Thursday, February 22, 1945

The Charlotte News

Thursday, February 22, 1945

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Third Army of General Patton, "running high, wide, and handsome again", had advanced three or more miles to within five miles of Trier, crossing the Saar River, and had captured more than 33 towns within the Moselle Valley, reaching to within 1.25 miles of Konz at the confluence of the Saar and Moselle. Further pressure was being brought to bear from both north and south on the area around Prum.

German resistance in the Saar-Moselle triangle had completely disintegrated and the region cleared of enemy resistance, as the Germans withdrew into the Hochwald forest.

The Seventh Army moved into the Saar basin from the south, advancing to within two miles of Saarbruecken, capturing half of Forbach and Spicheren.

To the north, the Canadian First Army advanced to within 2,000 yards of Calcar in its drive toward the Ruhr Valley.

The British Second, and American First and Ninth Armies continued in a waiting mode along the western side of the Roer River, waiting for its flood waters to recede, to permit entry to the Cologne plain on the other side.

At midnight, a tremendous explosion was heard from the Urfttalsperre Dam on the headwaters of the Roer, but it was not yet known whether the dam had been breached by the Nazi occupiers.

The largest air armada in history struck targets on the Western Front. Fully 7,000 planes participated, hitting dozens of German targets with a hundred tons of bombs per minute. Some 1,400 American heavy bombers and 800 fighter escorts hit an area from Hannover east to Berlin and from Nuernberg north to Luebeck.

The previous day, 5,400 sorties had been flown.

The RAF struck Berlin the night before, as well as Duisburg and Worms.

A Swedish newspaper correspondent, Jerje Granberg, reported that he had just come from Berlin and found it a city in chaos, packed with refugees and German deserters intermingling with them. The Germans were publicly threatening severe punishment to anyone hiding deserters and were searching streetcars and trains to locate the men.

He stated that it would take several weeks for the Russians to penetrate the outer ring of the city's defenses behind the Oder to reach the city proper. The suburbs of Berlin were mined and barricaded, with ruins turned into fortresses. Mr. Granberg reported that it took him 90 minutes to drive six miles through the various barricades. He predicted that, once Berlin was reached, it would take another six to eight weeks to conquer the city.

The Government had been partially evacuated after the American bombing raid of February 3, when several ministries were struck and laid to ruin. The Chancellory was blasted open but not fully destroyed.

The remaining civilian population, ballooned by refugees to 5.5 million, was stuck with no place to go, the rest of the potential points of evacuation either cut off or jammed to the gills with refugees. The roads and towns westward from Pomerania and West Prussia were jammed with refugees. Berlin's subway and elevated train platforms were packed shoulder to shoulder with people who were apparently without homes. Hundreds of thousands of the refugees were foreign to Germany.

In Italy, Fifth Army troops gained a thousand yards in a local attack east of Mount Belvedere after capturing the height the previous day.

On the Eastern Front, the Russians had moved once again into Guben on the Neisse, 51 miles southeast of Berlin, and street fighting was ongoing. On Monday, the Russians had entered Guben but were forced to withdraw.

The First White Russian Army was said to be attempting to complete the encirclement of Frankfurt.

The Germans had evacuated Zinten, seventeen miles south of Koenigsberg.

A surprise German counter-offensive was reported to have been initiated between Koenigsberg and Pilau.

Japanese bombers and fighters had inflicted some damage on American Fleet units in the vicinity of Iwo Jima, as Marine casualties on the island had grown to 4,553, of whom 385 had been killed in the action since the landing en masse on Monday. The Marine Third Division had landed the day before, attacking both to the north and south against divided enemy forces, with the northern drive seeking the Central Iwo airfield, presumably referring to Motoyama No. 2, and meeting in the process heavy resistance.

On Luzon, only scattered remnants of the enemy forces remained on Corregidor, the small fortress island at the mouth of Manila Bay. The remaining Japanese forces holding the fortress had blown themselves up by detonating munitions.

In Manila, Japanese troops held out on the second floor of the city's south shore Manila Hotel, the most intense point of remaining action in the capital. The First Cavalry Division had occupied the first floor of the hotel and fighting was ongoing room by room and corridor by corridor, as well as within the staircases.

The quality of room service was not reported.

Secretary of War Henry Stimson announced that American Army and Navy casualties had reached 801,162 through February 14, with the Army accounting for 711,497, an increase of 18,982 from those reported the previous week, all except 827 from the Army. The number of killed rose 3,200, to 138,723; the number wounded, 12,000, to 420,465; the number captured, 1,500, to 60,086; the number missing, 1,500, to 92,223. Of the wounded, 207,328 had returned to duty.

In the House, Representative Frank Hook of Michigan called Representative John Rankin of Mississippi a "dirty liar", to which Mr. Rankin retorted, "I don't take that talk from anyone," racing to the position of Mr. Hook and locking his arms around his neck. An ensuing struggle between the two men lasted for nearly a minute until other Congressmen managed to separate them. Mr. Hook's remarks were struck from the record.

The incident was precipitated by a speech of Representative Clare Hoffman of Michigan in denunciation of the CIO PAC, with which Mr. Hook had taken issue, saying he knew several respectable persons within the PAC. Mr. Rankin attempted to interrupt Mr. Hook and the two began engaging in considerable banter, leading to the final insult prompting the violent reaction of Mr. Rankin.

It was a normal day in the Congress of the United States.

At least Mr. Rankin didn't beat Mr. Hook senseless with his cane as had Representative Preston Brooks to Senator Charles Sumner in 1856, for Mr. Brooks being upset with Senator Sumner's abolitionist stand on slavery.

On the editorial page, "Trouble's Root" suggests that the troublesome conflict apparent within the textile industry, the demand for higher wages by labor and the insistence by management that price ceilings be lifted before wages could be raised, both positions being inconsistent with government strategy to resist inflation, was to one degree or another, pervasive throughout all industry in the country during the war.

"R. A. Dunn" laments the passing of the 82-year old banker and business leader in Charlotte, whose death had been prominently set forth on the front page of the previous day. Mr. Dunn had also served in a major capacity on the Davidson College Board of Trustees and engaged in considerable philanthropy within the community.

"Bingo!" finds the move to ban Bingo as falling under the general ban of gambling to be one to be resisted. Bingo, it relates, had been a part of man for time immemorial and had to be preserved as an institution. A move by a Mecklenburg legislator to keep Bingo legal, as long as it was being sponsored by civic, charitable, or trade associations, was therefore laudable.

In any event, if you hear in your ear: "B-14", "O-3", "N-9", "I-1", and "G-2", you, too, can shout the universal proclamation, aloud, and to the world.

"Protection Needed" offers that, on simple faith, it was believed that Social Security took care of G.I. beneficiaries, and to the extent it did not, the G. I. Bill would. But, it had turned out that under Social Security, the soldier lost all claims of benefits for his survivors.

For to be entitled to benefits for survivors, the decedent must have been entitled to fully-insured or currently insured status. The soldier had no such status under Social Security as his benefits lapsed during his time in service. So, unless the soldier had worked for a given time prior to service, his survivors received no benefits at all.

The piece advocates that the law be amended to allow soldiers' beneficiaries to receive Social Security benefits.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record finds Representative Robert Rich calling for the saving of a few dollars by having a proposed flood-control project for Pennsylvania set aside until after the war.

Representative Cleveland Bailey interrupted sarcastically to thank Mr. Rich for being a self-appointed watchdog of the Treasury.

To that, Mr. Rich insisted on the floor and stated that he only sought to save the money for the Treasury so that the war might be fought that much more efficiently. He called upon the Democratic Majority Leader, John McCormack of Massachusetts, to speak to the matter and help him save the country a few dollars.

Mr. McCormack then stated that it was his determined belief that Mr. Rich was wrong.

Drew Pearson discusses the optimism of Allied leaders that the war in Europe could end any day. German prisoners were being taken at the rate of a thousand per day, and yet there had appeared no general breakdown of German Army morale. There were no surrenders en masse as had been the case with the Italians in North Africa in the spring of 1943.

In World War I, as in this war, the leadership in Berlin had held out for weeks after the military commanders desired that the war should end. Business leaders in Germany were said to be desirous of having Franz von Papen or Hjalmar Schact, the German banker, negotiate terms of peace with the Allies. But no indication had come that Hitler or Himmler was prepared for anything but a fight to the bitter end. To avoid the breakdown in military discipline evident at the end of World War I, the SS rode herd on the military leaders. The Volkssturm or People's Army had proved to be ferocious fighters, if not well-trained soldiers.

Considering all of these factors, Allied military leaders had calculated that the war in Europe would end between sometime after April 1 and before July 1.

Mr. Pearson next informs that an effort in the House to tack on amendments to the Senate-passed bill to exempt insurance companies from the Sherman Anti-trust Act, amendments which would make it difficult for the Congress in the future to change the status once enacted, was causing problems with likelihood of final passage in the Senate and of signature by the President even if finally passed.

He next reports of the reorganization ongoing at Army intelligence, G-2, resultant of the failure properly to assess the German troop concentrations in the Ardennes in advance of the offensive begun December 16.

Next, he tells of future Supreme Court Justice, Tom Clark, to be appointed to the Court by President Truman, then assistant attorney general in charge of the criminal division, wanting to retire from the Justice Department and return to Texas to practice law. He had been persuaded to remain.

Justice Clark's son, Ramsey Clark, would become Attorney General under President Johnson.

Finally, Mr. Pearson notes that newly elected cowboy singer, Senator Glenn Taylor of Idaho, had used but five gallons of gas since arriving in Washington, an example which other Washington salons, he suggests, might emulate.

Marquis Childs discusses the rumor that President Roosevelt might pay an official visit to Paris on his way home from Yalta. If it had been so, which it was not, he would have been given an outpouring of welcome by grateful Parisians who would line the streets to greet him.

Observers had stated that if FDR were to come several months hence to Paris, however, his reception might be considerably less warm, deriving from resentment within the French Government for failure of the Americans to insure adequate food and warmth of France through the winter. The resentment had begun to spread to the people. Nor were they aware of the deep rift between FDR and Charles De Gaulle, existing primarily before the liberation when news of the world did not reach the French.

De Gaulle had, to a degree, used opposition to him by America to strengthen his position politically in the country, stressing in speeches the problems with the transportation system, that the number of rail cars devoted to providing fuel for the citizenry of France had never fallen below 11,000 during Nazi occupation, but that during the previous six months after liberation, it had fallen to 7,000 cars.

There was tendency to blame America because of the bombings of the country before liberation by American planes. Yet, Frenchmen believed that if a determined effort were made to effect an understanding among the people of the purpose of these bombings, the French would accept that they were a necessity to eliminate German control.

Mr. Childs had been informed that this concept of laying blame on American bombings for depressed conditions was beginning to become pervasive throughout Europe. The position was unfair to American military operations which had sought, through precision bombing, to concentrate only on military targets chosen for their location by the Nazis, and that it had been the Germans who had developed the concept of indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations, something the U.S. military had sought meticulously to avoid.

Samuel Grafton advocates for the proposed national service act as a means of healing the rift between civilian and the man in service. For the gulf had become pronounced and incapable of fully being explained. The distinction was plain enough. The servicemen were not free, acting constantly under orders, day and night; the civilian remained at liberty. But the understanding of what service under orders meant was not plain to the average American.

So, the national service act, while needed on a practical level to assure continued war production for the duration, would also have the ancillary benefit of tending to drive home this understanding of national service, and thus make the transition of the servicemen back to civilian life that much easier at war's end.

He points out that in New Bedford, Massachusetts, an effort by the Government to move 500 workers from textile mills to war factories had created an uproar among the local labor-management committee, complaining that the move was the equivalent of imposition of slavery, as some of the men would be forced to work nights.

The story would have a degree of sense to a civilian, but not to a soldier. And this gulf of understanding was persistently increasing in the soldier, manifested by a sense of bitterness toward the civilian populace.

Dorothy Thompson addresses the matters not resolved by the Yalta agreement of the Big Three, primarily how Germany would be treated following the initial period of occupation and how the nations would define "Nazism" and "war criminal" in distinguishing from ordinary Germans.

The latter concept seemed to be already wobbly in interpretation as between the West and Russia, Russia having essentially treated all German-speaking Rumanians as Nazis, having deported them to the Soviet Union, while the Soviet press condemned Maniu, the Rumanian peasant leader, as a "Fascist".

Yet, in the West, the United States Army had treated with Nazis in occupying Aachen, having placed in a position of responsibility for a time Otto Meyer, who turned out to have been a Nazi leader in the area since 1928, being responsible for placing persons into concentration camps after Hitler came to power. Despite his having represented himself to the Americans as an anti-Nazi and then subsequently being implicated as a Nazi accomplice, Herr Meyer was given only a prison term of ten years and fined 10,000 marks for providing incorrect information.

As to the method of occupation of Germany, it would appear that the determination to disarm Germany excluded the possibility of the Union of German Officers, formed during the war in Moscow from German prisoners, being employed to maintain order after the war. For the latter had been calling for a reorganized democratic army to protect the country against the rebirth of Nazism. That concept was incompatible with full disarmament. Ms. Thompson wonders whether the Russians had not organized the move toward disarmament to hold over the heads of the Western Allies.

The Nazis would be organized as an underground after the war, storing caches of weapons and ammunition, seeking to stir animosities between East and West during the occupation, in the hope of generating disturbances which the Nazis could then once again use to their advantage, just as Hitler had come to power in 1933 to counter-balance against the potential for a combined power bloc comprised of the dratted Social Democrats and Communists.

Ms. Thompson concludes that the Russians would have clarity as to that for which they were working with respect to Germany post-war, while the West would only have a vague notion, leading to tension between East and West.

Framed Edition
[Return to Links
Page by Subject] [Return to Links-Page by Date] [Return to News<i><i><i>--</i></i></i>Framed Edition]
Links-Date -- Links-Subj.