Cairo parley may presage Balkans push
Meeting with President of Turkey may mean push north from Thrace
By Robert Dowson, United Press staff writer
London, England –
President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill were reported conferring with President İsmet İnönü of Turkey in Cairo today in what may be a prelude to an Allied offensive in the Balkans, possibly in part through the Turkish “backdoor.”
The German Transocean News Agency broadcast a report attributed to Ankara that İnönü was returning from Cairo and a special session of the Turkish Cabinet would be held immediately.
The authoritative British Press Association, in what amounted to tacit confirmation of Axis reports of the conference, said it was expected the deliberations would “have almost as important an effect on the course of the war as the first Cairo and the Tehran Conferences.”
Promise offensive
The Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin declaration in Tehran significantly promised that new operations would be undertaken against Europe “from the south” and there was every indication that the “Big Three” discussed the possibility of bypassing the Aegean, Crete and Rhodes by striking directly into southeastern Europe from Turkish Thrace.
The Press Association said it was presumed that Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Churchill and the Turkish leaders were discussing the Anglo-Turkish Pact of 1939 which bound Turkey to help Britain in the event that aggression by a European power led to war in the Mediterranean.
The Press Association’s diplomatic correspondent said:
Ankara observers state the possibilities Turkey will enter the war are increasing and Russia, whose relations with Turkey markedly improved recently, is known to have stressed the importance of Turkish intervention.
Nazi mass troops
The diplomatic correspondent doubted, however, that Turkey would officially enter the war in the immediate future. Other sources suggested that if Turkey did decide to throw in her lot with the Allies, she would hardly announce it until Allied forces have taken up dispositions that would protect her from any sudden Axis attack.
Hungarian sources in Stockholm said yesterday that German troops were moving through Bulgaria toward the Turkish frontier zone.
The Press Association said “reliable overseas reports” indicated that British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, Turkish Foreign Secretary Numan Menemencioğlu and Harry Hopkins, President Roosevelt’s special assistant, were also participating in Anglo-American-Turkish conferences.
Would push from Italy
Cairo reports have implied that Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean, and Gen. Sir Henry Maitland Wilson, British commander in the Levant, both of whom would presumably be involved in any Balkan operation, were also in Cairo, recently if not presently.
Any Allied drive through Turkey into the Balkans would probably be accompanied by a thrust across the Adriatic from newly-won bases in southern Italy into Yugoslavia for a pincer offensive.
A United Press dispatch from Cairo, which passed the strict British censorship there, said the Arabic press was speculating broadly on Turkey’s future role, though Allied authorities refused to comment on the situation.
Among the principal questions discussed by the newspapers, the dispatch said, were:
- Opening of the Dardanelles to Allied ships supplying Russia.
- Russian influence in the Balkans, particularly in Bulgaria, Greece and Yugoslavia.
- Possible German reprisals against Istanbul in the event Turkey entered the war.
- Possible further Russian influence through the Middle East toward Iran.
Berlin terms parley U.S.-British sellout
By the United Press
Axis propagandists today described the Tehran Conference as a sellout by Great Britain and the United States and a “diplomatic victory” for Marshal Stalin, said second front mention was vague and declared the Allies would have realized their intentions against Germany long ago “if they had been able to do so.”
The Nazi home radio belittled the statement following the conference as “even more meager and empty than the announcement issued in Moscow,” referred to the principals as “the American big capitalist, the English Tory and the Bolshevik dictator.”
Prime Minister Churchill, the radio said, was “bringing up the rear in keeping with the satellite role to which England has sunk.”
Berlin broadcasts wondered why an appeal was not made to the German people and said Germany would not lay down her arms until victory was won.
In the first Japanese reaction, the Dōmei News Agency said an attempt to “destroy German morale on the basis of the successful propaganda used against Italy will be futile: and declared that the communiqué “doesn’t in the least affect Japan’s determination to crush the United States and Britain.”
DNB, the German news agency, said the Tehran communiqué was a “farce” and that it indicated that Mr. Churchill and President Roosevelt were “capitulating all along the line to Soviet demands.”
Roosevelt: ‘Very successful’
Cairo, Egypt (UP) –
President Roosevelt in two speeches to American soldiers in Iran said that he, Premier Joseph Stalin and Prime Minister Winston Churchill at a “very successful” Iran conference made plans to win the war as soon as possible and work for a world “for our children” in which war would cease to be a necessity, it was announced today.
Early last Thursday, just before he left Tehran, the President addressed “walking” patients at an American post hospital and later American troops at an Iranian base.
They were friendly, chatty speeches calculated to cheer men far from home.
‘Very successful’
The President said:
I have had conferences with Marshal Stalin and Prime Minister Churchill during the past four days – very successful, too – laying plans insofar as we can to make it unnecessary for us again to have Americans in Iran just as long as we and our children live.
I got here four days ago to meet with the Marshal of the Soviet Union and the Prime Minister of Great Britain to try to do two things.
The first was to lay military plans for cooperation between our three nations looking forward to winning the war just as fast as we possibly can and I think we have made progress toward that end.
Must win first
Our other purpose was to talk over world conditions after the war – to try to plan for a world for our children when war would cease to be a necessity. We have made great progress in that also. But, of course, the first thing is to win the war.
In addressing the hospital patients, the President said:
This place is a good deal like home. I landed about 10 days ago. This is the nearest thing to the United States I have seen yet.
The President said of plans for a warless world:
I think that is worth fighting for, even being sick for, in Iran.
MacArthur aide attends parley
Cairo, Egypt (UP) –
The staff officer from Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s headquarters participated in the Cairo Conference and is now on his way back to report, it can be revealed today.
This officer, whose name cannot be published, told the United Press he had presented a detailed picture of Gen. MacArthur’s strategy and operations to Prime Minister Churchill, President Roosevelt and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.
Turning to the status of the Pacific Theater on the second anniversary of Pearl Harbor, this staff officer from the Southwest Pacific commented:
We are no nearer the Japanese mainland than we were a year ago, but this has not been our chief aim.
What we’ve been trying to do is cut off the Japanese lifeline, especially to the Dutch East Indies. Rather than made a head-on attack on the Japanese mainland against well-defended shores which the Japanese would prefer, we have been hitting his four weak points – oil, air strength, merchant shipping, and naval shipping.