The Charlotte News
Monday, January 29, 1945
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page and inside page report that the Russians had surrounded
German officials were reported to be evacuating the capital via twenty trains. Just where in hell they were headed is not indicated. Perhaps, Hell.
German reports had the Red Army crossing the Brandenburg frontier, reaching to within 95 miles due east of Berlin, attacking along a line from Kreuz, 103 miles northeast of the capital, to Zraszyn on the Obra River to the southeast.
–O, Blondie. What now? Does life go on? We must talk of the future of the Reich, of the way that Tomorrow Belongs to Us. Blondie, come here. Why do you turn away? I do not wish to shoot you. You must obey your Master. Tell me the strategy for conquering finally the world. Your species has done so well at it through so many thousands of years, even for time longer than the Reich shall endure. You know the secret, Blondie. Tell me. Whisper. Whisper.
–What, O, Blondie? O, Blind-eye?
Paris radio, quoting reports out of Stockholm, told of riots in Berlin being quelled by police and SS troops. In Leipzig, it was reported, the SS fired on a crowd demonstrating against the sending of Volkssturm units, peopled by civilians, to the fronts to fight. The refugee problem was developing into chaos as people fled Berlin for Halle and Frankfurt, only to find no food when they arrived. Panic was spreading fast among Germans and it was thought that the ensuing eight days might be decisive of the war.
Too bad you had to go and kill all the Jews. They could have cooked you up some nice kosher wiener schnitzel.
The First Baltic Front Army of General Ivan Bagramian had captured Memel on Sunday.
The First Ukrainian Army was fourteen miles southeast of Breslau at Ohlau on the west bank of the Oder.
The Nazis now faced some four million Russian troops arrayed against them on the Eastern Front.
Gut luck.
On the Western Front, the First Army had during the previous 24 hours advanced up to 3.5 miles through deep snow northeast of St. Vith, capturing three towns, Bullange, Herresbach, and Holxheim, and moving to within a mile of the Siegfried Line.
To the south, the Third Army was either near or across the German border, moving to Saarbrucken, extending the salient to more than 200 miles, from Holland to the Saarland, along which the Allied forces were deployed at the Siegfried Line.
Twenty divisions, having eliminated the Ardennes Bulge, were now able to rest.
The Seventh Army front in Alsace was now snowbound and the French First Army, having made gains to within a half mile of Colmar below Strasbourg, was likewise stranded by the snow and ground haze.
Some 1,150 American heavy bombers supported by 700 fighter escorts attacked six railyards, around Coblenz, Hamm, and Munster, and a tank factory and rail yards at Kassel, in Western Germany. The RAF struck railyards at Kresfeld during the afternoon.
The RAF again had attacked the previous day and night German rolling stock removing supplies to the east from the Ruhr Valley. Berlin was also attacked and 3,000 tons of bombs were dropped on Stuttgart's railyards. It was reported that Berlin's shelters were overflowing from refugees out of the East.
Some 2,000 RAF and American planes hit Cologne, Duisburg, and Dortmund, striking railyards, bridges, and fuel plants on Sunday.
On Luzon, the Sixth Army was approaching San Fernando, the gateway to Manila 33 miles distant, while the First Army Corps captured heavily defended Rosario on the left flank. These latter units were headed toward Baguio, the summer headquarters of the Japanese High Command. The 37th Division took Angeles and its four airdromes on Sunday, five miles southeast of Clark Field, captured Thursday. Elements of the 40th Division had reached Arayat, twelve miles east of Angeles, as well as the road junction of Mexico, three miles northeast of San Fernando. The 25th Division had moved beyond heavily defended San Manuel against banzai charges and artillery barrages of the enemy, some of the heaviest resistance yet encountered in the American campaign begun from Lingayen Gulf on January 9.
Fort Stotsenburg, reported as captured on Thursday with Clark Field, was still not completely subdued until Monday, with enemy holdouts still offering resistance through the weekend.
A detailed map on the inside page shows the progress thus far in the three-week campaign for Luzon.
Carrier-borne planes of the Third Fleet again had attacked Formosa on January 21, hitting Takao, destroying or damaging 237 aircraft and 27 ships in the raid during its first twelve hours, the worst damage inflicted on Formosa since the prior October. Another 70 surface craft and 68 planes were destroyed January 22 in the Ryukyu Islands to the north.
B-29's out of Saipan again attacked Iwo Jima in the Volcano Islands.
West Coast Longshoremen's Union leader Harry Bridges had his petition for writ of certiorari to the United States Supreme Court allowed in his case, fighting deportation to Australia based on his allegedly being a Communist who advocated the violent overthrow of the U. S. Government. Ultimately, the High Court would rule at the end of the term in Mr. Bridges's favor in Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U.S. 135, albeit not reaching the broader constitutional questions raised under the First Amendment right of free association but rather limited to the finding of misconstruction by the lower courts of the term "affiliated" within the context of the statute, making subject to deportation any alien who was a member of or affiliated with any group advising, believing in, advocating, or teaching the violent overthrow of the Government.
When they couldn't make that one work any longer, the Nixon Administration went after Mr. Lennon 25 years later on the basis of another Bridge–not in Brooklyn, but over Roosevelt Island.
Wixon-Nixon. Candlestick. Macbeth. Out, out
On the editorial page, "Stand-Bys" finds the whole controversy surrounding the fitness of Henry Wallace to be Secretary of Commerce one requiring such perspicacity as to make cobblers of the editors and ward off their usual tendency to profess opinion. It was an unanswerable query, even if their natural inclination was that he was not suited to the position. But then again, if the President was going to make good his promise for 60 million jobs post-war, the piece asks why shouldn't he accomplish it by means of a solid New Dealer as Mr. Wallace.
Moreover, the integrity of Mr. Wallace was unassailable.
The piece finds parenthetically the need for investigation into Attorney General Biddle's integrity to assure that Tommy Corcoran had not been able to use improper influence with the Attorney General to get the Government's lawsuit dismissed against Sterling Products, Mr. Corcoran's client.
"Raise the Age" speaks to the too low age limit, 14, for enforced education in North Carolina, finds it conducive to high drop-out rates and consequent juvenile delinquency. It favors raising the limit to age 16. It would also improve North Carolina's low standing in overall education.
Nationally, in 1944, the number of years of schooling for those 25 and over had been 8.4, while in North Carolina, the average was 7.4. The primary reason for this seventh grade average education, posits the piece, was the 14-year age limit to enforced attendance.
Are you listening, little Alex? Or do we have to put your teeth in the glass after strapping your knees?
"Dix Hill Visitors" speculates on what the members of the North Carolina Legislature would find upon their inspection tour the following day of Dix Hospital for the insane, suggests that they would find only sympathy for the inmates, would find new spirit to authorization of funding for improved services at all four of the mental hospitals of the state, the worst of which was not Dix. The visit, it predicts, would elevate the sensitivity of the legislators to the plight of the persons confined to these hospitals.
Daily life in in this world of 1945 should have, however, in hindsight, imparted to them a plethora of sympathy. But all is relative to the times to which their inhabitants become inured.
"What, Again?" reports that the Gallup Poll had found that 30 percent of Americans believed that FDR would run for a fifth term in 1948. It was thought by only eleven percent that Henry Wallace would be the nominee of the Democrats, by six percent that it would be Vice-President Harry Truman, and by even lesser numbers that Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, War Mobilizer James Byrnes, or Senator Harry Byrd would be tapped.
The editorial expresses surprise at the result, but finds that the majority of 42 percent holding no opinion probably conveyed the most reasonable response at this juncture in time.
And so it was, given the intrusion of mortality upon the President.
Of course, had Dr. Gallup proposed the more salient question of who would win in 1948, undoubtedly the resounding answer would have come back, especially given Dr. Gallup's advisory role in the late Republican campaign, that Thomas Dewey would be the next President.
And, of course, such a result would have been entirely accurate, at least in Chicago.
The excerpt from the Congressional Record relates a colloquy between isolationist Senator Burton Wheeler of Montana and future Democratic Majority Leader, Senator Scott Lucas of Illinois, anent the necessity of pursuing the war to "unconditional surrender" of Germany and Japan.
Senator Lucas, while agreeing with Senator Wheeler in his criticism of the plan to de-industrialize Germany and convert it to agrarian-based economy as promulgated in the fall by Secretary of Treasury Henry Morgenthau, was having trouble understanding how Senator Wheeler's proposed universal bill of rights, applicable to enemy nations as well as Allies, could possibly apply to Russia, as intimated by Senator Wheeler in the colloquy it would, when so many statements of the Senator had expressed distrust of the Russians' sincerity and purpose.
Isolationism, reminds Senator Lucas, was even disappearing from its nesting place, in Chicago.
Drew Pearson relates of the Republicans in the Senate, who lately had become such avid supporters of the work of Jesse Jones as Secretary of Commerce, as part of their fight to derail the nomination of Henry Wallace to the position, being blessed with imperfect memories. They had apparently forgotten their heavy criticism of Mr. Jones during his tenure for his failure to obtain sufficient production of synthetic rubber to make up for the loss of natural rubber previously imported from the territories conquered by the Japanese in 1942. Mr. Pearson sets forth a colloquy between Mr. Jones and Senator Owen Brewster of Maine in which Senator Brewster attacked Mr. Jones for not consulting sufficiently with experts on the issue.
Mr. Pearson then indicates that in death, the forces of Wendell Willkie had done better with the Republican National Committee in obtaining an anti-isolationist chair than had Mr. Willkie himself in 1942 when Harrison Spangler had been selected RNC chair.
Marquis Childs comments on the speech by Prime Minister Churchill the previous week in which he had stated the fact that Britain was entering its 65th month of the war, emblematic of the war-weariness felt by Britons, struggling to maintain basic necessities of life under strict rationing and heavy bureaucratization. Mr. Childs suggests that Americans could not fully appreciate the hardship which the British were enduring and continued to endure so long as the war persisted.
Small things, such as dried eggs, had become major aggravations when compounded by the vicissitudes of the war itself. Only the larger hotels, catering mainly to foreign dignitaries, were possessed of any substantial variety of food comparable to that readily available in America.
Hospitals were overcrowded with injured civilians, some from the V-bomb attacks of the prior seven months, others having occupied the same ward since the Battle of Britain four years earlier.
With hopes of a quick end to the war by Christmas having been nurtured by the Allied sweep through France in the summer and fall, the German Ardennes offensive of mid-December came as a harsh and bitter blow to that hope. Wives had not seen their husbands in some cases for three or four years.
To complicate the problems, the controversy in Greece with the treatment of the ELAS-EAM became a political football. When Britons themselves recoiled from the news with disdain, they were particularly incensed to find themselves the recipients of criticism from Americans holding the same basic beliefs, if not as intensely held.
Mr. Childs iterates his profound respect for British patience, affirmed the more by recent turns of events.
Samuel Grafton observes that a culture of fear had grown up among conservative members of Congress, coalescing around the nomination of Henry Wallace to be Secretary of Commerce, the critics suggesting that were he confirmed, he would be able to topple the entire American system of free enterprise in one fell swoop of his iron hand. It was part and parcel of the atmosphere which had led the new Congress, as its first major undertaking, to make permanent the House Un-American Activities Committee, formerly chaired by retired Martin Dies of Texas. It had been manifested likewise in the rider sought to be attached to the national service act to prevent enforcement of closed-shop contracts with respect to drafted labor.
Mr. Grafton wonders at how suddenly Mr. Wallace, an unthreatening figure, had become infused with such power that he could threaten to change the world from such a subordinate position within government. Only the conservatives understood how this dramatic transmogrification had taken place, when he had been Vice-President for four years without the heavens falling, and Secretary of Agriculture before that without such dire results to the economic well-being of the nation.
A piece by NEA news service Washington correspondent Peter Edson looks at the comparative business and financial backgrounds of Jesse Jones and Henry Wallace, to determine who would be better qualified to run the Commerce Department, the old Secretary or the one newly appointed. After looking at various statistics and comparing budgets and agencies embraced by Commerce versus those of Agriculture, over which Mr. Wallace had presided as Secretary for eight years from 1933 to late 1940, Mr. Edson finds that Agriculture had a budget of a billion dollars and a staff of 80,000 persons, while Commerce had a budget of 101 million dollars and a staff of 40,000 persons.
Despite conventional wisdom that Mr. Jones was the more adept and experienced businessman, thus better fitted to run Commerce, than the soft-hearted liberal Mr. Wallace, the rhetorical question asked by Mr. Edson, who was the "bigger business man", had thus a fairly simple and straightforward answer.
Hal Boyle, with American paratroops in Belgium, reports of Big Dave T. de Varona, the Red Cross field director to whom all the soldiers of the 517th Parachute Combat Team looked for various and sundry items to be scrounged, from toothbrushes to chewing tobacco to doughnut girls. (Doughnut girls. That's what it
Big Dave had been a star tackle on the 1938 University of California football team. His poor eyesight, however, had kept him from being able to volunteer in either the Army, Navy or Marines, each of which he had tried to enter after Pearl Harbor.
He had become the only Red Cross field director ever to jump in combat, during the Italian campaign the previous spring, and in France the previous summer, eight jumps in all. During the jump in France, they hit the hill which was their main objective, a good thing, for the fact that the field which they had targeted for landing had been mined heavily by the enemy and spotted with oil drums filled with gasoline which the Germans had planned to set afire with machineguns.
He enjoyed dealing with the paratroopers, most young, all volunteers, all having established a fighting tradition in just three years.
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