The Charlotte News
Wednesday, March 7, 1945
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the First Army, gaining seven miles during the day, taking Bruhl and a dozen settlements, had moved to within two miles of Bonn by nightfall. A blackout of the news prevented further detail of the advance position.
The day before, the First and Ninth Armies had completely cleared enemy troops from 70 miles of the west bank of the Rhine, from Rheinberg south to Cologne, except for the pocket at Zons in the bend in the Rhine south of Duesseldorf. Enemy troops who survived the
Associated Press correspondent Louis Lochner reported that Cologne residents had informed him that during the mass exodus of German civilians from the city, thousands had utilized the Hohenzollern Bridge, the only remaining bridge across the Rhine. The bridge had limited capacity and began to sag under the intensely concentrated weight of heavily laden trucks, eventually collapsed, taking a large number of refugees with it.
Next time, you stupid Nazis,
The Fourth Armored Division of the Third Army, after its rapid 37-mile advance since Monday through a narrow corridor in the Eifels, the corridor being sometimes just the width of a road, extending east from the Kyll bridgehead east of Bitburg, had moved to a point near Monreal, within nine miles of the middle Rhine and within about fifteen miles of Coblenz, having gained five miles during the night. The Fourth was within fifty miles of Mainz and Weisbaden, 61 miles from Frankfurt. Third Army losses were thus far light.
Since the current offensive had begun January 30, 100,000 German prisoners had been taken by all Allied armies, over a million since D-Day.
Lt. General Graf Von Rothkirk, the commander of the German 53rd Corps which had laid siege to Bastogne in December during the outset of the Battle of the Bulge, was heard to complain, following his capture by the Third Army, that there was no way to win a war without gasoline or horses. He predicted, quite optimistically, that the war would be over in four to five months.
Der Fuehrer, Herr General, has, for your information, but 54 days to live before he will finally do the world a favor. Our soothsayer has predicted it and is infallible.
More than 900 American heavy bombers, accompanied by 250 fighters, struck oil plants in the area of Dortmund, a railway viaduct at Bielefeld, and rail yards at Soest and Siegen. The Bielefeld viaduct was key to supply of the German troops in the Ruhr.
About a thousand RAF bombers the night before attacked Wesel on the Rhine, in the longest mission yet of the war against any German city. The bombers also hit Sassnitz on the Baltic island of Ruegen.The mission lost three bombers.
In Italy, American troops of the 10th Mountaineer Division, moving northeastward west of the Pistola Highway, had gained, in three days of fighting, five miles within the Apennines, southwest of Bologna, in the strongest advance by the Fifth Army in many weeks. The Army had captured Castel D'Aiano, twenty miles from Bologna, the closest approach to Bologna by the Fifth Army west of the Pistola-Bologna road, Highway 64. More than 1,200 prisoners had been taken. Brazilian troops had taken Castelnuovo, three miles from Castel D'Aiano.
On the Eastern Front, it was announced by German radio that the First White Russian Army had initiated the final offensive on Berlin, striking northeast of Kuestrin on the Oder, 39 miles from the capital, and attacking Zehden, 31 miles from Berlin. Kuestrin was being attacked from both north and south from positions established several weeks earlier by the Russians.
Moscow announced the capture of Banska-Stiavnica, a fortress in Slovakia eight miles northeast of Bratislava.
On Iwo Jima, a final push had begun by the Marines to take the northern tip of the island on which there were an estimated 6,000 enemy defenders still tenaciously waging a fight to the death. Following a two-day virtual lull, the Marines began advancing under the most intense artillery barrage of the campaign against a continuous stream of small arms and mortar fire of the enemy. Only small, local gains were registered, on the west flank by the Fifth Division, just east of the center of the line by the Fourth, while the Third moved up the middle. By nightfall, the Marines were still 600 yards from the northeast shoreline, with an objective to cut the enemy forces in two. The Fourth Division was within 250 yards of volcanic cliffs which dropped onto a heavily-defended beach.
By 6:00 p.m. Monday, Japanese dead numbered 14,456 out of the original garrison of 20,000.
General MacArthur announced that the 57-day campaign to take Luzon in the Philippines was entering its final phase, following the liberation of Manila, Bataan, and Corregidor. On Corregidor, the 503rd Parachute Division had sealed off 300 caves and tunnels, dooming some 6,000 enemy troops within.
The President appointed William Davis director of Economic Stabilization, replacing Judge Fred Vinson, named to head the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, just stripped away from the Department of Commerce to enable confirmation of Henry Wallace as Secretary against the backdrop of Republican and Southern dissent to Mr. Wallace otherwise. Replacing Mr. Davis as chair of the War Labor Board would be George Taylor, author of the "Little Steel" formula for wage limits, and heretofore vice-chair of the WLB.
The Ohio River continued to flood its banks along nearly all of its 981-mile course, claiming thirteen lives and disrupting war production. Rain, however, which had fallen in torrents, had virtually stopped, and below-freezing temperatures were expected throughout the Ohio Valley by nightfall. Between 5,000 and 6,000 families had been evacuated in the valley. Pittsburgh war plants were preparing to remove valuable equipment in anticipation of flooding.
On the editorial page, "Henry's Choice" remarks of the lack of any left-wing tilt to the new Commerce Secretary's list of appointees to a committee on small business. It included Eric Johnston, president of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, Prentiss Brown, chairman of the board of Detroit Edison, Ernest Draper of the Federal Reserve Board, Stacy May of McGraw-Hill Publishing, and a passel of bankers.
The piece asks rhetorically whether this was some sort of ruse to fool the conservatives, that Mr. Wallace had not first consulted Sidney Hillman of CIO or Moscow. It suggests that the move would be characteristic of his term as Secretary, that he would seek to achieve high-minded goals through pragmatic methods.
"County Schools" comments on the need for a Mecklenburg County school tax to supplement the State funding which provided only minimum educational funding requirements. Charlotte city schools had long had a 25-cent tax supplement, but not so the county schools. While, generally, rural dwellers were less able to afford taxes, with the city close and affording therefore access to higher wage work, the county ought pass the proposed tax supplement to insure quality education.
"Cash and Cattle" delivers high praise to Charlotte's Citizens Bank for not following the cold and sterile model typically associated with banking enterprises, strictly in business to make profits. Citizens had bought silo forms for farmers to use to pour concrete silos, available for a small rental fee which paid only for maintenance. The program was non-profit. The bank also loaned money to farmers to buy premium cattle, another non-profit enterprise, which nevertheless helped to insure the success of the farm, preventing foreclosures, and providing community-based service which was reciprocal in terms of the reputation and good will afforded the bank.
Would it were that more banks and corporations generally these days would follow such an archetype rather than the blunt-headed and myopic business-school model of profit for profit's sake, vacations aplenty, golden parachutes, and the like, all to the ultimate destruction of the society, a short-sighted charm to allure the not so bright to quick profits, the while insuring to society long-term economic misery, for a good portion of the citizenry being no longer able to afford to do business, to participate actively in the stream of commerce, and thus no longer able to support the banks with fat deposits, and...
Greed ultimately undermines the foundations on which the wealth of a country was built and thus topples its own penthouse suites systemically for want of care of the basement.
In any event, after the war and the start of the nuclear era, those concrete silos would take on a whole new aspect, to assure the survival of the family
"Just 300 Billions" remarks on the fact that the national debt limit would shortly go from 260 billion to 300 billion dollars, provided the House Ways & Means Committee refused, as it likely would, to say no to further spending. The debt itself was at 235 billion, with the 260 billion limit, established a year earlier, projected to be reached by September, 1945.
The Congress believed that the 300-billion dollar limit would be the last of the war. Economists foresaw no great problem, provided that the nation's income remained at about half the debt limit. They were not concerned that the $42 per capita spending annually on debt service alone would be one and a half times the spending of the Government in 1932. Britain, observers had pointed out, had a debt two and a half times its national income.
The piece concludes, notwithstanding, that hard sledding fiscally might lie ahead for the country.
The excerpt from the Congressional Record finds Senator Lister Hill of Alabama singing the praises of Henry Wallace, as a great protector of private enterprise, as he had demonstrated during his nearly eight years as Secretary of Agriculture, from 1933 through the Democratic National Convention in 1940, when he was nominated for the vice-presidency.
Senator Hill then read from a statement of Bernard Baruch to the New York Herald-Tribune forum in which Mr. Baruch had stated that the notion of providing a quart of milk per day for Hottentots, the oft-used excoriation of Mr. Wallace by conservatives for his idealism in suggesting a plan for ending world hunger, would be a good thing, that well-fed, well-clothed, well-housed, and well-educated members of a society were less prone to bloodshed and spoliation than otherwise.
Drew Pearson informs that Mr. Wallace had met with the Cabinet for the first time in the first Cabinet meeting held by the President since his return from Yalta. The President had asked Mr. Wallace whether he had received a letter of welcome from his predecessor when he assumed his chair at Commerce. Mr. Wallace, with a grin, shook his head in the negative.
He next reports on the debate in the House anent the Flannagan resolution to express continued viability of the Tydings amendment to the Selective Service Act, providing for deferment from the armed services for farm workers. These workers, age 18 to 25, were badly needed in the draft. There were positions being taken for and against the resolution.
Indicative of the straits into which Nazi Germany had been forced by the Allies, was the report that a program, endorsed by Heinrich Himmler, was in operation whereby Jews could be easily freed from internment camps at a cost of $20 per person, $15 of which went to the Nazis and the rest to intermediaries arranging transportation. The Reich was broke.
We hate to disabuse the sentimentalists of their sentimentality, but the report may undermine somewhat, if not more so, the reputed heroics of Oskar Schindler, who is credited with the freeing of some 1,200 Jewish workers in his factories during the latter part of 1944 by such manumission. Apparently, the practice had become rather routine by that point, even endorsed by the monster Himmler.
But, it was a good movie, even if not entirely historically candid.
Mr. Pearson then describes the swearing in of former Vice-President Wallace by Justice Hugo Black as Secretary of Commerce, in the presence of Vice-President Truman.
Marquis Childs, reporting from Rome, tells of the view nearly uniformly held by American and British officers in Italy that the condition of the country was "hopeless" for the hangover effect out of the 22-year dalliance with Fascism. The Bonomi Government, which had replaced the Badoglio Government put in place after the fall of Mussolini and continued after the Allied liberation of Southern Italy until the fall of Rome the previous June 5, had accomplished little other than planning. Many feared that the country would turn to Communism, essentially because of a power vacuum.
Recently, the Bonomi Government had announced a plan to abolish the black market, raise wages and taxes, and confiscate wealth in excess of that owned in 1922, when Fascism first reared its head. But no one had confidence that these reforms would actually be implemented as the political machinery was not in place to enable enforcement of such a program.
Until Northern Italy would be liberated, the country would remain in its current status, as the north, particularly Milan, had traditionally been the seat of political and economic power with its industrial base. Southern Italy had traditionally been the poor house and museum for tourists.
For the nonce, the black market continued to reign supreme. Sources informed Mr. Childs that, for instance, rail passage, which had only recently been re-established, was costing about the equivalent of $1.25 to go from Rome to Naples, a reasonable cost. But, the Italians were nevertheless resigned to the notion that within a month or two, the price would skyrocket on the black market to $20 to $30.
Samuel Grafton undertakes to lay forth the fallacies of the arguments being waged by the uninformed conservative isolationists who were inveighing against the establishment of an International Monetary Fund, some confusing that fund, designed purely to stabilize world currencies, with the World Bank, also proposed at the Bretton Woods Conference of the previous July.
The World Bank was endorsed by most financial leaders in the country, for it required only that the United States put up 35% of the nine billion dollar capitalization of the bank, which would guarantee against losses loans made internationally by one country to another. But, since most of the lending would be by the wealthy banks of the United States, the wealthiest country in the world to emerge from the war, the effective result would be that 65% of the funds put up by other countries would be underwriting against loss the loans predominating from the United States.
The cavilers against the IMF were wanting therefore to reap the profits without risk on loans made internationally, but did not want to insure that international currencies would remain stable. Effectively, these business interests saw the opportunity for a quick killing, and the world could go hang.
But, cautions Mr. Grafton, by so playing this 150-year old isolationist game fiscally, the country might wind up hanging itself.
A piece from the Civil Liberties Union relates of a protest lodged with the War Labor Board regarding the termination and reclassification into 1-A draft status of three workers of the Cocker Machine and Foundry Co. at Gastonia, N.C. The workers had refused to cross a picket line established to seek enforcement of a WLB directive to management to establish a maintenance-of-membership clause in its contract with the union. One of the members of the draft board which had made the reclassification was a general manager at Cocker, and the ACLU took exception to this conflict of interest.
A letter writer, a soldier stationed at Pope Field in North Carolina, urges that some form of preemptive action be undertaken to avert the threatened coal strike by UMW, led by John L. Lewis. He informs that he had grown up in West Virginia and deplored the action of the miners in threatening to hold up war production with a strike, potentially causing the deaths of many Allied soldiers. He respected the miners' desire for higher wages but reminded that, just as their job was dirty and dangerous, so, too, was the business of war. He ventured that the quest for higher wages would be better received if delayed until after the war was over.
A quote from Secretary of State Edward Stettinius warns of the need to be vigilant of Nazis escaping to the United States and then blending in with the population, aided by Nazi underground leaders, as the war ended.
Framed Edition
Links-Date -- Links-Subj.