The Charlotte News

Monday, July 13, 1942

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: "Oil Fables" opines that the rumor that Nazi oil reserves might be approaching depletion was little more than that, the product of wishful thinking, that the reserves reported of 60 million barrels plus additional amounts from synthetic oil provided Hitler enough to continue to wage war in Russia and North Africa. The real problem, suggests the editorial, in Hitler taking the vast oil reserves in the Caucasus, with current production based on 1940 figures of about 170 million barrels per year, meant taking 80% of Russia's 213 million barrel annual supply and leaving it therefore without sufficient production to fight effectively against Hitler's war machine.

But the memo, not made public at the time, from Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau transmitted to FDR on December 6, 1941 painted a very different picture of the Nazi oil supply, suggesting that, based on full-scale operations, it was down to about three to six months of supply. Such figures provide explanation as to why Hitler waited again in 1942 until early June to begin his major spring offensive in Russia, to shorten the time of full operations to four or five months before Russian winter would again begin, even though the previous winter had proved disastrous for the Wehrmacht as the Russians refused to let Arctic temperatures and a few feet of snow deter them from continuing fully to wage war. During the warmer weather, however, Hitler's superior equipment had the previous summer demonstrated itself capable of substantial inroads on the Russian lines, even in a season abbreviated by both the late start of the campaign on June 22 and by the early and unusually fierce winter weather starting in early October.

The Reich was able now to provide oil from Rumania more easily to its tank columns in Russia via the Black Sea route opened up with Sevastopol and Kerch, and hence the whole of the Crimea, now in German hands from the May-June offensive. Still, more of their reserves had been exhausted during the winter fighting than had ever been expected. The Russian campaign, originally scheduled to be one lasting no more than three to six weeks, had now gone on for more than a year. If the figures provided to Secretary Morgenthau, as estimated by the British, Russian, and American intelligence sources were at all in the ballpark, German oil was indeed running low.

And the Japanese acquisition of the East Indies oil, while capable of supplementing their own supply, was not yet fully tapped, as the oil wells had been destroyed when the Dutch and British defenders retreated to Australia during the winter. Moreover, the Japanese had no means yet of getting the oil to Germany. The Trans-Siberian Railway obviously could not be utilized. The only sea route was either through Panama, protected from approach by the U.S. Navy, or through the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea into the Mediterranean, not available unless and until Alexandria, Cairo and Port Said in Egypt were secured by the Reich from the British. Rommel had been stopped now at El Alamein, 65 miles short of his destination in Alexandria. Further, the British held Madagascar on approach to the Red Sea for launching operations against the Japanese should the Suez Canal fall into Nazi control. That left only the more cumbersome land or air route to enable supply from Japanese-controlled sources, and neither the Reich nor Japan had planes capable of carrying large supplies of oil as did the Allies.

Thus, sufficient oil supply remained a significant problem for Hitler, one which had only been partially solved by the opening of the Black Sea to supply operations in Russia. It was still 2,000 miles from the Ukraine to Leningrad and the whole of that front had to be captured and controlled if Russia was finally to be subdued.

The key to that proposition, as the piece points out, was capture of the Caucasus and thereby cutting off the supply of oil from Russia.

But the piece probably does not adequately reckon with Hitler's own dwindling supply as a crucial factor limiting Hitler's options by this point--the reason ultimately why his drive would finally again soon stall on the Russian front at Stalingrad, starting the long two-year siege to come.

Arguably, had Hitler been able to capture the Caucasus and utilize its resources, he might have won the war, as his own reserves would have been increased nearly four-fold, while also likely enabling capture of Iran and Iraq oil as well, depriving thereby the British of most of their reserves by equal measures, enabling perhaps the invasion of Britain--something which Hitler had hoped to bring about the previous year in quick succession after the forecasted three to six-week campaign subduing Russia, either an invasion of Great Britain or being able to bring to bear such superior fighting power, promising another Dunkerque, that Britain would capitulate readily to terms and end the war in Europe with Hitler left in control.

"Super-Colossal" tells of the booming movie business, made more profitable by the war for its use by the government for propaganda purposes. And, of course, the movie industry did become a valuable sub-ally within the United Nations. Such movies as "Casablanca" and "Lifeboat", just to name two which were well-known in their day, became audience staples. And the movie marquees were filled with tens of quickly produced B-pictures for Saturday matinees to stimulate pride and patriotism and to engender in the home audience a direct sense of participation in the war effort from the sacrifice being made daily in the heavy conversion to war production in every city in the country, in the rationing program affecting every home throughout the land.

"Fire Away, Boys" reports of an apparently changed attitude of the President on press criticism, now receiving with approbation jabs over too slow war production or the impotent defenses provided merchant ships plying haplessly in the Atlantic, routinely sent to the bottom by U-boats. The attitude, says the piece, contrasted with his earlier bristling at the harsh rebukes leveled at him personally over such things as the Court-Packing Plan of 1937, inefficiency and over-spending of New Deal programs, howls of "Socialist" or even, by the more rabid critics, "Red", and those being aimed not only at FDR but Eleanor Roosevelt as well.

"Changing Times" remarks, as had Paul Mallon the previous week, of the decline in the need for legal services with the coming of the war, already diminishing with New Deal programs during the thirties. The bleak situation of lawyers is contrasted with that of doctors whose business was thriving for the ranks thinned by departures to the armed services. But, dire prediction is made even for medical personnel: that in the future, as with lawyers, lower incomes might result should socialized medicine, promoted increasingly, become the new practice.

We are still awaiting that day, of course. Canadian doctors, we hear from the documentary "Sicko", for all those dire predictions over scant incomes to be derived from socialized medicine, do quite well.

"Salty, Sharp" further contrasts the plight of labor in wartime: good. The piece finds without merit a CIO spokesperson's caviling at the Administration for vacillation in its resolve to bring about equable incomes, claiming, for instance, that the President's announced goal during the winter for capping personal incomes at $25,000 to be but a will-o-the-wisp. No, the piece insists, the laborer's wages were soaring, per the usual course in wartime.

And, a piece from The American Outpost of London seeks to air the attempts of the Goebbels propaganda machine to sow the seeds of distrust between the Allies, suggesting consistently that America's intent in the war was, while Britain paid the heavy price of fighting, to play the role of profiteer and usurper of the British Empire.

The piece from Paul Mallon and that by Fletcher Pratt, substituting for Raymond Clapper's column, dovetail to paint, from the Allied perspective, both the lugubrious present picture of the various fronts of the war while, in Mallon's piece, adding the saving grace that even should the Nazis succeed in the Russian campaign, they still had to face Britain and the U.S. in tandem, and that after suffering additional inevitable depletion in men and materiel against the stubbornly persistent Red Army and the civilian defenders of the cities who had already cost the Nazis over two million of their best troops.

Pertinax, substituting for Dorothy Thompson, reports on the Free French operating as the de facto government of France in exile under the leadership of General Charles De Gaulle. De Gaulle was insisting that the U.S. and Britain recognize him in that role and grant him authority over French possessions passing from control of Vichy to the Free French. His purpose was two-fold, to organize resistance efforts and to organize and deploy in service of the Allies the armed forces at his disposal to the fullest extent possible.

And, just what happened to the Bible quote of the day and what the editorial note in its stead means precisely, we haven't the foggiest notion. Perhaps you can figure out to what the "400" refers. (If it had been "700", we might instantly reach an inference, but the timing is all wrong.) Perhaps, it had to do with an automobile race at Rockingham. But, did they have those in those days, and to the extent of 400 laps? And even if so, what does it have to do with an absent Bible quote? Why did it ruin both the Rockingham correspondent and the editors? Was this some philosophical-existential test by the editors to determine to what extent readers read the Bible quote each day? Perhaps, we shall learn in days to come.

In any event, that one is not in the Bible, unless, that is, Charlotte found among the Apocrypha the Book of NASCAR--which is entirely possible.

--And then he raisethed up his Petty hand and waved it to the left and to the right, up and down, checking his sight as he so did; then, lo, a Fireball came out forthrightly from the heavens and descended upon the oval circumference comprisethed by the fault of the ass; and the moon did shine upon them, their prideful countenances, as they traced the oval in their chariots before Pharoah, in the days of much gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands and turning of the hair laid upon with rich ointments and oils, until their fenders did there meet in most clamorous array and clash, whereupon it sorely displeased their Lord to see, such that he smited them in the day of his wrath and few did return. NASCAR 19:60.