The allies failed to get the hardware to install the expansion. So they have had to wait until Türkije was safe from the axis.
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Roosevelt-Churchill dinner meeting, 8:30 p.m.
| Present | ||
|---|---|---|
| United States | United Kingdom | |
| President Roosevelt | Prime Minister Churchill | |
| Mr. Hopkins | Foreign Secretary Eden | |
| Admiral Leahy |
The conversation dealt with the allocation of forces for the operation against the Andaman Islands or alternatively against Rhodes, and the choice of zones of occupation in Germany as between the United States and the United Kingdom. With regard to the first topic, Roosevelt insisted on the Andaman Islands operation and emphasized that promises made to Chiang should be fully carried out. With respect to the second topic, Churchill and Eden argued for British occupation of the northwestern zone in Germany.
The Pittsburgh Press (December 3, 1943)
‘BIG THREE’ MAP ULTIMATUM TO NAZIS
‘Surrender or die’ note being drawn
Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin draft warning in Iran talks
By Robert Dowson, United Press staff writer
London, England –
An Istanbul dispatch passed by the British censorship said today that President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Premier Stalin, in conference in Iran, were drafting an ultimatum to Germany to surrender unconditionally or suffer total destruction by bombing.
The dispatch, bearing the censorship notation, “passed for publication,” was carried by the British Exchange Telegraph Agency and said that, accor4ding to news from Ankara, the “Big Three” had begun their historic conference at Tabriz, 350 miles northwest of Tehran and only 60 miles south of the Russian Caucasian border.
The German DNB News Agency broadcast a report attributed to Lisbon that the conference opened on Nov. 28 and was ending today. DNB said:
The main point is to appeal to the German people to surrender unconditionally and remove the Nazi leadership.
Montgomery mentioned
A broadcast by the Nazi Vichy radio also said the meeting had begun at Tabriz and asserted that Messrs. Roosevelt and Churchill were accompanied by Gen. Sir Bernard L. Montgomery, commander of the British 8th Army now in Italy.
There has been widespread speculation that the three heads of state would discuss details of an Allied squeeze on the Balkans with British and possibly U.S. troops hopping off from Italy, the Levant or Africa and the Red Army thrusting from the east.
Gen. Montgomery’s troops now hold Bari and Brindisi, the two main ports in southeastern Italy from which Italy began her invasions of Yugoslavia, Albania and Greece.
Eisenhower confers
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean, presided over a meeting of some of his Mediterranean staff in Egypt immediately following the Roosevelt-Churchill-Chiang conference, but there has been no confirmation that Gen. Montgomery was present.
A United Press dispatch from Ankara said the newspaper Ulus, organ of the Republican People’s Party, was speculating that the Anglo-American-Russian conference would have “even greater echoes” than the Roosevelt-Churchill meetings in Casablanca and Québec.
May ask Turkish bases
Neutral Turkey may be drawn into the war by an Allied request for the use of bases from which to bomb and perhaps invade Greece or Bulgaria.
There were reports that the American and British leaders may ask Stalin for the use of Russian bases for their steady blasting of Nazi targets.
Nazis expect demand
The Germans, anticipating a possible tri-power demand for their surrender, were already warning that they would never give in to the Allies.
Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels set the pace by asserting in his publication Das Reich that “one may have to suffer blows, but one must never give in.”
He said:
That nation will be victorious which does not carry the white flag of surrender in its baggage.
The newspaper Zwölf Uhr Blatt, in a similar vein, declared:
One hundred million Germans are welded through life and death in unity and would rather be torn to pieces for the Führer than to make the tiniest concessions to the enemy.
Connally ‘explains’ conference site
Fort Worth, Texas (UP) –
President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill carried the tripartite conference to Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin “because he is actively directing his armies in the field,” Senator Tom Connally (D-TX) said last night.
The Senator said:
They carried the conference to Stalin because he is actively directing his armies and it was necessary to make it as handy as possible to his headquarters.
Draft of declaration written by Churchill
Cairo, Egypt – (Dec. 1, delayed)
Prime Minister Churchill is believed to have prepared the first rough draft of the declaration of the Sino-American-British conference here between midnight and 2:00 a.m. EET. After discussions with President Roosevelt and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Mme. Chiang acted as interpreter during the talks.
The following day, Mr. Churchill took his draft of the declaration to President Roosevelt who congratulated the Prime Minister and dictated slight changes and additions in accord with his views.
Then Mme. Chiang, on behalf of China, requested its amplification of the original terms.
The completed declaration was in the hands of the Big Three for final initialing only a few hours before they left for secret destinations.
Allies hack out new gains in bitter battles in Italy
Strongly fortified town of Castel Frentano falls to British; Yanks also advance
By C. R. Cunningham, United Press staff writer
…
I DARE SAY —
Twigs and trees
By Florence Fisher Parry
I’m glad that the Gen. Patton incident has been placed back in the hands of the Army, where from the first it strictly belonged. Congress asks to meddle into too many matters outside its jurisdiction anyway. In the last analysis, it’s the Army, from general to foot soldier, who is fighting this war. Its ways are not our ways any more than its deaths are our deaths.
Who is to say whose shell shock was the greater, the soldier’s whom Gen. Patton cursed and hit, or that of the general himself, who, soon after he left the soldier he had insulted, broke down and sobbed at the sight of wounded men?
The training of any man into a hardened soldier is in itself one of the most relentless conditioning processes known. Ralph Ingersoll, in his remarkable book The Battle Is the Payoff, brings this fact brutally home. It is not enough to make iron bodies. It is the iron nerve that counts. Generals know this. They cannot be mollycoddlers. And while in no way condoning Gen. Patton’s lamentable act, I can understand and have compassion for it.
“Nerves” take strange outlets. In the case of the poor fellow who was the victim of Gen. Patton’s outburst, he could “hear the shells come over” but he couldn’t hear them burst. In the case of Gen. Patton, it was his taut control breaking suddenly, one instant into curses and violence and the next instant into sentimental tears.
As twig is bent
This unfortunate incident reminded me of a story out of the last World War: A French soldier lay dying. In a few moments he would be gone forever. The will to live had left him. His eyes were glazing and his breath had stopped. But at that moment the general passed by, brutally slapped the boy’s face, jerked him up by his chest and shook him.
How dare you die, you coward, when the country needs you so?! How dare you give up now and leave us fighting?! Coward!
The eyes of the dying soldier lost their glaze. Sharp points of fury focused them. Angry blood suffused his face. His heart began to pump its outrage, and life returned and flowed again within him.
“As the twig is bent, the tree inclines.” Mostly, but not always. Gen. Patton, for example, has had a soldier’s life – unsparing, bitter, hard – a lean, taut, basic life, no place for faltering nerves. His standards for human conduct are bound to be quite different from those of others.
Compare, for example, his “conditioning” with that of our President, who in temperament provides as sharp an antithesis as could be had. The current Time gives us a chronological reminder of our President’s preparation for the biggest single job ever one man’s to hold. That he should now have become the statesman who sits with three other world leaders at the greatest conference table in all history, provides astounding commentary upon the man’s elastic capacity for growth; and we would have chary souls, indeed, if at this towering moment we were to begrudge or deny our President his moment of fulfillment.
The transformation
Consider how this twig was bent:
Franklin D. Roosevelt was born in a large estate, son of a country squire. His first trip to Europe was when he was three. He had his own pony at seven. He made yearly trips to Europe surrounded by tutors, costly toys, and doting parents. When he was 19, he entered Groton, a privileged boys’ prep school.
From there to Harvard, clubs, sports and the pleasant pastime of writing reform editorials in the Harvard Crimson. At 31, he married a timid, plain young cousin and had a long and carefree European honeymoon.
Two years later he is managing his Hyde Park estate, and a few years later is seen campaigning for State Senator in a bright red, open car. He is then 36 years old. He has never done a stroke of work in his life. But politics appeal to him as a gentleman’s occupation.
At 47 (mind you), we see him as vice president of the Fidelity & Deposit Company of Maryland at a salary of $25,000 a year. It is in that year that he is stricken by infantile paralysis and goes into communion with his own soul.
He comes out of that with a set chin and a smile which even then might have served as a warning to any adversary.
Eleven years later, he is in the White House, the most firmly entrenched President in history. Now ensconced in the seats of the Mighty, he occupies the principal chair and will forever sit in the halls of history, the greatest simple example that mankind can proffer to disprove the old saw, “As the twig is bent, the tree inclines.”
This old adage may hold true in the Army. Gen. Patton is a supreme example of its truth. But present now at some historic rendezvous sits President Roosevelt grinning defiance at the adage – mama’s boy into politician, into statesman, into the history books, and so into immortality.
Poll: Women’s draft gains support in last month
Action favored over call for married men by 78%
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion
…
War strategy set by Curtin and MacArthur
Talks held in the light of new ‘crush Japan’ decisions in Cairo
…
Bougainville Yank raiders kill 200 Japs
Thousands of others believed dead in sinking of transport
By Brydon Taves, United Press staff writer
…
At Thanksgiving dinner –
Roosevelt sings a ditty and Churchill dances jig
Old-time favorite tunes played by musicians for distinguished group at parley
By Gault MacGowan, North American Newspaper Alliance
Cairo, Egypt – (Dec. 1, delayed)
In a temporary White House which gleamed in actual white against a tropical setting of scarlet flowers, cypresses and peppercorns, President Roosevelt was host at a “family” dinner on Thanksgiving at which the guests feasted on turkey and trimmings and an American orchestra played.
The President’s singing of a little ditty of his own composition, Prime Minister Churchill’s execution of a dance step while waving his cigar, and a proposal by Harry Hopkins to take the orchestra home to the “Twenty-One Club,” a New York nightclub, to learn the very latest tunes were among the most vivid memories of the musicians.
The President’s personally composed ditty, in the key of E flat, was unfortunately unrecorded in either words or music. The Prime Minister’s impromptu dance steps were to the oft-recorded “Sidewalks of New York.”
President’s son present
The joking threat of Mr. Hopkins to take the orchestra to New York to learn some new music came when the orchestra could not meet a request for “Pistol-Packin’ Mamma,” apologizing, “We don’t know the latest ones; we’ve been overseas too long.”
Prime Minister Churchill, who attended the dinner with his daughter Sarah and her husband Victor Oliver, asked the musicians to play “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny.” The request song of President Roosevelt, whose son, Col. Elliott Roosevelt, and son-in-law Maj. John Boettiger, were present, was “Home on the Range.”
Other requests
“Home on the Range” was played four times for the President and “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny” four times for Mr. Churchill. There were also special requests for “The White Cliffs of Dover” and “When the Lights Go On Again.” The President followed with suggestions of “Anchors Aweigh” and “Swanee River.”
All the men in the orchestra were presented to the President and the Prime Minister after the dinner.
Among other celebrated guests at the American Thanksgiving meal were British Foreign secretary Anthony Eden, U.S. Ambassador to Russia W. Averell Harriman and U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James John G. Winant.
Prime Minister Churchill and the President visited the Pyramids together after the dinner, returning soon to continue that conference. Generalissimo and Mme. Chiang Kai-shek visited the Pyramids separately before their departure.
A stop of 15 minutes before the Sphinx was included in the Pyramid trip of the President.
WAC is in charge of Roosevelt phone
Cairo, Egypt – (Dec. 1, delayed)
There were thousands of soldiers guarding with anti-aircraft installations and machine guns, the perimeter within which the momentous Cairo Conference was held.
There were hundreds of delegates and there were dozens of famous soldiers, sailors and airmen in attendance. Yet the proudest and busiest person of all was a 37-year-old WAC corporal from New York.
She is Cpl. Mary Catherine Broadhead, and she was in charge of the personal telephone switchboard of President Roosevelt. This was a big job, as Cpl. Broadhead found out, but the corporal was up to it, for she was formerly in charge of 74 telephone operators at the headquarters of Gen. Eisenhower.
Fire victim joins WAC
Boston, Massachusetts –
Miss Edwina J. Mullin of Cambridge, who was injured in the Cocoanut Grove holocaust, has joined the WAC to replace her Army-officer fiancé who was among the 490 persons who were killed in the nightclub fire.