The Charlotte News
Monday, May 7, 1945
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page and inside page report, in a prematurely released Associated Press exclusive, that, following five years, eight months, and 6 days, a total of 2,075 days, three years, five months since the beginning of American involvement, the European War had
Estimated casualties at war's end in Europe were 40 million on both sides, including those killed, wounded, and captured.
A table of significant events during the European war is printed on the inside page.
As indicated on a second inside page, the bold headline had been featured in The News, as it had been at the rival Charlotte Observer, in large red print, hitting the streets shortly after the 10:00 a.m. unofficial announcement. The surrender had occurred at 2:41 a.m. French time, 8:41 p.m. EWT on Sunday, and took place in General Eisenhower's headquarters in a little red schoolhouse in Reims. The news had been announced in Europe at 9:35 a.m. EWT, preceded by the announcement of the German Foreign Minister, Count Ludwig Schwerin Von Krosigk, to the German people at 8:00 a.m. EWT. Count Von Krosigk's words are printed on the front and inside pages. He invoked God's help more than once in the rebuilding of Germany and meeting the demands of peace, which he assured would be harsh for the German people but which would have to be faced realistically. The first news of the day had been that Norway had unconditionally surrendered.
Col. General Gustav Jodl, new chief of staff of the German Army, signed the surrender document for the Germans. Lt. General Walter Bedell Smith, General Ivan Susloparoff of Russia, and General Francois Sevez of France signed for the Allies. General Eisenhower was not present at the time of signing but received the German staff immediately afterward.
London had broken out in wild celebrations at the news, with crowds jamming Piccadilly Circus. Cheers also erupted in New York and shredded paper was thrown from windows.
There was no great celebration in Charlotte, only a little tickertape thrown from windows as people quickly snatched up the newspapers and read them mostly in quiet. A piece contrasts the more open celebration of the Armistice on November 11, 1918, which had hit the local newsstands in the wee hours of the morning and had come as much more of a surprise, absent the adumbrating events which had preceded for over a week the final surrender in Europe this time.
Since April 28, reports had come that Heinrich Himmler was prepared to make an unconditional surrender to Great Britain and the United States, but not Russia. Events had occurred in rapid succession since then, the announcement May 1 in late afternoon of Hitler's death, the announcement the following day of Goebbels death, the rapid crumbling and surrender of the German Armies, first in Italy on May 2, then steadily through Saturday in all areas of Europe save Czech territory invaded by the Third Army and some questions during the weekend regarding the surrender of German forces in Norway. Prime Minister Churchill had announced the previous week that he thought the war might be over by the previous Friday evening.
The only person in the end who hit the nail on the head in terms of predicting precisely the end was the 800,000th German prisoner captured by the First Army, taken two weeks earlier, who predicted that the war would end in two weeks, this being prior to several other events, and so, at least, moderately interesting.
Dampening the news a little, Prague radio announced that the German forces in Czechoslovakia did not recognize the surrender and would continue to fight until they had gained safe passage from Czech territory.
There was also the recognition that, while the fighting was over in Europe, there remained perhaps a long, hard struggle ahead to conquer Japan, with the prospect that many of the soldiers in the European theater would now be transferred to the Pacific. Thus, especially for the United States, less so than for either Britain or Russia, the war itself appeared far from over.
A report on the inside page tells of the War Department plans to deploy by the fall six million new men to the Pacific theater for General MacArthur's promised march to Tokyo. The British intended to supplement this force with several hundred thousand men out of Burma. Australian and Dutch troops presently engaged on Tarakan in Borneo would also become available. Thus far, there had been less than a million Americans at any given time deployed by the Army in the Pacific. Lt. General Robert Richardson, commander of Army forces in the Pacific, stated that Japan was like Europe in that it had established highways and cities, and would not involve the complex jungle fighting which had beset and slowed forces in the islands.
President Truman announced through press secretary Jonathan Daniels that he would have no statement regarding the European surrender until a joint statement would be issued by all of the Big Three Allies simultaneously. For the first time since becoming President on April 12, Mr. Truman had lunch at his desk rather than walking the short distance down Pennsylvania Avenue to Blair House, still his temporary residence.
The nation's capital took the news in stride, traffic moving at a normal pace, Lafayette Square virtually deserted, taking the cue of the President, as urged also by War Mobilizer Fred Vinson, that no great celebration should take place until the entire war was over.
American G.I.'s of the First Army, for whom the war had ended sometime earlier with the clearing of the Ruhr pocket and the linking April 25 with the Russians, saw the news as anti-climactic, wondering what now would be their fate. It was characterized as a strange ending to a strange war, with the last resistance of the Germans melting away suddenly during the course of the prior week. There would be no celebrations. They continued to sit in the sun and clean their equipment as the Russians were encamped on the other side of the Mulde, as the situation had been for many days. The end for Nazi Germany had been obviously coming for weeks and came finally therefore as no surprise.
The British announced that Tuesday would become officially V-E Day in Great Britain and that Prime Minister Churchill would deliver a broadcast at 9:00 a.m. EWT on Tuesday. Both Tuesday and Wednesday were declared national holidays in Britain.
We Yanks, being revolutionaries, however, do not stand on formalities. V-E Day was this date, or April 30, as you please. What Winnie and King George declared, we don't give a good royal damn. If you don't like it, we can fight about it.
As a footnote to the surrender, the inside page reports that the Associated Press had been suspended by Supreme Allied Headquarters from filing further news dispatches because of a premature report by Edward Kennedy, the A. P. correspondent reporting the front page story of the surrender. After receipt of the Kennedy dispatch at about 9:35 a.m., only two subsequent minor dispatches were received in New York by the A. P. up to 12:30 EWT. The United Press was still not carrying the story of the surrender by 2:30. The News had received the dispatch and began making over its first edition, normally due on the streets at 10:00 a.m., but arriving a bit after that hour this date.
The story had been an exclusive because Mr. Kennedy had jumped the gun with its release, prompting the suspension. General Eisenhower had requested of pool reporters allowed to cover the signing that they hold the story for 36 hours until the Russians had a chance to announce the news in Moscow and Berlin. Mr. Kennedy then heard the German announcement during the morning hours and assumed it had been cleared by censors for release, as it had been, and phoned in the story to the A. P. office in London which relayed it to New York.
Other reporters had previously been suspended for filing stories not first cleared by censors. This tempest in a teapot would grow over the next few days and tarnish Mr. Kennedy's reputation as a reporter, as he was expelled from France as a correspondent by Supreme Allied Headquarters.
Despite the firestorm, including protests from the New York Times regarding his conduct, he would continue in the news profession as both an editor and associate editor of California newspapers. He later stated his lack of regret for having scooped the story.
The A. P. would fire him in November for the breach of protocol, but has, just this past Friday, May 4, 2012, issued an apology for so doing, stating that he had acted appropriately in the public interest. Some of the other reporters in the pool apparently continued for years to view the matter differently.
Mr. Kennedy, who passed away November 29, 1963 at age 58 after being hit by a car on November 24, was said to have received the new development without comment.
Whether, incidentally, his ultimately fatal accident had anything to do with the rush to get out the breaking news that day of the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald is not indicated, but would be of historical interest, if so. Perhaps, it was simply one of those eery, inexplicable collisions of events which are wont to happen on occasion, such as the similar fate of Margaret Mitchell in Atlanta in 1949 while on her way with her husband to attend the movie, "A Canterbury Tale".
The news of that penultimate event, we shall never forget, came to us in an automobile while riding along Highway 86 on a sunny Sunday afternoon, amid the shadows overhead of the passing trees, being dunned by the approach of winter of their last flame-lit leaves, in image counterfeit. Just as we passed the New Hope Church, the notice was broadcast via the
The Russians in Berlin, searching through the ruins of the Reichs-Chancellery, had still not found the remains of Hitler or Goebbels, though the bodies of many leading SS and General Staff members had been located, all apparent suicides. The Russians continued to believe therefore that the announcement of Hitler's death had been a Nazi trick.
Another report from Moscow, however, stated that the bodies of Goebbels and his family had been found.
In the Pacific war, about 60 B-29's attacked Kyushu, the 17th such raid since March 27. Three Superfortresses were lost.
On the editorial page, "An End and a Beginning" remarks on the surrender and end of hostilities in Europe being not just an end but a beginning for a long struggle to rebuild after the war, a grim task ahead. Nazism was not dead in Europe. There were homeless millions, wandering waifs in starvation, whose suffering was not over with the end of the war. So, Europe could only celebrate the end of the war with half a heart.
Similarly, in the United States, celebration was tempered by the realization that fighting still lay ahead for long hard months in the Pacific.
So it was hard yet to think back on the many struggles of the European and Mediterranean theaters, Oran, Kasserine Pass, Bizerte in North Africa, the campaigns for Sicily, Italy, Normandy and D-Day, followed by the torturous hedgerows of the previous June and July, the many lives lost and left behind on the beaches eleven months earlier. Behind lay a million American casualties of the war.
But for now, Americans observed the little red schoolhouse in Reims, but also, with hindsight to those who had fallen since the landings in North Africa, November 8, 1942, those who were no longer able to sense corporeally the fate of the world, but who had given their lives to preserve it in democracy.
Millions more Americans were looking now to the Pacific, where yet more lives would need be sacrificed before the end could finally come.
No one, including the scientists at Los Alamos, knew that the war in the Pacific would be over within a bit more than 90 days. No one dared dream such a thing. Even those scientists did not know whether the device on which they were working in careful secrecy in the New Mexico desert would produce the anticipated results, whether it would fizzle, or whether it would ignite the atmosphere in a chain reaction and blow the whole world to kingdom come, considered by some number of them a distinct possibility.
But, for now, it was "V-E Day, and more than halfway to final victory over the Axis. It is also the day to regard the price we have paid for this day, and to remember, remember for tomorrow."
"The Twain Meets" finds it remarkable that Senator Josiah W. Bailey of North Carolina had, during a routine meeting of the Commerce Committee, provided praise to Secretary Henry Wallace for his Reader's Digest article, printed this date on the page, a defense of free enterprise with Government assistance. The turnabout was revolutionary for Senator Bailey, an ardent foe of Mr. Wallace, having tried to block his nomination as Secretary during the first two months of the year. The piece hopes that Senator Bailey fully understood the position of Mr. Wallace, that a Planned Economy was unsound, but that, nevertheless, planning was necessary.
The breeder of reaction, Mr. Wallace, had, for the nonce, seemingly struck a chord of cooperative alignment in the shucks, even among some of his more tenacious opponents of the past.
"Reminder" tells of the local election set for the next day to determine members of the City Council following the April 30 primary.
The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Representative Ed Gossett of Texas discussing the treaty ratification power of the Senate, advocating that since a majority could declare war, it only made sense that a majority of the Congress ought be able to declare peace, rather than the Constitutional rule requiring two-thirds of the Senate to ratify treaties. He claimed that the Founders would have voted to change the rule and that every President since George Washington had favored the change.
Congressman John Rankin of Mississippi then challenged Mr. Gossett to back up those claims.
Mr. Gossett then read from former Secretary of State John Hay, assistant to Abraham Lincoln and Secretary under Presidents McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, favoring abolition of the two-thirds rule, and quoted Woodrow Wilson as having said that the rule constituted "the treaty of making power of the Senate."
The excerpt by Henry Wallace from his forthcoming book, Sixty Million Jobs, as reprinted in Reader's Digest, as indicated in the column, contains his position as new Secretary of Commerce, against a Planned Economy but in favor of planning to maintain the economy "competitively free" and more free than it then was.
He believed that the economy was then threatened by "private totalitarianism", that is, concentrating the decisions for the economy's direction within the hands of the directors of a few major corporations. At the end of 1944, he points out, 75 percent of the war production was controlled by 56 corporations.
Mr. Wallace favored placing the control of the economy in the hands instead of as many as possible of the country's three million business enterprises. Small business had provided in 1944 fully 45 percent of American industrial and commercial employment and thus was an important component of the entire structure of the economy. Thus, he encouraged "capitalism of the common man".
He explains that he began as a small business man, a breeder of seed corn, developing a new method for breeding, then starting a company to market it. He borrowed money to capitalize his company. The company had grown and now had plants in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, sold four million dollars worth of seed corn per year. So, he knew what it was to meet a payroll and what was necessary to make a small business thrive.
Secretary Wallace believed that four things should be done to promote small business: insure that monopolistic practices did not serve to exclude artificially newcomers from the market who wished to start small businesses; second, small businesses should have reasonable access to credit, supplemented, when necessary, by the Government; third, the Government should cooperate with and aid industrial development; and fourth, there should be tax relief to stimulate business, including abolition of the wartime excess profits tax at war's end, and, in the meantime, exemption from it for small businesses, the ability of start-up businesses to write off new plants and facilities to a greater extent than under exisiting law, a tax limited to that of partnerships for corporations which did not operate nationally, and the ability to write off business losses for up to five to six years rather than, as under the current code, for only two years.
Drew Pearson reflects back to October 9, 1934, when a bomb thrown by a Croatian fanatic in Marseilles had killed King Alexander of Yugoslavia, causing the Yugoslavs to blame the French for not providing adequate protection and causing the Government to move into alliance with the Germans. The Croatian had been trained in a German sabotage school.
He remarks that in San Francisco, security was so loose that the same result might transpire again, with catastrophic results to the world. Foreign delegates of the 46 attending nations had complained of lax security, but nothing had been done to remedy the exiguity.
On one occasion, two journalists and two University of Southern California co-eds had entered the conference, each carrying a typewriter, without credentials, just to test security. They had walked through the Veterans Building, not just once but three times, where the confreres met, then exited each time with their typewriters, never once being challenged by police, local or military. Mr. Pearson states that they could have been carrying 200 pounds of TNT on each trip through the building or been waiting outside with a machinegun as the delegates exited at the end of the session.
Now, all the disgruntled Nazis and Fascists needed to do was recruit some innocent looking journalists and USC co-eds for the task and they were in.
He next suggests that the most dominating figures of the conference had thus far been Sir Anthony Eden and V. M. Molotov. Crowds swarmed the St. Francis Hotel, hoping to catch a glimpse of Commissar Molotov. The reaction was similar whenever Mr. Eden entered the conference hall.
Both men were apparent heirs to the leadership of their countries, but each had come from a vastly different background, Eden from the aristocracy of Britain and Molotov from a worker-revolutionist family in Russia. Eden was sometimes at odds with Churchill, while Molotov always appeared to get along with Stalin. Despite the differences of background, Eden and Molotov respected one another.
Mr. Eden understood the need to avert a third world war, had sought to stop the present one, had waged a fight within the British Cabinet in 1935 to try to prevent the war by Italy in Ethiopia. Sir Samuel Hoare, then Foreign Secretary, had been in favor of allowing Italy to have its way. But Mr. Eden had recognized that if Mussolini were allowed to thwart the authority of the League of Nations with impunity, it would mean the start of another world war.
Dorothy Thompson writes from Jerusalem of the continuing nationalism in Europe remaining as vestiges of Nazism despite Hitler's death. Reports from Yugoslavia and France, as well the rest of Europe, were that there was great hostility regarding the prospect of returning to Jews property stolen from them by the Nazis and resold to non-Jews.
The way appeared already being prepared for seeking to maintain the myth that Hitler and the Nazis had fought Bolshevism. Ms. Thompson then proceeds to tell of how Hitler had fought against Bolshevism during the war and for the West: by making a non-aggression pact with Stalin, then attacking the West, in Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and Britain, attacking Russia in 1941 only because he feared being stabbed in the back and because he hoped to impress conservative elements in Great Britain, leaving Europe and Germany ultimately in ruins long after defeat was a foregone conclusion.
"He who in death is proclaimed the protector of Europe is the destroyer of Europe." And, of course, so it was
An Army corporal in Hamlet writes a letter to compliment The News for its May 2 editorial on the lack of wisdom of the United States in welcoming Argentina to the fold of the San Francisco Conference. The soldier states that it presented itself as nonsensical to fight against Fascism in Europe and then admit Argentina, with a Fascist Government and pro-Axis stance until late March, to the tables of peace. He states that most other soldiers felt likewise.
Another letter writer praises "Witch-Wetting" from Friday, re the condemnation of the action of the City Council in seeking to ban from public property all meetings by Jehovah's Witnesses and similar organizations, as being violative of the First Amendment. The author assured that he was not a member of the sect and, because of their stance on the war, had no respect for their particular creed, but nevertheless found it appropriate and praiseworthy to defend their basic civil liberties.
Framed Edition
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