets saw it much as the Union applied the term to the South at the end of the Civil War, that there would be required an amalgamation of the region into the Union. The West did not view the concept in this light, rather as necessitating temporary occupation until such time as the machinery of civilian government and primary institutions could be restored to enable a functioning society.

But the Russians were as keen in their studies of the Mackinder/Haushofer geopolitical theory as the Germans, and understood in consequence that control of parts of Germany's industrial base in the Rhine and Ruhr, combined with their Ukrainian resources, could enable control of Central Europe via the Heartland concept, that sought to have been established by Hitler with his 1941 invasion of Russia.

The Russians were prepared for occupation of Germany, with a police apparatus already created from anti-Nazi Germans and ready to be deployed; the West, by contrast, had not taken that hint from the Russians and were appearing to set forth instead only on an ad hoc basis in formulating the policy for occupation.

She concludes: "Unless I completely misread the situation, the division of Germany will create, eventually, one sphere of influence in Germany—not two, not three, not four. Therefore a common policy and, if possible, a common military occupation, is urgently necessary."

Of course, there would quickly come to be East and West spheres of influence within Germany, with it most strikingly set forth on a bright line within Berlin. Does Ms. Thompson hit upon some of the problems, of which she had been discussing for well over a year regarding the situation with respect to lack of adequate post-war planning for Germany by the West, far behind that of the Soviet Union, which ultimately led to the creation of these military and political spheres of influence, setting in place the dynamic of opposing forces in tension which became the Cold War?

The situation was complicated by the advent of nuclear weaponry, something no one could predict at this juncture, but also a wildcard which may well have served to avoid a third world war utilizing conventional weapons in reaction to the occasionally tightening rope of this nearly half-century tug of war to come between East and West in Europe.

Hal Boyle, still with the First Army in Belgium, tells of how the head of a cow was used by an American officer as a roadblock. Strange, indeed.

The officer espied a Tiger tank coming down the road, realized his only weapon was his rifle, went into a nearby barn, chased six cows into the road, managed to hit one with a rifle shot, causing it to fall across the path of the oncoming tank. The Tiger then stopped long enough at the odd sight for a bazooka to take aim and fire, knocking it out.

A sergeant had a harrowing experience in his foxhole. A tank pulled up less than ten feet from it and began firing right over him. The 88-mm. shells seared the soldier's face as they whizzed above. One set his blankets on fire. Then, to complicate matters, American artillery began firing on the tank. One shell hit the tank squarely and its ammunition inside began exploding, shaking the sergeant up even more. It was a "hell of a way to stay warm in a foxhole," he explained.

A T/5 driving a jeep, wound up inadvertently crossing into German lines, was told by a German sentry to halt. He managed to pull his souvenir German pistol, poke it in the sentry's ribs, and then use the surprised enemy as a shield while the soldier retreated toward his jeep. Two other German sentries came onto the scene, however, and promptly dispatched their fellow Nazi. The T/5 nevertheless shot back as he continued to make his way to the jeep. He eventually was able to get away, with bullets aplenty flying as he went.

The Brooklyn native stated, "...[T]hem Krauts knocking off their own man—that tickles me."

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