Thursday, September 9, 1943

The Charlotte News

Thursday, September 9, 1943

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that a few hours after the Italian surrender the previous day, Lt-General Mark Clark led the American Fifth Army in an invasion at Naples in an effort to stop the Nazis from seizing the city. The sea teemed with ships over a thousand square-mile area. The Army immediately met stiff German resistance. It was accompanied in its thrust northward by Italian troops. Milan and Turin were reported to be in Italian hands.

Three divisions of Germans were reported by Swiss sources to have been withdrawn from Italy back across the Brenner Pass.

German sources claimed that Italian troops largely remained loyal to the Nazis and had occupied the Brenner Pass for the Axis a day before Badoglio’s announcement of the armistice with the Allies. The sources also contended that all of northern and central Italy were under German control and that the Nazis had set up a new Italian Fascist government to replace that of Badoglio.

A detailed report on the downfall of Mussolini July 25 surfaced via Berlin radio, indicating that he was dragged from the Royal Palace in Rome, strapped to a stretcher and taken away in an ambulance and most likely imprisoned on Ponza Island in the Gulf of Gaeta, 75 miles southeast of Rome.

The largest daylight raid yet by American bombers across the Channel to targets in northern France appeared to presage an imminent invasion of the Continent across the Channel.

On the Russian front, the Red Army took Bakhmach, key German communications and supply center in the northern Ukraine.

On the editorial page, "One-Third Won" suggests that the fall of Italy must have had a profound adverse effect on the morale of Germany and Japan, with the prospect that one or both would next be forced to acquiesce to terms of unconditional surrender.

"Victory's Log" finds interesting reading in General Marshall’s report to Secretary of War Stimson regarding America’s first two years of war. It emphasized that the American bomber had contributed significantly to the Allied victories, that continued aggressive action by American forces was the keystone to success in the war, and that the various successful operations, in North Africa, on Sicily, in Italy, on Kiska and Attu in the Aleutians had registered an adverse psychological impact on the enemy.

Dorothy Thompson finds already anachronistic an article written by Harry Hopkins in the American Magazine for his statement that the war might be won in 1945 unless Russia were lost to the Allies, in which case the war might drag on for some greater length of time. The piece, she concludes, was likely written prior to the unanticipated Russian summer offensive which began July 5. Mr. Hopkins had pinned his wary prediction on the notion that the Russia had run out of reserves whereas the Germans were still flush with abundant manpower.

Ms. Thompson finds the error in judgment emblematic of the Allied problem of late, not knowing how to deal with the Russian success in the East.

Raymond Clapper finds Tom Dewey’s statement that America should enter a permanent post-war alliance with Great Britain to be telling of a new attitude among Republicans, contrary to the old isolationist mentality. He deems it likely the result of the influence of Walter Lippmann’s recent book, U.S. Foreign Policy.

And he further deems it a fresher approach than anything coming from either Secretary of State Hull or the President. FDR's press conferences, Mr. Clapper carps, had become as informative as those of President Coolidge.

The President, like his predecessor, might have become too involved in stamp collecting.

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