The Charlotte News
Saturday, June 14, 1941
FIVE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: "Scheme" takes note for the first time on the editorial page the amassing of twenty German divisions--about 300,000 troops--on the Soviet border frontier. But the editorial makes little of the belief it recognizes as held by some that Hitler intended invasion of Russia. Instead, it posits that it is more likely that Hitler is seeking a deal with Stalin, to which it assumes Stalin would be ready to acquiesce to avoid a fight: to give Hitler's armies access to southern Russia to cross the Transylvanian isthmus into Iraq, Iran, and Egypt, to divide the British Empire in half, and then make heading for India.
The editorial also mentions the possibility of Hitler convincing Turkey to let another of his armies pass through its territory and thus create a pincer against the British occupation of Iraq. But it does not take into account the threat by Stalin to Hitler that if he mobilized in Turkey, Stalin would come to Turkey's defense. And this, it would appear, was the key omission which rendered the piece's logic unsound when juxtaposed to what actually transpired eight days later.
The army amassing on the Soviet frontier was indeed for its transparently obvious purpose: invasion. Just as had been the amassing of troops similarly on the border with Poland just before the initial blitz of September 1, 1939.
Perhaps, Hitler was relaying messages to Stalin in this time, demanding either acquiescence in allowing his army to pass through Turkey unimpeded or face invasion. Perhaps, more probably, the negotiation stage had come and gone in April and May, and the invasion, with divisions withdrawn from the western front to accommodate it, a foregone conclusion.
Whether there remained any way out for Stalin short of war, Hitler's Operation Barbarossa was now afoot--named for the Turkish corsair who, along with his brother, in the sixteenth century, piratically conquered the north African states of Tripolitania (Libya), Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, while plundering the coasts of Italy, Greece and Spain. Perhaps in that name for the invasion, therefore, is transmitted the idea Hitler wanted to convey cryptically to his generals, that this operation was key to control of the whole of the Mediterranean and Middle East, and with it the establishment of control over the British Empire and all its resources, and thus ultimately of the Atlantic.
As to the Norwegian bird song recounted in "'Fuglesang'", rather than attend the Nazi rally, these birds had flown to the Norwegian wood to hear, no doubt, Northern songs of the fugle, rather than Fuglesang whose song was little more than the fugleman's fugling to fugle the masses into fugling as quislings, right along with him.
The sensible letter to the editor of Mr. Smith uses as its source for quotes from a representative isolationist, the letters from Nell Dixson Russell. Which proves that she was indeed the I Am Giving It To Them, just as she proclaimed herself to be on May 31 in response to the "Great I Am" "Imperial KKK" harassing Her Majesty.
Installment 12 of Out of the Night is here. Jan Valtin meets Gushi and Getsy in San Francisco. He is first ordered to deliver propaganda pamphlets to Japan, thought crucial to disruption and sabotage in China, in turn to bring about the Communist revolution there. But, as Gushi and Jan plan to go dancing, Getsy intervenes with new orders: bump a guy off. No questions; the Party commands. Jan wrestles with the notion, then agrees to do the nefarious deed for the Party.
Meanwhile, Superman goes into action, the crooks decide to blow up Easy, and Wimpy sends the Ark to Davy Jones's locker.
All while the Barbary pirates make off with the loot from the back pocket of Red Ryder, to whose aid comes Li Sing.
Framed Edition
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