Editorial: The American offensive
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By the United Press
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Five United Press men go to Africa with AEF
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McIntire retained
Washington –
President Roosevelt today nominated RAdm. Ross T. McIntire for another term as Surgeon General of the Navy and Chief of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. Adm. McIntire is also the White House physician.
Nazi ‘tourist’ plan employed by Hull in handling Vichy
Americans sent into North Africa to prepare for troops; years of criticism withstood by State Department in order to keep finger on French pulse
By H. O. Thompson, United Press staff writer
Cordell Hull – He saw it coming in 1940.
Washington –
After nearly 2½ years of public criticism of its policy toward Vichy France, the State Department is now able to explain that that policy was part of the preparation for military operations now in progress on the north coast of Africa.
The State Department’s policy has been denounced as “appeasement;” Secretary of State Cordell Hull’s resignation has been demanded by various groups of citizens on several occasions because of continuation of relations with Vichy.
Mr. Hull, long the target of most of the criticism levelled at his Department, called an extraordinary press conference yesterday afternoon and told the assembled correspondents that part of the story could now be told.
American ‘tourist’ on job
When it can all be told, it will be found that some 20 American representatives (the Nazis would call them “tourists”) had done an excellent job of laying a foundation for the invasion of Africa last weekend by a powerful U.S. Army. Those men were sent to French Morocco to supervise the delivery of food to the natives. They not only saw that the food did not fall into German or pro-Axis hands, but promoted goodwill toward the United Nations and kept alive in French minds the freedoms which had been traditional under their governments before the fall of France.
Continuation of relations with Vichy made it possible for those representatives to carry on their work. But now that the military phases of the situation have unfolded, informed persons here said, there is no reason for carrying on that fiction longer. The initiative in breaking relations, however, was left to Vichy since the United States’ avowed purpose in the whole campaign is to help the French people remove themselves from the Nazi yoke.
Allies in accord
Mr. Hull revealed that the British and Canadian governments had wholeheartedly supported the American policy. He gave five principal purposes of that policy, describing the fifth as the most important:
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The opportunity for obtaining information from inside German-controlled areas and from North Africa.
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Maintenance of close relations with the French people and encouragement of anti-Hitler factions.
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Keeping alive the basic concepts of freedom of the French people.
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Retention of close personal touch with the Franco-German situation; assistance in promoting resistance to German pressure for French naval forces and French bases outside the Franco-German Armistice of 1940.
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Paving the way and preparing the background for the present military expedition in the Mediterranean and along the Atlantic Ocean areas of French North Africa.
Hull foresaw menace
An authoritative source revealed that American representatives had carried those objectives constantly in mind in dealing with France, regardless of the character of the officials in control of Vichy, The question of whether Americans liked those officials was not permitted to interfere with the larger objectives.
Mr. Hull, it was revealed, has consistently regarded the Mediterranean as the scene of possibly decisive conflict in this war. On Oct. 12, 1940, he told Army and Navy officers that Hitler might bring Japan into a huge offensive aimed at dividing and crushing the British and menacing the United States from North Africa.
Hitler would leave nothing undone, he said, to utilize the French naval forces and French bases, and would aspire to occupation of all of French North Africa.
Daily pledges taken
The story of Vichy-American relations goes back to those dark days in June 1940, when France was about to capitulate to Germany. The U.S. Ambassador to France then, William C. Bullitt, began immediately trying to get pledges from the French leaders that they would not let the French Fleet and French bases fall into Nazi hands. Every few hours of those tragic days – as the flight of the French government went from Paris, to Tours, to Bordeaux and eventually to Vichy – pledges were exacted from the French officials.
The United States hoped that the French government would go across the Mediterranean – to the very colonies now invaded by U.S. troops – and continue resistance. But the group of pro-Axis Frenchmen headed by Pierre Laval favored an armistice – and carried the day.
Policy takes shape
The entire Western Mediterranean area was involved, rather than the mere question of contact with a certain group in Vichy.
The U.S. government felt that to withdraw and let pro-Nazi elements in France remain without any pro-Allied pressure would mean immediate commandeering of the French Fleet and French Mediterranean bases by Hitler.
By the middle of October – after Mr. Hull’s conference with military leaders – a formula for American policy was evolved. It was based on the decision that the U.S. government would keep its representatives in France and in the French colonies and begin a campaign of encouraging the French to oppose Hitler’s demands.
That has continued despite the clamor at times in this country for a break. The greatest criticism came shortly after the State Department “rebuked” the Free French (now Fighting French) for their occupation of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, two tiny French islands off the coast of Canada.
In the light of the State Department’s explanation of its policy, that “rebuke” can now be described as window dressing to the fictional diplomatic relations then being maintained between Vichy and Washington.
The end of the story remains to develop. How successful American representatives were in winning over French people in the African colonies is now being learned by the U.S. Army in Africa.