The Charlotte News
Wednesday, April 18, 1945
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the 90th Division of the Third Army had invaded Czechoslovakia with the infantry riding aboard tanks, moving eight miles from captured Hof into Asch, within the territory which had led to the start of the European war, the Sudetenland, object of the Munich Pact in September, 1938. The final complete bisection of Germany was thus effected, and accomplished with virtually no opposition, save in Prex, a mile from the border. The 90th pushed another two miles to the area of Gottmasgrun. Czechoslovakia became the seventh or eighth country, depending on whether Alpine troops had crossed into Northwestern Italy, which General Eisenhower's troops had invaded, including France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Luxembourg, and Monaco.
To the East in Czechoslovakian territory, the Russians were within sight of Bruenn.
The 2nd "Hell on Wheels" Armored Division and the 30th "Old Hickory" Division of the Ninth Army had captured the ruined city of Magdeburg on the Elbe River. The 2nd took the southern portion of the city, including the Krupp Works, while the 30th entered the heart of the city at the cathedral.
Other elements of the Army fought five miles east of the Elbe, beyond Barby, to within 52 miles of Berlin. The highway bridge in the latter area had been blown by the Germans but the railroad bridge appeared still intact.
British tanks moved to within 18 miles of Hamburg along a forty-mile front and to within twelve miles of Harburg.
The British Second Army had on Sunday liberated fully 39,000 concentration camp survivors from the hell on earth of
Five hundred children stood among the prisoners still alive. Babies had been born daily. The Army was processing the survivors and moving them to a barracks, except those too sick to be moved or having communicable diseases.
Three compounds housed 2,000 women and two others housed 12,000 men. Another 15,000 recent arrivals were awaiting processing by the Nazis when liberated.
The medical officer described it as a "horror camp". Even after the British had arrived on the scene, they found SS guards, who had not obeyed the terms of surrender by turning in all of their arms, shooting prisoners for stealing potatoes. The guards were disarmed and ordered to serve duty in cleaning up the camp.
Belsen had been a concentration camp since mid-1943, designed as a recuperation facility for slave laborers too ill to work. Unknown numbers died from disease and starvation before the liberation. At least 53,000 corpses were discovered at the point of liberation.
Among the dead at Belsen were Anne Frank, age 15, and her older sister Margot, age 19.
Part of an American force of 750 heavy bombers struck Traunstein in Germany, less than 25 miles from Berchtesgaden, as the remainder of the force struck at Rosenheim and other targets in southern Germany and western Czechoslovakia.
About a thousand RAF and Canadian bombers hit the German naval base at Helgoland on the North Sea. Both RAF and Russian bombers, uniting for the first time, bombed Berlin during the night.
Another 453 Luftwaffe planes were destroyed on the ground during bombing operations the previous day.
In Italy, the Polish troops of the Eighth Army moved up the Po Valley, two miles past Castel San Piedra, to within ten miles of Bologna, while the Fifth Army made grudging but steady progress from the south along the mountain highway from Florence.
Other Eighth Army forces moved beyond Argenta, cutting off the Argenta Gap, the key to Ferrara and the Po Valley. Indian troops of the Eighth Army reached the Canal Di Medicina, four miles to the northeast of Medicina, fourteen miles northeast of Bologna. To the west, New Zealanders advanced 4,000 yards to reach the Gaina Canal along a two-mile front. Italian troops two miles beyond the Sillaro River were chasing the Germans from one hill to the next, capturing a thousand prisoners during the previous 24 hours.
We note that on Saturday, April 14, future Kansas Senator, Minority and Majority Leader, and 1976 Republican vice-presidential nominee and 1996 presidential nominee, Robert Dole, then an Army second lieutenant, had been seriously wounded during a combat operation which he had led in the mountainous terrain south of Bologna. He would be awarded the Bronze Star for his bravery in battle. He had received the wound immediately after pulling his radio man back into a trench, unfortunately the man already fatally wounded. As he attempted to advance out of the trench again, he was hit by machinegun fire.
The night before, as fate would have it, on Friday the 13th, his future wife, future North Carolina Senator Elizabeth Hanford Dole, at the age of eight, was residing in her hometown of Salisbury as the Southern Railway train bearing the body of President Roosevelt passed through the town at around 11:00 p.m., likely past the young Ms. Hanford's bedtime.
On Ie Jima, in what appeared another routine operation taking the airfield on the small island just three miles to the west of Okinawa against relatively light opposition, columnist Ernie Pyle, whose writing was beloved by the G.I. of World War II, was shot and killed during an enemy ambush by machinegun fire at 10:15 a.m. on the southern side of Ie. He had been observing the Tenth Army advance, standing next to a regimental commanding officer. Mr. Pyle had transferred to the Pacific from the European theater seven months earlier.
As we have previously quoted, nearly seven years ago, his last, unfinished piece, found in his shirt pocket after his death, is both moving and palpably descriptive of the war which he saw firsthand. He tells of how the people back home could not really appreciate the scene.
His pieces were not carried regularly by The News, though they were once in awhile, usually, however, appearing on the inside of the newspaper rather than on the editorial page. In late summer, 1939, his work had been filling a space on the editorial page while one of the syndicated columnists was on vacation.
He would likewise also appear during July and August of 1942, replacing the vacationing Raymond Clapper, who would also die covering the war in the Pacific, in a mid-air collision in the Marshalls near Eniwetok in early February, 1944. The pieces on the editorial page appeared July 20, 24, 30, August 1, 3, and 4.
Mr. Pyle was 44 years old.
The war and all its carnage was not yet over, even if the outcome was a certainty, as it had been for the better part of a year. Everyone seemed to understand except the German and Japanese High Commands, still believing and living off their own Big Lies, the ultimate penalty for telling the Big Lie in the first place.
During the previous month, Admiral Nimitz announced, there had been 2,250 Japanese planes destroyed by planes from American and British carriers in support of the invasion of Okinawa. Task Force 58 had knocked out 1,600 of the planes. The remainder were destroyed by land-based planes, anti-aircraft guns, and planes from escort carriers. British carriers accounted for 80 of the kills. The number did not include planes shot down by B-29's or their accompanying fighters.
Kamikaze raiders were making repeated suicide runs against American warships off Okinawa, drinking the sake and seeking to join their fellows in Nirvana.
On Luzon, the 33rd Division moved to within four miles of the center of Baguio, summer capital of the Philippines, liberating 7,000 civilians trapped in the city.
On the Eastern Front, the Russian troops reported being able to see the flames of Berlin. According to German reports, nine Russian armies were now converging on the capital, breaching its last outer defense lines less than 18 to 20 miles distant. A third Russian offensive had been initiated along a seventeen-mile front at the Oder River south of Stettin, aiming to join with the Western Allies to the north and west of Berlin. The front along the Niesse River 48 miles to the southeast of the capital had been expanded to 45 miles, nearing Cottbus on the Spree River.
Premier Stalin, according to a German report, told the Russian troops at the start of the new offensive to take Berlin, that the war would end with the fall of Berlin on April 25. Moscow did not confirm this prediction and it would have been contrary to Stalin's previous exercise of caution in making any such statement. Apparently, it was more German propaganda so that they might ruefully respond when the "prediction" proved false.
This time, however, their own prediction of the demise of the Third Reich was all too acutely accurate, five days short of the mark. Too bad they didn't throw in that Hitler would commit suicide on or about that date and make it a real show of prophetic wisdom, perhaps even setting the suicide on the top of the Brocken for literary drama.
Well, W. J. Cash had beat them to the draw on that bit of foreshadowing, on September 1, 1939.
Burke Davis, News Associate Editor, had been sent to Washington to attend the first press conference, held the day before by President Truman. He provides his impressions, stating that the new President was no country boy to be led around by the nose. He was confident, quick on his feet, and suave, not exhibiting any of the modesty of his legend. He gave quick, certain responses to press questions, sometimes merely indicating he was not going to discuss a particular topic, such as appointments. He had appeared more forceful than in his speech Monday to Congress, banging his desk with emphasis when asserting that he was going to attend to business in Washington.
The veterans of the White House press corps stated their amazement, that it was the first time a Presidential press conference had begun on time, and more ground had been covered than at any point in memory. He was jovial and polite, but firm and resolute. Even columnists such as anti-New Dealer George Dixon had been impressed and expressed the belief that the new President's attitude harbingered unity in government at long last.
The desk in the Oval Room was clear of keepsakes, all of President Roosevelt's personal items having been removed.
Not yet was in place the sign which would soon come to sit on that desk.
The new President brimmed with energy at age 61, appeared fit and strong—as he would later describe it, the result of his daily morning constitutional.
On Friday morning, following an all night vigil Thursday, he had to borrow food from his neighbor as the Trumans were caught without any. That was the way of the new President, informal, an average citizen, without pretense. Being escorted along Pennsylvania Avenue each morning now by Secret Service from Blair House to work at the White House, he had appeared glum to reporters, apparently missing his 47-block bus ride to and from his apartment, as had been his custom until the previous Thursday evening.
President Truman owned a large library on the Civil War and was a history buff on the conflict, had taken long walking tours at Gettysburg and on the battlefields of Virginia, Manassas and so on, during his decade in the Senate.
We digress a moment to note that this reference by Civil War buff Burke Davis, later author of several Civil War biographies, perhaps not coincidentally appeared on the 80th anniversary of the signing of the first terms of surrender exacted by General Sherman from General Joseph Johnston at Bennett Place near Durham, N.C., coincident with the date on which Jefferson Davis and his Confederate Cabinet rode into Charlotte to form the last meeting of the Confederacy. Those terms to which agreement had been made at Bennett Place, however, were rejected by the Cabinet in Washington as too lenient. The final terms would be accepted April 26.
As the 50-odd correspondents left the press conference and moved out onto the White House portico, James Byrnes arrived with Admiral Leahy. Mr. Byrnes had with him on a leash Duchess, the daughter of Blaze, the controversial bull mastiff of Brigadier General Elliott Roosevelt, the doggie who had been allowed to catch a ride as freight in late January, bumping in Memphis, albeit per routine on cargo planes, three soldiers headed home on furlough. With Duchess was an officially unidentified black dog.
As the reporters looked on, Mr. Byrnes had asked, "Is that what you gentlemen came to watch?"
Last we had heard, Mr. Byrnes had a Scottie named Whiskers, competing for press attention with Fala. Dogs on the leash change rapidly, though, in Washington. Perhaps, Fala took Whiskers on a tour of the Potomac and claimed to have lost sight of him somewhere around Foggy Bottom.
On the editorial page, "Double Standard" remarks on the sentence of two American soldiers to death and a third to life imprisonment for assault on two German women at Tauberbischofsheim. All three men were black.
Three white soldiers were about to be tried on similar charges.
A German had thanked the military court for the sentence, to which the court had responded that it meted the tough sentences to maintain order, not for the German people, asking whether a German court would have done the same had German officers assaulted American women.
The German armies had murdered, plundered, and committed bestial acts wherever they had been; American armies had not been permitted to behave in such manner.
It was tough, remarks the piece, to accept such rigid sentences of American soldiers amid reports of the types of conduct unpunished, even encouraged, which had gone on within the Reich. But it was necessary to retain discipline and mete out just punishment for the enemy while maintaining decency within the ranks of Allied military personnel.
"A Procession" notes that eight male attendants, loyal to Morganton State Hospital Superintendent Dr. J. R. Saunders, were leaving the hospital upon his resignation. The exodus would leave only four doctors for 2,500 patients and a shortage of attendants as well. The problem would challenge the new State Hospital Board recently appointed by Governor Cherry.
The departure of the old personnel would eventually benefit the institution, but in the interim, the patients would likely suffer.
"Scots Wha Hae" reports of it being time to render a budget in Mecklenburg County and the Board of Commissioners, made up of Scots and a Bradshaw, were prone to frugality. The dilemma they faced was whether to raise the tax rate by a penny and increase the expectancy of collection by a single percentage point to render their budget. That, in the face of six years in which tax collections had not failed to reach in excess of 85 percent, the planned target of the one percent increase in expectancy. The recent fiscal year had enjoyed a 91.59 percent collection rate. Nevertheless, caution reminded that during the thirties, collection had been as low 71 percent.
While amusing to observe the parsimony of the Commissioners at work, their penny-wisdom had kept county taxes low and its credit high and so was to be admired as an attribute.
"Calm and Cool" comments on the remarks of Governor Gregg Cherry regarding race relations in the state, urging mutuality of respect between the races and working together to build the future of the state. His brief statement admitted of racial tension but also did not seek to belabor the issue. He placed the matter on a plane of necessity and principle, that for which the men overseas were fighting.
Too bad that not all of those men quite
The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Senator William Langer of North Dakota remarking on Comptroller Lindsay Warren's report that 50 billion dollars worth of corrupt profits had been made on war contracts, relating the fact to the relative hardship of coal miners and farmers.
U. S. Steel had registered record profits during the war, and many of the coal mines were owned by the company.
Likewise Armour & Co. had made huge profits during the war but the farmers could not sell their hogs because of prices being set too low.
One of his constituents had complained that she had 200 hogs she could not sell because the packing plant had no room for them, and she wanted to know what to do. He had informed her that she should pack them up and ship them to the President so that he might give every agency head a hog to demonstrate what a fine job they had been doing for the farmers of the Northwest.
Drew Pearson relates of the advice being provided President Truman to make a clean break with the New Deal and appoint his own Cabinet.
Mr. Pearson assesses each position, predicts that Henry Wallace, a good friend to Harry Truman, would remain at Commerce.
Secretary Wallace would leave in October, 1946 and be replaced by Averill Harriman.
Secretary of War Henry Stimson had such a long record of service in government, having been President Hoover's Secretary of State and twice serving previously as Secretary of War, that he would remain. But, at 78, he might wish to retire at the end of the war.
Undersecretary Robert Patterson would replace Mr. Stimson in late September.
President Roosevelt, he indicates, had been essentially his own Secretary of the Navy, but Secretary James Forrestal, largely a figurehead since the death in April, 1944 of Frank Knox, would likely continue in the role, but not necessarily indefinitely, especially if the new President, often critical while in the Senate of the admirals, perceived Secretary Forrestal not to be properly riding herd on them.
Secretary of Treasury Henry Morgenthau had been with the New Deal since the beginning and would likely stay on unless his wife's ill health required his retirement.
Secretary Morgenthau would be replaced in July by War Mobilizer Fred Vinson, to become Chief Justice within a year thereafter.
Likewise, Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes, who had repeatedly submitted his resignation to President Roosevelt at each re-election and had now done so again with President Truman, would be retained, based on his knowledge and experience.
Mr. Ickes would be replaced the following March by Julius Krug, appointed by President Roosevelt as head of the War Production Board.
Attorney General Francis Biddle would likely stay on as well, being a staunch defender of civil liberties, despite the desires of the big city bosses to be rid of him, and the major corporations being desirous of having more leeway under anti-trust laws.
In late June, the President would appoint Texan Tom Clark, to be appointed in 1949 to the Supreme Court, as the successor to Mr. Biddle. Justice Clark's son, Ramsey, would serve as Attorney General under President Johnson, having been appointed to the Justice Department by President Kennedy.
Postmaster General Frank Walker might step aside if he decided that President Truman wanted to reward Democratic National Committee chair Bob Hannegan, largely responsible for getting Senator Truman on the ticket the previous summer at the Chicago convention. Mr. Walker had been a close friend of FDR, as had Secretary Morgenthau and Secretary Ickes.
Mr. Pearson was correct in his suggestion, Mr. Hannegan succeeding as Postmaster General in late June.
Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins had resigned twice before and would tender her resignation to President Truman, had been begged to stay on by President Roosevelt. But now she would definitely wish to bow out after twelve years on the job. Senator Harley Kilgore of West Virginia, on the Senate Investigating Committee chaired by Senator Truman, would likely get the nod as her replacement. Progressive Georgia Governor Ellis Arnall was another possibility. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black might also be willing to serve.
Lewis Schwellenbach would succeed Ms. Perkins at the end of June.
Secretary of Agriculture Claude Wickard, appointed only because of the move of Henry Wallace in 1941 to the Vice-Presidency, would likely be replaced.
Secretary Wickard would be replaced by Clinton Anderson in June.
Secretary of State Stettinius also would likely be supplanted with a more experienced Secretary, as President Roosevelt had dominated foreign affairs and President Truman frankly admitted having little knowledge or experience in the area. Mr. Pearson notes, with accurate perspicacity, that James Byrnes might become Secretary of State, at which point Mr. Stettinius might become the U.S. representative to the United Nations.
Thus, he predicts, there would be three changes in the Cabinet, at State, Labor, and Agriculture.
Within eighteen months, the entire Cabinet, with the exception of Secretary of the Navy Forrestal, who would become the first Secretary of Defense in 1947, would thus be the appointees of President Truman, although all of his new appointees, except Congressman Clinton Anderson, had originally served in primary capacities under President Roosevelt. Other than Secretary Forrestal, only Secretaries Wallace and Ickes would stay beyond September, 1945.
Mr. Pearson concludes by informing that President Truman, first day on the job Friday, had gone to the Capitol to see his old friends, declared, "I feel just as if someone had hit me over the head with a sixteen-pound mallet." His colleagues on the Hill told him that it wasn't cricket to visit at the Capitol as President, but the new President nevertheless assured that he intended to do so.
The only drawback to doing so, he declared, was that when he went to get in his car, he found himself surrounded by a motorcycle escort which created a "terrible commotion on the street", "even stopped people from crossing the street."
If left to the new President, he likely would have stepped from his car and walked the folks across himself.
Marquis Childs remarks on how many sudden advisers Harry Truman had acquired since Thursday, people who were readily suggesting that he divest himself of all New Deal liberals in the Administration and replace them with moderates, sure of themselves that he would follow their sage advice.
Harry Hopkins was thought to be prime to be let out to pasture, but, thus far, President Truman had called on him for advice, being a sensible man and realizing that Mr. Hopkins had been so close to FDR that he had sat in on every important diplomatic and military meeting of the previous five years, understood Mr. Churchill and Mr. Eden and many others in the British Government, as well as Comrade Stalin and those of the Russian Government. He had attended the major conferences, with Churchill at Casablanca in January, 1943, with Stalin and Churchill at Tehran in November-December, 1943, and the Big Three meeting at Yalta in January-February. He had helped initiate Lend-Lease in 1940-41.
Secretary of State Stettinius, while having great knowledge of Lend-Lease in his prior chief administrative role over it, and having been Undersecretary since August, 1943, had nevertheless been in the lead role at State only since latter November. Mr. Hopkins was thus invaluable to President Truman in providing the background experience and knowledge necessary to make the shift of power seamless.
The only problem was personal to Mr. Hopkins, that he was, himself, ailing in health, had been in the care of the Mayo Clinic when news of the death of the President had reached him. But to the extent he could lend advice, the entire country would benefit.
When Mr. Truman had first arrived in the Senate in 1935, he had been treated with open disrespect by some of his colleagues for his having obtained the job through the auspices of Boss Tom Pendergast of Kansas City. But, he never held grudges for this lack of warm reception at the beginning, instead went about accumulating the respect of his colleagues by assuring, through action and policy, his decency and respect for clean government. He had never adopted the egoist strut which plagued many Senators.
While the office of the President was so bound up in power that its occupant could easily fall prey to the old axiom anent corruption and power, Mr. Childs offers the belief that President Truman would "steer a clear course", lest he be overborne by the advice of too many advisers.
Samuel Grafton wonders why the Nazis could not demonstrate rational sense and realize the war was lost. He answers his own question as to why they would not surrender by stating that they could not do so, for the fact that Fascism represented in Europe a social convulsion, not just a war. The same was true of feudalism. Fascism likewise would not surrender, even after the formal fighting would end. It would never really give up. World War II was but a chapter in its long history.
Should aid through Lend-Lease, as being proposed by some on Capitol Hill, abruptly end when the guns would fall silent, then Fascism, beaten down, could find its Hydra-head by which to accomplish resurgence. The war would not be won until all vestiges of Fascism were eliminated from Europe.
Hal Boyle, with the Ninth Army near Leipzig, tells of Friederich Barbarossa, the red-bearded warrior of old, whose spirit still lived within the Kyffhausen Gab mountain northwest of Bad Frankenhausen, sitting at a stone table, by legend, around which his beard had been growing through the centuries.
So it had been related to Mr. Boyle by Corporal Kirk Dalton, former reporter of the Kansas City Star, leaving out the unknown factum at the time that Hitler had adopted his name for the invasion of Russia, June 22, 1941. Barbarossa was reputed in the legend to be on the verge of emergence from the cave to fight the anti-Christ. Thus far, however, he had not shown his face against the Sherman tanks of the American armored divisions.
Bored at the front, despite the Germans still sending in mortar shells and sniper fire, some G.I.'s of Company C of the 60th Armored Infantry Battalion were sitting around in the spring sun thinking of baseball while reading of spring training camps at home, as related in Stars and Stripes. So, they put in a call to headquarters, ordered some baseball equipment, receiving it despite some incredulous inquiries, spent the rest of the day playing baseball, within earshot of the shells and rifles of the enemy. No casualties were reported in the game.
Framed Edition
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