America at war! (1941–) – Part 3

7807

In der Normandie erfolgreiche Abwehr- und Angriffskämpfe
Südengland unter Dauerfeuer

dnb. Aus dem Führer-Hauptquartier, 17. Juni –
Das Oberkommando der Wehrmacht gibt bekannt:

Seit dem 15. Juni, 23,40 Uhr, liegen Südengland und das Stadtgebiet von London mit nur geringen Unterbrechungen ständig unter dem Feuer unserer schwersten Sprengmittel. Mit stärksten Zerstörungen in den betroffenen Gebieten ist zu rechnen.

In der Normandie kam es gestern wieder zu für uns erfolgreichen Angriffs- und Abwehrkämpfen. östlich der Orne gewann unser Angriff trotz starker feindlicher Gegenwehr nach heftigen Kämpfen den größten Teil des Waldgebietes südlich Bavent.

Gegen den mit starken Panzerkräften während des ganzen Tages südwestlich Tilly angreifenden Feind errangen unsere Panzerverbände einen vollen Abwehrerfolg. Einige durch unsere Stellungen durchgebrochene feindliche Panzer wurden vernichtet. Auch beiderseits der Straße Bayeux-Saint-Lô griff der Feind gestern mit starken Kräften an. Die Kämpfe sind noch im Gange.

Südwestlich Carentan scheiterten starke Angriffe des Gegners unter schweren Verlusten für ihn. Nur im Raum Sainte-Mère-Église gelang es dem Feind, nach Westen bis Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte vorzudringen, wo weiterhin schwer gekämpft wird.

Bei den Kämpfen auf der Halbinsel Cherbourg haben sich eine Kampfgruppe unter Führung von Oberstleutnant Keil und das Pionierbataillon 191 unter Führung von Hauptmann Bonenkamp besonders ausgezeichnet.

In Mittelitalien verlegte der Feind gestern seinen Schwerpunkt in den Raum nordwestlich des Bolsenasees. Es gelang ihm dort nach erbittertem Ringen, in den Stellungen unserer Nachtruppen einige Einbrüche zu erzielen. Im Raum von Grosseto und östlich davon wurden alle feindlichen Angriffe blutig zerschlagen. Die Verluste des Feindes waren hoch. Zahlreiche Panzer und Lastkraftwagen blieben brennend liegen.

In den frühen Morgenstunden des heutigen Tages landete der Gegner nach schweren Luftangriffen an mehreren Stellen auf der Insel Elba. Heftige Kämpfe mit den schwachen deutschen Besatzungskräften sind im Gange.

Aus dem Osten werden keine besonderen Kampfhandlungen gemeldet.

In den Morgenstunden des 16. Juni flog ein nordamerikanischer Bomberverband mit Jagdschutz nach Südostdeutschland ein und warf Bomben in Außenbezirken der Stadt Wien und auf Preßburg. Es entstanden Schäden und Verluste unter der Bevölkerung.

In der vergangenen Nacht griffen britische Bomber die Städte Duisburg und Oberhausen an und verursachten dort Gebäudeschäden und geringe Personenverluste. Einzelne britische Flugzeuge warfen Bomben auf Berlin.

Über dem Reichsgebiet und den besetzten Westgebieten wurden am Tage und in der vergangenen Nacht durch Luftverteidigungskräfte 83 feindliche Flugzeuge zum Absturz gebracht.

Unterseeboote versenkten im Atlantik zwei Schiffe mit 11.000 BRT und einen Zerstörer.

7808

Moskaus Druck in USA –
Finnlands Gesandtschaft ausgewiesen

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7809

Supreme HQ Allied Expeditionary Force (June 18, 1944)

Communiqué No. 25

Allied forces in the area of SAINT-SAUVEUR-LE-VICOMTE have made further progress westwards.

Local clashes continue in the TILLY and CAEN sectors.

Clearing weather in the late afternoon yesterday permitted the resumption of our tactical air operations on a considerable scale. Enemy air opposition was sporadic.

Heavy day bombers struck at five enemy airfields and landing strips in the TOURS-NANTES area. Their fighter escort later strafed targets of opportunity.

Our medium and light bombers were brought into action with good results against fuel dumps in the BOIS DU HOMME (south of CAUMONT) and in the SENONCHES-LA LOUPE area (west of CHARTRES). Other medium bomber formations attacked the railway yards at MÉZIDON and a forty-mile stretch of track between LE MERLERAULT and SAINT-LUBIN on the PARIS-GRANVILLE line.

Five-gun emplacements were attacked by fighter-bombers which were active during the afternoon against a variety of targets in the area from COUTANCES to LES PIEUX and eastward across the CHERBOURG Peninsula to QUETTEHOU. Constant armed reconnaissance patrols were flown over the combat zone in front of our troops. Other formations of fighter-bombers attacked military objectives elsewhere in northern FRANCE.

Enemy communications were attacked at many points by light bombers on offensive patrols last night.

7810

U.S. Navy Department (June 18, 1944)

CINCPAC Communiqué No. 55

In the early morning of June 17 (West Longitude Date), the enemy launched an amphibious counterattack against our forces on Saipan. A group of troop‑carrying barges attempted a landing south of Garapan, but were re­pulsed by our armed landing craft. Thirteen enemy barges were sunk.

7811

The Brooklyn Eagle (June 18, 1944)

MASSED GUNS MOW DOWN ROBOT PLANES
‘Flying bombs’ KO’d like clay pigeons

Britain’s south coast packed with batteries to halt weird weapon
By Phil Ault

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7812

German units fleeing Cherbourg area

Yanks slash five miles from Nazis’ last escape highway
By Edward W. Beattie

SHAEF, London, England (UP) –
U.S. battle patrols slashed westward to within five miles or less of the last Nazi escape road from the top of the Cherbourg Peninsula today and front dispatches said the bulk of the German forces were retreating down the highway under a hellfire of bombs and shells, leaving a band of expendables to defend the prize port of Cherbourg to the death.

Spearheads of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division that captured Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte raced on through the hills northwest and southwest of the town to within sight of the sea, almost closing the Allied lines across the peninsula, and threatening the coastal fishing villages of Barneville and Saint-Lô-d’Ourville.

United Press war correspondent Henry Gorrell reported that German trucks and staff cars loaded with troops were careening southward along the coastal highway, running a murderous gantlet of shellfire laid down by U.S. field guns in the hills above them.

To make stand elsewhere

The German position on the upper half of the peninsula was deteriorating rapidly, and it appeared the enemy high command had decided to evacuate as many troops as possible through the coastal bottleneck and make a stand on the high ground north of La Haye-du-Puits, a four-way highway junction and the key to the Nazis’ peninsular defenses.

There was no indication, however, that they intended to quit the port and town of Cherbourg itself without a fight. Front dispatches suggested that the Nazis were leaving suicide battalions behind to wreck its harbor facilities when its fall becomes imminent.

The latest Allied communiqué reported additional though slight progress in the American thrust across the center of the peninsula and in the fighting farther to the southeast, below Isigny and around Tilly.

Several villages captured

A number of unidentified villages east and west of Tilly were captured and U.S. units striking southward from Isigny advanced two miles to reach the Vire River and the Taute Canal.

United Press correspondent Richard McMillan reported that British Commandos, with heavy tank and artillery support, stormed and captured a number of German strongpoints that had been holding out for 10 days behind the Allied lines around Tilly.

U.S. forces also attacked west and south of Carentan with unannounced results in an apparent effort to straighten out their battle line in that sector.

U.S. casualties 15,883

As the battle for the prize Cherbourg port reached a climax, it was announced that U.S. troops have paid a price of 15,883 casualties in the 12-day-old French invasion, including 3,283 killed.

The Yanks drove four miles northwest of Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte and captured Saint-Jacques-de-Néhou, from where they could see the peninsula’s west coast highway and the German traffic withdrawing along it.

“A partial German withdrawal from the Cherbourg area appears underway,” wrote United Press correspondent Henry T. Gorrell in a dispatch from the Saint-Sauveur area. “Our artillery is pounding the careening German vehicles, many of which are staff cars carrying officers.”

Yanks continue advance

The Yanks were reported steadily continuing their advance on the road tonight, supported by the heaviest artillery concentration they had yet used on the French beachhead. Gorrell said they were within sight of the shimmering Atlantic on the west side of the peninsula.

Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley’s Yanks had clamped a stranglehold on the express highway down the west side of the Cotentin Peninsula, occupying high ground west of Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte dominating the road as well as Saint-Jacques, which is four miles northwest of Saint-Sauveur.

Heavy reinforcements were piling through Saint-Sauveur, and that key railroad point is now “firmly held,” official advices said. The westward American surge across the peninsula covered a 10-mile front, with the right flank approaching Bricquebec, seven miles northwest of Saint-Sauveur, and the left only four miles from La Haye-du-Puits, which controls the entire west coast communication system.

Gen. Bradley, in his first field press conference, said, “Our position is now absolutely secure and I can’t see how the enemy can kick us out.” He said that operations had succeeded largely because of “guts and valor” and “I can’t say too much for the paratroopers, who did a marvelous job and kept Germans from building up as we were struggling for a firm foothold ln the initial stages.”

Bradley added:

The enemy has had a devil of a time coming up and a hard time getting his supplies up.

7813

French patriots halt Nazis rushing to front

An advanced command post, SHAEF (UP) – (June 17)
The Allied High Command, in the first official acknowledgment since D-Day of spreading operations by the French underground, announced tonight in a special communiqué that a reinforced Army of the French Forces of the Interior had effectively tied up Nazi reserves in “its assigned role” behind the German lines.

The communiqué cited large scale sabotage which has crippled rail and road traffic, reportedly completely stopped in the strategic Rhône Valley.

It also mentioned disruption of telephone and telegraph communications, power plants, and canals, and successful battles against enemy units.

Delay Nazi troop movements

The communiqué said:

These multiple and simultaneous acts of sabotage, coordinated with the Allied air effort, have delayed considerably the movement of German reserves to the combat zone.

Simultaneously, the second French communiqué issued here on the fighting in the interior reported that German troops en route to reinforce Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt’s forces in Normandy were being held up as the result of patriot attacks along the railway line between Bordeaux and Limoges. French saboteurs have blasted the track with dynamite at several places, causing extensive damage, it was said.

Forays against communications and railways all across France, and reaching to the Paris vicinity, were reported “interfering considerably” with German troop movements to the fighting zone.

Underground army increase

Confirming previous reports that Frenchmen, including Vichy police and militia, were flocking to join the partisans, the Allied communiqué said that since the day, U.S. and British troops landed in Normandy, the French Interior Army had “increased both in size and in the scope of its activities.” It said:

Guerrilla operations against the enemy are in full swing and in some areas the Army of the French Forces of the Interior are in full control.

The communiqué gave credence to earlier reports of underground successes against the Germans in pitched fighting, particularly in the Jura sector of southeastern France. Although it mentioned no place names, the communiqué noted that the Maquis had attacked German garrisons, reportedly taking 300 prisoners, to have engaged in street fighting, and to have occupied villages in some areas. It said many Nazi detachments had been destroyed.

7814

Marines, Army troops near Saipan airfield

Battle 20,000 veteran Japanese on island – strong U.S. naval force bombards Guam
By William F. Tyree

Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (UP) – (June 17)
U.S. Marines and Army doughboys, battling across the cane fields of Saipan against veteran Japanese divisions, have improved their positions and are driving toward Aslito Airfield, only four hours’ flying time from Tokyo, Adm. Chester W. Nimitz today.

While the Leathernecks and Army troops moved forward against 20,000 to 30,000 enemy troops defending the island, battleships and cruisers of one of Adm. Nimitz’s great naval task forces bombarded Guam, the Japanese-held American island 111 miles to the south.

U.S. aircraft carriers at the same time repulsed a Japanese torpedo attack in the spreading battle of the Marianas. No damage was caused to U.S. ships in this enemy raid.

Marines, Doughboys attack together

For the first time, Nimitz disclosed that leathernecks and doughboys had stormed the beaches together. The invasion forces were described in frontline dispatches as “veteran Jap fighters.” Nimitz formally referred to them as “U.S. Marines and elements of an Army division.”

The invaders were now firmly established on Saipan after a bitter opening seesaw battle.

Aslito Airfield is two miles east of Agingan Point at the extreme southern end of Saipan. The field obviously was one of the primary objectives of the drive and the communiqué indicated that assault waves were fighting their way toward the 3,600-foot runway.

New blows at Kurils

New aerial attacks were delivered against the Kurile Islands north of Japan. Eleventh Army Air Force Liberators bombed Matsuwa, Paramushiru and Shimushiru Wednesday.

Heavy naval surface units, some of which had been laying down a protective barrage on Saipan, turned their attention to Guam, shelling the island where the U.S. Navy and Pan American Airways maintained a peacetime station. Guam was the first American territory to fall to the Japanese.

Frontline dispatches indicated our beachhead on Saipan spread over a two-mile front on either side of Charan Kanoa, a sugar mill town, captured by the Americans in street-to-street fighting. Other forces consolidated their positions below the capital city of Garapan.

In another communiqué, the Pacific Fleet Commander-in-Chief announced that a big U.S. carrier task force thrust within 615 miles of the Japanese capital Wednesday to blast the Bonin and Volcano Islands, midway to the Marianas, in support of the invasion forces.

7815

Raiders blast Nazi air bases, rocket coast

Big U.S. bomber fleets attack nine airdromes in blow at Luftwaffe
By Walter Cronkite

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Soldier sentenced to die reprieved by Eisenhower

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7816

French drive inland on Elba in stiff fight

5th and 8th Armies in Italy sweep ahead 100 miles from Rome
By Reynolds Packard

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7817

Attack on Sorong nets 50 Jap planes

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7818

americavotes1944

Would use Farley, Bricker in presidential coalition

Washington (UP) – (June 17)
Rep. Noah M. Mason (R-IL) today proposed former Democratic National Chairman James A. Farley as vice-presidential candidate on a coalition ticket with Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio as the presidential nominee.

Mason said:

A coalition ticket such as this would provide a clean-cut division between conservatives and radicals.

It would mean that internationalists and left-wingers would remain New Dealers and all conservatives and nationalists would find a home in the Republican Party.

7819

Halsey reassigned; to stay in Pacific

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De Gaulle is back in Algiers; speech scheduled today

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7820

Billions in ‘dead money’ sought for bonds

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7821

B-29s make Tokyo a prime target for heavy raids

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7822

Gorrell: Stream of Nazi transport runs hellish gantlet of U.S. shellfire

By Henry T. Gorrell

With U.S. assault forces, Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte, France (UP) – (June 17)
For hours now a steady stream of German transport has been running a hellish gantlet of American artillery fire on the last coastal escape road out of Cherbourg and there is every indication that the Germans are abandoning a suicide defense force in the port city while they try to save the bulk of their forces for a fight farther to the east.

We can see the German transport vehicles careening down the highway between here and the ocean shimmering in the sunlight only nine miles away.

The road runs through an impenetrable marshland, so the Germans have scant room in which to dodge the barrage of shellfire which is raining down upon their escape corridor. The road is lined with shattered and upended vehicles – many of them staff cars which probably carried officers.

Yank advance is speedy

The occupants of these cars have been pinned under the wreckage. I passed many vehicles riddled with holes and burned out at the roadside as I followed the fast-moving American spearheads in their advance.

We are advancing steadily along hedgerows through dense woods and underbrush, fighting hand-to-hand and supported by the greatest artillery concentration yet seen in France.

Since sunset yesterday, we have covered seven kilometers (4.3 miles) north and westward from Saint-Sauveur by bypassing the enemy at Néhou and ejecting him from Saint-Jacques-de-Néhou.

The U.S. advance westward across the peninsula has been so swift that the air force has had to exercise utmost caution to avoid shooting up our own ammunition trucks and tanks.

The Germans sallied out of Néhou in a half-hearted counterattack at dusk yesterday but ran into concentrated artillery fire that shattered their ranks and flattened the village.

During yesterday’s advance, we overtook an entire German field hospital and at least one artillery battery complete with horses, wagons and a commissary filled with choice wines. Many U.S. paratroopers captured in the early phase of the invasion were liberated yesterday and today as the Germans abandoned them in their precipitate flight.

I’ve passed hundreds of German corpses during the past few days and I have been struck with the fact that most of them were shot through the head. This is a tribute to the hours of practice our doughboys put in on the rifle ranges in England waiting for D-Day.

7823

Editorial: Racial disturbances help Hitler; they do only harm to America

Last Sunday, eight armed hoodlums charged through a crowded Brooklyn subway train yelling, “This is D-Day for colored folks; white folks get off!” Their rampage was climaxed by the shooting of a passenger after the gang had knocked him down.

Friday night, other youngsters – teenaged Brooklyn youths – charged through Fort Greene Park, swinging clubs and fists at each other. One group was white; one group black. The white hoodlums were said to have been “aided” by two uniformed sailors.

Sociologists say the Negro boys were “compensating for assaults and injuries they, or other Negroes, daily receive on trains in the South.”

The white youths, who appear to have instigated Friday night’s attack, may have thought they, too, were compensating for something. Maybe they had the subway hoodlumism in mind. Maybe they thought they were “defending the white race.” But neither the white race nor the black race needs or wants that kind of “defense.”

We in Brooklyn must keep our energies in channels that will help the war rather than something that will do us – white, black, Indian, Jew – Americans all – harm.

We are a city of war workers. We are a city of racial mixtures. So is all of America. We have petty racial strife and we have distrusts and all the ugly little things that go with the odious idea of a “superior” race. But we also have a Brooklyn heritage, a tradition of getting along together. We are all Americans in our schools, on our jobs. We Brooklynites usually vent our tensions on the Dodgers – but not on each other.

Finally, let us remember that Dr. Goebbels will make much of the Fort Greene incident. It will be presented to the Germans as an example of our disunity and will be used to encourage the German people to stick to the Nazis a little longer.

The racist idea does not work for people of any color. The dark Japs thought it would. The fair Germans thought it would. See where it got them?

7824

americavotes1944

Heffernan: Bricker and state’s rights

In one of the radio forums the other night, John W. Bricker, Governor of Ohio, contended for the rights and asserted the ability of the states to meet the economic problems of the post-war era. Governor Bricker, an avowed candidate for the Republican nomination for the Presidency, pointed out that the huge debt of the national government, the tremendous cost of administration of the New Deal theories and extension of an already-insupportable parasitic bureaucracy would not only deprive Americans of the liberties they once enjoyed but incapacitate the federal administration, leaving it without ability to meet the situation which will arise when the litigation of the guns has ceased.

On the other hand, said the Governor of Ohio, the states are in the main in a better financial condition to provide the needed remedies and sustain the federal government in the performance of the functions which the necessities of the time may demand.

There is a growing number of people in the United States who are more and more finding themselves in agreement with the fine American statesman, whose gubernatorial activities in the great state of Ohio have set an example of inestimable value. These people realize that the war has taken from us the cream of our young manhood. They feel that it is their obligation to keep for those men now in service the America for whose sake the men in the fighting lines have placed their lives on the altar of sacrifice. And they have the guarantee of his record that John Bricker knows how to administer American constitutional government justly, efficiently and with benefit to all his people.

It was my hope that when events began to favor the Republican Party that party would forget patronage, forget cheap politics and not repeat the Harding mistake of 1920. It was my hope that it would not forget that its noblest exemplar and greatest President summed up all that there is of American democracy in these words:

That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The states of the Union are the natural pillars of the federal government. Jefferson so called them long ago. To set up instead of them artificial regional areas, each governed by an appointive satrap of an all-powerful central government, is not to go forward but to go backward to the old systems that have cursed the Old World for generations. Can we not remember that it was Mussolini and Hitler who declared that democracy was dead? Are we to bury it next November?

7825

americavotes1944

CIO Political Action Committee moves to hop over law barrier

Washington (UP) – (June 17)
The CIO Political Action Committee moved today to strengthen its hand in the 1944 presidential campaign by announcing plans for a committee modeled after national political parties, which would be exempt from the Smith-Connally Act’s restraints.

Already committed to support President Roosevelt and Vice President Henry A. Wallace for reelection, the Political Action Committee revealed plans to establish a national committee, with representatives from outside as well as within the ranks of labor, which would receive and spend voluntary contributions from individuals.

The plans were announced at the closing session of a two-day conference attended by 300 delegates representing CIO affiliates.

CIO President Philip Murray and Political Action Committee Chairman Sidney Hillman told the conference that the proposed program would set up machinery for achieving goals ln the platform adopted by the delegates yesterday. They also assailed Governor Dewey of New York and Governor Bricker of Ohio, the principal candidates for the Republican presidential nomination.

While Hillman reiterated that the Political Action Committee had no purge list, he promised that foes of the committee could expect “more surprises” and that changes would be made in the membership of Congress.

7826

Wilson’s romance occasion for $4 million production

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