Incident in Normandy
Some U.S. infantrymen move the battle ahead by eliminating a German sniper in a barnyard
…
The High Command visits beachhead
…
Harold Stassen
As Republicans convene, they and their country can be proud to have a candidate like this ex-governor – even though they will probably not nominate him
By Robert Coughlan
This week, 1,059 Republican delegates will meet in Chicago to nominate a candidate for the Presidency of the United States. It is generally assumed that they will choose Thomas E. Dewey. Three weeks later, 1,176 Democratic delegates will meet at the same place in the same city for the same purpose; and with even greater unanimity they will choose Franklin D. Roosevelt. Thomas E. Dewey and Franklin D. Roosevelt will then have a campaign, and next November the voters will choose one or the other of them. This act will generate a good deal of excitement around the country. The Dewey partisans will be hot, and the Roosevelt partisans will be hot, and there will be occasional fistfights, broken heads and bad feelings. To a considerable number of voters, however, it will all seem a little tiresome.
These unexcited voters will feel that way because it is not exciting to be forced to choose between two inadequacies. They would prefer not to vote for Roosevelt for reasons too familiar to mention yet, when faced with the alternative of Dewey, they are not inspired. Many of them, in fact, are dispirited. What they finally will decide, nobody knows. What they do decide, however, may swing the election. For these voters are very numerous. They include several million orphaned Willkieites and many others, both Republican and Democratic, who are of a liberal but anti-New Deal disposition. The polls suggest that there may be as many as five million of them. The present writer is one of them, and this article is written and published on their behalf.
There is nothing the Democratic delegates at Chicago can do about these voters, since their convention will be about as free as a Siberian salt mine. The Republican delegates, however, are ostensibly going to have an “open convention” where supposedly anything can happen. Nobody believes this for a moment; but before the almost inevitable happens and the Dewey nomination is sealed, many delegates will be taking a metaphorical last look over their shoulders at the five million or so pivotal voters. These delegates will be asking themselves, “Is this being smart? Is there any other good Republican candidate who could carry the party and the mugwumps?” And they may remember the name, “Harold Stassen.”
Granting that no one man encompasses the humanity of Lincoln, the good sense of McKinley, the vigor of Theodore Roosevelt, the geniality of Taft, the pulchritude of Harding, the economy of Coolidge and the solemnity of Hoover, and in short, that nobody is humanly perfect, it is nevertheless plain to a lot of people that Stassen is the perfect Republican candidate for the election of 1944. His perfection is whole and unassailable, like a billiard ball. He is, for one thing, a lifelong and party-conscious Republican, with only enough urgency in his record to bless him with the honorable tradition of Theodore Roosevelt. Yet there is no trace of doubt about his liberalism. Long before Tom Dewey came out for Cordell Hull, Stassen was speaking and writing in favor of a foreign policy of enlightened self-interest. He wants a world government – “a definite, continuing organization of the United Nations of the World.” However: “This does not mean that the new level of government will take the place of the national level of government. It will not fundamentally disturb domestic sovereignty. Nations will continue to have their own flags, their own constitutions, their own heritage and their own citizens. The new level should be added to carry out relations among nations” – to keep the peace, enforce international law, stimulate trade, promote health and literacy, administer Axis, backward or disputed territories, and supervised international sea- and airways.
Stassen is equally enlightened on domestic policies. He is for minimum wages, unemployment insurance and old-age pensions; for collective bargaining and strong labor unions; for guaranteed minimum crop prices to farmers; for public works during periods of economic slack. Yet he has so many basic objections to the New Deal that they compound quite a different philosophy of government. He would democratize the labor unions, reform their internal practices, and outlaw jurisdictional strikes altogether. He would liberalize securities regulations, lower taxes on business, tighten up Social Security and government relief in general, and revise the monopoly laws to make them really work.
Stassen’s program for the country is implicit in his program for the Republican Party:
The people want a rebirth of forthrightness, and the world needs a forthright America. The Republican Party can prove itself a match for the times only by being forthright, direct and constructive.
To a practical politician, such sentiments are interesting but not wholly relevant. In an election, principles, while fine to have, are often not as important as a candidate’s oomph or political sex appeal. In the case of Franklin D. Roosevelt, this is summed up in the word “charm.” This is very powerful; and yet, as the five million floating voters look across the span of the next four years, they may decide that they want not merely a charming piece and charming post-war world. They have in mind something solid. And as a symbol of solidity, Stassen is practically epochal. He stands 6’3” tall and weighs over 200 pounds, mostly muscle. His face is pleasant and the firm set of his features, capped by thinning sandy red hair, gives him an appearance of competence and maturity despite his age, which is 37. He looks enough like Gen. Eisenhower to be a younger brother. It has been said unkindly of Dewey that his lack of interest in foreign affairs is due to the poor mental picture he has of himself seated between Churchill and Stalin. It has also been suggested that he use Stassen as a stand-in for such occasions. The idea may or may not be funny, but the political implications for the Republicans in November are not funny at all. Stassen’s nomination would take care of that.
He has diversified support
Regarded from any other angle of practical politics, Stassen’s qualifications are almost poetically complete. His personality is warm, but with the quiet restraint that becomes a statesman. He has an engaging family: A pleasant young wife and two photogenic children, Glen, 8, and Kathleen, 2½. He is a churchgoing Baptist whose favorite drink is milk, but who doesn’t feel self-conscious in the presence of a Scotch and soda. He is a good speaker with a firm, calm, baritone voice, lacking any particular accent; and he was practically suckled on a microphone. He appeals to all groups; he was born and raised a farmer, he wooed and won labor in his own state, he looks and talks like a successful businessman; and since he is now in uniform on duty in an active war theater, he has obvious pulling power among servicemen. Perhaps most important of all, he knows politics. After its lamentable experience four years ago, it will be some time before the GOP forgets that courage and energy are not enough in a campaign.
Stassen even has an impeccable history. He was poor but honest. He stayed honest.
No newspaper in Minnesota or anywhere else recorded the fact that on April 13, 1907, Harold Stassen was born. A week after his birth, on April 22, there appeared in the birth-statistics column the calm statement: “Mrs. W. Stasen [sic], boy.” More momentous happenings occupied the papers at the time. The day before his birth, the legislature passed a bill providing a penalty for anyone inducing a mother not to nurse her child. On the day of his birth, the legislature heard a report on automobiles: “Automobiles must not pass teams, animals, or persons on foot at a greater rate of speed than eight miles an hour… Chauffeurs running over people must stop and give their number.” Also on the same day appeared a timely editorial note in a Minnesota paper: “President Roosevelt hoped that the Southern Democrats may force his renomination for a third term received a jolt yesterday…”
The important event of the day occurred in a modest, unpainted farmhouse in Dakota County, which takes place in West St. Paul, a stockyard and packing district surrounded by farm and dairy country. The citizens of West St. Paul, while not swept away, were pleased to hear the news, for William Stassen was and is a well-liked member of the community. He has been its mayor three times, has served on the school board and for more than 40 years has been treasurer of his growers’ association. He operates a small truck farm whose produce he hauls across the river each morning to St. Paul, where he sells it from his stall in the public market. He is Norwegian, German and Czech, and his wife is German; they blend into the blonde, rugged, solid, ethnographic landscape of Minnesota.
He was an Alger boy
Harold, the third of four sons, was marked at an early age by ambition, resourcefulness, energy, a thirst for learning and other good campaign material. He attended a one-room country school to which he had to walk two miles twice a day, sometimes through waist-high snowdrifts. His brothers and sister did the same, but with less pluck and luck, and ended up, respectively, a milk wagon driver, a sheet-metal worker and proprietor of a small grocery store. The sister, who is married, has been a statehouse stenographer. Since the Stassens were poor, the children worked to help buy their books and clothing. Harold sold newspapers and also raised and sold skunks, a distinction he shares with few men and no other presidential candidate. At an early age, he became a crack shot with a rifle, producing an anecdote of value to campaign biographers. It was the custom in his neighborhood to hold turkey shoots each year just before Thanksgiving. Each contestant put up a dime to enter, and the winner got a turkey. Harold would take orders around the countryside for a dozen or so turkeys, then go to all the shoots, win all the turkeys, kill and clean them and deliver them to his customers. Later on, he became a national champion marksman.
Harold finished high school at 14, meantime operating a rabbit and pigeon business and a roadside vegetable stand. For a year and a half, while his father was ill, he stayed at home to run the farm. Nevertheless, he managed to graduate from the University of Minnesota at 19. While at the university, he worked part-time as a grocery clerk, an adding-machine operator, a pan greaser in a bakery, and finally as a Pullman conductor on the St. Paul-Chicago run. In his spare time, he became an intercollegiate debater, a champion orator, captain of the school’s national rifle team, an honor student, leader of sundry campus causes and all-university class president. He was so involved in campus affairs that he had to hire a fraternity brother as his secretary. At 21, still working every other day for the Pullman Company and still immersed in campus affairs, he graduated from the university’s School of Law. Without losing a stroke, he opened a law office with Elmer J. Ryan, a fellow graduate, in St. Paul.
There have been various fashions in presidential candidates during the course of U.S. history, beginning of the soldier, succeeded by the social philosopher, who was replaced by the practical politician, who gave way to the soldier again, who was replaced by the idealist, and so on, in an erratic but discernible cycle. It may be a commentary on the present state of civilization that the current fashion is for champions of law and order. Among the Republican candidates this year, nearly all got their starts as watchdogs of the law: Dewey, most famously; but also Warren, as a district attorney; Bricker, as an assistant state attorney general; Saltonstall, an assistant district attorney and even such a token candidate as Green of Illinois, who was a gangbuster in Chicago. It is both a good omen and a tribute to his sense of destiny that Stassen entered public life in the same way. Little more than a year after getting his law degree, he filed for and won the Republican nomination for a county attorney of Dakota County. Almost immediately he collapsed and had to go to a hospital. His strenuous life in college had caught up with him; he had tuberculosis. While he lay ill, his friend and partner Elmer Ryan, though a Democrat, carried on his campaign. And by the time Stassen had recovered, minus one lung, he was the new county attorney.
How to handle labor problems
Opportunities for spectacular crime are fairly limited in Dakota County. Hence, Stassen did not become a national hero overnight. What he lacked in glamor, however, he more than made up in physical and political courage and in his handling of important social antagonisms, as compared to the antagonism of one gangster for another. He showed his character, as well as mere skill and vigor, in such incidents as the threatened milk strike of 1932. Milk prices to the farmer then were so low that in neighboring Iowa, only a few weeks before, dairy farmers had gone on strike, not only refusing to send their own milk to market, but waylaying dairy trucks and dumping their contents on the road. An agitator showed up in Dakota County and at a meeting of local farmers, tried to stir up similar violence. “Block the highways! Spill the milk!” he shouted. “If the county attorney gets in your way, run him out!”
Stassen’s voice came from the back of the room, “The county attorney is here.” He took the platform and told the farmers that if there were any sort of disorder, he would prosecute – but that if they would submit the issues to negotiation, he would act as their counsel without fee. They agreed; Stassen did; the price was raised (without any increase to the consumers) and the peace was kept.
Almost as melodramatically, he prevented bloodshed during a strike of packing-house workers in South St. Paul. Both sides were ready to take to the barricades when he persuaded them to get together and talk their difficulties out. With Stassen in the middle, they did, and within five days, the strike was over. When the company refused to rehire members of the strike committee, Stassen served without pay as their counsel before the NRA Compliance Board, and won their reinstatement. In another case, involving a tax suit, he had a chance to show his legal scholarship. The case wound up in the U.S. Supreme Court, where Stassen, though only 26, had the job of presenting the main argument for the state of Minnesota. He was questioned for an hour on points of law by Chief Justice Hughes, who later wrote the decision. It was unanimously in his favor and set a precedent that was cited 16 times in the next five years in federal court decisions involving related issues.
Stassen served two terms as county attorney. By the end of the second one, he, as well as some millions of Minnesotans, had decided that something had to be done about the fantastic regime of Elmer Benson, the Farmer-Labor governor. Stassen was only 31. Although he had achieved a certain fame in the state because of his record in Dakota County, it was considered quite a good joke among Republican leaders when he filed in the primary for the governorship. He won the nomination and then proceeded to drive 55,000 miles around the state to wage a personal, curbstone campaign. He won the election and surprised his seniors again by doing it with a 225,000 plurality over the combined Farmer-Labor and Democratic candidates. It was the biggest landslide in Minnesota history.
The present fashion in Republican presidential candidates inclines not only toward gangbusters but also toward governors. No other campaign within memory has failed to turn out at least a few Senators, Congressmen, Supreme Court Justices or Cabinet members: Everyone seriously in the race this time is a governor. The reason may be that what the party and country yearn for is a Good Executive – a man who has shown that he can run a state government in a sound, efficient, calm, orderly, orthodox way, and who consequently might run the federal government in the same way. By this criterion, Tom Dewey would be a good candidate. So would Bricker, Saltonstall, Warren, Hickenlooper, Griswold, Baldwin, et al. They each have done a sound, efficient, calm, orderly, orthodox job.
Additional criteria might be suggested, however. One would be: What was the condition of the state government when the sound, efficient, etc., man took over? Another would be: How much of his success does he owe to the war, which has suspended nearly all problems of unemployment, relief, labor relations, public works, patronage, finances? Another would be: What did he do to make these chronic problems easier to handle when they reappear, as they will? By these standards, Stassen’s record in Minnesota is something quite distinct from those of most good Republican (or Democratic) governors.
He reformed the state government
Stassen took office in 1938, two years before the United States began to arm. The preceding regime had been one of the weirdest in American history, marked by every offense from payroll padding to political assassination. The labor war was not a figure of speech; it was a real war, with strong overtones of class revolution. The high point came in April 1937 when a mob took over the state capitol (with Governor Benson’s blessing), broke into a committee room, bulldozed legislators, dispossessed the senators from the chamber and spent the night there, picnicking off the desks and having a riotous good time. Nothing much is lacking but Mme. Defarge and the tumbrils.
The difference between Stassen and his predecessor was shown not many months after his inauguration. Again, an organized mob marched on the capitol to demonstrate against relief methods. Stassen invited its leaders into his office, gave them a polite, attentive hearing, and then escorted them out to the statehouse steps. The crowd booed when he appeared. Stassen looked them over and said: “There’s one nice thing about this country. You can boo your officials without getting pushed up against the wall and shot.” Then he talked about relief, explaining the problems, admitting some faults and promising to do his best to remedy them. When he finished, the mob cheered him and dispersed peacefully.
Stassen not only got along with labor, but so identified himself with its just demands that when he ran for reelection, he won the endorsement of the state CIO. When he first took office, the farm bloc in the legislature pushed a punitive anti-labor bill through the Senate. Stassen persuaded the farmers to drop it in favor of his own temperate program. The chief feature of this is the “Count Ten Law,” requiring a 10-day cooling off period between the time a strike is declared and the time it becomes effective. With Stassen himself and his labor conciliator, who had been the head of a typographical union, as mediators, 10 days usually produced a fair and mutually acceptable solution. When a strike or lockout endangered the public interest, the law also provided that the governor could appoint a special arbitration commission and order a further 30-day wait. During Stassen’s first year, he appointed five such commissions, and each time the threatened strike was prevented.
Fairness and sweet reason were Stassen’s tools in dealing with the labor situation; he applied old-fashioned honesty and efficiency to others. The highway department has a $3 million deficit, incurred in the interest of graft and political pork. Stassen packed 10 members of the old regime off to jail, revamped the department and within a year had converted the deficit into a $3 million surplus. The Farmer-Laborites had loaded the state payroll. Stassen axed 7,000 employees and put through a new civil-service law that covered every department and employee and left him only with the power to appoint the department heads. The Farmer-Laborites had built up an oppressive deficit; Stassen put through a bill that tied expenditures to income. Relief had been an administrative burden of the state; Stassen decentralized it and turned it back to county and local control.
By the time he was ready to leave office, Stassen had fewer statutory powers, by his own request, than any recent Minnesota governor. With his fewer powers, he accomplished more than any other Minnesota governor in history. He had cut the state debt by nearly $40 million, cut yearly expenditures by more than $13 million, reduce the payroll from 17,000 to 10,000, reduce strikes by 70% and lowered property taxes by 46%. At the same time, he increased aid to schools by some $1,600,000, increased old-age benefits by $1,850,000 and improved the functions and increased the budgets of the various social institutions of the state. He set up a $2,500,000 fund for disabled veterans and a $15 million fund for post-war problems.
At the end of his second term, Stassen had a difficult choice to make. His record in Minnesota had made him well known around the country. He had twice been chairman of the National Governors’ Conference. As keynoter at the 1940 Republican Convention, he had impressed his party with his eloquence and manifest ability. As floor manager for Willkie during the convention, he had shown himself to be a shrewd political professional. He was an obvious possibility for the Presidency. If he had stayed on in Minnesota and used his time to proper advantage, his chances for it seemed excellent.
He stepped out of presidential campaign
Stassen ran for a third term, but notified the voters that he was doing so only because his program for the state was not complete. He would resign after the first legislative session, he warned, and then intended to go into the Navy. “This war,” he said, “will be fought by young men of my age, and I want to be with them.” From anyone less obviously sincere than Stassen, this might have sounded precious. But he meant it, and in April 1943, he resigned as governor and was sworn in as a reserve officer. After boot training in the East, he was sent out to the Pacific as a lieutenant commander attached to Adm. Halsey’s staff. When Halsey last week gave over his command of the South Pacific, Stassen continued his duties under Halsey’s successor, VAdm. John H. Newton.
If anyone suspected that Stassen was being politically adroit by putting on a uniform, his subsequent behavior has done nothing to confirm it. He has said nothing, done nothing, nor allowed anyone else to say or do anything for him that would relate his Navy job to politics. Pacific correspondents find him clam-like on the campaign. Not long ago, H. V. Kaltenborn had dinner with Adm. Halsey and the staff at Nouméa, and inevitably, talk turned to the 1944 elections. Finally, after an hour of it, Halsey turned to Stassen, banged his fist on the table and said: “Dammit! Stassen, what’s wrong with you? You haven’t said a word all evening.” Stassen smiled amiably and went on saying nothing.
As flag secretary, Stassen is a sort of general office manager at headquarters, handling routine affairs. He manages to blend into the official landscape and, as one admiral says, be “just another lieutenant commander.” He is well-liked among the staff. He has lived with Halsey and the admiral’s chief of staff and planning officer in a big house near Nouméa, about midway between the beach and the made-over warehouse where Halsey had his offices. Sometimes he accompanied Halsey at sea, sometimes not. He has seen some action, particularly doing a “familiarization cruise” he took with a task force under RAdm. Merrill. A good-sized Japanese force jumped the Merrill ships one night off Empress Augusta Bay. In the battle, the Japanese lost a cruiser and five destroyers and were chased back to within 100 miles of Rabaul, where Japanese planes came in for a dive-bombing attack. The only hits were on Merrill’s flagship where Stassen stayed with the admiral on the open bridge throughout the battle. He made a good target but suffered nothing more than some near misses. Stassen’s evident high safety factor so impressed his colleagues that some of them began to rub him for luck. Superstitious Republicans might note this, and also that, like every other presidential candidate during the century, he has a double letter in his name. E.g.: Franklin Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Calvin Coolidge, Warren G Harding, Woodrow Wilson, William Howard Taft, Theodore Roosevelt. On the other hand, of course, there was Wendell Willkie.
While Stassen has been tending to his new business in the Pacific, his friends back in Minnesota and Washington have been conducting a campaign for him that makes up in fervor what it lacks in size and finesse. Having very little money, and no political contact with or aid and advice from their candidate, they are obviously working at a disadvantage. They have certain principles to go by, informally laid down by Stassen before he went into the service; don’t try to smear any other Republican candidate; don’t trade on the Navy uniform; emphasize the post-war plan; enter the primaries in the states bordering Minnesota in order to get a nucleus of pledged delegates. They have followed these rules, but only with middling success. Stassen picked up some delegates in Wisconsin and Nebraska; these, with his Minnesota delegation, will assure him of 35 votes at the convention and his supporters expect to pick up another 25 or so among unpledged delegates. For a campaign lacking the presence of the candidate, this wasn’t bad, but might have been better. Stassen has run best where it doesn’t count – in university “mock conventions” such as Northwestern’s, where he wins more often than any other candidate. Whatever happens in the convention and election of 1944, there is encouragement in this for both Stassen’s and the country’s future.
But Stassen’s supporters are not thinking about the future now. They are sure that their man is the best man and the only man who can beat Roosevelt, and they refuse to admit that he had already been counted out. Nor do they entertain for a minute the idea that he should settle for the Vice Presidency, giving liberal window-dressing to a Dewey ticket. They are well advised in this since, as a matter of fact, Stassen would refuse the Vice Presidency, as he would almost as certainly refuse a Cabinet job in a Dewey administration. They want him to be President, now, this year. And in their hallucinations, they have the picture of him, nominated by some freak of political luck, notified at Nouméa by wireless, flying back in a great gray Navy flying boat to Chicago, cheered by an excited convention, making a dramatic and successful campaign, riding in an open car down Pennsylvania Avenue… But subconsciously they know it can’t be. As one of them said recently in a conversation, “Golly, he would have been a wonderful candidate.”
The Free Lance-Star (June 26, 1944)
Dewey ahead at GOP convention
Action of individual states rolls up strong lead
Chicago Stadium, Chicago, Illinois (AP) –
Thomas E. Dewey’s harvest of pledged votes swelled beyond the total needed for a first ballot nomination as the Republicans held their first session of the 23rd national convention in the steaming amphitheater today.
With state after state jumping on a Dewey bandwagon, the New York Governor had a total of 539 pledged votes, when the opening session ended after a one-hour-and-15-minute meeting. In addition, his supporters said 159 others were assured.
By Paul Miller
Chicago Stadium, Chicago, Illinois (AP) –
Governor Thomas E. Dewey took an apparently insurmountable lead for the Republican presidential nomination today as the party’s 1944 convention opened to the main business of the conclave thus all but settled in advance.
Rapid-fire action by individual states raised the New Yorker’s total of pledged and claimed votes to 650 with 529 needed to nominate.
So far had Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio dropped in the pre-convention determination of state votes that speculation of the delegates switched from the Presidency to talk of vice-presidential prospects headed by Governor Earl Warren of California.
Governor Dwight Griswold of Nebraska, it was announced, will place Governor Dewey’s name in nomination Wednesday morning. Previously, Griswold had been mentioned for the Vice Presidency.
His designation to nominate, said unconfirmed reports on the convention floor, was part of a piece of high strategy that was discussed as shaping up like this:
Griswold (a Midwesterner) nominating Dewey (an Easterner) for President – with Warren (a far Westerner) as the possible vice-presidential choice.
The forces of Governor John W. Bricker continued their fight nonetheless. The Bricker supporters said: “It won’t be decided until the roll call actually starts on the floor Wednesday.”
Governor Dwight H. Green of Illinois had the job of officially welcoming delegates to the Windy City in a speech that accused the Roosevelt administration of “political meddling” with the Armed Forces in running the war.
Green declared that Republicans would give the professional fighting men a free hand.
A new flurry of speculation over the possibility of some Republican action towards Senator Harry F. Byrd (D-VA) was started by Senator Owen Brewster (R-ME), who declared in a radio interview that a “responsible leader” of the Republican Party had approached Byrd with the suggestion that he make himself available for the GOP vice-presidential nomination.
The subject was raised in Washington by a group of Republican Congressmen last week, but Byrd said he was not interested.
GOP criticizes conduct of war
New Deal is accused of political meddling
Chicago, Illinois (AP) –
Governor Dwight H. Green of Illinois today accused the Roosevelt administration of “political meddling” with Army and Navy heads in the conduct of the war and pledged that the Republicans, if victorious in November, will give the professional fighting men a free hand.
Welcoming the delegates to the Republican National Convention, Governor Green denounced “New Dealers” as seeking to remain in power on a “Win the War” slogan and asserted:
The winning of the war is uppermost in the mind of every American… There is no “Win the War” Party in America and public opinion has so properly rebuked the attempts of the New Dealers to grab that slogan that they have almost completely abandoned it.
He said a Republican triumph this year would “strike dread into the hearts of the enemy.”
Green said:
They will know that the government of this nation has passed into the hands of men determined to cut all the red tape and bureaucratic inference with the trained leaders of the United States Army and Navy. Those officers will have in the conduct of the war the unstinted support of the Republican administration, free from political meddling of second-string bureaucrats.
He praised the delegates as “unswayed by the weird pretense that an ‘indispensable man’ exists,” and said they were dedicated to work not only for “the heralded objectives of the ‘Four Freedoms,’ but resolved to reestablish here in America the 33 freedoms guaranteed to all citizens under the Constitution.”
State delegation likely to split
Virginia Republicans will divide vote in Chicago
Chicago, Illinois (AP) –
Virginia’s position near the bottom of the roll call may have an important psychological bearing on the Old Dominion’s first ballot vote Wednesday at the Republican National Convention.
Some members, Dewey partisans by inclination, said today “as of now” the Virginia’s vote probably will divide about 50-50 between Dewey and Bricker. Bricker advocates claimed substantial Virginia strength.
Officially, Virginia has two votes pledged to Dewey, two to Bricker, 15 remaining unpledged.
Virginia will have “plenty of time to watch the trend,” some members said, and if it appears to be Dewey on the first ballot, the New York Governor will draw at least a substantial vote.
If, however, many small delegations choose to “pass” vote to watch the tide, leaving the issue far from settled, Virginia may itself choose to pass.
The Old Dominion’s delegation had nearly all arrived, but no call had been issued for a formal caucus.
National Committeeman Henry A. Wise said a meeting probably would be called late Monday. Members of an anti-Wise faction, headed by new state chairman Randolph Dovel, also arrived in Chicago today.
Still smarting under the Convention Committee’s rejections of their claim to the state’s four delegates-at-large, the anti-Wise group promised to renew its claim possibly Monday before the convention’s Credentials Committee.
Keynote Address of California Governor Warren
June 26, 1944, 9:00 p.m. ET
We are here to do a job for the American people. And we mean business.
What is our job? Ask any American. Ask the anxious American mother and father. Ask the anxious wives and sweethearts of our fighting men. Ask our fighting men themselves. They will tell you what our job is.
They will give you the keynote for this convention. They will tell you out of their hearts, and what they say will be the same – East and West, North and South, it will be the same.
For now the same anxieties are on every American heart – the same hour-to-hour concern for what the day may bring forth, the same steadfast courage to sustain them, the same dreams, the same hope that they will have a chance to make their dreams come true.
This is what is on their hearts. This is our job:
To get our boys back home again – victorious and with all speed.
To open the door for all Americans – to open it, not just to jobs, but to opportunity!
To make and guard the peace so wisely and so well that this time will be the last time that American homes are called to give their sons and daughters to the agony and tragedy of war.
Isn’t that a plain and homely story? But is there any other story which any American would put in place of it? Is there any other thing which, in his heart, any American wants more than these? Is there any American who would not give everything he has to bring these things to pass?
We know there is only one answer to these questions. We know, also, that that answer makes our job. To get that job done is why we are here.
This convention and this election are not time out from the job of winning the war and the peace. This convention and this election are part of that job.
We are here to speed the cause – to help America to speed the cause – for which our fighting men are giving their lives. We are here to make the road on which America can march toward victory, toward opportunity, toward peace.
That is the biggest job Americans have ever undertaken together. It is too big a job for little Americans – it is too big a job for a quarreling America. There is room for honest differences among us. There is no room for disunity. We can be of differing minds. But we must be of one heart.
That singleness of heart is not something we can wait for. Our boys in Normandy, in Italy, in India and China, in the far reaches of the South Pacific – they are not waiting for it. They are of one heart. What a highly courageous, steadfast heart it is!
What they ask of us – what they have the right to expect of us – is singleness of heart here at home. Freedom is in the balances. We dare not be found wanting.
For so great a venture together we must be together. Here and now we can begin to get together. That is our purpose.
It is the purpose of this convention to put the public welfare above private self-interest; to put the nation above the party; to put the progress of the whole American community above special privilege for any part of it; to put indispensable principles – once and for all – above indispensable men.
The choice of me as a keynote speaker was not made because of any personal attribute of mine. There were others far abler who could have been chosen.
The only good reason I was chosen was because I come from the great, hopeful, energetic West. Ours is the youngest part of America. My own state of California was a child of four years when the Republican Party was born.
Growth and change and adventure are still a part of our daily life.
In the West, there is little fear of failure and no fear of trying. That spirit of youth is the spirit of this convention.
Certainly, we are not here to look for a road back to some status quo. There is no status to which we could or should return. The future cannot be overtaken in reverse.
Neither are we here to work out some easy-sounding scheme whereby America can stand still. We believe that America wants to get going and keep going. A forward-going America is what we are here for.
In that spirit we can be confident of the future. It will not be easy. We have nothing easy to offer. Dark days lie ahead. We have no tricks to escape them. We expect tough going and we are ready for it. There is no pessimism, no defeatism, no bitterness, no jauntiness among us. Too much that we love and cherish is at stake.
And of one thing we are sure: America can come through these trying, desperate times a finer, happier, better-spirited America. It is our purpose to see to it that America does come through that way.
That is what the American people expect the Republican Party to accomplish. They are already turning to us for its accomplishment. That is why, in so many streams of late, they have been changing so many horses. That is why – in city halls, courthouses and state capitols, where government is closest to the people – the people have returned to Republican government. That is why, in election after election, they are restoring Republican leadership to Congress.
The people did this, not just because they wanted a change. They did it because they wanted a chance. As times became more critical, as their problems became more complex as strange policies and questionable practices added to their difficulties and increased their confusions, they instinctively returned to the Republican Party.
In Congress, from 16 Republicans in the Senate in1937, the people have now elected 37; from 88 Republicans in the House of Representatives, the people have now elected 212. From eight Republican governors in 1938, the people have now elected 26. Three out of every four Americans now live under Republican state administrations. In Washington, where the bureaucrats live, there is still a Democrat in the White House. But out where the people live the country is predominantly Republican.
In those 26 Republican states, the people have already elected the kind of government which the job ahead of us requires.
They are determined this year to have more of that kind of government. They are determined to have more of it in the states. They are determined to have more of it in Congress. They are determined to have more of it – a great deal more of it – in the White House.
In those states where the people have returned to the Republican Party, government is not only for the people but of and by the people. That means not some of the people, but all of the people. Their kind of representative government reaches from ocean to ocean and from border to border. It extends to both sides of the tracks. It includes every citizen. That is why the platform of this convention will be one on which all of us can stand together –not divided by race or creed, not as minorities or majorities but as fellow Americans.
No party that stands for less than that can unite America. A better world for others must begin with us. That is where in 26 of our states it has already begun.
In those states which are already Republican you will find the record of public administration is progressive, enlightened and in the public interest. In those states you will find increased emphasis upon the public health, upon free education, upon care for orphaned and neglected children, upon support for the aged, for the victims of industrial accidents, for those handicapped by physical disabilities and for the victims of economic misfortune.
Those are the states of this Union where labor has achieved its highest dignity; where labor and management have come to their best understanding; where they have learned to work together most effectively; where, together, they are doing the best job.
What is the result of that kind of government? I can tell you. I can tell you in terms that every American with a son fighting overseas will understand. To win the war in the air, those Republican states have been called on to produce more than 81 percent of all our airplanes. To win the war at sea, those states have been called on to produce more than 76 percent of all our ships. To win the war on land, those states have been called on to produce more than 87 percent of all our ordnance – and more than 83 percent of all our other fighting equipment.
The American people were introduced, not long ago, to Dr. Win-the-War. From the record of these states, it is clear that Dr. Win-the-War is a Republican.
But this war cannot be fought and won as Republicans or Democrats. This is an all-American war. There is a place for every American in it. There is no place of honor for any American who is not in it.
In or out of office, Republicans and Democrats share the responsibility of winning the war. We want to share it in the same spirit in which the sons of all of us fight from the same foxholes, through the same jungles, across the same beaches, in the same ships at sea and in the air.
The generals who command our armies, the admirals who command our fleets are no more Republican or Democratic than the armies and the fleets which they command. They are not a product of politics. They are products of our non-political military establishment. Their concern is not with the party in power – whether it is Republican or Democratic, Their concern is how to get the men and the materials out where the war will be won. They know how to run the war and we will see to it that they have the opportunity to run it without political interference.
Our purpose is to see that the country is responsive to their military leadership; to stand back of them through good days and bad; to see to it that they get the materials needed for victory.
How well that victory can be won; how magnificently it can be won when government unites all the people to win it, is plainly written in the record of those 26 states whose government is now Republican. That is what needs to be done for the nation as a whole. To that we dedicate ourselves as our first objective; to keep the war out of politics and politics out of the war; to strengthen, among us, that spirit of single-mindedness, of unity, of self-forgetfulness that will hearten our military leaders, strengthen their hands and speed the day when, having bivouacked along the main streets of Germany and Japan, they will lead our boys victoriously home again.
But when the war is won, what then? We will have 11,000,000 men and women out of uniform. We will have millions of war workers whose war work has stopped. We will have tens of thousands of businessmen whose war contracts have been canceled.
What will those millions of Americans want? They will want what is the right of every American to have. They will want jobs. By jobs, they do not mean made jobs – with the government as employer. That is not what we mean, either. They mean moneymaking jobs in private industry. Those are the kind of jobs we mean.
But these young people will not be satisfied with just jobs. We will not be satisfied, either. These young people will want good jobs and a chance to get ahead. Hundreds of thousands of them will want to set up in small businesses for themselves; to be their own boss; to have their own farm; to own their own filling station; to run their own store, or operate their own little factory.
We will see to it that they get that chance. We can see to it because we know what it is that makes jobs and opportunity. We know that the government does not make them – not the kind of jobs the people want and which we aim to help the people to get. Government-made jobs can be a crisis necessity. But such jobs are not good enough for the long pull. For the long pull, the American people want a highway, not a dead-end street.
The belief that we have come to the end of the road, that a dead-end street is all that we have ahead of us – that will not produce jobs and opportunity, either. That belief is defeatism. The fruit of defeatism is an economy of scarcity. We know what scarcity produces. It produces scarcity: of jobs, of opportunity, of the good things of life.
We know what it is that makes jobs and opportunity. We know that private production makes them. We know that our productive system going full blast can make enough of them. It is the Republican Party that has kept that knowledge alive in America. We have kept it alive against great odds. And now the country knows how important it is that the Republicans kept that knowledge alive. For that confidence in our productive system and the know-how to get that system into full-blast production made the difference, when war came, between life and death. The same knowledge and the same knowhow will make the difference when the war is won.
But we Republicans also know that full-blast production – and the jobs and opportunity which it makes – can only come in a climate that is friendly to production. A climate that is friendly to production requires a government that is friendly to production.
It requires a government which believes that our economic soil, far from being worn out, is still life-giving; a government which believes that those who work honorably and well to make that soil produce, far from being a threat to our well-being, are the hope of it; a government which, far from penalizing production, encourages it; a government which believes in an economy of plenty because its aim for all the people is abundance.
In such a climate, labor and management will not be set off – one against the other. They will realize – government can help them to realize – that they do not represent two different systems; that they are, rather, part of the same system. They will understand that they are partners in that system. If, for any reason, one partner fails, both will be destroyed. They will, understand, also, that such a partnership system exists for more than profit; that it’s even more important reason for existence is the increasing security and wellbeing of all the people.
With such an understanding of their relationship to each other and their responsibility to the community, labor and management can reconcile their day-to-day differences in order, together, to make full production possible. It is a Republican responsibility to foster that climate and speed that understanding. That we will do.
In such a climate, also, the farm will no longer be set off against the city; the city against the farm. Farmer and city dweller will come to see that they do not represent two rival economic communities; that, in fact, they are partners in the same community. They will understand that bad times for one mean bad times for the other; that good times for one must include good times for the other. It is a Republican responsibility to speed that understanding and foster a climate in which prosperity is possible for both. That also we will do.
We know that this can be done. We know that the people expect us to do it. They have turned to us because – under the threat of war – they wanted to get along. When the war is won, they want to keep going – toward full, peacetime production that will insure, not jobs alone, but opportunity and a fair and increasing share of life’s good things. To that we dedicate ourselves as our second objective.
But to insure such a future, this war must end in something better than an armistice. This war must end in peace. For our homes, our sons and our daughters, this time must be the last time.
In their hearts the American people know what kind of peace they want. They may differ upon details, but they are agreed upon the things that are really important. What is needed is effective leadership, honestly and vigorously to carry into realization the aspirations upon which our people are united.
We want a peace that will be lasting. That means a peace that will be just. That means not only justice for the few and powerful, but justice also for the many and less powerful.
We want a peace that is based upon realities and not upon the insecure foundation of mere words or promises. That means a peace which, being mindful of the interest of other nations, does not neglect or sacrifice the interests of our own nation.
None of these aspirations can be realized under a leadership that plays power politics on a worldwide stage. They cannot be achieved under a leadership which neglects the interests of America. No such leadership can hope to keep the world’s respect or to unite America in helping to solve the world’s problems. Nor can they ever be achieved by a leadership which holds itself superior to the wisdom of the people.
As Republicans, we are united in uncompromising opposition to aggression. We are prepared to take a definite stand against aggression, not merely to denounce it but to resist it and restrain it. That calls for effective co-operation with all the peace-loving nations of the world; for the establishment of a tribunal for the settlement of international disputes which otherwise might lead to war. We are agreed, too, that, if such a program is to be effective, the friendly cooperation of the war’s principal Allied combatants – the United States, Great Britain, Russia and China – is as essential as the keystone of an arch. But beyond that is the task of establishing order, maintaining peace and extending prosperity. We stand ready to welcome every nation that is prepared in honesty and goodwill to join with us in the accomplishment of that purpose. And we know that if we are to maintain respect among the nations of the world, if we are to be able to keep our own commitments and to compel recalcitrants to keep theirs, we must keep America ever strong and self-reliant.
The Republican Party has not waited to declare these principles. At the Mackinac Conference, we blazed the way for them. The future of America and the happiness of our children depend on their establishment.
Whatever the exact procedures, on these principles the American people, in their hearts, agree. I do not believe that any sound American political party should say more. I am sure that in good conscience, no such political party can say less.
This is the job we are here to do. These are the things about which we mean business: To get the boys victoriously back home; to open the door to jobs and opportunity; to make a peace that this time will be lasting. This is too great an undertaking for petty politics; for name-calling or for hate-making. There is no place among us for malcontents. We are in no mood for torchlight jubilation. Whether we win as a party is of less importance to us than whether we win as a people.
There has been progress in every decade of American history. Progress is an American habit. We do not propose to deny the progress that has been made during the last decade. Neither do we aim to repeal it. Whatever its source, if it is good, we will acknowledge it. If it is sound, we will build on it. If it is forward looking, we will make use of it as we go forward from here.
Neither do we aim to turn the clock back and make an issue of every administration mistake in the last eleven years. We are less concerned about these past errors than about the direction in which for the future we are going.
We believe the New Deal is leading us away from representative government. We believe that its centralization of power in the numerous bureaus at Washington will eventually destroy freedom as Americans have always understood it – freedom in the home, freedom of individual opportunity in business and employment, freedom to govern ourselves locally.
We believed the New Deal is destroying the two-party system. The New Deal is no longer the Democratic Party. It is an incongruous clique within that party. It retains its power by patronizing and holding together incompatible groups. It talks of idealism and seeks its votes from the moat corrupt political machines in the country. The leaders of its inner circle are not representatives of the people. They are the personal agents of one man. Their appointments to public office are not made on the basis of efficiency or public approval, but on the basis of loyalty to the clique. Under this rule, the Constitution has been short circuited. The Cabinet has ceased to be a voice and has become an echo. Congress, wherever possible, has been circumvented by executive decree. Both Congress and the judiciary have been intimidated and bludgeoned to make them servile.
Over all of this – and over all of us – is the ominous, gargantuan figure of an arrogant, power-intoxicated bureaucracy. Nowhere in its vast domain has it been satisfied with merely one bureaucrat, if by hook or crook desks could be found for two. These bureaucrats of the New Deal tell the farmer what to sow and when to reap – sometimes without regard for either the seeds or the season. They require him to work in the fields all day and keep books for the government all night. These same bureaucrats tell the worker what union he shall join, what dues he shall pay, and to whom he must pay them. They soon will tell the worker where he can work and where he cannot work. Then the workers of America will be a long way down the road toward the kind of government which our nation is now resisting with all its power.
These bureaucrats encumber the small businessman with a multiplicity of rules, regulations, orders and decrees which entangle him, stifle his business and darken his future. They move in – like political commissars – to watch over the shoulders of our industrialists – to say what, where and how industry can produce.
They have threatened our free press. They have intimidated our free radio. They are using every device and excuse to insinuate themselves into control over the public schools of our states. They have injected a low grade of politics into the administration of relief and social welfare.
They have bypassed the governments of the states in an effort to destroy state effectiveness and compel the people to rely solely upon the New Deal clique at Washington for the solution of all their problems.
For years they have deprived entire regions of representation in the policy-making agencies of the federal government.
To perpetuate themselves in power the New Deal clique has always capitalized upon some crisis. It has always had the indispensable man – the same man – for each succeeding crisis. The first time it was the depression. The second time it was the recession. Last time it was to keep us out of war. This time it will be to achieve peace. The next time – who knows what crisis it will be? That there will be one and that the indispensable man will still be indispensable, we can rely upon the New Deal clique to assert. The New Deal came to power with a song on its lips: “Happy days are here again.” That song is ended. Even the melody does not linger on. Now we are being conditioned for a new song: “Don’t change horses in the middle of a stream.” That melody isn’t likely to linger either. For eleven long years we have been in the middle of the stream. We are not amphibious. We want to get across. We want to feel dry and solid ground under our feet again.
The life of a nation is a succession of crises. War and peace and economic and social adjustments have always followed each other in endless succession. No party, clique or individual can rightfully claim priority in government because a crisis occurs during its administration.
The Republican Party was born in a great crisis. The American people turned to it because they wanted to get safely, speedily through that crisis and get on their way again. Then, as now, the Republican Party was called by the people to displace a regime of men, who had grown tired, complacent and cynical in the business of government. Then, as now, the Republican Party was called upon to replace a party that was torn with dissension and in revolt against itself. Then, as now, the Republican Party was called by the people to furnish youth and vigor and vision.
Now, as then, the Republican Party will respond to that call. It will represent the nation, the whole nation and nothing but the nation. It will devote itself fervently to the problems of the people and in everything it does the Constitution of the United States of America will be its guiding star. It will function through established law and not through the caprice of bureaucratic regulation. There shall be one law for all men.
Its greatest concern will always be for those who have the greatest need. It will conduct government openly where the people can see, discuss and decide. It will operate less from the government down and more from the people up. It will make wise and careful use of the people’s money. It will keep the public’s books in such a way as to allow the people to see how their money is used. It will see that taxes are just, visible and designed to stimulate rather than punish. It will strengthen our great public school system, keep it under the control of state and local government, where it is responsive to the people, and prepare it to play a stronger part in the life of the Republic. It will promote peace in industry by stimulating goodwill between labor and management. It will free the agencies of public information from the domination of government. It will make fully effective the immeasurable strength of the nation by promoting goodwill and unity at home. It will not be cocksure in good times or depressed and cynical in bad times. It will direct our combined material and spiritual resources against the enemies of our country. It will make any sacrifice to achieve victory even one day sooner so our boys can come home. It will see to it that they are cared for when they do come home. It and we will honor them the rest of our lives.
But we will start building right now that finer America which during their night vigils they dream of as they look at the stars from their foxholes on land and from their gun turrets at sea and in the air; the America that to them spells happy homes and freedom of opportunity for all; the America that represents unity at home and peace with the countries of the world.
It takes faith to build such an America – a strong faith, the same faith that now sustains our fighting men; a faith that is truly “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
With such a faith – which is our faith – we shall march under God toward victory, toward opportunity, toward peace.
The Pittsburgh Press (June 26, 1944)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Somewhere in France – (by wireless)
Sniping, as far as I know, is recognized as a legitimate means of warfare. And yet there is something sneaking about it that outrages the American sense of fairness.
I had never sensed this before we landed in France and began pushing the Germans back. We have had snipers before – in Bizerte and Cassino and lots of other places. But always on a small scale.
Here in Normandy, the Germans have gone for sniping in a wholesale manner. There are snipers everywhere. There are snipers in trees, in buildings, in piles of wreckage, in the grass. But mainly they’re in the high, bushy hedgerows that form the fences of all the Norman fields and line every roadside and lane.
It is perfect sniping country. A man can hide himself in the thick fence-row shrubbery with several days’ rations, and it’s like hunting a needle in a haystack to find him. Every mile we advance, there are dozens of snipers left behind us. They pick off our soldiers one by one as they walk down the roads or across the fields.
It isn’t safe to move into a new bivouac area until the snipers have been cleaned out. The first bivouac I moved into had shots ringing through it for a full day before all the hidden gunmen were rounded up. It gives you the same spooky feeling that you get on moving into a place you suspect of being sown with mines.
In past campaigns, our soldiers would talk about the occasional snipers with contempt and disgust. But here sniping has become more important and taking precautions against it is something we have had to learn and learn fast.
One officer friend of mine said, “Individual soldiers have become sniper-wise before, but now we’re sniper-conscious as whole units.”
Snipers kill as many Americans as they can, and then when their food and ammunition run out, they surrender. To an American, that isn’t quite ethical. The average American soldier has little feeling against the average German soldier who has fought an open fight and put into print. He is learning how to kill the snipers before the time comes for them to surrender.
As a matter of fact, this part of France is very difficult for anything but fighting between small groups. It is a country of little fields, every one bordered by a thick hedge and a high fence of trees. There is hardly any place where you can see beyond the field ahead of you. Most of the time a soldier doesn’t see more than a hundred yards in any direction.
In other places, the ground is flooded and swampy with a growth of high, jungle-like grass. In this kind of stuff, it is almost man-to-man warfare. One officer who has served a long time in the Pacific says this fighting is the nearest thing to Guadalcanal that he has seen since.
Thousands of little personal stories will dribble out of D-Day on the Normandy beachhead. A few that I pick up from time to time I will pass along to you.
The freakiest story I’ve heard is of an officer who was shot through the face. He had his mouth wide open at that time, yelling at somebody. The bullet went in one cheek and right out the other cheek. That sounds dreadful, but actually the wound is a fairly slight one and the officer will be in action again before very long.
Capt. Ralph L. Haga of Prospect, Virginia, claims the distinction of being the first American chaplain to set foot on French soil in World War II.
He hid the beach 65 minutes after H-Hour, with the combat engineer unit to which he is attached. Like everybody else, he had rough going, but he wasn’t hurt. He is a Methodist and before the war was a pastor at Bassett, Virginia.
U.S. Navy Department (June 26, 1944)
Communiqué No. 528
Mediterranean Area.
The U.S. destroyer escort FECHTELER (DE-157) was sunk in the Mediterranean during the month of May as the result of enemy action.
The next of kin of the casualties have been notified.
CINCPAC Communiqué No. 64
United States Marines scaled Mount Tapochau on June 24 (West Longi¬tude Date) and have established positions near its summit. Further ground was gained along the western shore, and more of the southern portion of Garapan fell to our forces. Simultaneously, substantial gains were made along the eastern shore, and the Kagman Peninsula is now entirely in our hands. In the center of our lines progress was slowed by enemy troops occupying caves in cliffs overlooking our positions. Our troops have advanced beyond and surrounded this pocket of resistance, and it is being subjected to artillery fire at close range. In the south, small gains were made against enemy troops cornered on Nafutan Peninsula. In these operations three coastal defense guns were captured on Kagman Peninsula. To date our forces have destroyed 36 enemy tanks and captured 40 more.
Guam and Rota Islands in the Marianas were attacked by aircraft of our fast carrier task force on June 24 (West Longitude Date). At Guam, six enemy aircraft were destroyed on the Orote Peninsula airfield, and two were probably destroyed: Runway revetments were bombed. A large cargo vessel in Apra Harbor, damaged in a previous strike, was attacked again. Several tons of bombs were dropped on the airstrip near Agana Town, and one enemy plane was destroyed on the ground and eight to ten were damaged. At Rota Island, revetments and buildings were bombed, and fires started. Two enemy aircraft were destroyed on the ground.
Paramushiru and Shumushu in the Kuril Islands were bombed by Liberators of the Eleventh Army Air Force and Ventura search planes of Fleet Air Wing Four before dawn on June 24, starting large fires. Intense antiaircraft fire was encountered. All of our planes returned.
Dauntless dive bombers and Corsair fighters of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing and Navy Hellcat fighters continued neutralization raids in the Marshalls on June 24.
Völkischer Beobachter (June 27, 1944)
Angst vor der Sozialkatastrophe in der USA
Juden unter Sonderschutz – Meinungsfreiheit aufgehoben
…
Wallace soll Tschungking beschwichtigen
…
Der letzte Funkspruch des Seekommandanten –
Die große Stunde der Marinebatterie ‚Hamburg‘
pk. Bei der Kriegsmarine, im Juni 1944 –
In der Geschichte der Kriegsmarine gehört das Datum des 25. Juni 1944 den Batterien von Cherbourg, so wie der Name der Marinebatterie „Marcouf“ mit dem ersten Tag der Invasion verbunden bleiben wird. Was sich im Einzelnen an Taten soldatischer Größe und aufopfernder Tapferkeit in Batterien und Funkstellen, in Widerstandsnestern und Stützpunkten der Kriegsmarine abgespielt hat, liegt heute noch jenseits unseres Wissens. Die knappen Funksprüche, die der Seekommandant von Cherbourg gab, sagen nichts, was über die kargen operativen Tatsachen hinausginge, klar und mit einer fast grausamen Nüchternheit. Und doch liegt in den schicksalsschweren Meldungen, die in den letzten Stunden des Kampfes in den Äther gingen, eines Ahnen um die opfervolle Größe der Verteidiger. „An alle – Heil Hitler – hier Cherbourg – Sk.“ Das war der letzte Spruch, den der Seekommandant Konteradmiral Hennecke im offenen Text absetzen ließ. Das war am 25. Juni 1944, 19,05 Uhr.
Aber bis zu dieser Stunde waren aus seinem Gefechtsstand kurz und knapp die Meldungen gekommen, die mit Blitzlichtern den Kampf der tapferen Batterien der Seefestung beleuchteten und ihre stolzen Erfolge. Sie haben in dem Endkampf um Cherbourg der feindlichen Flotte noch schwere Wunden geschlagen, als endlich einmal die schweren Schiffe in die Greifweite ihrer Rohre kamen. Schon in den Morgenstunden des 24. Juni hatten die Batterien „Hamburg“ und „Brommy“ einen Verband feindlicher Kreuzer und Zerstörer unter Feuer genommen, der – um Batterien und Leitstände treffsicherer beschießen zu können – näher an die Küste herangestaffelt hatte. In diesem Artillerieduell zwischen Küste und Seestreitkräften wurden ein Kreuzer und ein Zerstörer mehrfach getroffen, so daß beide Schiffe abdrehen mußten und sich hinter einer Nebelwand in Sicherheit brachten.
An diesem Tage lag bereits seit Hellwerden stärkstes Feuer auf den Stellungen, dass sich im Laufe des Tages, vor allem in den Nachmittagsstunden zu einem ununterbrochenen Inferno von Bombenserien, Einschlägen der schweren Schiffartillerie und der von Land herüberreichenden Feldartillerie der Amerikaner steigerte. Dennoch hielten die tapferen Kanoniere der Batterien, die auch nach Land hinschießen konnten, die Anmarschstraßen des Gegners, seine Transport- und Bereitstellungsräume unter Feuer und brachten so der schwerkämpfenden deutschen Infanterie fühlbare Entlastung. Am späten Nachmittag gegen 18 Uhr hatte das Trommelfeuer eine Intensität erreicht, die keinen Zweifel mehr über den äußersten Ernst der Lage zuließ.
Als nach einer Nacht voll Störungsfeuer der Morgen des 25. Juni dämmerte, setzten die Angriffe in fast noch gesteigerter Stärke wieder ein. Zu den schweren Kalibern der Schiffsartillerie kamen die Einschläge von Granatwerfern, die der Feind im Vorgelände der Batterien in Stellung brachte. Dabei bekamen die Verteidiger in ihren Löchern und Bunkern kaum jemals einen Feind zu Gesicht, nur immer wieder das Brüllen und Bersten des Materials, das Schüttern und Beben der Erde unter dem Trommeln der Einschläge aller Kaliber, die vor dem Sturm der feindlichen Infanterie bereits jeden Widerstand ersticken sollten.
Eine halbe Stunde nach Mittag kam etwa 13 Kilometer vor der Küste wieder ein feindlicher Kreuzerverband in Sicht. Aus den schweren Rohren der Batterie „York“ rauschte Salve auf Salve herüber, während um die Batterie selbst nahezu ununterbrochen die Erdfontänen der Einschläge standen. 13,05 Uhr: Salven von „York“ liegen deckend! Treffer auf einem der schweren Kreuzer, bei dem auch leichte Kreuzer standen.
Etwa eine Stunde später steht die Silhouette eines Schlachtschiffes in den Okularen der Entfernungsmesser: zwei Drillingstürme vorn und achtern, zwei Gittermasten – California-Klasse. Vorn und achtern blitzen die Mündungsfeuer, sechs Einschläge wirbeln im Vorgelände in die Höhe. Salventakt. Sie schießen sich heran. Und dann: Jetzt schießen alle vier Türme Vollsalve.
Die Küstenbatterien antworten. „York“ hat einen der Kreuzer erneut eingedeckt, auf dem deutlich starke Rauchentwicklung beobachtet wurde. Und wieder pfeifen und bersten Bomben um die Batterien, greifen die Tiefflieger mit ihren Geschoßgarben nach den Scharten der Geschütze.
Dann wächst wieder ein Schlachtschiff über die Kimm, es muß Prince of Wales-Klasse sein. Viererturm vorn und Achtern. Aber es bleibt unser Feuerbereich. 15,15 Uhr meldete „York“: Erneut Treffer in den Aufbauten eines Kreuzers, der hart abdreht. Indessen mannen ungeachtet des schweren Beschusses die Kanoniere Munition an die Geschütze. Schließlich läßt der Feind Nebelbomben in das Blickfeld der Batterien werfen, um die Feuerleitung zu erschweren.
Während „York“ im Westteil der Seefront kämpft, erlebt am äußersten Ostrand der Batteriefront die schwere Marinebatterie „Hamburg“ ihre große Stunde. 14,32 Uhr sinkt draußen auf der grauen See ein britischer Kreuzer im Feuer ihrer schweren Granaten. Vom Leitstand aus sehen sie deutlich, wie sich das schwere Schiff überlegt, kentert, sich langsam noch einmal aufrichtet und dann schnell auf Tiefe geht. Aber es gibt keine Pause: jetzt liegen die Salven in einem neuen Ziel. Ebenfalls ein Kreuzer, der bald nach den Treffern auf qualmt. In einer Feuerpause geht unter den Kanonieren der Batterie ein Wort um, das der Seekommandant ihnen durchgegeben hatte. „Vorbildlich!“ Indessen beobachten die Männer am Entfernungsmesser, wie der schwere beschädigte Kreuzer achtern mehr und mehr wegsackt und schließlich mit schwerer Schlagseite sinkend außer Sicht kommt. Auch der kam nicht mehr bis Portsmouth!
Und wieder brüllen die Geschütze, donnert in das Krachen der Einschläge das polternde Bersten von Flächenwürfen feindlicher Bombergeschwader, ein paar Rohre gegen die hundertfache Feuerkraft des Gegners. Sie wissen, daß sie hier ihren letzten Kampf kämpfen. Vielleicht wissen sie auch, daß sie, die vielen unbekannten Soldaten der Marineartillerie, an diesen Tagen in die Geschichte des letzten schweren Kampfes der Seefestung Cherbourg unauslöschlich den Namen ihrer Batterien geschrieben haben.
Seitdem der Seekommandant seinen letzten Funkspruch abgesetzt hatte, wenige Sekunden bevor die eingebaute Wasserbombe die ganze Funkanlage zerriss, haben die Batterien der Kriegsmarine keine Verbindung mehr. Und in der schweren Nacht zum 26. Juni, in der diese Zeilen geschrieben werden, wissen wir nicht, an welchen Stellen des Festungsbereichs noch im letzten Opfergang Marineartilleristen kämpfen und wo sich schon das große Schweigen über die Batteriestellungen gesenkt hat.
Kriegsberichter HANNS H. REINHARDT