Butylene shifted to aviation gasoline to help air forces in France and Pacific
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50,000 FANS SEE DODGERS TRIUMPH
Flock tallies five runs to one for Yankees, none for Giants in bond game
Brooklyn scores in 1st; scores once and settles three-wat baseball contest with two markers in second
By John Drebinger
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Pershing gets Wyoming degree
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Government defends sedition trial venue; witnesses tell of propaganda in capital
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The Free Lance-Star (June 27, 1944)
GOVERNOR WARREN SEEN LIKELY AS RUNNING MATE WITH DEWEY
California may reach decision tonight
Choice of Dewey is held assured
Chicago Stadium, Chicago, Illinois (AP) –
The Republican National Convention rushed toward climactic development today. Platform drafters announced agreement, and it was learned that Governor Earl Warren of California might say, by nightfall, whether or not he was in the running for the vice-presidential nomination or moving definitely out.
Heavy pressure was being brought to bear on the big Californian to announce that he would take second place on the ticket running with Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York if the nomination is offered. On the platform, where he acted as temporary chairman before turning the gavel over to Rep. Joseph W. Martin (R-MA), permanent presiding officer, he was the center of clusters of party prominents.
Governor Thomas E. Dewey, assured of the presidential nomination, was reported making preparations to come here on short notice, possibly by tomorrow, to accept. Many more than the votes required to nominate were already his.
The platform-drafting Resolutions Committee approved a foreign policy plank retaining the pledge to enforce future world security by an international agency employing “peace forces.” This pledge had been criticized by Wendell Willkie and others, including 15 governors.
Willkie’s statement of criticism, released in New York last night, caused a stir when word reached the convention and led to new speculation on the possibility Willkie might bolt the party he led on the campaign of 1940. He kept his own counsel on this point.
Former President Herbert Hoover, arriving for a major address before the convention tonight, predicted agreement on a plank and praised the speech in which Warren last night predicted that the state victories won by Republicans in the last two years will extend to the nation in 1944.
Urge acceptance
Some clearing of the vice-presidential picture impended members of Governor Warren’s own delegation were reported urging him to state he will accept second place if offered it.
Supporters of Governor John W. Bricker for President, still fighting for the nomination, contended “steamroller tactics by the Dewey camp” was reacting in the form of new expressions of interest in and support for the Ohioan.
Warren, the most discussed possibility for second place on the ticket, told the delegation before the convention opened Monday that he did not want his name placed in nomination or a California vote if someone else nominated him.
With the renewed pressure on Warren – and amid discussion also of Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio, Governor Dwight Griswold of Nebraska and Governor Dwight Green of Illinois – the convention looked for some sign of a trend and decision today.
California called a caucus at which, it was learned, Warren’s position was under discussion. Warren himself has taken the position. He was elected in California on a platform calling for the development of projects that will require years. Moreover, he has insisted he can be “of more use” to the party in California than in Washington. But he is a staunch party man.
Martin opens parley
Today’s convention program in the big steaming Chicago Stadium bulged, starting with the address of Rep. Martin, permanent chairman of the convention, and followed tonight by speeches of former President Herbert Hoover and Connecticut’s Rep. Clare Boothe Luce.
Appearing fit and ready, Mr. Hoover arrived from New York with the declaration that he’d give his best for a Republican triumph in November. He told reporters:
I am going to stay in this fight until I die. The fight is for everything that is precious to the American people.
The third session of the convention was slowly getting underway.
Hoover active in GOP campaign
Chicago, Illinois (AP) –
Arriving to address the Republican convention, Herbert Hoover said today that he would participate vigorously in the election campaign.
The only living former President told newspapermen as he stepped from his train:
I am going to stay in this fight until I die. The fight is for everything that is precious to the American people.
Hoover would not say whether he expected to “barnstorm” for the Republican ticket, but left no doubt that he would contribute all his energies to the Republican ticket. He said, “The prospects for a Republican victory this fall are good.”
Foreign policy plank drafted by GOP body
By Jack Bell
Chicago, Illinois (AP) –
The Republican Platform Committee approved today a foreign policy plank retaining the pledge, criticized by Wendell Willkie and others, to enforce future world security by an international organization employing “peace forces.”
It rejected protests of Willkie and 15 Republican Governors that this language was not sufficiently plain.
The Platform Committee inserted a promise that the party would bend all efforts to bring home members of the Armed Forces “at the earliest possible time after the cessation of hostilities.”
Committee officials, releasing only a portion of the platform immediately, said it would be laid before the convention during the afternoon. They hoped to complete the draft during the day.
Provision approved
In another portion of the platform dealing with the maintenance of post-war Armed Forces, however, the committee approved a provision some members interpreted as a gesture toward those, like Willkie, who have been demanding that the United States join an international organization with military force to preserve peace.
The platform declared at this point for “the maintenance of post-war military force and establishments of ample strength, for the successful defense and the safety of the United States, its possessions and outposts, for the maintenance of the Monroe Doctrine, and for meeting any military commitments determined by Congress.”
The latter pledged to have Armed Forces available for any use approved by Congress suggested the possibility of a military allotment to an international organization to enforce peace, some said.
Fight is seen
A fight on the foreign plank might be carried to the floor by some of the governors who asked for more specific pledges.
As it was approved by the committee, the foreign plank pledges prosecution of the war to “total victory” and proposes to achieve peace aims “through international cooperation and not by joining a world state.”
It favored “responsible participation” by this country in a “cooperative organization among sovereign nations” to prevent aggression and said such an organization “should develop effective cooperative means to direct peace forces to prevent or repeal military aggression.”
Senator Warren Austin (R-VT), chairman of a foreign affairs subcommittee, predicted that the final draft would produce “complete harmony” in the Resolutions Committee.
Although Austin and other platform drafters called Willkie “mistaken” in his stand on the plank, there was evidence that backers of Dewey had no relish for any situation that might cost Willkie’s November support of the New York Governor, if the latter becomes the presidential nominee as expected.
Martin installed as GOP chairman
Says day of reckoning for New Dealers is at hand
Chicago, Illinois (AP) –
Rep. Joseph W. Martin (R-MA) took up the gavel as permanent chairman of the Republican National Convention today with a declaration that his party would “save constitutional government at home” and “build an enduring peace.”
Martin, House Minority Leader, told the delegates the “day of reckoning” was at hand for the New Deal because people are “tired of bungling and fumbling, waste and extravagance, arrogance and bureaucratic dictatorship.” Even some Democrats have rebelled, he said.
He went on:
We have seen the head of the Communist political party in this country, Earl Browder, merge his political party with Sidney Hillman’s CIO Political Action Committee in a drive for a fourth term for President Roosevelt, and the election of a Congress that will be subservient to the will of those organizations.
It presents a vital issue of this campaign. Do the people want these radical organizations, with their avowed purpose to remake America, to control the Presidency, to secure a “rubber stamp” Congress, and to nominate… our government? Of course they don’t.
Martin outlined the course he believed the Republican administration would pursue and concluded:
We will save constitutional government at home and, on the firm foundation of freedom and individual opportunity, we will build an enduring peace.
Martin said:
The first thing the Republican Party will do when it comes into power will be to restore to Congress its responsibility and functions…
He promised a “genuine economy in government,” and a tax system as simple as possible, equitable and designed to stimulate industry and create jobs.
Labor will retain “all the essential rights and just privileges it has gained,” Martin continued, while agriculture will be assured “a commensurate return on investment and labor.”
Republican Party Platform of 1944
Introduction
The tragedy of the war is upon our country as we meet to consider the problems of government and our people. We take this opportunity to render homage and enduring gratitude to those brave members of our armed forces who have already made the supreme sacrifice, and to those who stand ready to make the same sacrifice that the American course of life may be secure.
Mindful of this solemn hour and humbly conscious of our heavy responsibilities, the Republican Party in convention assembled presents herewith its principles and makes these covenants with the people of our Nation.
The War and the Peace
We pledge prosecution of the war to total victory against our enemies in full cooperation with the United Nations and all-out support of our Armies and the maintenance of our Navy under the competent and trained direction of our General Staff and Office of Naval Operations without civilian interference and with every civilian resource. At the earliest possible time after the cessation of hostilities we will bring home all members of our armed forces who do not have unexpired enlistments and who do not volunteer for further overseas duty.
We declare our relentless aim to win the war against all our enemies: (1) for our own American security and welfare; (2) to make and keep the Axis powers impotent to renew tyranny and attack; (3) for the attainment of peace and freedom based on justice and security.
We shall seek to achieve such aims through organized international cooperation and not by joining a World State.
We favor responsible participation by the United States in post-war cooperative organization among sovereign nations to prevent military aggression and to attain permanent peace with organized justice in a free world.
Such organization should develop effective cooperative means to direct peace forces to prevent or repel military aggression. Pending this, we pledge continuing collaboration with the United Nations to assure these ultimate objectives.
We believe, however, that peace and security do not depend upon the sanction of force alone, but should prevail by virtue of reciprocal interests and spiritual values recognized in these security agreements. The treaties of peace should be just; the nations which are the victims of aggression should be restored to sovereignty and self-government; and the organized cooperation of the nations should concern itself with basic causes of world disorder. It should promote a world opinion to influence the nations to right conduct, develop international law and maintain an international tribunal to deal with justiciable disputes.
We shall seek, in our relations with other nations, conditions calculated to promote worldwide economic stability, not only for the sake of the world, but also to the end that our own people may enjoy a high level of employment in an increasingly prosperous world.
We shall keep the American people informed concerning all agreements with foreign nations. In all of these undertakings we favor the widest consultation of the gallant men and women in our armed forces who have a special right to speak with authority in behalf of the security and liberty for which they fight. We shall sustain the Constitution of the United States in the attainment of our international aims; and pursuant to the Constitution of the United States any treaty or agreement to attain such aims made on behalf of the United States with any other nation or any association of nations, shall be made only by and with the advice and consent of the Senate of the United States provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur.
We shall at all times protect the essential interests and resources of the United States.
Western Hemisphere Relations
We shall develop Pan-American solidarity. The citizens of our neighboring nations in the Western Hemisphere are, like ourselves, Americans. Cooperation with them shall be achieved through mutual agreement and without interference in the internal affairs of any nation. Our policy should be a genuine Good Neighbor policy, commanding their respect, and not one based on the reckless squandering of American funds by overlapping agencies.
Post-War Preparedness
We favor the maintenance of post-war military forces and establishments of ample strength for the successful defense and the safety of the United States, its possessions and outposts, for the maintenance of the Monroe Doctrine, and for meeting any military commitments determined by Congress. We favor the peacetime maintenance and strengthening of the National Guards under State control with the Federal training and equipment as now provided in the National Defense Act.
Domestic Policy
We shall devote ourselves to reestablishing liberty at home.
We shall adopt a program to put men to work in peace industry as promptly as possible and with special attention to those who have made sacrifice by serving in the armed forces. We shall take government out of competition with private industry and terminate rationing, price fixing and all other emergency powers. We shall promote the fullest stable employment through private enterprise.
The measures we propose shall avoid federalization of government activities, to the end that our States, schools and cities shall be freed; shall avoid delegation of legislative and judicial power to administrative agencies, to the end that the people’s representatives in Congress shall be independent and in full control of legislative policy; and shall avoid, subject to war necessities, detailed regulation of farmers, workers, businessmen and consumers, to the end that the individual shall be free. The remedies we propose shall be based on intelligent cooperation between the Federal Government, the States and local government and the initiative of civic groups – not on the panacea of Federal cash.
Four more years of New Deal policy would centralize all power in the President, and would daily subject every act of every citizen to regulation by his henchmen; and this country could remain a Republic only in name. No problem exists which cannot be solved by American methods. We have no need of either the communistic or the fascist technique.
Security
Our goal is to prevent hardship and poverty in America. That goal is attainable by reason of the productive ability of free American labor, industry and agriculture, if supplemented by a system of social security on sound principles.
We pledge our support of the following:
Extension of the existing old-age insurance and unemployment insurance systems to all employees not already covered.
The return of the public employment-office system to the States at the earliest possible time, financed as before Pearl Harbor.
A careful study of Federal-State programs for maternal and child health, dependent children, and assistance to the blind, with a view to strengthening these programs.
The continuation of these and other programs relating to health, and the stimulation by Federal aid of State plans to make medical and hospital service available to those in need without disturbing doctor-patient relationships or socializing medicine.
The stimulation of State and local plans to provide decent low-cost housing properly financed by the Federal Housing Administration, or otherwise, when such housing cannot be supplied or financed by private sources.
Labor
The Republican Party is the historical champion of free labor. Under Republican administrations American manufacturing developed, and American workers attained the most progressive standards of living of any workers in the world. Now the Nation owes those workers a debt of gratitude for their magnificent productive effort in support of the war.
Regardless of the professed friendship of the New Deal for the workingman, the fact remains that under the New Deal American economic life is being destroyed.
The New Deal has usurped selfish and partisan control over the functions of Government agencies where labor relationships are concerned. The continued perversion of the Wagner Act by the New Deal menaces the purposes of the law and threatens to destroy collective bargaining completely and permanently.
The long series of Executive orders and bureaucratic decrees reveal a deliberate purpose to substitute for contractual agreements of employers and employees the political edicts of a New Deal bureaucracy. Labor would thus remain organized only for the convenience of the New Deal in enforcing its orders and inflicting its whims upon labor and industry.
We condemn the conversion of administrative boards, ostensibly set up to settle industrial disputes, into instruments for putting into effect the financial and economic theories of the New Deal.
We condemn the freezing of wage rates at arbitrary levels and the binding of men to their jobs as destructive to the advancement of a free people. We condemn the repeal by Executive order of the laws secured by the Republican party to abolish “contract labor” and peonage. We condemn the gradual but effective creation of a Labor Front as but one of the New Deal’s steps toward a totalitarian state.
We pledge an end to political trickery in the administration of labor laws and the handling of labor disputes; and equal benefits on the basis of equality to all labor in the administration of labor controls and laws, regardless of political affiliation.
The Department of Labor has been emasculated by the New Deal. Labor bureaus, agencies and committees are scattered far and wide, in Washington and throughout the country, and have no semblance of systematic or responsible organization. All governmental labor activities must be placed under the direct authority and responsibility of the Secretary of Labor. Such labor bureaus as are not performing a substantial and definite service in the interest of labor must be abolished.
The Secretary of Labor should be a representative of labor. The office of the Secretary of Labor was created under a Republican President, William Howard Taft. It was intended that a representative of labor should occupy this Cabinet office. The present administration is the first to disregard this intention.
The Republican Party accepts the purposes of the National Labor Relations Act, the Wage and Hour Act, the Social Security Act and all other Federal statutes designed to promote and protect the welfare of American working men and women, and we promise a fair and just administration of these laws.
American wellbeing is indivisible. Any national program which injures the national economy inevitably injures the wage-earner. The American labor movement and the Republican Party, while continuously striving for the betterment of labor’s status, reject the communistic and New Deal concept that a single group can benefit while the general economy suffers.
Agriculture
We commend the American farmers, their wives and families for their magnificent job of wartime production and their contribution to the war effort, without which victory could not be assured. They have accomplished this in spite of labor shortages, a bungled and inexcusable machinery program and confused, unreliable, impractical price and production administration.
Abundant production is the best security against inflation. Governmental policies in war and in peace must be practical and efficient with freedom from regimentation by an impractical Washington bureaucracy in order to assure independence of operation and bountiful production, fair and equitable market prices for farm products, and a sound program for conservation and use of our soil and natural resources. Educational progress and the social and economic stability and wellbeing of the farm family must be a prime national purpose.
For the establishment of such a program we propose the following:
A Department of Agriculture under practical and experienced administration, free from regimentation and confusing government manipulation and control of farm programs.
An American market price to the American farmer and the protection of such price by means of support prices, commodity loans, or a combination thereof, together with such other economic means as will assure an income to agriculture that is fair and equitable in comparison with labor, business and industry. We oppose subsidies as a substitute for fair markets.
Disposition of surplus war commodities in an orderly manner without destroying markets or continued production and without benefit to speculative profiteers.
The control and disposition of future surpluses by means of (a) new uses developed through constant research, (b) vigorous development of foreign markets, (c) efficient domestic distribution to meet all domestic requirements, and (d) arrangements which will enable farmers to make necessary adjustments in production of any given basic crop only if domestic surpluses should become abnormal and exceed manageable proportions.
Intensified research to discover new crops, and new and profitable uses for existing crops.
Support of the principle of bona fide farmer-owned and farmer-operated cooperatives.
Consolidation of all government farm credit under a non-partisan board.
To make life more attractive on the family type farm through development of rural roads, sound extension of rural electrification service to the farm and elimination of basic evils of tenancy wherever they exist.
Serious study of and search for a sound program of crop insurance with emphasis upon establishing a self-supporting program.
A comprehensive program of soil, forest, water and wildlife conservation and development, and sound irrigation projects, administered as far as possible at State and regional levels.
Business and Industry
We give assurance now to restore peacetime industry at the earliest possible time, using every care to avoid discrimination between different sections of the country, (a) by prompt settlement of war contracts with early payment of government obligations and disposal of surplus inventories, and (h) by disposal of surplus government plants, equipment, and supplies, with due consideration to small buyers and with care to prevent monopoly and injury to existing agriculture and industry.
Small business is the basis of American enterprise. It must be preserved. If protected against discrimination and afforded equality of opportunity throughout the Nation, it will become the most potent factor in providing employment. It must also be aided by changes in taxation, by eliminating excessive and repressive regulation and government competition, by the enforcement of laws against monopoly and unfair competition, and by providing simpler and cheaper methods for obtaining venture capital necessary for growth and expansion.
For the protection of the public, and for the security of millions of holders of policies of insurance in mutual and private companies, we insist upon strict and exclusive regulation and supervision of the business of insurance by the several States where local conditions are best known and where local needs can best be met.
We favor the reestablishment and maintenance, as early as military considerations will permit, of a sound and adequate American Merchant Marine under private ownership and management.
The Republican Party pledges itself to foster the development of such strong privately owned air transportation systems and communications systems as will best serve the interests of the American people.
The Federal Government should plan a program for flood control, inland waterways and other economically justifiable public works, and prepare the necessary plans in advance so that construction may proceed rapidly in emergency and in times of reduced employment. We urge that States and local governments pursue the same policy with reference to highways and other public works within their jurisdiction.
Taxation and Finance
As soon as the war ends the present rates of taxation on individual incomes, on corporations, and on consumption should be reduced as far as is consistent with the payment of the normal expenditures of government in the post-war period. We reject the theory of restoring prosperity through government spending and deficit financing.
We shall eliminate from the budget all wasteful and unnecessary expenditures and exercise the most rigid economy.
It is essential that Federal and State tax structures be more effectively coordinated to the end that State tax sources be not unduly impaired.
We shall maintain the value of the American dollar and regard the payment of government debt as an obligation of honor which prohibits any policy leading to the depreciation of the currency. We shall reduce that debt as soon as economic conditions make such reduction possible.
Control of the currency must be restored to Congress by repeal of existing legislation which gives the President unnecessary powers over our currency.
Foreign Trade
We assure American farmers, livestock producers, workers and industry that we will establish and maintain a fair protective tariff on competitive products so that the standards of living of our people shall not be impaired through the importation of commodities produced abroad by labor or producers functioning upon lower standards than our own.
If the post-war world is to be properly organized, a great extension of world trade will be necessary to repair the wastes of war and build an enduring peace. The Republican Party, always remembering that its primary obligation, which must be fulfilled, is to our own workers, our own farmers and our own industry, pledges that it will join with others in leadership in every cooperative effort to remove unnecessary and destructive barriers to international trade. We will always bear in mind that the domestic market is America’s greatest market and that tariffs which protect it against foreign competition should be modified only by reciprocal bilateral trade agreements approved by Congress.
Relief and Rehabilitation
We favor the prompt extension of relief and emergency assistance to the peoples of the liberated countries without duplication and conflict between government agencies.
We favor immediate feeding of the starving children of our Allies and friends in the Nazi-dominated countries and we condemn the New Deal administration for its failure, in the face of humanitarian demands, to make any effort to do this.
We favor assistance by direct credits in reasonable amounts to liberated countries to enable them to buy from this country the goods necessary to revive their economic systems.
Bureaucracy
The National Administration has become a sprawling, overlapping bureaucracy. It is undermined by executive abuse of power, confused lines of authority, duplication of effort, inadequate fiscal controls, loose personnel practices and an attitude of arrogance previously unknown in our history.
The times cry out for the restoration of harmony in government, for a balance of legislative and executive responsibility, for efficiency and economy, for priming and abolishing unnecessary agencies and personnel, for effective fiscal and personnel controls, and for an entirely new spirit in our Federal Government.
We pledge an administration wherein the President, acting in harmony with Congress, will effect these necessary reforms and raise the Federal service to a high level of efficiency and competence.
We insist that limitations must be placed upon spending by government corporations of vast sums never appropriated by Congress but made available by directives, and that their accounts should be subject to audit by the General Accounting Office.
Two-Term Limit for President
We favor an amendment to the Constitution providing that no person shall be President of the United States for more than two terms of four years each.
Equal Rights
We favor submission by Congress to the States of an amendment to the Constitution providing for equal rights for men and women. We favor job opportunities in the post-war world open to men and women alike without discrimination in rate of pay because of sex.
Veterans
The Republican Party has always supported suitable measures to reflect the Nation’s gratitude and to discharge its duty toward the veterans of all wars.
We approve, have supported and have aided in the enactment of laws which provide for reemployment of veterans of this war in their old positions, for mustering-out-pay, for pensions for widows and orphans of such veterans killed or disabled, for rehabilitation of disabled veterans, for temporary unemployment benefits, for education and vocational training, and for assisting veterans in acquiring homes and farms and in establishing themselves in business.
We shall be diligent in remedying defects in veterans’ legislation and shall insist upon efficient administration of all measures for the veteran’s benefit.
Racial and Religious Intolerance
We unreservedly condemn the injection into American life of appeals to racial or religious prejudice.
We pledge an immediate Congressional inquiry to ascertain the extent to which mistreatment, segregation and discrimination against Negroes who are in our armed forces are impairing morale and efficiency, and the adoption of corrective legislation.
We pledge the establishment by Federal legislation of a permanent Fair Employment Practice Commission.
Anti-Poll Tax
The payment of any poll tax should not be a condition of voting in Federal elections and we favor immediate submission of a Constitutional amendment for its abolition.
Anti-Lynching
We favor legislation against lynching and pledge our sincere efforts in behalf of its early enactment.
Indians
We pledge an immediate, just and final settlement of all Indian claims between the Government and the Indian citizenship of the Nation. We will take politics out of the administration of Indian affairs.
Problems of the West
We favor a comprehensive program of reclamation projects for our arid and semi-arid States, with recognition and full protection of the rights and interests of those States in the use and control of water for present and future irrigation and other beneficial consumptive uses.
We favor (a) exclusion from this country of livestock and fresh and chilled meat from countries harboring foot and mouth disease or Rinderpest; (b) full protection of our fisheries whether by domestic regulation or treaties; (c) consistent with military needs, the prompt return to private ownership of lands acquired for war purposes; (d) withdrawal or acquisition of lands for establishment of national parks, monuments, and wildlife refuges, only after due regard to local problems and under closer controls to be established by the Congress; (e) restoration of the long established public land policy which provides opportunity of ownership by citizens to promote the highest land use; (f) full development of our forests on the basis of cropping and sustained yield; cooperation with private owners for conservation and fire protection; (g) the prompt reopening of mines which can be operated by miners and workers not subject to military service and which have been closed by bureaucratic denial of labor or material; (h) adequate stockpiling of war minerals and metals for possible future emergencies; (i) continuance, for tax purposes, of adequate depletion allowances on oil, gas and minerals; (j) administration of laws relating to oil and gas on the public domain to encourage exploratory operations to meet the public need; (k) continuance of present Federal laws on mining claims on the public domain, good faith administration thereof, and we state our opposition to the plans of the Secretary of the Interior to substitute a leasing system; and (l) larger representation in the Federal Government of men and women especially familiar with Western problems,
Hawaii
Hawaii, which shares the Nation’s obligations equally with the several States, is entitled to the fullest measure of home rule looking toward statehood; and to equality with the several States in the rights of her citizens and in the application of all our national laws.
Alaska
Alaska is entitled to the fullest measure of home rule looking toward statehood.
Puerto Rico
Statehood is a logical aspiration of the people of Puerto Rico who were made citizens of the United States by Congress in 1917; legislation affecting Puerto Rico, in so far as feasible, should be in harmony with the realization of that aspiration.
Palestine
In order to give refuge to millions of distressed Jewish men, women and children driven from their homes by tyranny, we call for the opening of Palestine to their unrestricted immigration and land ownership, so that in accordance with the full intent and purpose of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the Resolution of a Republican Congress in 1922, Palestine may be constituted as a free and democratic Commonwealth. We condemn the failure of the President to insist that the mandatory of Palestine carry out the provision of the Balfour Declaration and of the mandate while he pretends to support them.
Free Press and Radio
In times like these, when whole peoples have found themselves shackled by governments which denied the truth, or, worse, dealt in half-truths or withheld the facts from the public, it is imperative to the maintenance of a free America that the press and radio be free and that full and complete information be available to Americans. There must be no censorship except to the extent required by war necessity.
We insistently condemn any tendency to regard the press or the radio as instruments of the Administration and the use of government publicity agencies for partisan ends. We need a new radio law which will define, in clear and unmistakable language, the role of the Federal Communications Commission.
All channels of news must be kept open with equality of access to information at the source. If agreement can be achieved with foreign nations to establish the same principles, it will be a valuable contribution to future peace.
Vital facts must not be withheld.
We want no more Pearl Harbor reports.
Good Faith
The acceptance of the nominations made by this Convention carries with it, as a matter of private honor and public faith, an undertaking by each candidate to be true to the principles and program herein set forth.
Conclusion
The essential question at trial in this nation is whether men can organize together in a highly industrialized society, succeed, and still be free. That is the essential question at trial throughout the world today.
In this time of confusion and strife, when moral values are being crushed on every side, we pledge ourselves to uphold with all our strength the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and the law of the land. We so pledge ourselves that the American tradition may stand forever as the beacon light of civilization.
Address by Former President Hoover
June 27, 1944
Delegates and guests of the Republican Convention:
We meet at a difficult time for a political convention. Millions of sons of both Republicans and Democrats are fighting and dying side by side for the freedom of mankind. But it is the part of freedom for which they fight that we should carry on at home. Nothing could be a greater shock to freedom than for us to suspend the national election or the soul-searching criticism which will make the more sure that the war will be won and freedom preserved.
Tonight, I propose to speak to you upon some larger forces which are contending in this world convulsion. And the direction our country should take if freedom of men is to be preserved.
You will, I am sure, permit me to claim some personal experience with these larger forces which are today dominating mankind.
Like most of you coming from forebears to whom hard work was the price of existence, I worked with my hands for my daily bread. I have tasted the despair of fruitless search for a job. I have seen the problems of labor both as a workman and as a manager of industry. Long before the First World War professional work took me to many lands under many governments, both of free men and tyrannies. I dealt with the poverty and squalor of Asia and the frozen class barriers of Europe. I participated on behalf of my country in the First World War. I saw the untold destruction and misery from that war. I dealt with famine among millions. I dealt with violence and revolution. I saw the degeneration and regeneration of nations. I saw intimately the making of the peace treaty of Versailles.
And in all those years of travel to every corner of the earth I landed a hundred times on the shores of my country. Every time it was with deep emotion and gratitude. Emotion, because here was the sanctuary of real freedom. Here was a land of opportunity, a land of wider spread comfort; a land of greater kindliness; a land of self-reliance and self-respect among men. And gratitude, because I had been born in this land.
During another twelve years I was placed by my countrymen where I had to contend with peace and war and where I had to deal with the hurricanes of social and economic destruction which were its aftermaths. I have had to deal with explosion of Asiatic antagonism to the West. I have seen the rising tide of totalitarianism sweeping over the world.
Why do I recite all of this? Because the experience that has come to me, the honors that have been given to me demand of me, that I contribute whatever I can to preserve freedom in America and the world.
Over long periods the deep-rooted forces in the world move slowly. Then from accumulated pressures have come explosive periods with wars, convulsions, violent change and a train of stupendous problems. And always a part of the complex forces in these gigantic explosions has been the quest of man to be free.
The first of these gigantic explosions which was to shake the modern world began 170 years ago with the American War of Independence and the French Revolution. After those world wars there followed a hundred years of comparative peace in which the will to freedom spread widely over the earth.
Then came the gigantic explosion of the last World War. Again among the forces in that convulsion was the death clash of free men and dictatorship.
Men inspired by freedom were victorious twenty-five years ago and freedom spread to additional millions of mankind. But victorious men failed to lay the foundations of lasting peace. And from the destruction of that world war came unemployment and poverty over the whole world. And in its wake also came instability of governments, lowering of morals, frustration of ideals and defeatism. Out of this desperate aftermath despotism rose again in the grim shapes of Fascism and Communism. By them the freedom of men was defeated over a large part of the earth.
Now we are in the midst of the greatest explosion in all the history of civilization. Again free men are fighting for the survival of human liberty.
By whatever failures of statesmanship the world were brought to this ghastly Second World War, the realistic fact is that we are in it. There is only one way out of war – that is, to win it. And victory will come again to our armies and fleets for the sons of America do not quit. By winning the war I mean absolute victory over the enemy armies. Any compromise with Hitler or Tōjō will destroy all hope of either freedom or a lasting peace. That is our pledge to these thousands of our men who are dying in the islands of the Pacific and upon the fields of Italy and France.
We are fighting not alone for preservation of freedom, but also for the moral and spiritual foundations of civilization. And it is not alone these foundations under other parts of the world which concerns us today. We must look to our American house.
Recently a canvass was made among youth, both in the armed forces and on the home front, to learn what sort of a world they wanted after this war. I may tell you:
They want a home with a family, a dog and an automobile. They want the security and self-respect of a job. They want to be free to choose their own jobs and not to be ordered to them by a bureaucrat. They want to prove their own worth and have the rewards of their own efforts. They want to be free to plan their own lives. They want to be free to undertake their own adventures.
They want the pleasure of creative work. They want the joy of championing justice for the weak. They want to tell every evil person where he can go. They want a government that will keep down oppression whether from business or labor. They want a fair chance. They want peace in the world that their children never need go through the agonies and sacrifices they have themselves endured.
They want to be free Americans again. Unexpressed in all this there is deep in their souls a force that reaches back into a thousand generations. That is, the ceaseless yearning of humankind to be free. Its advance is as sure as the movement of the stars in the universe. It is as real as the law of gravitation. It is as everlasting as the existence of God.
At each of the great rallies of our party in 1936, in 1940 and today in 1944 I have been called to speak upon the encroachments and the dangers to freedom in our country. Each time I knew even before I spoke that our people would not believe that the impairment of freedom could happen here. Yet each subsequent four years has shown those warnings to have been too reserved, too cautious.
The reason why these warnings have been accurate is simple. From the beginning the New Deal in a milder form has followed the tactics of European revolutions which have gone before. The direction being set, the destination is not difficult to foresee.
The violent forms of these European revolutions all have certain methods in common. They seek to destroy every safeguard of personal liberty and justice. Their method was to create centralized government and a single political party. Purge was their political weapon. Their economic system is regimentation through coercion by bureaucracy. Their faith is the negation of Christianity – that the end justifies the means. Their strategy is to make public opinion by falsehood and to destroy opposition by assassination of character through smearing.
Now I ask you a question. Do you recognize any similarity between these practices and the ten years of the New Deal?
Has not every distress, every sorrow, and every fear of the people been used to further fasten some part of these totalitarian practices upon us?
With the blessing of the Attorney General, the Communists and the fellow travelers are spending vast sums to reelect this regime. Would they spend their money to support the freedom of men?
We all recognize that to win this war many liberties must temporarily be suspended at home. We have had to accept much dictatorship of bureaucracy. We must adopt some of the very practices against which we are fighting. In former wars we had no fear of such temporary suspension of liberty. Abraham Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson believed in freedom of men.
Long before the war, in an address on January 3, 1936, Mr. Roosevelt recounted how he had “built up new instruments of public power” which could “provide shackles for the liberties of the people” in any other hands. Freedom is not promoted by shackles in anybody’s hands. We now know the peacetime shackles they provided for the liberties of the people. They put shackles on our farmers. They put them on honest labor unions, on the freedom of workmen, on honest business enterprise. They have done more. These bureaucrats with these “instruments of power” fanned bitter hatreds between labor unions which divided the ranks of labor. And they fanned hate between employers and workmen. They built class conflict instead of national unity.
Can a regime which forged “shackles on the liberties of the people” in peace time be trusted to return freedom to the people from the shackles of war?
Our present rulers have now issued an abridged edition of the Bill of Rights and the other Constitutional guarantees of the citizens from oppression by government. They call the new version the Four Freedoms. The original edition, issued and perfected by the fathers, contains thirty freedoms, not four only. True freedom abides in the whole thirty. They have enriched the soil and the soul of this land for 170 years. Not one or four, but all of them together have brought the greatest advance in civilization in the history of mankind. In this time of crisis to freedom should we amend or abandon any of them?
The Constitution of the United States is a philosophy of government. It is not suspended even by war. But apparently some of these guarantees in our Constitution have not yet been approved by the OPA, the WLB, and the NLRB, the FEC, the FCC and some other parts of the alphabet.
If you happen to get into the clutches of these agencies, you will find a lot of the spirit of even the Magna Charta has been forgotten to say nothing of the Constitution. As an exercise in history, you might read again some of those rights, such as, trial by jury, the right of appeal to the courts; just compensation for property taken for public use; the provisions against search and seizure, taking of property without due process of law and others.
These thirty freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution will survive only so long as their safeguards also survive. I need not remind you of the steady invasion of states’ rights; the packing of the courts; the dictation to Congress; the constant proof that executive officials arrogate unlawful authority.
Only by a change in administration will our returning soldiers find freedom preserved at home.
The price of freedom is not only vigilance as to rights and their safeguards. It also requires vision and action to keep freedom in step with social and economic change that would restrict it.
There is little real freedom for citizens, who, because of forces beyond their control, must go hungry, cold, sick or ignorant. From the very beginning the faith of America has been that we were our brother’s keeper. In earlier time that responsibility was attended to by neighbors, by counties, by municipalities. Many years ago the state governments began to assume a larger part in these responsibilities. In recent years the federal government has assumed a part of the burden in education, public health and by various experiments in old-age pensions and unemployment insurance. But if all these services are to bear the full fruit in freedom, they must be cleared of politics and discrimination. They must be placed upon expanded and firmer foundations.
For the past seventy years the American people have had to engage in battle for freedom on our own economic front. The fertile soil of freedom has grown gigantic business and labor organizations which have immensely increased our comfort and our standards of living.
The vast majority of both business and labor leaders are honest and patriotic. We cannot, however, permit even a small minority of arrogant and irresponsible business leaders to dominate the freedom of men through monopolies, unfair treatment of labor and manipulation of elections. Neither can we have even a small minority of arrogant and irresponsible labor leaders dominating the freedom of men, dictating who can have jobs and manipulating elections. The truly American concept is that we shall maintain freedom from such abuses by a government of law instead of by the whimsicalities of men or the regimentation of men. We do not need to burn down the house of freedom with the fires of totalitarianism to destroy a few rats.
An imperative problem in freedom is rising before us in the transition from war economy to peace economy. We must convert huge plants and find peacetime jobs in industry for thirty million men and women.
We must begin now to make the blueprints of this transition. But before the blueprints can even be commenced, the major question for America must be determined. That is, in what economic and social climate, under what sort of conditions is this transition to be made? Already the New Dealers have planned a large number of Trojan Horses labeled “Liberalism” and “Freedom” stuffed with a mixture of totalitarian economics and with doubtful statistics. The easiest task of government is to suppress individuals, subject them to bureaucracy and subsidizes them to lean on governments – or a political party. If a government has enough power, it can always do that. The hard task of government, and the really liberal task, is to build self-reliance, stimulate initiative, and thereby create men and women of energy, of dignity and of independence. That is the motive power of America.
We will need every atom of this power in the nation, if we are quickly to convert from guns to plowshares in such fashion as to provide jobs and opportunity for all our people. That can never be had by bureaucratic curbing of initiative, class war, or any other mixture of this totalitarianism with freedom. The decision between these philosophies of government must be made now. For the plans must be established now. We cannot be without a peace program as we were without a preparedness program. We owe it to our fighting men that they find no delays in productive jobs.
Only by a change in administration will these gigantic problems be solved in a climate of freedom.
We are faced already with the gigantic problems of making a peace where freedom can live. The world cannot go on like this. Science daily creates more dreadful weapons. Chivalry and compassion has gone out of modern war. Women and children are slaughtered and starved with the same ruthlessness as armed men. We cannot fail again in making peace that sticks if civilization is to survive.
Already during this war we are making the mold in which the new world will be cast. Some of these shapes are already beginning to emerge.
It is obvious that the hot fires of nationalism are rising out of the emotions of this war just as they do from every war. The Communist internationalism of Russia has been driven out by the nationalist aspiration to free Mother Russia and expand the Empire. Other United Nations are demanding the independent resumption of their possessions. Mr. Churchill has stated that he did not become His Majesty’s Prime Minister to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire. I am sure that if the Republican Party comes to power it will not be to liquidate either the economic welfare or the independence of the United States.
It is obvious from the rise of nationalism that ideas of world super-government, no matter how idealistic, are already dead from these cold blasts of realism. Peace must be based upon cooperation between independent sovereign nations.
It is obvious that three great dominant centers of power will emerge from this war – that is, the United States, Great Britain, Russia and possibly China as a fourth. And France will someday return as a major power.
It is obvious that there must be some sort of world organization to preserve peace. It is proposed that, like the League of Nations, it shall have a general assembly representing all peaceful nations and a council in which the great centers of power have a permanent part. If the general assembly is not to be a mere debating society, it should be split into three divisions – one for Europe, one for Asia and one for the Western Hemisphere. And each region should be given the primary responsibility for peace in its area before the central council is called upon. Especially should that responsibility be imposed on Europe where the dangers of world wars come from.
It is obvious that there must be a long transition period from war to stable peace. Before any organization to preserve peace can succeed, the foundations of political and economic reconstruction of the world must be laid in such a manner as to allay the causes of war. Unless these foundations are securely laid, any temple dedicated to preserving peace will be built upon sand. That was the disaster of the League of Nations. A good league has never cured a bad peace.
It is obvious that the great centers of power in Washington, London, and Moscow will dominate these vital political and economic settlements no matter what peace preserving machinery is set up. Their approach to these settlements must be that of trustees for all nations not their selfish interests. They must not become a disguised military alliance or become the scene for power politics or balance of power. The whole history of the world is punctuated by the collapse of such methods into renewed wars.
It should be obvious that there can be no lasting peace unless the productivity of the world is restored. That can come only by exertion from within nations and from political settlements which give them a chance. The United States must furnish food to thousands of starving towns and cities ravaged by the enemy. We should have long since been feeding the undernourished children, for compassion is not dead in America. The United States can be helpful to all mankind, but it is certain we cannot finance a world WPA.
It is obvious the American people have but one purpose in this war. We want to live in peace. We do not want these horrors again. We want no territory except some Pacific island bases that will protect the United States. We want no domination over any nation. We want no indemnities. We want no special privileges.
But we do want the freedom of nations from the domination of others, call it by whatever name we will – liberation of peoples, self-government or just restored sovereignty. We want it both in the cause of freedom and we want it because we know that there can be no lasting peace if enslaved peoples must ceaselessly strive and fight for freedom.
There are constants in the relations between nations that are more nearly to be found in their history, their surroundings, their ideals, their hearts, than in the declarations of their officials. Foreign relations are not sudden things created by books or speeches or banquets. The history of nations is more important than their oratory.
The ideal of freedom for other people’s lies deep in American history and the American heart. It did not arise from Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points or from the Atlantic Charter. It was embedded in the hearts of the American people by the suffering and sacrifice with which they won their own independence. It was in response to the cry for liberation and freedom of peoples that we established the Monroe Doctrine, which we fought the Mexican War, the Spanish War, and the First World War and now, after twenty years, we again sacrifice the sons of America to the call of freedom.
Without this spiritual impulse of freedom for others we would not have engaged in a single one of these wars. Had we not been concerned with the freedom of China, we would not have been attacked at Pearl Harbor. Only because freedom was in jeopardy in all Europe are we making this gigantic effort.
Therefore, the American people are not likely to welcome any settlements which do not include the independence of Poland as well as every other country which desires to be free from alien domination. Americans do not want this war to end in the restriction of freedom among nations. It is obvious that the United States will emerge from this war the strongest military, and thus political, power in the world. Our power to bring freedom to the world must not be frittered away.
During the past month Forrest Davis has published a circumstantial account of the Tehran Conference. It is said to have been authorized. It has not been denied. It relates to President Roosevelt’s new peace method, called by him, The Great Design. A peace method under this same name, The Great Design, was proposed by Henry IV, a French monarch, some 350 years ago. It has some similarities to Mr. Roosevelt’s idea.
We are told Mr. Roosevelt had this Great Design in mind during his recent conference at Tehran.
So far as these published descriptions go this method is power politics and balance of power diplomacy. That is not the diplomacy of freedom. And worse still apparently the United States is to furnish the balance between Britain and Russia. If that be the case you may be sure that we will sooner or later gain the enmity of both of them. The basis of lasting peace for America must be friendship of nations not brokerage of power politics.
There may have been no political commitments at Tehran. But certainly since that Conference we have seen a series of independent actions by Russia which seem to be the negative of restored sovereignty to certain peoples. Certainly the Atlantic Charter has been sent to the hospital for major amputations of freedom among nations. The American people deserve a much fuller exposition of this Great Design.
And the Tehran Conference raises another question. Under our form of government the President cannot speak either for the Congress or the conclusions of American public opinion. The only way for America to succeed in foreign relations is by open declaration of policies. They must first have seasoned consideration and public understanding. These do not come by secret diplomacy. America cannot successfully bluff, intrigue or play the sordid game of power politics.
Nothing contributed more to the tragedy of Versailles than the suspicion and misunderstandings which arose when the heads of states sought to persuade and beguile each other in secret. Such unchecked bartering results in implications, deductions and appeasements will rise to plague us.
Direct conferences by heads of state and their military leaders on military questions are useful. But under our institutions and our public opinion negotiation in political matters with our allies should be conducted by Secretaries of State. The President of the United States is far more influential delivering considered judgments from the White House. The voice from that pulpit is far more potent than any beguilement in private conversation in some foreign city, or any personal power diplomacy.
President Wilson also had a “great design” most of which was lost by the blandishments and pressures of personal negotiation. Every thinking American views with great apprehension a repetition of 1919. America needs a change in administration to get out of personal power diplomacy
There is a force for freedom as old as life itself which will emerge with new vividness from the complexities of the times. Not only life but freedom itself must find regeneration from youth.
In every generation youth presses forward toward achievement. Each generation has the right to build its own world out of the materials of the past, cemented by the hopes of the future.
Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die. And it is youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow and the triumphs that are the aftermath of war.
This convention is handing the leadership of the Republican Party to a new generation. And soon to support these younger men there will be an oncoming generation who will differ from all others. Twelve million young men matured far beyond their years under the supreme tests of war will be coming home. To them will be added the other millions of young men and women serving in the shops, on the farms and in the offices. They also, by the responsibilities they have shared, have had their minds and understanding advanced beyond their age. From the tremendous experience in this war this new generation will have grown in responsibility, in dignity, in initiative and skills.
And these young men who are offering their lives on the beaches and in the mud, those who are fighting in the air, those who battle on the seas, will return to demand justification for their sacrifices and for the sacrifice of their buddies who have died. They will insist upon a reckoning and they will be stern and hard faced. They will reject the easy language of politics, the straddling and compromises, and the senseless phrases of skilled ghostwriters. And they will be watchful of political leaders lest they again be led into the giving of the blood and risking the future of their families from failures in international statesmanship. Today, more than any new generation that we have known, youth will demand a voice in its own destiny.
I rejoice that this is to be. Youth can bring the courage, the ideals and confidence which can erect a new society in America upon the debris of two world wars. We need their courage as never before.
We, the older generation, who have learned something of the great forces in the world, can advise and counsel. The issues are not new, and we can distill principles from the experience of the past. But youth must act and the past can never wholly point the way through the changing future.
And let me say this to the many younger Republicans in this convention. On each election night, I read of able young Republican men and women who are chosen by their countrymen to positions of trust and eminence. I see men whom I have known since they cut their eye teeth in district politics, rise to state and city government, to the Congress, and to the Governorship in their state. From that I know that our party is a living institution recruiting from the oncoming generation its brilliant men and women and setting them to work for the good of our country. And it is through this living institution, the Republican Party that I call upon the younger generations to take up the weapons for American liberty to fight the good fight in the manner and according to the lights of their own time.
And may I say this to youth: You have a great material heritage. You are receiving millions of farms and homes built by your forebears. There have been prepared for you magnificent cities, great shops and industries. But you have even a greater heritage. That is a heritage of religious faith of morals and of liberty. There is no problem which confronts the nation that you cannot solve within this framework.
You in your own manner can lead our people away from the jungle of disorderly, cynical and bitter ideas, the topsy-turvy confusions, the hopelessness and lack of faith and defeatism that have haunted this nation over these dozen years. You can lead our nation back to unity of purpose again.
We of the older generation know that you will carry forward. We wish you to carry the torch bravely and aloft. Carry it with the dauntless assurance of your forebears who faced the chill of the ocean, the dangers of the forest and desert, the loneliness of the pioneer to build upon this continent a nation dedicated to justice and liberty and the dignity of the individual man. Watch over it. Vigilantly guard it. Protect it from foes, within and without. Make for this a sanctuary and dedicate it to God and all mankind.
Youth of the Republican Party! I, representing the generation of your fathers, greet you and send you forth crusaders for freedom which alone can come under a Constitutional Republic – a Constitutional America.
We, who have lived long, turn our eyes upon your generation lovingly with hope, with prayer and with confidence for our country.
Address by Clare Boothe Luce (R-CT)
June 27, 1944
We have been called together in a time of historic crisis to choose die next President of the United States. Plainly the honor of speaking to you in this hour so fraught with consequence has come to me because I am a woman. Through one woman’s voice our Party seeks to honor the millions of American women in war-supporting industries, the millions in Red Cross work, and the thousands upon thousands in civil service, in hospital and canteen and volunteer work. Our Party honors the women in the armed services and our truly noble Army nurses. Their courage has written a new chapter for American history books. Above all we honor the wives and sisters and sweethearts and mothers of our fighting men. The morale of the home front has been largely in their keeping. They have kept it to the height of the morale on the battlefront.
And yet, I know and you know that American women do not wish their praises sung as women any more than they wish political pleas made to them as women. They feel no differently from men about doing their patriotic jobs. They feel no differently from men about the ever-growing threats to good government. They feel no differently about the inefficiency, abusiveness, evasion, self-seeking, and personal whim in the management of the nation’s business, which are little by little distorting our democracy into a dictatorial bumbledom. And certainly, they feel no differently about pressing this war to the enemy’s innermost gates, or creating from the sick havocs of war itself, a fair and healthy peace.
But there is one thing that women feel, not differently but more deeply about than men. That is the welfare of their sons and brothers and husbands in the service.
In this crowded convention hall, it is rare to see a woman without the little red and white pin whose blue star shows that somewhere on land, in the air, at sea, there is a man in uniform who is very dear to her. It is no more than the truth to say that he is dearer to her than all else in the world. To speak of what is closest to the mind and heart of an American woman today is inevitably to speak of the man who is known affectionately at home, and fearsomely on every battle front, as G.I. Joe.
American women want these minutes and, yes, every minute of our thought and concern to turn on this fighting man. His hopes, his aspirations, his dangerous present, and his still uncertain future, are uppermost in their minds.
Now, G.I. Joe’s last name is Legion, because there are about 12 million of him. What his immediate wants are today, his generals know best. Mostly they are more tools, and better tools, which will increase his margin of safety and multiply his chances of victory. To the filling of these wants, all Americans are pledged to the limit of their capacity.
But this convention is gathered together to consider not so much G.I. Joe’s immediate wants, as to clarify what his wants are likely to be in the next four years, and to plan to meet those wants.
Before this convention is done it will clearly interpret his long-term wants in keynote and platform, and to the honoring of them our candidate will pledge himself.
The great Norwegian, Ibsen, said, “I hold that man most in the right who is most closely in league with the future.”
We shall prove to be most in the right in November. For here the Republican Party will choose the man most closely in league with G.I. Joe’s future as he and his family see it.
We know that Joe himself is not thinking of his future wants at this hour. He is too busy engaging a desperate enemy. If you asked him today what he wants of the future, he would probably say, “I want to go home, or course. But I want to go home by way of Berlin and Tokyo.”
And this tremendous and heroic want of Joe’s to sail into the roadsteads of Yokohama, and march by the waters of the Rhine, is alone a greater guarantee of the future security of our nation, than any guarantee we can offer. This is Joe’s gift, beyond price, to America. We have come together here to nominate a President who will jealously and prayerfully guard that gift all his years in office.
Joe wants his country to be secure, from here out, because no matter how confused some people may be at home, there is no doubt in Joe’s mind what he is fighting for. Joe knew it the minute he landed on foreign soil. A fellow named Col. Robert L. Scott wrote it in a book called God Is My Co-Pilot. And it was never said better by any man – “Know what we are fighting for? …It’s the understanding that comes when you’ve seen the rest of the world, when you’ve seen the filth and corruption of all the hell-holes Americans are fighting in today… Then you know… for it’s seared on your soul – that we have the best country in the Universe… You know that you have everything to live for and the Japs and Germans have everything to die for.”
We are come together here to nominate the kind of President who in the years ahead will keep Joe’s America – America: That is to say, a country in which a man and woman have everything to live for.
But wait. If today you asked Joe, in the heat of battle, why he wanted to get to Berlin and Tokyo, why he wanted to keep America, America, you might get a very unexpected and sobering answer. He’d say that the biggest reason was that he wanted to vindicate and avenge G.I. Jim. And because G.I. Jim is the biggest reason today that Joe is fighting like a man possessed of devils and guarded by angels, we had better talk of him in the time that remains to us.
Who is G.I. Jim? Ask rather, who was G.I. Jim? He was Joe’s pal, his buddy, his brother. Jim was the fellow who lived next door to you. But “He shall return no more to his house, neither shall his place know him anymore.” Jim was, you see, immobilized by enemy gunfire, immobilized for all eternity.
But Jim’s last name was not Legion. You read casualty lists. You have seen Jim’s last name there: Smith, Martof, Johnson, Chang, Novak, LeBlanc, Konstantakis, Yanado, O’Toole, Svendson, Sanchez, Potavin, Goldstein, Rossi, Nordal, Wroblewski, McGregor, Schneider, Jones. . . You see, Jim was the grandson and great-grandson of many nations. But he was the son of the United States of America.
He was the defender the of the Republic, and the lover of Liberty. And he died as his father died in 1918, and their fathers in 1898, 1861, in 1846 and in 1812, in 1776. He died to make a more perfect union, “that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
His young bones bleach on the tropical roads of Bataan. white cross marks his narrow grave on some Pacific island. His dust dulls the crimson of the roses that bloom in the ruins of an Italian village. The deserts of Africa, the jungles of Burma, the rice fields of China, the plains of Assam, the jagged hills of Attu, the cold depths of the Seven Seas, the very snows of the Arctic, are the richer for mingling with the mortal part of him. Today his blood flecks the foam of the waves that fall on the Normandy beachheads. He drops again and again amid the thunder of shells, while silently down on the tragic soil of France the white apple blossoms drift over him. Yes, even as it was in 1918. Or, nameless phrase, tantalizing and inscrutable as the misty black and bottomless pit of time, Jim is just “Missing in action.” Then all that marks him anywhere is a gold star in the window, and the tears that are silently shed for him.
There are many gold stars on the women sitting in these halls. To all who loved Jim, even more than to those who love Joe, everything we do and say here must be reasonable and inspiring.
We are come together here to nominate a President who will make sure that Jim’s sacrifice shall not prove useless in the years that lie ahead.
For a fighting man dies for the future as well as the past; to keep all that was fine of his country’s yesterday, and to give it a chance for a finer tomorrow.
Do we here in this convention dare ask if Jim’s heroic death in battle was historically inevitable? If this war might not have been averted? We know that this war was in the making everywhere in the world after 1918. In the making here, too. Might not skillful and determined American statesmanship have helped to unmake it all through the ‘30s? Or, when it was clear to our Government that it was too late to avert war, might not truthful and fearless leadership have prepared us better for it in material and in morale, in arms and in aims? These are bitter questions. And the answers to bitter questions belong to time’s perspective. Being human, we Republicans are partisan. But being partisan, we risk being unjust if we try to answer these questions in days so fateful. But this, even as partisans, we dare say: The last twelve years have not been Republican years. Maybe Republican Presidents during the ‘20s were overconfident that prosperity would last at home, and that sanity would prevail abroad. But it was not a Republican President who dealt with the visibly rising menaces of Hitler and Mussolini and Hirohito. Ours was not the administration that promised young Jim’s mother and father and neighbors and friends economic security and peace. Yes, peace. No Republican President gave these promises which were kept to their ears, but broken to their hearts. For this terrible truth cannot be denied: these promises, which were given by a government that was elected again and again and again because ft made them, lie quite as dead as young Jim lies now. Jim was the heroic heir of the unheroic Roosevelt decade: a decade of confusion and conflict that ended in war.
In war itself, Jim learned hard and challenging truths that his Government was too soft and cynical, in peace, to tell him. In battle he learned that all life is risk; that a fellow has first to rely on himself, before his comrades can rely on him; he learned that perfect teamwork is possible only after a man is witting to stand up to the worst alone. Jim found out that a large part of his security lay in his own willingness to take a lot of responsibility for it. That being the case, he asked no more than the best tools, a chance to use his own brains in the pinches, and the kind of leaders who were willing to risk their skins a little, too, when the pinches came. Of course all this knowledge, born in the struggle to survive, will be of more use to Joe, the veteran, than to Jim. For in the end Jim also learned that the only perfect democracy is. the democracy of the dead.
But Jim did not complain too much about his government. Sure, mistakes, awful mistakes, had been made by his Government. But Jim figured that anybody can make mistakes. Maybe his friends and neighbors had made them, too. How could his friends and neighbors tell that they had been going for some promises that could not, or should not, be kept? How could they tell that some of them were never spoken to be kept? Maybe they’d have talked differently, acted differently, voted differently, if they’d known- all the facts. But maybe they wouldn’t. Anyway, Jim has taken the rap for everyone, from the man in the White House, down to the man in the house around the corner. And it was OK with him. Jim was ready to pay with his life for his countrymen’s mistakes, anytime, if it gave the homefolks and good old Joe and his family, a fresh start on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, in a world wiped clean of the Nazi marauders and Japanese spoilers.
If Jim could stand here and talk to you, he’d say:
Listen, folks, the past wasn’t perfect. But skip it. Get on with the business of making this old world better. You’ve got the land, the tools, the know-how, and big bunches of people who want to pull together. No country ever bad more. And you’ve got great and friendly nations who want to pitch in with you, like they pitched in with me and Joe to fight the Japs and Germans. Take your hats off to the past, but take your coats off to the future. I didn’t look back when I struck the beaches. Is it tougher at home for you fellows?
This is what Jim would say if he could stand hare and talk to you. Well, I suspect Jim is at this convention, although he is no longer, you understand, a Republican or a Democrat. But a man who dies to keep America just might like to stay on a bit to see whether or not he’s really succeeded. So, if Jim were here, it might be the most natural thing in the other-world. Maybe he was brought here by some friend who knows his way around American presidential conventions. Yes, maybe he was brought here by Gen. George Washington. All Americans know that the General’s spirit has watched over every gathering where Presidents have been picked for 147 years. And if that is the case, then Jim has learned a lot he never knew before about American Presidents. For example, while Jim always knew from the history books that the General was a soldier without blemish, now he knows that Washington was a President who, if he erred, as all Presidents do, erred with integrity. He knows that Gen. Washington might have become America’s king, and that President Washington might have stayed in power all his days, the early days of our weak and infant Republic. They were days of terrible crisis and stupendous emergencies. Wild disorders of frontier life, political confusion worse than any we know, marked Washington’s last years in office. And there were great social and economic injustices still to be corrected. Then every man said that George Washington was the indispensable man. Who understood and could better save the new Liberty he had given a new nation? Jim always knew that Washington so loved his country and the institutions that he helped to author, that he refused more than two terms. That was a tradition Washington’s spirit never saw broken at any president-making gathering until it was broken by the man who promised in this very city 12 years ago that “happy days are here again,” who promised peace, yes peace, to Jim’s mother and father. But Jim knows now why Washington is calm, even so. Why? Well, Washington knows better today than he knew a century and a half ago, that no one man can save our nation’s institutions. And no one man can wreck them. He knows that the people alone can save or destroy their country’s institutions. But free men always have another chance to make their own history, because, in peace or in war, free men must always choose their President. Among free men, a political choice is inescapable. Even those who refuse to choose and stay home from the polls, make a choice: They choose not to choose. This is the noble paradox of a Republic.
Oh, yes, Jim and his friend, the father of his country, want us to choose well, as well as we know how here: they want us to choose a man who would rather tell the truth than be President; to choose a man who loves his country and its institutions more than he loves power. But they do not want us to pretend that any one Republican, more than any one Democrat is indispensable. They want us to think as Americans. And as Americans, they want us to raise here a “standard to which the wise and honest can repair.” They know that the event, today as yesterday, is in the hands of God.
And this we will do, for Jim’s sake. And then we can say, before all our fellow citizens, that his spirit and Washington’s spirit will be happier here than at the Democratic Convention.
Then Jim can exultantly say:
I am the Risen Soldier, I have come
From a thousand towns, the city blocks
The factories, the fields of this fair land…
Many am I,
Yet truly one, the Son of many streams
That poured their wealth into the common cup
The wide and golden cup of Liberty…
I am the Risen Soldier; though I die
I shall live on and, living, still achieve
My country’s mission – Liberty in Truth…
Lord, it is sweet to die – as it were good
To Live, to strive for these United States,
Which, in Your wisdom, You have willed should be
A beacon to the world, a living shrine
Of Liberty and Charity and Peace.It is as Americans that we are gathered here. We come to choose a President who need not apologize for the mistakes of the past but who will redeem them, who need not explain G.I. Jim’s death but who will justify it. Apology and explanation must suffice for the next convention that meets in this city.
We Republicans are here to build a greater and freer America, not only for, but with millions of young, triumphant boastful G.I. Joes, who are fighting their way home to us.
Let the next convention that meets here point to Joe’s homecoming with foreboding. Let another Party call Joe, who has saved us, “the terrible problem of the returned veteran.” Another candidate, not ours, can hold his return as an economic club over the heads of the people. We are Americans! We say, “Joe, we welcome you. So hurry home, Joe, by way of Berlin and Tokyo. We need you to build this greater America.”
The Pittsburgh Press (June 27, 1944)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
On the Cherbourg Peninsula, France – (wireless)
For a couple of days, I rode around the Cherbourg Peninsula with Bert Brandt, war photographer for ACME Newspictures.
You may have seen by now some of the pictures Bert took during that time, so I would like to tell you how they came about.
Picture No. 1: This showed a large crowd of French people, led by the mayor of their town, advancing toward an American soldier with outstretched hands of welcome.
Well, that was taken in Barneville. The people really did welcome us, but of course the actual picture had to be staged.
The people were very pleased and eager. The soldier Bert picked out to receive the throng was Sgt. Max Monsorno of Woodhaven, Long Island. He was one of the 9th Division men left to guard the town after the others had pressed on through.
Bert instructed the crowd in its act, through the only Barneville woman who spoke English. She told them how they should advance toward the sergeant, all smiling and be sure to look at the sergeant and not look at the camera. Then Bert yelled “Go!” The mayor walked towards Sgt. Monsorno with his hand out. The crowd surged up behind him. Bert snapped a picture and then shouted at them to do it again. It seemed the mayor wasn’t smiling big enough to suit Bert.
More instructions. More interpretations. A little girl jumped up and down with delight. The older people got more excited. Sgt. Monsorno gave the mayor a colossal stage smile, to show him how.
Then Bert yelled “Go!” again, the mayor almost cut his head in two with a smile, and the little girls threw their flowers, and the whole crowd waved their arms. Everybody was very happy, including Bert. And we hope we made you very happy too.
Picture No. 2: Dead horses and wrecked German vehicles along the roadside. The circumstances were these:
We had caught the Germans trying to retreat down the road from Bricquebec to Barneville, and plastered them with artillery. The devastation along that road was immense.
The Germans were moving with many horse-drawn vehicles as well as trucks. They were in two wheeled French work carts, in fancy passenger bugles, in light wagons along the style of our own Wild West covered wagons.
At spots, the wreckages piled so high that traffic couldn’t get through until our own engineers dragged the debris off the road. Hundreds of carts and guns and dead horses littered the road. German bodies lay sprawling big holes, pockmarked the macadam, burned out trucks lay dead by the roadsides, masses have broken and entwining telephone wires snarled the highway. That was the scene when Bert Brandt took Picture No. 2.
The picture was of a bulldozer methodically pushing dead horses and spattered trucks, all in the same scoopful off a road into an orchard. The dozer driver went after his job with a grim got-to-do-it look on his face.
There were scores of pitifully dead horses within a space of a few yards. Some of them lay as if asleep. Others were in distorted, gnarled positions, their leg bones cracked and broken as the bulldozer pushed. A little bunch of French people stood looking on.
Bert took his pictures while standing on the hood of a command car in which he had been riding. I sat in the back seat, calling to him to hurry up and finish. Of all the war I’ve seen, that is the site which has come the nearest to making me sick at the stomach.
Picture No. 3: Two sweet little French girls, about six years old, throwing flowers to me as we passed them in our car. The circumstances:
We were on our way back to camp after taking the picture of the horses. We passed through a concrete roadblock Germans had built just north of Bricquebec. As we passed through to a little girl standing on top through some flowers to us, but they missed in the flowers fell on the road behind us. We had gone about 50 yards when Bert said, “Say, that would make a picture. Let’s go back and get it.”
So, we backed up, got out and indicated by sign language that we wanted the little girls to do it again. They were smart as whips. They got the idea instantly. Furthermore, there were two of the prettiest little girls you ever saw in your life.
We picked some more flowers for them. Then Bert got set in the road ahead. I got in the back seat. Bert had me put my goggles back over my eyes so that it would look as if we were going fast, although we were actually barely moving for the picture.
We had to retake the picture three times. The little girls, in their eagerness, would throw the flowers too soon. Finally, I acted as director, and as the car approached, I kept saying, “No, no, no,” and then I remembered the French word “maintenant,” which means “now,” and so at the right moment I called out “maintenant!” and they threw flowers and everything was perfect.
Then I got out of my car and I had no sooner hit the ground. Then I was attacked by my two little friends, plus half a dozen more who had arrived and who had been watching and they were all over me like a swarm of bees laughing and kissing and hugging me till I was almost smothered.
It was completely impulsive and I don’t think it had anything to do with the liberation or the war. I think it was motivated by the simple fundamental that the French like to kiss people. They don’t even care who they kiss. Vive la France!
Völkischer Beobachter (June 28, 1944)
Invasion und Gangstertum
pk. Noch in keinem Kriege haben deutsche Soldaten so klar erkannt, wofür sie kämpfen und wen sie zum Gegner haben, wie in diesen Tagen; nicht allein durch die Methoden, womit der Feind diesen Krieg führt, sind ihnen die klaren Erkenntnisse der Situation vermittelt worden, sondern auch durch die Pamphlete jener Kriegsstifter, die weitab vom Schuss ihren Haß und ihren Unflat in Kübeln über das deutsche Volk und seine Führung ausschütten.
Es erübrigt sich, über den jüdisch-bolschewistischen Gegner noch Worte zu verlieren, denn unsere Ostkämpfer haben mit eigenen Augen gesehen, gegen welches Untermenschentum es hier zu kämpfen gilt, welche Gefahr der Zivilisation von dieser Seite droht. Nicht nur Deutschland, sondern ganz Europa. Umso perfider erscheinen uns die Argumente, die man von London und Washington aus in die Welt hinaussandte und die von der Befreiung Europas vom Joch des Nationalsozialismus sprechen. Jene „christlichen“ Soldaten, die man gegen uns aufmarschieren ließ, entpuppten sich als Kulturschänder, Mörder und Gangster, die nicht nur gegebene Befehle ausführten, wenn sie ihre Bomben auf Wohnviertel deutscher Städte warfen und Tausende von Frauen und Kindern umbrachten, sondern sie erklärten sich auch identisch mit den Auftraggebern, indem sie sich selbst als Mörder-Vereinigung bezeichneten.
In den Tagen der Invasion erhielten wir nun gerade im Westen die Beweise für die aller Menschlichkeit hohnsprechende Art der feindlichen Kriegführung, wenn wir sahen, wie feindliche Jagdflugzeuge im Tiefflug über Flüchtlingskolonnen hinwegflogen und mit ihren Bordwaffen französische Frauen und Kinder niedermachten, dann wieder zurückkehrten und verwundete oder auch schwerverwundete auf den Straßen liegende Zivilisten noch einmal unter Feuer nahmen. Es überraschte uns nicht mehr, als wir bei einem in Gefangenschaft geratenen kanadischen Hauptmann Notizen über eine Offiziersbesprechung fanden, in denen es wörtlich hieß, daß die den Verkehr im Invasionsraum behindernden französischen Flüchtlingskolonnen rücksichtslos zu überfahren und zu beschießen seien.
In Caen lenkten britische Aufklärer nach dem ersten Bombardement der Stadt die „Liberators“ auf das Hippodrom, in dem Tausende der Zivilbevölkerung Zuflucht gesucht hatten, da es als nichtmilitärisches Objekt genau zu erkennen war. Die Briten warteten, bis weitere der Flüchtlinge im Hippodrom versammelt waren, um dann den Massenmord mit umso größerem Erfolg zu begehen. Sie beschossen nicht nur mit Bordwaffen deutsche Mannschaftswagen, sondern griffen auch zivile Krankenautos des Französischen Roten Kreuzes an, bombardierten weit sichtbar gekennzeichnete Hospitäler und Verbandplätze und fuhren ihrerseits in den gleichen Nächten mit hellerleuchteten Lazarettschiffen von der Normandieküste nach England, weil sie wussten, daß deutsche Schnellbootkommandanten niemals eines solchen Verbrechens fähig sein konnten, Torpedos auf einen Transport mit Verwundeten abzuschießen.
So schreiten die Invasoren über Berge von Frauen- und Kinderleichen, die zu Tausenden in den Städten und Dörfern der Normandie liegen, in die Landstraßen hinein. Der Zynismus dieser Art Menschen, die sich selber als „Befreier“ Frankreichs bezeichneten, ging noch weiter: Kanadische Fallschirmjäger, die im Raum Caen abgesprungen waren, zwangen französische Frauen und Kinder, sich nach der Art von Wegelagerern zu tarnen, indem sie sich hinter diesen am Straßenrand aufgestellten harmlosen Zivilisten im Straßengraben verbargen, um in den ersten Stunden der Invasion, in denen die Absprungräume noch nicht restlos gesäubert waren, ahnungslos vorbeifahrende Fahrzeuge abzuknallen. Sie verbargen sich in Scheunen und forderten unter Bedrohung mit der Waffe französische Bauern auf, in ihrer unmittelbaren Nähe der Feldarbeit weiter nachzugehen, um so ungestört aus dem Hinterhalt glatten Meuchelmord begehen zu können. Was bedeutet dagegen schon die Nachahmung des sowjetischen Beispiels, erbeutete Lastwagen mit Offizieren und Soldaten in deutschen Uniformen zu besetzen.
Die Liste dieser verbrecherischen Methoden erhebt keinen Anspruch auf Vollständigkeit, aber sie genügt, um die hinterhältige Kampfesweise des Gegners zu charakterisieren. Man legt sich als deutscher Soldat trotz dieser schon in der Sowjetunion und auch in Italien Wiederholt erlebten Gangstermethoden gerade in diesen Tagen immer wieder die Frage vor, wie ein englischer oder us.-amerikanischer Soldat solcher Verbrechen fähig sein kann. Man stellt diese Überlegungen an, obwohl die Terrorflieger in deutschen Gefangenenlagern oder vor englischen Mikrophonen längst eine Antwort darauf gaben. Weit aufschlussreicher als all diese Äußerungen kalten Zynismus ist jedoch die Antwort, die uns eine im Nachlass eines kanadischen Seemannes gefundene amerikanische Zeitschrift gibt.
Das amerikanische Magazin Look veröffentlichte in seiner Ausgabe vom 4. April 1944 das Ergebnis eines Rundbriefes in einem Jungenklub in Neuyork, wo Neun- bis Dreizehnjährige aufgefordert werden, folgende Fragen zu beantworten:
Was würdet ihr mit Hitler tun, wenn ihr ihn Befangen hättet? In einer Bildreportage, die Aufnahmen von sechs Jungen, ihre Namen und ihr Alter bringt, werden dann der Leserschaft die Antworten serviert. Die Aussagen dieser Vertreter der jüngsten us.-amerikanischen Generation möchten selbst dem Gegner die Schamröte ins Gesicht treiben. Aus diesen Erklärungen, die deutlich die Federführung des Juden aufweisen, spricht nicht nur ein infernalischer Haß, sondern auch eine an das Unglaublichste grenzende Verderbnis und Unmoralität.
Bis auf eines erklärten sich diese Kinder eines modernen Staates, der einen Anspruch auf Zivilisation und Ehre erhebt, bereit, den Führer persönlich zu ermorden. Sie gehen aber noch weiter und schildern die Foltermethoden, die sie dabei anwenden wollen mit einer so brutalen Grausamkeit, daß man zurückschreckt vor diesem Abgrund an innerer Verkommenheit und Fäulnis; von Herzlosigkeit zu sprechen, bedeutet schon eine zu milde Verurteilung dieser niederen Gesinnung und Schlechtigkeit, die mehr als auf eine in Haß erzogene Jugend auf ihre Erzieher und Führer zurückfällt. Man glaubt Stellen aus dem Talmud zu lesen, wenn man dies Pamphlet in den Händen hält, das bisher ohne Beispiel in der feindlichen Hetzliteratur dasteht und die Hassartikel eines Juden Rosenfeld, der über die Sterilisation des deutschen Volkes plädierte, weit in den Schatten stellt. Jetzt erkennt man die Ursachen und Ausgangspunkte der Gangstermethoden, mit denen die seit Jahren in einen abgrundtiefen Haß gegen Deutschland erzogenen und aufgeputschten Trabanten Judes diesen Krieg gegen anständige und faire Soldaten wie auch gegen Frauen und Kinder führen.
Unsere Begegnungen mit diesen Söldnern einer jüdisch-kapitalistischen und bolschewistischen Clique haben uns oft genug Beweise geliefert, daß dieser Haß nicht allein dem Führer gilt, sondern dem ganzen deutschen Volke, seinen Männern, Frauen und Kindern ohne Ausnahme. Wir wissen schon lange, daß es in diesem Ringen auf Leben und Tod keine Gnade mehr geben kann und darf und jeder einzelne Gegner ein verantwortlicher Vollstrecker dieser verbrecherischen Befehle ist.
Wir erkennen weiter, daß Haß nur mit Haß beantwortet werden kann, und das werden wir tun und schwören es bei unseren gefallenen Brüdern, unseren gemordeten Vätern, Müttern, Frauen, Kindern und Schwestern.
Kriegsberichter MAX KARL
Deutsche Verteidiger mauern sich ein –
Im Endkampf um Cherbourg
Von unserem Berichterstatter in der Schweiz
b—r. Bern, 27. Juni –
Während des Endkampfes in Cherbourg kann auch der Feind nicht umhin, die außerordentliche Tapferkeit anzuerkennen, mit der die deutschen Soldaten aller Waffengattungen auf diesem Platz und in seiner Umgebung bis zum letzten ausharren und kämpfen.
Alle Darstellungen anglo-amerikanischer Berichterstatter geben Beispiele von der Hartnäckigkeit, mit der die deutschen Truppen sich schlagen. Zahlreiche Stützpunkte und Widerstandsnester hielten und halten sich im Rücken der Amerikaner. Ja, als diese eine der stärksten Stellungen, das Fort du Roule bereits fest in der Hand zu haben glaubten, wurde es ihnen durch einen plötzlichen Zugriff der Deutschen nochmals entrissen.
Auf amerikanischer Seite erklärt man dazu, daß dieses Fort durch ein Netz von unterirdischen Gängen mit der Stadt Cherbourg selbst verbunden sei. Aus diesen Gängen seien die Deutschen, nachdem die Amerikaner den oberen Teil des Forts schon genommen hatten, wieder in die Stellung gelangt. „In diesen geheimen Gängen“ heißt es weiter, „sind nicht nur Maschinengewehre, sondern auch gewaltige Küstengeschütze aufgestellt. Die amerikanischen Infanteristen haben wiederholt versucht, die Eingänge zu diesen unterirdischen Gewölben zu finden, mußten aber jedesmal unverrichteter Dinge zurückkehren.“
Über den weiteren Kampf um diesen Stützpunkt wird unter anderem noch berichtet:
In dem Fort haben sich die deutschen Soldaten eingemauert. Wir sehen verschiedene Öffnungen in den Fassaden, die erst vor kurzer Zeit mit Zement verschlossen worden sind. Der Zement ist noch feucht. Ein Eindringen war unmöglich. Alles war zugemauert und nur Löcher für die Geschütze waren offen und aus diesen blitzte es in kurzen Abständen.
Nicht weniger erbittert wird in der Stadt Cherbourg selbst gekämpft. Darüber wird berichtet:
In jeder Straße sind Scharfschützen und MG-Posten in Häusern und Dachstuben verborgen. Schwarze Rauchwolken liegen über der Stadt, da große Brände seit mehr als 12 Stunden in den Docks und im Arsenal wüten. Die Deutschen leisten rund um die Stadt Widerstand, in Granville, Beaumont-Hague und Saint-Croix-Hague. Gleichzeitig scheint die Haltung der Besatzung der Küstenbatterie von Cap Hague darauf hinzudeuten, daß die Deutschen, wenn sie auch Cherbourg als Verteidigungsstellung aufgeben, doch die Absicht haben, die Alliierten an der Besetzung des Hafens so lange wie möglich zu hindern.
Der Hafen ist nicht mehr benützbar und Meldungen aus der Stadt besagen, daß es viel Zeit beanspruchen wird ihn zu säubern, da Schiffe in den Einfahrten versenkt wurden und schwere Zerstörungen an den Anlagen festzustellen sind. Die Rolle der deutschen Marineartillerie wird verschiedentlich betont. Ein Korrespondent der Agentur Reuter hat an Bord des schweren Kreuzers Glasgow am Sonntagnachmittag den Kampf zwischen einem großen Geschwader unter Führung des amerikanischen Konteradmirals Deyo gegen die deutsche Marineartillerie erlebt.
Die deutschen Küstenbatterien eröffneten das Feuer Punkt 12,10 Uhr. Sofort waren alle alliierten Kriegsschiffe an der Beschießung beteiligt. Die deutschen Batterien schossen sehr gut, so daß Konteradmiral Deyo das Zeichen zum Abbruch der Beschießung gab. 20 Minuten später waren wir wieder aus einer Entfernung von 15.000 Meter vor Cherbourg. Alle Schiffe feuerten auf eine Küstenbatterie südöstlich von Cherbourg, die immer noch antwortete. Andere Küstenbatterien schienen dagegen zum Schweigen gebracht zu sein. Plötzlich erhielt die Glasgow einen Treffer. Konteradmiral Deyo gab neuerdings den Befehl zu weiterem Rückzug, da nun die Aufgabe des Geschwaders zu Ende war.
Warum die Aufgabe des Geschwaders zu Ende war, obwohl die deutschen Batterien, wie der Treffer auf die Glasgow zeigte, noch durchaus kampffähig waren, wird nicht angedeutet.
Dr. Koppen: Unser Kampf
Berlin, 27. Juni –
Als die Briten und Amerikaner am 6. Juni zur Invasion antraten, erinnerten wir an jene Taktik des Kremls, die in den alliierten Ländern die Volksstimmung für einen vollen Einsatz an einer Landfront großen Stils dadurch mobil machte, daß sie das Schlagwort in Umlauf setzte: Schnelle Beendigung des Krieges durch zweite Front. Moskau war sich bewusst, damit einer weitverbreiteten Friedenssehnsucht entgegenzukommen, gleichzeitig aber gerade die Kreise für sich einzuspannen, deren wachsende Kriegsmüdigkeit sonst die gemeinsame Kriegführung ungünstig hätte beeinflussen müssen. Nach dem Gefühl des Mannes auf der Straße in London und Neuyork wurde also nach langem Zögern der Sprung über den Kanal in der Absicht unternommen, in diesem Jahr die Entscheidung zu erzwingen und damit den Krieg abzukürzen.
Man hatte bereits vergessen, daß schon bei der Verkündung der Atlantik-Charta von dieser „Verkürzung des Krieges“ gesprochen worden war, wovon vor allem eine damals von Eden im Unterhaus abgegebene Erklärung zeugte. Es war damals auch in der englischen und amerikanischen Presse die Ansicht vertreten worden, daß nun der Krieg durch die gemeinsame Anstrengung der Alliierten, zu denen ja die USA bald zählen würden, spätestens in zwei Jahren ein Ende finden müsse. Diese Rechnung hatte aber den entscheidenden Faktor außer Ansatz gelassen: die unerschütterliche Standfestigkeit des deutschen Volkes, die sich als das wahrhaft entscheidende Moment in diesem Krieg erweisen wird und ganz besonders in dem kampfdurchtobten Sommer 1944, in dem an allen Fronten mit höchstem Einsatz gerungen wird.
Es ist dieses unbeirrbare Selbstgefühl, der Glaube an die eigene gute Sache, das stolze Bewusstsein des eigenen Wertes, die denkbar wirksamste innere Verfestigung des nationalen Organismus und die daraus hervorgehende unbedingte Gewissheit der Selbstbehauptung in allen Wechselfällen, die früher sogar kleinen Völkern für gewisse Epochen eine überragende Stellung verschafft hat – den Spartanern und Athenern so gut wie später den Niederländern, Schweizern und Schweden. Erst recht bestimmt das als beherrschendes Motiv den geschichtlichen Ablauf, wenn diese Antriebe ein großes und traditionsgesättigtes Volk beseelen und zu höchster Leistung und Kampfkraft emporreißen. Das deutsche Volk hat in diesem Krieg bewiesen, wie sehr in ihm all diese sittlichen Kräfte lebendig sind, die einer Nation die höchste Weihe verleihen und ihren Anspruch auf freies Leben und Wirken bestätigen, das ihrer würdig ist.
Eine solche Haltung angesichts einer Fülle von kriegerischen Erfolgen zu zeigen, würde an sich noch nicht viel bedeuten. Weit schwerer aber wiegt auf der Schale der Geschichte der Beweis von Seelenstärke inmitten schwerer Prüfungen, die das Letzte an positiver Leidensfähigkeit und vor allem auch an Geduld abfordern. Auch heute noch ist das Geschehen an den Fronten wesentlich dadurch bestimmt, daß der deutsche Soldat durch seine höhere Moral, altererbte Tugenden, Disziplin und unvergleichlichen Todesmut aufwiegen muß, was der Feind an Zahl und Material voraushat. Wie er sich immer wieder unerschrocken in die Bresche wirft, wie er auch dort, wo die materielle Überlegenheit des Gegners besonders stark gegen ihn ausschlägt, also in der Luft und auf dem Meer, keineswegs auf Angriffsgeist verzichtet, so wird auch das deutsche Volk keinen Augenblick wankend in dem Entschluss, durch verstärkten Einsatz auf dem technischen Sektor den Ausgleich zu schaffen, der sich schon anbahnt und in absehbarer Zeit noch weit gewichtiger in Erscheinung treten wird.
Wir werden in den kommenden Monaten noch mit mancher Belastungsprobe zu rechnen haben. Wie wir aber in den letzten eineinhalb Jahren des Krieges unsere Unbeugsamkeit dem Feind so unzweideutig bewiesen haben, daß er seine im vorigen August angekündigte große Propagandaoffensive gegen den Selbstbehauptungswillen des deutschen Volkes überhaupt nicht zu starten wagte, so wird der Gegner auch diesmal nicht die Entscheidung zu erzwingen vermögen, die ihm als Kampfziel vorschwebt und die ihm als so unbedingt notwendig erschien, daß er diesmal alles auf eine Karte setzt. Diese Karte wird nicht stechen und in dieser Gewissheit werden wir alles Geschehen der nächsten Zeit zu beurteilen haben.
Dieser Kampf ist alles andere als ein einseitiger Aufzehrprozeß, dessen Ergebnis sich mit dem Rechenstift ermitteln ließe. Im Verlauf eines Krieges zählen nicht nur die einzelnen militärischen Vorgänge, sondern die Auswirkungen aller moralischen Kräfte, die in den beteiligten Völkern lebendig sind. Es zählen jene unwägbaren Dinge, die noch immer die meisten Kriege entschieden haben, und es zählt vor allem der Lebenswille des Starken gegenüber der Vernichtungswut seiner Feinde. Daß es aber diesmal um die letzten Dinge geht, das weiß jeder Deutsche, zumal ihm der Gegner genau vorgerechnet hat, welche Pläne er gegen ein unterlegenes Deutschland im Schilde führt.
Wir haben uns in diesem Krieg stets bewusst von jenem leichtfertigen Überschwang freigehalten, mit dem das England der Chamberlain, Churchill und Derby in Erwartung eines schnellen und leichten Sieges in seinen „reizenden“ Krieg eingetreten ist, von jenem zahlenwütigen Optimismus, in dessen Zeichen sich die Yankees in Unkenntnis der Kraft ihrer selbstgewählten Gegner in das Kriegsabenteuer Roosevelts hineinschleppen ließen. In dieser realistischen Gemessenheit waren wir auch hart im Nehmen und werden es künftighin weiter so halten, bis unsere Stunde schlägt.
Denn solange ein Volk kämpft, erhält es sich die Möglichkeit, die der alte römische Wahlspruch in die Worte zusammenfasst, dass das Glück die Tapferen unterstützt. Das Nachlassen der moralischen Spannkraft war es, dass, wesentlich verschuldet durch eine schwache und glaubenslose Führung, uns im November 1918 zu dem bitteren Gang nach Compiègne gezwungen hat. Die Leichtgläubigkeit verantwortungsloser Piraten der öffentlichen Meinung war es, die uns vor jetzt genau 25 Jahren die Feder in die Hand drückte, welche die Unterschrift unter das Diktat von Versailles vollzog.
Der Feind wagt heute selbst nicht mehr an die Wiederholung eines solchen Selbstmordes zu glauben. Er versucht daher sein Heil auf den Schlachtfeldern und verleiht sich Vorschußlorbeeren, wie es Churchill tat, als er am Vorabend des Einsatzes der „V1“ bei einem Essen in der mexikanischen Gesandtschaft sich zum soundsovielten Male einen Siegestermin festlegte, indem er ankündigte, der Kampf werde in wenigen Monaten entschieden sein. Das wird nur in dem Sinn zutreffen, daß auch der konzentrische Ansturm, der nach der Besetzung von Rom begann, nicht zu dem Ziel geführt haben wird, dass sich die Roosevelt, Stalin und Churchill gesetzt haben.
Er wird zerbrechen an der festgefügten Kampffront der Massen und Herzen, die ihnen das deutsche Volk entgegensetzt. Dann wird die Stunde der Entscheidung schlagen, die den tiefsten Sinn dieses Krieges erfüllt.
Dr. WILHELM KOPPEN
Innsbrucker Nachrichten (June 28, 1944)
In unerschütterter Standhaftigkeit
Noch immer verteidigen sich zahlreiche Stützpunkte im Raum von Cherbourg – Schwere Kämpfe an der italienischen Front – Erbitterte Abwehrschlacht östlich der Beresina – Bei Kirkenes 77 sowjetische Flugzeuge abgeschossen
dnb. Aus dem Führerhauptquartier, 28. Juni –
Das Oberkommando der Wehrmacht gibt bekannt:
In der Normandie lag der Schwerpunkt der Kämpfe wieder im Raum südöstlich Tilly. Während des ganzen Tages griffen starke feindliche Infanterie- und Panzerverbände, von schwerster Schiffsartillerie unterstützt, unsere Front an. Ihr Ansturm brach am zähen Widerstand unserer tapferen Divisionen zusammen, die dem Feind durch Gegenangriffe an einigen Stellen das am Vortag verlorengegangene Gelände wieder entrissen. Nur in einem Abschnitt konnte der Feind nach hartem, wechselvollem Kampf seinen Einbruchsraum geringfügig erweitern. Er hatte schwerste blutige Verluste und verlor weit über 50 Panzer, östlich der Orne wurde ein feindlicher Stoßtrupp restlos vernichtet.
Im Raum von Cherbourg verteidigen sich immer noch zahlreiche Stützpunkte des Heeres, der Kriegsmarine und der Luftwaffe tapfer und ihrer Pflicht getreu. Die Einfahrt in den Hafen von Cherbourg ist dadurch dem Gegner nach wie vor verwehrt, wenn auch die Trümmer der Stadt im Besitz des Feindes sind. Auch im Nordost- und Nordwestteil der Halbinsel Cherbourg halten sich noch eigene Stützpunkte in unerschütterlicher Standhaftigkeit.
In der letzten Nacht griffen schwere Kampfflugzeuge feindliche Schiffsansammlungen vor der normannischen Küste an. Ein Speziallandungsschiff wurde in Brand geworfen. Es entstanden Explosionen.
Die Marineküstenbatterie „Yorck“ zwang einen feindlichen Zerstörer und einen Schnellbootverband, die in den Hafen von Cherbourg eindringen wollten, zum Abdrehen.
Vor der niederländischen Küste und im Kanal beschädigten Vorpostenboote mehrere britische Schnellboote.
Schweres Feuer der „V1“ liegt unaufhörlich auf dem Raum von London.
An der italienischen Front wurde auch gestern wieder im Abschnitt zwischen der Küste und dem Trasimenischen See erbittert gekämpft. Der Feind versuchte erneut, mit starken Infanterie- und Panzerverbänden unsere Front zu durchbrechen. Es kam zu schweren, wechselvollen Kämpfen, in denen der Gegner jedoch nur auf dem äußersten Westflügel Boden gewinnen konnte. In allen übrigen Abschnitten wurde er unter hohen blutigen Verlusten abgewiesen.
In den schweren Abwehrkämpfen westlich des Trasimenischen Sees haben die 29. Panzergrenadierdivision unter Führung von Generalleutnant Fries, die 4. Fallschirmjägerdivision unter Führung von Oberst Trettner und die 336. Infanteriedivision unter Führung von Generalleutnant Faulenbach, hervorragend durch Artillerie und Flakartillerie unterstützt, alle mit überlegenen Kräften geführten Durchbruchsversuche des Feindes unter besonders hohen Verlusten für den Gegner, zum Teil im Nahkampf, immer wieder abgewehrt.
Im Mittelabschnitt der Ostfront dauern die erbitterten Kämpfe im Raum Bobruisk und Mogilew an. Nach Räumung der Städte Orscha und Witebsk hat sich die schwere Abwehrschlacht in den Raum östlich der mittleren und oberen Beresina verlagert.
Südöstlich Polozk scheiterten wiederholte Durchbruchsversuche der Bolschewisten. Südöstlich Pleskau brachen örtliche Angriffe des Feindes zusammen.
Schlachtfliegerverbände unterstützten die Abwehrkämpfe des Heeres und vernichteten zahlreiche feindliche Panzer, über 100 Kraftfahrzeuge und eine große Zahl Geschütze.
Schwere Kampfflugzeuge führten am Tage einen Angriff gegen den Bahnhof Kalinkowitschi. Auch in der Nacht wurde der sowjetische Nachschubverkehr erfolgreich bekämpft. Besonders in den Bahnhofsanlagen von Smolensk entstanden Brände und Explosionen.
Bei mehreren feindlichen Angriffen auf Stadt und Hafen Kirkenes brachten Jäger und Flakartillerie in den gestrigen Abendstunden und im Verlauf der Nacht 77 sowjetische Flugzeuge zum Absturz. In heftigen Luftkämpfen errangen Oberleutnant Dorr und Leutnant Norz allein je zwölf Luftsiege.
Ein starker nordamerikanischer Bomberverband führte gestern Vormittag einen Angriff gegen das Stadtgebiet von Budapest. Deutsche und ungarische Luftverteidigungskräfte vernichteten 21 feindliche Flugzeuge.
Deutsche Kampfflugzeuge griffen in der letzten Nacht Einzelziele in Südostengland an.
Amerikanische Gemeinheit
Kinder auf die Suche nach Blindgängern geschickt
Genf, 28. Juni –
Eine schwere Anklage richtet Daily Telegraph gegen nordamerikanische Soldaten, die nach Übungen mit scharfer Munition zum Aufsuchen und Entfernen von Blindgängern ins Gelände geschickt wurden. Die damit beauftragten Soldaten scheuten die mit der Suche verbundene Gefahr und stifteten Schuljungen mit Geldspenden an, ihnen die gefährliche Arbeit abzunehmen (!). Dabei sei schon eine Anzahl Kinder, die die Grohe der Gefahr nicht kannten und mit großem Eifer ans Werk gingen, getötet worden.
Offiziell sei u. a. dem Erziehungsausschutz von Nottinghamshire eine als stichhaltig erwiesene Anzeige zugeleitet worden, wonach die bezahlte Suche von Kindern nach Explosivstoffen Todesfalle und schwere Verletzungen ausgelost habe. Der Ausschuss habe sich zu einer entsprechenden Beschwerde an den englischen Erziehungsminister genötigt gesehen, der dringend gebeten worden sei, sich in der Sachs unverzüglich mit den Militärbehörden in Verbindung zu setzen.
Supreme HQ Allied Expeditionary Force (June 28, 1944)
Communiqué No. 45
In the battle southeast of TILLY-SUR-SEULLES, Allied armor succeeded in widening the breach created by the infantry on Monday. Advancing on a four-mile front, our forces have driven across the main VILLERS-BOCAGE–CAEN road after particularly heavy fighting on the left in the area of TOURVILLE. The enemy is resisting stubbornly but the advance continues to make good progress.
In the vicinity of CHERBOURG, Allied forces made progress in cleaning out enemy remnants hemmed in the horns of the peninsula.
After a two-day lull enforced by weather, the Allied Air Forces yesterday operated over a widespread area in northwest FRANCE, ranging from CHERBOURG and LA ROCHE-SUR-YON in the west to ORLÉANS, PARIS and beyond in the east.
Operations in support of our ground forces were largely carried out by fighters and fighter-bombers. Attacks were concentrated on enemy reinforcements moving northward along several routes.
Successful attacks were made on numerous trains carrying troops and equipment between PARIS and ORLÉANS. Other targets included marshalling yards at ARTENAY and TOURY, and road and rail traffic and focal points near RENNES, CHARTRES, SAINT-NAZAIRE, LAVAL, NANTES, PARENNES, FLERS and east of PARIS.
The attacks were continued into the night by our light bombers. An enemy headquarters south of the battle area and a telephone center in the BREST PENINSULA were bombed with good results.
Other fighter-bombers attacked airfields at VILLENEUVE-VERTUS, CONNANTRE and COULOMMIERS.
Last night, our heavy bombers struck at rail centers in VITRY-LE-FRANÇOIS, and VAIRES east of PARIS. Others were over military installations at PAS-DE-CALAIS, following up two daylight attacks on similar objectives. A small force of heavy day bombers attacked an aircraft at CREIL.
Twenty-three enemy aircraft were destroyed during the course of these operations. Thirteen of our bombers and eight of our fighters are missing.
Communiqué No. 46
The Allied attack southwest of CAEN is making steady progress in spite of more bad weather and intense opposition.
The enemy was drive out of RAURAY, southwest of FONTENAY, where resistance had been most stubborn. After further heavy fighting in GRANVILLE and TOURVILLE, our armor and infantry crossed the river ODON south of TOURVILLE, on a front of about two miles.
Our advance continues towards the high ground south of the ODON.
In the CHERBOURG PENINSULA, enemy strongpoints east and west of the city are being steadily cleaned up.
Early this morning, two destroyers HMCS HURON and HMS ESKIMO encountered three armed enemy trawlers near the Channel Islands. Action was joined and two of the enemy ships were destroyed by gunfire. The third which made off during the action was believed to be damaged.
Adverse weather this morning restricted air operations over the battle area to a limited number of patrols.
In the LAON District, where better weather prevailed, our heavy bombers attacked airfields at COUVRON, ATHIES and JUVINCOURT. They also hit the railway yards at SAARBRÜCKEN across the German frontier. Escorting fighters strafed and dive-bombed locomotives, railroad cars and trucks.
U.S. Navy Department (June 28, 1944)
Naval advance to the westward
For Immediate Release
June 28, 1944
The advance of our naval forces to the westward began with the reoccupation of Attu and Kiska in the far north, and the capture of the most important islands in the Solomons group in the far south.
From our far northern bases we began attacking the Japanese Kurils from the air. We have also made several surface vessel bombardments against the enemy’s shore installations in the Kuril chain.
In the south, the successful termination of the Solomons campaign made possible air and surface raids against Japanese garrisons in the Bismarck Archipelago and along the northern New Guinea Coast.
With our positions in the far north and in the south firmly established, the next step was the squeeze made in the middle of the enemy’s perimeter. This resulted in the capture of the Gilbert Islands. Following that, the Marshall campaign then gave us Kwajalein, Majuro and Eniwetok. Farther to the south we took the Admiralty Islands and also important positions on New Britain. Then strategic areas along the northern New Guinea coast fell to us with the result that we were then able to launch air and surface attacks against Truk, Ponape, Kusaie and other islands in the Caroline group, from several directions. We also were able to strike from Australia in the far south against Japanese positions in Java. But it was the capture of certain of the Marshalls group that permitted us to launch our surface and air attacks as far west as Palau, Guam, Saipan, Rota and the Bonin Islands.
Our last offensive blow, aimed in the ultimate capture of Saipan, has already permitted our air and surface fleets to strike still farther westward. The final occupation of Saipan will enable us to project surface and air operations that will include the mainland of Japan, the Philippines and a greater part of the Dutch East Indies.
CINCPAC Communiqué No. 65
U.S. Marine and Army troops have made further gains on Saipan Island, pushing north nearly two miles along the east coast, passing the villages of Donnay and Hashigoru: On the west coast, further penetrations have been made into Garapan Town. Enemy troops broke through our lines containing them on Nafutan Point on the night of June 26 (West Longitude Date), and attempted to drive northward. Two hundred enemy troops were killed in this counterattack. The next day, further attacks were launched by our forces against Nafutan Point and the enemy now holds only the extreme tip of the point.
Close support is now being given our troops by shore‑based aircraft operating from Aslito Airdrome. Tinian Island has been subjected to protracted daily bombardment to neutralize enemy positions there.
On the night of June 25, several enemy torpedo planes attacked a carrier group screening our transports. Several torpedoes were launched, but no hits were obtained. One enemy plane was shot down, and another probably shot down. During the night of June 26‑27, enemy aircraft again attacked our transports, but all bombs landed in the water. One near miss on a transport injured a member of the crew.
Surface units of the Pacific Fleet bombarded Kurabu Zaki at the southern tip of Paramushiru in the Kurils on the night of June 25‑26.
Paramushiru and Shumushu Islands were bombed by Liberators of the 11th Army Air Force and Ventura search planes of Fleet Air Wing Four before dawn on June 25 and 26. Several fires were started in these raids. Anti-aircraft fire was intense. Eleven enemy fighters attacked a single Ventura of Fleet Air Wing Four near the airfield at Paramushiru before dawn on June 26. Two of the attacking planes were damaged, and one disappeared into a fog bank trailing smoke. The Ventura returned with superficial damage.
Carrier aircraft swept Guam and Rota Islands in the Marianas on June 26. Fuel reservoirs and coastal defense gun positions were bombed. three small craft in Apra Harbor at Guam were destroyed. The cargo vessel damaged in previous strikes was observed to have sunk. At Rota, the airstrip was strafed and buildings were set afire. There was no enemy air opposition during these attacks.
Truk Atoll was bombed by 7th Army Air Force Liberators on June 25. One of five enemy fighters which intercepted our force was shot down. We suffered no damage. Army and Marine aircraft attacked enemy objectives in the Marshalls on June 25.
An enemy twin‑engine bomber was shot down south of the Hall Islands by a search plane of Fleet Air Wing Two, Group One, on June 26. The same day, an enemy torpedo plane was damaged by another search plane northwest of Truk.
The New York Times (June 28, 1944)
BRITISH CUT RAIL LINE IN SWEEP WEST OF CAEN
Gain up to five miles; new drive presses foe back on 7-mile-wide front despite mud
Called major blow; enemy knots hold out near Cap de la Hague and Maupertus
By Drew Middleton
Montgomery’s new offensive gathers momentum
Southeast of Tilly-sur-Seulles, the British rolled forward more than five miles (1). In taking Colleville (A on inset), they cut the railroad from Caen. At Mouen (B), they severed the highway paralleling the railroad and they pushed across the Odon River into Tourville. Another thrust eastward enveloped Saint-Manvieu (C). As the Americans completed the mopping up of Cherbourg (2), repairs to the port went forward. Some German units were still resisting at Cap de la Hague (3) and at the Maupertus Airdrome (4), east of the liberated port.
SHAEF, England –
The British Army on the east of the Normandy bridgehead has launched an offensive that in its initial stages has been strikingly successful.
Some of the finest divisions under the British flag, tempered by many campaigns and whetted to razor edge by the flying bomb attacks on their homes, have smashed forward from Tilly-sur-Seulles, gaining four to five miles on a seven-mile front and battering crack German divisions in their path.
Gen. Sir Bernard L. Montgomery’s first large-scale offensive began as the U.S. occupation of Cherbourg was completed yesterday. The importance of the capture of that port can now be evaluated in terms of prisoners taken. In the last four days of the fighting for Cherbourg at least 25,000 Germans were captured. It is estimated that since D-Day, the Germans suffered approximately 70,000 casualties in killed, wounded, missing and prisoners throughout the Norman front. More than 32,000 of these are prisoners, which is close to the strength of three German infantry divisions under the present establishment.
It is probable that 2,000-3,000 Germans of the Cherbourg garrison escaped from the port by sea either to the Channel Islands or to ports to the south, such as Saint-Malo.
The first British successes in Gen. Montgomery’s offensive are these:
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The Caen–Villers-Bocage railroad has been cut.
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The villages of Cheux, Fontenay, La Gaulle, Saint-Mauvieu and La Hout-du-Borq have all been liberated by British troops.
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Crack German divisions holding the sector southeast of Tilly have been badly mauled in an advance through heavy mud in the face of sharp fire from enemy anti-tank and field guns.
The troops were also mopping up enemy remnants at Tourville, Colleville and probably Mouen, and Granville was being entered, said an Associated Press dispatch from the British front.
The British advance is in a southeasterly direction, as if Gen. Montgomery were trying to encircle the German defense bastion of Caen while at the same time, he ended any chance of a major German counteroffensive through Caen to the sea.
British infantry and armored units were fighting with their traditional doggedness under the worst possible weather conditions. Five big enemy tanks were knocked out by one six-pounder anti-tank gun in yesterday morning’s fighting. The Tommies were driving the enemy from position to position in the thickly wooded country.
Big battle developing
There is every indication that one of the biggest battles of the campaign is developing on the British front. On the American front, for so long the busiest sector, activities have been confined to counting prisoners and preparing Cherbourg for the flow of Allied supplies and reinforcements. U.S. and British naval parties are already working in the port, while men of the U.S. Navy are repairing damaged installations.
There was still some fighting to the northeast and northwest of Cherbourg. German troops were holding out at Maupertus Airfield, five and a half miles east of the city, at midday yesterday, but it is probable that this obstinate position had been surrounded. There were no reports of enemy opposition further to the east around Barfleur.
Small groups of German troops were also resisting to the northwest of the port in the Cap de la Hague area, where the enemy claimed to have established a line in the Jobourg area, three and three-quarter miles southeast of Cap de la Hague.
It was revealed yesterday that the U.S. VII Corps took Cherbourg. This corps was composed of the 4th, 9th and 79th Infantry Divisions, commanded by Gens. Raymond O. Barton, Manton S. Eddy and Ira Wyche. Maj. Gen. Lawton Collins commands the corps.
To the soldiers and officers of these divisions, Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley paid tribute yesterday. These troops, he said, have done a “magnificent job.” He added:
Their bravery and skill indicate the highest degree of training and are in accordance with the best tradition of our military service.
The Army commander said in a courtly message to the French population of the peninsula:
It is a pleasure to be able to say to the people of France, “Here is your first large city to be returned to you.”
Gen. Collins and Maj. Gen. Leonard T. Gerow, who led the V Corps, both have received the Oak Leaf Cluster and Distinguished Service Medal for their services in the Cherbourg Peninsula, the former for the assault on Cherbourg, the latter for planning and executing the drive across the peninsula that made the city’s capture possible.
Montgomery’s congratulations
Gen. Bradley received a letter of congratulation from Gen. Montgomery on the capture of Cherbourg. The British commander wrote:
You have a fine army full of brave fighting men, and it is a great honor for me to have such an army under my command.
Whatever damage the Germans have done to the port’s installations, its capture will enable the Allies to move supplies through one of the largest ports on Europe’s west coast. Even if the docks have been wrecked by demolitions, the Allies will be able, until these are repaired, to land supplies on the beaches in the inner harbor from anchorage sheltered from the waves by the great sea wall.
The outer roadstead within this wall provides room for 100 of the largest merchantmen in the 1,250 acres of water, while the inner roadstead has a water area of 16 acres and 1,968 feet of quays. In peacetime, the port handled 1,200 tons of cargo on a normal day, but under wartime requirements, it may handle five times as many tons.
The importance of such a port to Allied planes plus the destruction of four German divisions in Cherbourg – the 91st, 77th, 243rd and 709th Divisions – make Cherbourg’s capture not only the end of the first phase of the campaign but an Allied triumph of the first magnitude.
The British are striving to win a second outstanding Allied victory in France. Eleven burned-out enemy tanks marked their advance in the Saint-Manvieu sector yesterday. The infantry plodded through mud to attack new German formations late yesterday as the assault was pushed with undiminished vigor.
The offensive began early Monday morning from north of the Seulles River. Swiftly the British drove the Germans off the open ground sloping down toward the Odon River, which joins the Orne at Caen. It is hardly a river in the American sense, being only about 20 feet wide.
According to reports from the front, the British have cleared up that area between Odon and Seulles Rivers as far to the southeast as Mouen and Colleville on the Villers-Bocages–Caen highway.
The British infantry, supported by tanks, encountered strong enemy resistance at the Colleville crossroads, only seven miles southwest of the center of Caen yesterday. They were fired on by German tanks and anti-tank guns, and spirited fighting flared up in this area yesterday evening and continued into the night.
The British advance was heralded by 150-200 fighter-bombers, which, despite bad weather conditions, bombed and strafed enemy troops throughout the battle area. By late afternoon, the Germans admitted a breakthrough three miles wide and two miles deep.
It is too early to assess the British offensive in relation to the remainder of the Allied tactical picture. This correspondent believes it is not a holding attack designed to pin German divisions to a particular area, but the first of many blows to be struck by both sides in what has now become the most important in the Normandy sector. It is a major attack, whatever its objectives, with first-class troops involved on both sides.
On the right, the British are fighting in a thickly wooded area almost ideal for infantry battles. On the left, they are approaching the plain of Caen, a flat area with little cover in which armor can be massed to the greatest advantage.
If armor is to be used in the latter stages in this area, the British will have the edge. They have destroyed more than 100 German tanks since D-Day, and their own losses have been far less. The stage seems set for a renewal of that armored superiority which the British enjoyed in Africa in 1942 and 1943.
Escape convoy intercepted
London, England (Reuters) – (June 27)
Closing within a hundred yards of a German convoy attempting to pass along the Cherbourg Peninsula to the Channel Islands, a Canadian motorboat flotilla sank one German escort, sank or damaged several trawlers and prevented the convoy from reaching its destination, it is revealed today.
The flotilla suffered only two casualties.
REPUBLICANS TAKE PLATFORM QUICKLY WITHOUT CHANGES
Willkie’s attack on foreign policy plank is unheeded – Edge drops floor fight
Hoover says youth rules; calls for all-out drive on New Deal – war on bureaucracy is pledged by Martin
By Turner Catledge
Chicago, Illinois – (June 27)
The Republican National Convention today promulgated a platform of national and foreign policies highlighted by a pledge of post war international cooperation to maintain order, by which it proposes to convince the American electorate next fall that it can be depended upon to win the war, keep the peace and restore prosperity, if returned to power in Washington.
The party’s declarations were, for the most part, in broad terms. The platform left considerable details to be filled in by the candidates. The convention is expected to designate Governor Dewey of New York for President tomorrow.
The prospect that Governor Earl Warren of California would be the candidate for the vice presidency was subject to reappraisal tonight after he told his state delegation that “in good conscience” he could not accept the nomination.
Platform session listless
A few hours after it had adapted the platform, in the most listless and sparsely attended of its sessions, the convention heard its leading elder statesman, the former President Herbert Hoover, hand over leadership of the Republican Party, in the convention’s name, to “a new generation.”
Mr. Hoover shared the honors at a crowded night session with Rep. Clare Boothe Luce. She emphasized the party’s appeal to the “G.I. Joes,” who, as the former President put it, will be returning soon “to demand justification for their sacrifices.”
Earlier in the day, Rep. Joseph W. Martin, House Minority Leader, was elected permanent chairman of the convention and in his speech declared that the Republican Party was the only force that could be depended upon to straighten out the sprawling bureaucracy in Washington.
With these preliminaries out of the way and a platform loaded with appeals to the greatest possible number of voting groups and interests, the convention looked forward to the nomination of presidential and vice-presidential candidates.
Nominating plans speeded
Selection of Governor Dewey for top place on the ticket remained a certainty. Plans were also perfected to go through with the nominations early enough in the day to have the presidential nominee appear for a rousing notification ceremony at the night session. Should these plans go through as made, the convention will then end a day earlier than expected.
Governor Warren’s refusal caused some consternation among convention leaders because of the possibility of a last-minute scramble for the place. Attention began to quickly center on Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio, who, it was understood, would be entirely acceptable to Governor Dewey.
The Ohio delegation went into caucus at a late hour to decide its course. Earlier the delegation had staged a meeting for the forces determined to present Mr. Bricker for the first-place nomination. Leaders then insisted that they would follow the original Bricker-for-President program. Some Midwest delegations were understood to be putting pressure on Mr. Bricker to accept second place.
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