Sabotage fight finances voted
Senate restores appropriation to $4,350,000
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Bumper 1943 food output indicated by farm output
But intended boost in production will still be too small to meet all demands, officials say
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Monahan: A ‘Panther Woman’ stalks the screen
Simone Simon in Cat People – Duke Ellington on Stanley Stage
By Kaspar Monahan
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Dinah Shore’s just the girl next door!
That’s the way Dinah describes self on joining films
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
On the North African desert –
Most of the American fighting so far in North Africa has been in the mountains, and Americans have seen little of the real desert. But they will sooner or later, so I jumped at the chance to go along on a sortie far into the Sahara, just to see what it would be like.
There were 15 of us in two big ten-wheeled trucks. We took our bedding rolls and enough rations for five days. The purpose of the trip was to salvage the parts from some airplanes that had made crash landings in the desert. Our trip was to take us within 20 miles of German outposts. We weren’t much afraid of being captured, but we were afraid of being strafed by German planes.
We started one morning, and made a French desert garrison at lunchtime. We got out tins of corned beef, sweet potatoes, peas, orange marmalade and hardtack. The French soldiers built a fire out of twigs between two rocks for us to heat water for tea. They cleared off a table in one of their barracks rooms, and did every little thing for us they could.
Cigars bring smiles
For months I’ve been carrying around some cigars I got on the boat coming from England, waiting for a propitious moment to give them away. So, when we left, I gave some to the French soldiers, and you could see the delight on their faces. They all lit up right away, and puffed and held the cigars off and looked at them approvingly, as though they were diamonds.
After we left, our soldiers kept talking about how nice the French were to us, and how they didn’t have much but whatever they had they’d give the best to us. The Americans liked the French, and everywhere you go, the French are grand to Americans.
That French garrison gave us one of its Arab enlisted men as a guide. He was a picturesque figure, rather handsome in his white turban, blue sash and khaki smock. He carried a long knife and a long-barreled rifle. He spoke no English whatever, and no French that we could understand. He said “wah” to everything we asked him.
He knew the way all right, but the communication system between him and us needed some improvement. All we ever got out of him was “wah.” We finally nicknamed him “Wah,” and before the trip was over, we were all saying “wah” when we meant “yes.”
It’s not like the movies
What we saw of the Sahara wasn’t exactly like what we see in the movies, but that’s maybe because we didn’t go far enough into it. The Sahara, you know, is more than 1,000 miles wide, and we were into it no more than 200 miles.
We saw nothing more spectacular than what you’ll find in the more remote parts of our own Southwest. Certainly, it was beautiful. At one point it was so utterly flat and bare that you could have landed anywhere and said:
This is an airport.
At other places it had dry river beds, very wide, their bottoms strewn with rocks. This surprised us, for what is a river doing on a desert? Again, the country would be rolling, and covered with a scrub-like vegetation.
Scenes make Ernie homesick
Parts of it were so exactly like the valley around Palm Springs, California, even down to the delicate smoke-tree bush, that it made you homesick. And one bare, tortured mountain could have been the one behind El Paso. Only once did we see a place with no vegetation at all, where the yellow sand was drifted movielike in great rippled dunes.
At long intervals we would come to what is known locally as an oasis. I used to think an oasis was three palm trees with a ragged guy crawling toward them, his parched tongue hanging out. But in this part of the desert an oasis is a village or a city. It doesn’t have three palm trees; it has tens of thousands of them, forests of them, which make their owners rich from the bounteous crop of dates.
It has big adobe buildings like the Indian pueblos, and narrow streets and irrigation ditches, and hundreds of children running around. It is a big community, and getting to an oasis is like getting to Reno after Death Valley.
Völkischer Beobachter (March 21, 1943)
Knox ringt sich ein Geständnis ab
dnb. Stockholm, 20. März –
Die großen Erfolge der deutschen U-Boote während der letzten Wochen haben sogar dem früher so großmäuligen USA.-Marineminister Knox die Lust zu weiteren Prahlereien verdorben. In der Pressekonferenz am Freitag wurde er nach dem Stand der Atlantikschlacht gefragt. Knox gab zu, „daß im Allgemeinen in letzter Zeit eine regere Tätigkeit der Achsen-U-Boote festzustellen sei.“ Die von deutschen U-Booten in letzter Zeit gegen Geleitzüge unternommenen Angriffe seien „in gewisser Hinsicht“ häufiger geworden. Knox Erklärungen sind die erste offizielle Stellungnahme zu dem letzten Ansteigen der Schiffsversenkungen. Bisher hatten es die Londoner und Washingtoner Amtsstellen vermieden, ihren Völkern diese gewaltigen Tonnageverluste auch nur anzudeuten.
USA.-Admiral über U-Boot-Gefahr
dnb. Stockholm, 20. März –
Der USA.-Admiral Woodward sagte in einer Rede in Buffalo mit beredten Worten eine anwachsende Aktivität der Achsen-U-Boote im Frühjahr voraus und erklärte, daß Hitler sich in der Durchführung des U-Boot-Krieges durch nichts hindern lassen werde. Woodward betonte, man dürfe die Gefahr der deutschen U-Boote nicht verkennen.
Morgenthau – Nachfolger Morgans
Von der „Weltbank“ zur Weltherrschaft
dnb. Tokio, 20. März –
Zu einer am 10. März in London stattgefundenen sogenannten Währungskonferenz schreibt Osaka Mainitschi Schimbun, dieser Konferenz komme insofern Bedeutung zu, als es sich dabei um den Plan handle, durch Schaffung einer sogenannten Weltbank die jüdische Weltdiktatur unter Roosevelt-Morgenthau zu errichten.
Auf den ersten Blick erinnere die Konferenz an die Verteilung des Felles des Bären, der noch nicht erlegt sei. Bei genauer Betrachtung werde jedoch klar, daß auf diese Weise der langjährige Plan der Nordamerikaner oder, besser gesagt, der Juden zur Errichtung ihrer Weltherrschaft durch das Gold verwirklicht werden soll. Besonderes Interesse verdiene dabei die Forderung der Nordamerikaner, 51 Prozent der Aktien dieser „Weltbank“ zu besitzen und zu kontrollieren. Sie wollten hiezu ihre riesigen Goldbestände als Kapitalfonds anbieten und damit zwei Vögel gleichzeitig abschießen, nämlich einmal die ihrer Währung drohende Gefahr abwenden und zweitens die wirtschaftliche Vorherrschaft der USA. über England sichern. Aufschlußreich dürfte sein, wie sich England gegenüber diesen Plänen Verhalte. Der Dollar solle das Pfund erobern. Im letzten Weltkrieg habe sich Morgan nicht gescheut, einige hunderttausend Amerikaner zu opfern, um die jüdische Goldherrschaft in der Welt zu errichten. Diesmal sei es der jüdische Finanzminister Morgenthau, der die Führung an sich zu reißen versuche.
So sei der jetzige Weltkrieg, schreibt das japanische Blatt abschließend, gekennzeichnet durch das Ringen der Menschheit mit dem Mammon. Auf der einen Seite kämpften die Staaten der Achse, die die ehrliche Arbeit als Wertgrundlage betrachteten, auf der anderen Seite das internationale Judentum.
Terrorangriff auf die Residenz des Beis von Tunis
dnb. Rom, 20. März –
Die anglo-amerikanischen Luftpiraten führten, wie Stefani aus Tunis meldet, vor kurzem einen besonders heftigen Terrorangriff auf die kleine mohammedanische Stadt Mersa durch, die bekanntlich dem Bey von Tunis und seinem Hof als Sommerresidenz dient. USA.-Bomber warfen Tausende von Brandbomben auf die Wohnhäuser und Villen und verursachten mehr als 100 Tote unter der Zivilbevölkerung.
U.S. Navy Department (March 21, 1943)
Communiqué No. 319
South Pacific.
On March 19: Dauntless dive bombers (Douglas) and Wildcat fighters (Grumman F4F) attacked Vila in the Central Solomons. Fires were started.
On March 20:
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Dauntless dive bombers and Wildcat fighters again attacked Vila.
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Dauntless dive bombers and Wildcat fighters attacked Munda on New Georgia Island. A fire was started.
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On the evening of March 20, Flying Fortresses (Boeing B-17) and Liberators (Consolidated) attacked Japanese positions on Kahili in the Shortland Island area.
The Pittsburgh Press (March 21, 1943)
Drastic ration forecast on 200 red-coupon items
OPA to announce point values Wednesday; ‘runs’ started on unrestricted food
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African rains hold up Allies
Three U.S. divisions ready to push on Gabes
By Virgil Pinkley, United Press staff writer
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Coal dispute is laid in lap of Roosevelt
Northern operators notify President of stalemate; Southerns appeal
By Fred W. Perkins, Press Washington correspondent
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Nitti stooge of big shots, gang’s attorney reveals
Underworld shows excitement, federal officials prick up ears at lawyer’s charge
Chicago, Illinois (UP) – (March 20)
A posthumous charge by Capone mobster Frank Nitti, that he was only the front man for the real gang lords of Chicago, caused excitement in underworld circles here tonight and made federal officials prick up their ears.
The charge was spoken by E. Bradley Eben, attorney for Nitti and other Chicago hoodlums indicted at New York yesterday on charges of labor racketeering. Mr. Eben was the last person known to have talked to Nitti before the gangster drank himself into stupefaction and then shot himself through the head.
Mr. Eben told newspapermen:
Now that Frank Nitti is dead, I can say that he told me he never was the Chicago gang boss. I am not easily convinced, but I assure you that I believed him when he told me he had nothing to do with the New York extortion case.
Mr. Eben quoted Nitti as telling him:
I was a little guy. I never was the big shot. People built me up as the big boss after Capone went to prison and the guys in the racket began looking up to me. I made a lot of money. I invested my money and the income was enough to keep me going.
I knew Brown and Bioff [George Brown and Willie Bioff, leaders of the Motion Picture Operators Union convicted of extortion from movie magnates]. I used to walk with them and have lunch with them. That was a mistake. I never shook down anybody.
Mr. Eben said he talked to Nitti by telephone at 11 a.m. yesterday shortly after the indictments of Nitti and eight others in connection with the $2,500,000 labor extortion plot was announced.
He said he suggested that Nitti come downtown and talk it over, and Nitti replied:
Sure, I’ll be there at 2 o’clock.
Seemingly not drunk then
The attorney added:
Frank did not appear to be drunk then, and he was not a drinking man.
About an hour later, Nitti, staggering drunk, put the pistol to his head and quashed the government’s case against him.
At an inquest into Nitti’s death, Charles Caravatta of Pullman, Michigan, the dead man’s brother-in-law, testified the gangster was mentally unbalanced.
Caravatta said:
He wasn’t acting in the full powers of his mind and seemed to be temporarily insane. He did a lot of queer things.
Checks with old stories
Caravatta also said Nitti was not a drinker.
What might have sounded like a trapped gangster’s natural self-defense received unusual attention from authorities because it checked with the story that always was told – but never proved – that not even Al Capone in his heyday was the real power. There have been many and conflicting whispers about the shadowy character who issued the orders to Capone and lesser leaders, took the lion’s share of their plunder, and allowed these limited intellects to bask in the front-page notoriety, the nightclub adulation and eventually the government witness box.
Hint implicates politicians
U.S. District Attorney J. Albert Woll hinted today he was going after this character of characters. He planned to call a federal grand jury within 30 days to start where the New York jury left off, and he intimated that supposedly legitimate businessmen and politicians might be implicated.
U.S. Marshals started out with warrants this afternoon for the other Chicagoans involved – Paul Ricca, Louis “Little New York” Campagna, Phil D’Andrea, Frank “The Immune” Maritote, Ralph Pierce and Charles “Cherry Nose” Gioe.
But they had little hope of nabbing them, because gangdom’s doors were locked and its inhabitants were “undercover.” Mr. Eben reportedly discussed surrender of some of these clients Monday if suitable bail arrangements could be made.
There were empty tables at some of the North Clark St. joints tonight.
Nitti is not alone in evading arrest
Chicago, Illinois – (March 20)
Deputy U.S. Marshals went searching today for seven Chicago underworld figures indicted at New York on racketeering charges. Their reports:
PHILIP D’ANDREA: His home in suburban Glencoe burned down a year ago. He left no forwarding address.
FRANK DIAMOND: His listed address is a vacant store.
PAUL RICCA: His wife said he hadn’t been home since Wednesday.
RALPH PIERCE: Unaccounted for since he was questioned early this week about a murder and released on $100 bond.
LOUIS CAMPAGNA: Whereabouts unknown since he saw his attorney yesterday.
CHARLES GIOE: Left his hotel at 7 a.m. today, three hours earlier than usual.
FRANK NITTI: Warrant returned unexecuted. Fugitive dead, by suicide.
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Carrier pigeon used by reporter at front
Allied HQ, North Africa (UP) – (March 20)
For the first time in the North African campaign, a carrier pigeon has been used to transmit a dispatch from the frontlines.
United Press correspondent Phil Ault, who was an eyewitness to the capture of the Axis base at Gafsa, wrote a dispatch on Wednesday night and sent it by pigeon to a forward teleprinter base which relayed it to Allied headquarters.
It took the pigeon 50 minutes to reach the teleprinter base from the frontlines.