Background of news –
Allies outnumber Nazis
By Col. Frederick Palmer
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In Washington –
Post-war tax plan suggested by Baruch called ‘impracticable’
Doughton claims determining nation’s needs in advance would be impossible
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Landon offers 3-point plan to GOP
War, industry and peace stressed
Topeka, Kansas (UP) –
Alf M. Landon, the 1936 Republican standard-bearer, offered three planks today for the 1944 GOP platform – to win the war, reconvert to peacetime production by a free industry, and pursuance of a lasting peace.
In an address before the Kansas State Republican Convention, Mr. Landon called for the party to chose a presidential candidate who would work with Congress ad inspire confidence at home and abroad.
Scores red tape
The GOP nominee also must be a man determined to wipe out bureaucratic “red tape that is interfering with our war effort,” he said.
Mr. Landon recommended that the party platform include:
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“An assurance that we will exert every effort toward winning the war. No temporary political expedience will be permitted to jeopardize or delay on hour the winning of the war.”
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“Definite plans for reconversion from war to peace and for returning soldiers and sailors: a blueprint for free industry and not a socialistic state so that businessmen are assured of a fair profit, labor will be assured of full employment, good pay and higher standards of living, and farmers assured of a better price for their crops.”
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“The war and the way to lasting peace must be pursued with unrelenting vigor.”
Confusion charged
Mr. Landon condemned the present administration as “the same babble of voices confusing our foreign relations that confused our domestic relations.”
Off-hand comments by President Roosevelt, confusion among government agencies and vagueness of foreign relations in general, he said, have weakened the war effort.
He said:
The ballyhoo that surrounded the President’s return from Tehran is almost unpleasantly reminiscent of Dr. Cook’s return from the North Pole.
Bricker: U.S. must lead world
Denver, Colorado (UP) –
The United States must take a position of world leadership in the post-war era, but U.S. interests must not be submerged by having a superstate or world government imposed upon us, Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio told the Denver Chamber of Commerce yesterday.
Mr. Bricker called on the nation to “recapture the spirit of private enterprise and self-government” and said the men returning from the battlefronts “want good jobs in private industry, not government-made positions or a dole.”
The gathering of businessmen applauded his other contentions – that “no man has the right to strike in time of war,” that secret conferences must be abolished, government must discontinue “competition with business” and that the ranks of “three and one-half million federal officeholders” must be drastically reduced immediately after the war.
Mr. Bricker said freedom of the press was essential, saying that “if we keep the news lines open, the truth will keep us free.”
Dubinsky bolts Labor Party
New York (UP) –
Formation of an independent party pledged to support President Roosevelt for a fourth term loomed today as David Dubinsky, president of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, announced he would urge the union’s 162,338 members to follow his example in bolting the American Labor Party.
Mr. Dubinsky, whose right-wing forces of the ALP were defeated by a left-wing faction in Tuesday’s primary, estimated an independent party could poll 300,000 votes in New York State.
Foes called Reds
One of the organizers of the ALP, Mr. Dubinsky promised his support to an independent party yesterday when he said he regarded “the former American Labor Party as a communist labor party, and am therefore withdrawing from that party.”
Mr. Dubinsky said that if an independent party was not formed, he would vote for President Roosevelt on the Democratic ticket, but intimated that if Wendell L. Willkie were the Republican candidate, he might vote for him. He added that under no circumstances would be vote for Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York for President.
Bore brunt of cost
Mr. Dubinsky also said his union paid about 60% of the ALP expenses in the last eight years and reported that the union’s contributions totaled almost $533,000.
The left-wing faction, led by Sidney Hillman, leader of the CIO Political Action Committee, scheduled a statewide meeting tomorrow to plan its campaign in support of Mr. Roosevelt. The goal of the group is to boost upstate enrollment in the ALP from 16,000 to 200,000 and to establish a working organization in every region of the state.
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
With 5th Army beachhead forces in Italy – (by wireless)
The Anzio beachhead area is practically all farms. Much of it lies in the famous old Pontine marshes. I’ve looked these up in Baedeker, and found that the Romans have been trying to drain them since 300 years before Christ.
Even Caesar took a shot at it, and so did many Popes. Mussolini was the last one to give the marshes a whirl, and as far as I can see, he did a pretty good job of it.
On these little farms of the Pontine marshes Mussolini built hundreds of modern (in the Italian manner) stone farmhouses. They’re all exactly alike, except for color, and they stipple the countryside like dots on a polka-dot dress.
Despite its flatness, the area is rather pretty. It doesn’t look like marshland. It is green now, and will be greener in a few weeks. Wheat is coming through the ground. There are rows of cedar trees throughout the area. Spots of uncultivated ground are covered with waist-high oak bushes, resembling our hazelnut bushes in the fall, crisp and brown-leafed.
Now and then you see a farmer plowing with German shells landing right in his field. We’ve tried to evacuate the people, and have evacuated thousands by boat. Daily you see our trucks moving down to the dock with loads of Italian civilians from the farms. But some of them simply won’t leave their homes.
Life goes on
Now and then the Germans will pick out one of the farmhouses, figuring we have a command post in it, I suppose, and shell it to extinction. Then, and then only, do the Italian families move out.
One unit was telling me about a family they tried in vain for days to move. Finally, a shell killed their tiny baby, just a few days old.
Here in the battle zone, as in other parts of Italy, our Army doctors are constantly turning midwife to deliver bambinos.
Farmers frequently do dry-cleaning with gasoline for our officers, and they say the job they do would pass inspection in any New York tailoring shop. Soldiers throughout the area get the remaining Italians to do their washing. Practically every inhabited farmhouse has a gigantic brown washing hanging in the backyard.
One outfit of tankers that I know sent all its spare clothes to one farmhouse to be washed. Shortly afterward the Germans picked out that house for the center of barrage.
The Italians abandoned the place, and were unhurt. But next morning, when the soldiers went to see about their clothes, all they found was dozens of American shirts and pants and socks torn into shreds by shell fragments.
Cattle in fields
In the fields there are small herds of cattle, sheep, horses and mules. Many of the cattle are slate-gray, just like Brahma cattle. And they have wide, sweeping horns very much like the majestic headgear of the famous longhorn steers of Texas. Now and then you see an Army truck radiator decorated with a pair of these horns.
Most of the livestock can graze without human attention, but as an old farmer I’ve been worrying about the cows that have nobody to milk them when the farmers leave. As you may or may not know, a milk cow that isn’t milked eventually dies a painful death.
An officer friend of mine, who has been at the front almost since D-Day, says he’s seen only one cow in trouble from not being milked, so I suppose somebody is milking them.
One unit I know of took the milking proposition into its own hands, and had fresh milk every day. Of course, that’s against Army regulations (on account of the danger of tubercular milk), but Army regulations have been known to be ignored in certain dire circumstances.
Much of the livestock is being killed by German shellfire. On any side road you won’t drive five minutes without seeing the skeleton of a cow or a horse.
And of course, some cows commit suicide. As the saying used to go in Tunisia, it was the damndest thing, but one cow stepped on a mine, a very odd mine indeed, for when it exploded it hit her right between the eyes. And here on the beachhead we’ve seen an occasional cow deliberately walk up and stick its head in front of a rifle just as it went off.
There isn’t as much of that, to my mind, as there should be. We’re fighting a horrible war that we didn’t ask for, on the land of the people who started it. Our supply problems are difficult. K-rations get pretty boring, and fresh meat is something out of Utopia.
Excuse me while I go kill a cow myself.
Stokes: Compromises
By Thomas L. Stokes
Chicago, Illinois –
Democrats are really hard up this year.
You are sure of that when the boys in the back room, meaning the notorious Kelly-Nash Democratic machine of Cook County and this city, accepts as the party’s candidate for governor a hard hitter, who has been tossing nasty adjectives their way for years.
He is Thomas J. Courtney, Cook County state’s attorney for three consecutive terms over the opposition of the machine and for whom, times being normal the bosses would not give a second thought, and certainly not a kind thought.
The Courtney case is typical of the compromises that are going on here among Democrats in this year of desperation, themselves the measure of the worry of Mayor Ed Kelly, who now rules the roost alone since the death of his sidekick, Democratic National Committeeman Pat Nash; the worry of Senator Scott Lucas, up for reelection, and the worry of the national administration.
Boss Kelly is not sitting so pretty. Republicans have been whittling away at his once-lavish majorities in the city. At stake this year is a whole flock of Cook County jobs which are essential cogs in his once-well-greased machine.
A New Deal worry
This translates itself into administration’s worry. The machine’s Cook County majorities, offsetting downstate Republican votes, have given President Roosevelt the state’s 29 electoral votes three times in a row. His majority, however, dwindled to 105,000 in 1940 against Wendell Willkie, falling from a peak of 700,000 against Alf M. Landon in 1936.
Nor is it pleasant to recall that while President Roosevelt carried the state by 105,000 in 1940, the Republican Dwight Green won the governorship by 150,000. The President thus ran 250,000 ahead of the Democratic state ticket.
Governor Green, running for reelection, is assured of renomination at the April 11 primary. Mr. Courtney has no opposition and will be his opponent.
The President’s political lieutenants, looking dolefully over the terrain, are anxious to win Illinois to put together with a big state or two in thew East, scattering small states in the Far West, and the Solid South to carve out a scant victory in November.
Kelly makes his gesture
Out of the common plight of all concerned has emerged a series of deals typified by the Courtney case, an all-for-one and one-for-all program. Boss Kelly has made his compromising gestures.
The result is that the party has an unusually respectable slate of candidates, the object was to build a good base for President Roosevelt.
A part of the program, too, is that the national administration shall keep hand-off. No meddling is wanted by Washington New Dealers with more ardor than practical political sense.
Democrats will play the war heavily to offset the influence of Col. Robert R. McCormick and the Chicago Tribune and their hand-picked candidates, isolationist in hue, on the Republican ticket. A certain victory is seen for the Tribune candidate for the Republican senatorial nomination, Richard J. Lyons, a hell-roaring orator, in the primary against Deneen Watson, sponsor of the Republican Post-War Policy Association organized to jimmy the party away from isolationism. Mr. Lyons will oppose Senator Lucas in November.
At this stage, things look none too bright for the Democrats.
Volcano, war hit old churches
By Edward P. Morgan
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Woman assailed as Nazis’ friend
U.S. asked to act against Miss Kellems
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Bucs welcome first stiff workout
Frisch slates all-out drill at Louisville
By Dick Fortune
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Rickey urges ‘carry on’ even if draft takes 4-Fs
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‘Meal ticket’ vs. ‘hot tamale’ –
Zurita makes Gotham debut as 3–1 underdog to Beau
By Jack Cuddy, United Press staff writer
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LaMotta favored to defeat Woods
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No April Fool gags –
Jack Benny says he wants a girl singer
Dunninger banned from Army camps
By Si Steinhauser
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Steel workers plan to keep no-strike rule
Rank-and-file survey would hearten Army
By Fred W. Perkins
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Völkischer Beobachter (April 1, 1944)
Selbst Reuter muß eingestehen:
Englands schwerste Niederlage im Luftkrieg
Bisher der Abschuß von 132 viermotorigen Bombern festgestellt
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Eine Ohrfeige der Iswestija –
Moskau ruft die Anglo-Amerikaner zur Ordnung
Von unserem Berner Berichterstatter
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U.S. State Department (April 1, 1944)
740.0011 European War 1939/33765: Telegram
The Minister in Switzerland to the Secretary of State
Bern, April 1, 1944
[Received April 1 — 10:56 a.m.]
1999
It is officially announced that on April 1, 1944 at 10:30 in the morning approximately 30 American planes flew over the Cantons of Thurgau and Schaffhausen. At about 11 a.m. bombs were dropped on the town of Schaffhausen. According to presently available reports several fires are raging in the station district and in the city. Further details will be announced later. All railroad traffic in direction of Schaffhausen has been interrupted.
Military Attaché leaving immediately for Schaffhausen to investigate and report.
I shall immediately endeavor to obtain appointment with Foreign Minister for further exploration matter. Details will be telegraphed as obtained.
HARRISON
740.0011 European War 1939/33770: Telegram
The Minister in Switzerland to the Secretary of State
Bern, April 1, 1944 — 8 p.m.
[Received 8:10 p.m.]
2020
My 1999 and 2010.
I called on Mr. Pilet-Golaz at his residence this afternoon to express my regret and sympathy. According his preliminary information some 50 American bombers flying from southeast in direction northwest suddenly appeared over Schaffhausen this morning and dropped bombs and incendiaries. A number of important buildings in the center of the town were hit also railway station and railway yards. Several factories on outskirts were set on fire by incendiaries. Some 100 people were killed and wounded, including a high cantonal official killed. Many persons rendered homeless; fires still burning. Railway communication with Schaffhausen interrupted. Mr. Pilet-Golaz was at a loss for any explanation of what apparently was a deliberate attack. He had sent instructions to Minister Bruggmann. He has also given orders that press and radio announcements should be restrained and factual.
HARRISON
U.S. Navy Department (April 1, 1944)
CINCPAC Press Release No. 332
For Immediate Release
April 1, 1944
Liberator bombers of the 7th Army Air Force bombed Dublon, Moen and Eten Islands in the Truk Atoll at night on March 30 (West Longitude Date). Hits were made on the airstrip at Moen and in barracks areas. Several delayed explosions were observed. Two enemy planes intercepted our bombers, but all returned safely.
Three enemy positions in the Marshall Islands were bombed and strafed by Mitchell bombers of the 7th Army Air Force and Dauntless dive bombers and Corsair fighters of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing. A Dauntless bomber was shot down by anti-aircraft fire near one objective and its crew rescued by a destroyer.
The Pittsburgh Press (April 1, 1944)
SWISS CHARGE BOMBING BY YANKS
Planes kill 30 in neutral city, dispatches say
Liberators attack Southwest Germany
By Walter Cronkite, United Press staff writer
London, England –
U.S. Liberators attacked Southwest Germany today and Swiss dispatches said U.S. planes dropped bombs on Schaffhausen, in North Switzerland, near the German frontier, killing at least 30 persons.
A Swiss communiqué said about 30 U.S. bombers flew over the cantons of Schaffhausen, of which the city is the capital, and neighboring Thurgau. Bombs dropped on Schaffhausen started several fires, the communiqué said. Supplementary Swiss advices reported seven columns of smoke rising over the city and a number of buildings destroyed or damaged.
Crews to be questioned
U.S. Army Air Force officials said any official statement or unofficial reaction would have to await interrogation of crewmen out today and a detailed study of reports. They indicated any such reports would probably be delayed for some hours.
The U.S. 8th Air Force sent a relatively small formation of Liberators escorted by Mustang and Thunderbolt fighters against Southwest Germany to usher in a new month of the aerial campaign against the Luftwaffe and other enemy war potentials.
Reports from Schaffhausen through Zürich said the bombardment extended over the entire Swiss city.
Station reported destroyed
A station was destroyed and the assistant station master and seven other persons killed, the Swiss advices said. They also reported three factories badly hit, a theater on fire and an asylum for the aged hit.
Schaffhausen is 23 miles north of Zürich and five miles from the German border. It has a population of more than 15,000.
The Swiss communiqué said:
On April 1, American bombers in formations of 30 flew over the cantons of Schaffhausen and [adjacent] Thurgau beginning at 10:30 a.m. [5:30 a.m. EWT].
About 11:00 a.m., bombs were dropped on the city of Schaffhausen. According to reports so far received, several fires were started in the station district and the city. Further details later.
Identified as Yanks
While the communiqué said only that the bombs fell on Schaffhausen after U.S. planes began flying over, other Swiss dispatches identified the bombers as of U.S. nationality.
Soon after the Swiss communiqué was issued, the German DNB News Agency broadcast it, saying the bombers were American and that all Schaffhausen rail traffic was discontinued temporarily.
Planes circle city
Accounts from Schaffhausen by way of Zürich said the bombers circled over the city for some time, dropped a number of red flares and then opened the bombardment which shook houses like an earthquake.
A spectator said a number of houses in his area, including a cloth factory, was still afire when the report was sent. He said he saw a number of dead and wounded persons carried into a house.
Nearly 200 Liberators rode out difficult weather and heavy anti-aircraft fire, including Nazi rocket parachute bombs, to blast the Reich.
Bomb through clouds
Some Liberator groups bombed visually through holes in the clouds and saw their targets covered by big fires and black smoke. Others used special navigational devices and bombed through the obscuring clouds.
The German Air Force made only a halfhearted attempt to intercept, and the bulk of the attacks was concentrated in brief passes at a single group of Liberators.
Mosquito attack
A mid-morning Berlin broadcast said bomber formations were over and approaching Southwest Germany. Only a half-hour earlier, the same station said strong formations were approaching southern Germany. Some may have come from Italian bases.
A number of enemy raiders were also over North and Northwest Germany, Berlin said.
British Mosquito bombers rounded out the Allies’ March offensive last night with small-scale attacks on western Germany without loss. Though the month thus ended on a comparatively minor note, U.S. and British heavy bombers during March probably dropped nearly 50,000 tons of explosives – a new record – on Germany and occupied Europe.