Monday, January 1, 1945

The Charlotte News

Monday, January 1, 1945

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that before noon on Sunday, the Third Army had advanced from three to six miles along a twelve-mile front on each side of St. Hubert, fifteen miles west of Bastogne, into the German southern flank along the Bulge line, destroying or damaging 94 German tanks.

To the southwest, in the area of Bitche, the Germans had made five successive counter-thrusts the day before and this day along a ten-mile front against the Seventh Army front in that area, appearing to be initiating another counter-offensive drive. Two of the thrusts were in battalion strength.

Clear weather afforded plentiful air cover to the American operations. The Luftwaffe was also active along the front but with losses of at least 125 planes to the RAF and ground fire, half the contingent which had flown sorties.

Some 800 American heavy bombers and 800 fighters struck at Dollbergen, northwest of Brunswick, hitting an oil refinery as well as striking the rail network around Coblenz.

The Russians had ejected the enemy from two-thirds of Buda on the west side of the Danube, overrunning 300 blocks of houses and buildings on Sunday. In Pest on the east side of the river, the Russians had advanced three miles further into the three-ringed defenses. In 48 hours, 7,300 enemy troops had been killed and 22 tanks and self-propelled guns had been captured.

At other points along the front, the Russians moved within six miles of the rail junction at Losone northeast of Budapest and forged a new crossing of the Hron River at two points west of Leva, leaving the Russians but 65 miles from Bratislava and 93 miles from Vienna.

A map of Europe shows the progress of the Allies on both fronts during 1944.

In Italy, the Fifth Army advanced about four miles in the Serchio River sector to recapture the ground lost to the Germans east of the river, taking Barga on Sunday and from there, moving 1.5 miles to take Sommocolonia.

The Eighth Army continued to move in its drive north of captured Faenza.

On Leyte in the Philippines, the American mop-up operations continued, with another 1,191 enemy troops reported killed just since Friday as the Americans adopted "Indian-style" tactics, moving by night in the northwest corner of the island and striking isolated pockets of 200 to 300 enemy troops at dawn.

In Burma, the Allies had moved to the northern and western rim of the rice bowl, from which led the roads to Mandalay, some 70 miles distant. It continued to appear to Allied Headquarters that the Japanese were withdrawing from Burma.

King George VI granted earldom to David Lloyd George, Britain's foremost elder statesman, having served in Commons for 54 years, having been Prime Minister from 1916 to 1922 and the leader of the Liberal Party from 1926 to 1931. The announcement came just a week after Lloyd George had announced his intention to retire for health reasons. The honor placed him thereby in the House of Lords, a House which he had fought bitterly during his career and had even threatened to abolish it.

Secretary of State Stettinius indicated that the United States continued to recognize the Polish government-in-exile in London, a government which Prime Minister Churchill had essentially abandoned in his speech to Commons in December when he voiced Britain's support for the cession to Russia of Polish territory to the Curzon Line in exchange for areas under German control east of the Oder, in East Prussia, and Danzig. The Soviets had deemed the Russian-sponsored regime at Lublin to be the Polish Provisional Government.

Adolf Hitler emerged from his long silence since the July 20 attempt on his life to declare that Germany would never capitulate to terms of surrender and that the war would not be over before 1946 unless by German victory. Providing encouraging and spiritually uplifting advice to the German people at the New Year, the Fuehrer stated: "We are going to destroy everybody who does not take part in the common effort for the country or who makes himself a tool of the enemy."

He finally realized that within that group was, most especially, himself, but the realization would not come until April 30.

He continued to blame Jews and bolshevists for the desire to ruin and enslave Germany. "Public opinion in the democratic countries is directed by the Jews," said he.

Louis Lochner, veteran A. P. reporter, stated that the voice appeared to be that of Hitler but lacked the old emotion and fervor which had always characterized his speeches. Speculation in London ran that it might have been a recording of Hitler's voice. The speech was interrupted by ghost transmissions numerous times during the broadcast as received in London. The speech referred to the July 20 attempt on Hitler's life and the period of August when Paris had fallen and Germany appeared on the road to defeat.

Had you gone to the theater this date in 1945, you might have seen this newsreel before the main feature.

Had you opened the January 8 issue of Life, you would have read this.

On the editorial page, "The New Year" relates that the nation had been sobered by the Battle of the Bulge and was not so optimistic as it had been a year earlier when victory appeared within the grasp of the Allies in 1944. General Eisenhower had so predicted, even if Secretary of State Hull had dampened that optimism with cautious restraint.

The previous year, New York had ended its dim-out for the first time in the two years since Pearl Harbor, resulting in the most joyous New Year's celebration of the war.

President Roosevelt then had offered the sobering notion that the country should take no false pride in accomplishment. The piece counsels that the same advice might be provided at the beginning of 1945.

"Guideposts" finds the annual report of the Duke Endowment, with its substantial contribution to medical care in the state, to be instructive of how much work there was still to be accomplished and its high cost, were Governor Broughton's recommended improvements, proposed late in his term, to be implemented.

"Nominations", in response to the City Manager's invitation for suggestions on improvements of streets within Charlotte, provides a list of those which could stand widening.

Well, see what you think.

We know that a few years ago, on New Year's Eve, not having been to Charlotte in some years, we became lost and, despite a fair knowledge of the city through the mid-1970's, found ourselves in a completely foreign land, wound up circling hopelessly for some four hours before giving up our destination entirely.

The whole city is now one big street, or so it seems.

"Penny Foolish" indicates that the planned transfer of Charlotte's venereal disease rapid treatment center to Monroe would ignore the fact that most of these cases arose in Charlotte and that placing the center in Monroe would necessitate replacement of a nearby center, as one of the reasons for the relatively high incidence of the disease was that its carriers were loathe to go far out of their way for treatment.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Representative Crawford of Michigan explaining to the Congress that certain types of Christmas candies were subject to military secrecy. He had investigated why stores had been able to obtain Cuban-made candies but not American-made. But, having found the answer, he had been warned that it was a military secret he could not reveal, subject to his imprisonment for 30 years and a fine of $10,000. It appeared that the disclosure would impair national defense.

He had, however, he informed, incongruously received in the mail from the War Food Administration information as to the millions of pounds of flour exported to Cuba.

It was okay to reveal exports of flour, concluded the Congressman, but not imports of lollipops.

Drew Pearson relates that those in the know at the Pentagon had stated that the failure of intelligence to anticipate the German breakthrough in Belgium was worse than anyone realized, that even news dispatches at the front had related the German build-up of troops and supplies, and activity ongoing by night.

Some military leaders faulted the decision by deceased General Leslie McNair to implement a policy whereby no colonel over age 48 could serve overseas in combat, resulting in too few experienced colonels at the front in field command positions.

The 106th Division of the First Army had been the first to cave in at the German offensive. It was a division with no battle experience and with younger officers. If it had been able to hold at the front even for a few hours, says Mr. Pearson, it might have shortened the war considerably.

Parenthetically, it should be noted that, green though the division was, the 106th had held for three days at Schnee Eifel before being forced to surrender on December 20.

The situation was akin to that at Kasserine Pass in Tunisia in February, 1943, and at Salerno in Italy in September, 1943, where green field commanders ignored a basic tenet of field operations, that a halted regiment must immediately dig in and prepare fortifications. The blame for Kasserine Pass had been placed on General Lloyd Fredendall and that for Salerno, on General Ernest Dawley. But, in truth, neither were so much to blame as the green field commanders.

Seasoned troops from General Mark Clark's Italian campaign had landed at Normandy and seasoned troops from Guadalcanal had been with the Seventh Army in France. But in the area of the Ardennes, the 106th had been situated, replete with its green troops and green commanders, in what was thought to be a rest area for the Germans. It was even conceivable that German intelligence had so detected the condition and thus found the most vulnerable spot in the lines.

Dorothy Thompson assesses the morale which was stimulated to enable the German offensive in the Battle of the Bulge, finds it to have originated elsewhere than conventional wisdom had posited, strictly in Heinrich Himmler's terrorist tactics with the troops. That method was useful in defensive strategy but could not marshal such an offensive as had gone forth in Belgium and Luxembourg. Yet, prisoners were not stating any newly found faith in Nazism or in winning the war.

She offers that for Germany to surrender, it had to surrender itself in parts, submitting thereby to its own dissolution. In the East, it had to surrender to the Russians, in the West, to the Americans, British, and French. Because of the four different policies followed by these principal European Allies, Germany could not surrender itself to a single entity.

So, the stimulus behind the offensive, as mad as it was to undertake, appeared rather to originate with this attitude, that there was nothing else to do but fight or be vanquished and dissolved as a nation. The call of the Propaganda Ministry was for Germans to unite in a last ditch effort, for they had nothing to lose. So Germany would, she predicts, fight on. For it could not surrender and remain Germany.

Marquis Childs discusses a book by Canada's Air Marshal, William A. Bishop, titled Winged Peace. An ace in World War I who had shot down 72 German planes, the author warned that if the countries of the world did not join to control the airspace cooperatively, the world was risking destruction into the future. Nationalism could not be the hallmark by which it could be guided lest it result in global conflict, with robot planes, V-2 rockets, and the prospect of a jet plane which could fly within the stratosphere, all threatening a new age of doom if not adequately controlled internationally. Mr. Bishop had written of a V-1 type plane two months before its June 16, 1944 deployment.

Mr. Childs finds the book to be one which should be read and appreciated as setting forth the necessary policy to maintain the future peace.

Samuel Grafton eschews the notion that lack of sufficient acquisition of intelligence had been to blame for the Belgium Bulge, for the civil war in Greece, and for the general problems with respect to the political situation in Europe. He states that leaders selected their intelligence gatherers largely in their own image, to provide them the intelligence necessary to support the policies which they wished to pursue. It was not, therefore, he insists, a failure of intelligence but rather a failure, either from supply shortages or weather problems, to keep the Germans sufficiently busy on the Western Front that they could not mount such an offensive as they did.

As the front page reports, the column of Dr. Herbert Spaugh had been permanently transferred to the back page of the newspaper, and so we will not be able to read it anymore, usually to our loss.

A letter writer from the Mecklenburg Tuberculosis Association thanks The News for its effort in helping the Christmas Seals drive on behalf of the Association.

Seventh Day of Christmas: Seven Roads Retained.

Eighth Day of Christmas: Eight Managers' Man Delays.

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