America at war! (1941–) – Part 3

8166

Cherbourg’s port now under repair

Work rushed to permit direct shipment of troops and materials from U.S.
By Gene Currivan

London, England – (June 27)
Cherbourg had hardly fallen to the Allies when Army engineers and Navy repair units were at work restoring the great harbor and preparing an entrance to Europe, more than 300 miles closer to New York than London is. Considerable time will be saved, when troops and material can be moved directly to France without a stopover in Britain.

Reports from the harbor area indicate that while the Germans had ample time to destroy the harbor installations, they apparently did not have sufficient manpower or material to wreck Cherbourg’s great breakwater or to block the two wide channels leading into the outer harbor.

Previously, in similar situations, the Germans were able to cripple ports by sinking ships at harbor entrances, but at Cherbourg, they could not attain this objective. At Naples and Tripoli, the blocking of channels was extremely effective, although Tripoli was operating at normal wartime standards within ten days.

But at Cherbourg, the Germans had little time and, more important, little tonnage to spare. Their navy being in its present shrunken state, there were no warships or merchant vessels that could be spared for such a blockade.

With the harbor restoration units, the Army sent in railway operating battalions under Brig. Gen. Clarence L. Burpee of Jacksonville, Florida, who won the Legion of Merit with Oak Leaf Cluster for his handling of railroad snarls on the North African and Italian fronts. These units will have the unusual advantage of working within an area already ringed by their own countrymen. Although still under fire from the air and long-range artillery, they will probably complete their work speedily.

As soon as landing facilities have been completed, streams of railroad equipment will be shipped to the continent. Waiting to go are long lines of new flatcars, boxcars, rolling refrigerators and hospital trains. It will be one of Gen. Burpee’s duties to prepare the way for this equipment. Reconnaissance has shown the extent of railroad damage and detailed restoration plans have been worked out.

In the harbor area, which is protected by a three-mile breakwater of granite, flat beaches flank the principal port facilities, so even though dock repair takes some time, it is now possible to land troops and equipment. The land conditions on the beaches are infinitely superior to those under which the beachheads were taken, principally because of the breakwater’s protection.

Plans to raise U.S. flag he furled in Reich in 1923

London, England – (June 27)
Maj. Gen. Raymond O. Barton, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, which helped take Cherbourg, is going back to Germany in this war to rehoist the Stars and Stripes he hauled down as commander of the last U.S. troops to leave the Reich after World War I.

The Colorado-born professional soldier, who grew up in Indian territory, has under his command the same two infantry companies he led out of Germany on Jan. 23, 1923.

Gen. Barton, a major back in 1923, recalled the flag-lowering ceremony as he prepared to jump the Channel on the eve of D-Day.

He said:

I hope to parade the same two companies and plant the same flag over Fortress Ehrenbreitstein just across the Moselle from Coblenz. That flag has rested in the Secretary of War’s office since the last war. I hope we can borrow it for the occasion.

My boys will do to Hitler what their pappies did to the Kaiser in 1918.

8167

‘BIG ARMY’ MEETING TESTS OF INVASION
U.S. replacement plan seen proved at Cherbourg for blows that are coming

Loss of men held down; timing of Russian offensive a cheering factor – Goebbels’ tactics again warned of
By Sidney Shalett

Washington – (June 27)
Allied strategy in pressing the invasion of Europe consistently will follow a pattern of striking sharp, overwhelming blows in which we will expect and accept considerable losses, but avoiding, insofar as possible, any costly stalemates in which huge forces are locked with the enemy while the attrition mounts up on both sides.

It is possible today, on the basis of the latest military information received here from the battlefronts, to make the above statement authoritatively and also to evaluate some of the significant developments on the European fronts.

Allied strategists are aiming at a knockout as speedily and as economically as possible. They have no delusions that it will be a quick or easy job to defeat the Germans in the west, but they do not want the task to cost more lives or time than necessary.

Therefore, they are determined to employ the principle of genuine “lightning war,” combined with overwhelming force, against the Germans. The landings in Normandy, first of a series of expected blows, were an example of this. We landed quickly, with an element of surprise, and in sufficient force to achieve our objectives.

Our losses in France so far have been considerable, but still they have been a good deal less than the Allied High Command expected for the job.

System of rapid replacement

One of America’s “secret weapons” in both France and Italy – and this has been stressed by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson – has been the extraordinarily effective system of immediate replacement of casualties and battle-weary troops. It worked well in Italy – Mr. Stimson gave it a great deal of credit for cracking German resistance south of Rome – and it is now working effectively against the Germans in France.

The theory is simple, but the accomplishment requires tremendous reserves and organization. What happens is this: Every 24 hours or as close to that schedule as practicable, U.S. casualties in combat division, and, to as great extent as possible, battle-fatigued troops, are replaced by fresh men.

Thus, the Germans, who have no such reserves in France, are constantly faced by an efficient, up-to-strength, offensive-minded force.

According to the best authoritative information here, the constant pressure is proving demoralizing to the Germans.

Another factor, involving the Germans’ attitude, is not helping the enemy. He knows that many of our divisions that are defeating him are in battle for the first time. Yet these “green” troops, because of the realistic and rigorous conditioning they have had, are outfighting Nazi veterans.

Germans are fighting well

Current advices indicate that the purely German units are fighting extremely stubbornly. Cherbourg proved that, although it demonstrated once again that the defeated “superman” can be consistently beaten by his betters. Where German units are mixed with foreign soldiers pressed into Nazi service, the results are not particularly happy for the foe.

So far as can be learned, the U.S. Army is in a position to carry on its replacement system throughout the Battle of Europe, provided that the flow of young, tough replacements – the under-26 group for which our military chiefs have pleaded – keeps coming into the Army. A table of expected losses has been worked out, and our chiefs think they can handle the replacement problem.

The success of the replacement system in Italy and France is viewed by some here as vindication of the “Big Army” pleas made by our chiefs at a time when there was considerable controversy over why we needed a force as large as they asked for.

The Germans have been far from infallible in divining either our potentialities or our intentions. They never dreamed we would be able to pout in so many men and so much matériel in so short a time on what they regarded as mere beaches in Normandy.

The fact that we did, is a tribute to the careful and skillful planning of our invasion leaders.

The Allied air situation over Europe at present is regarded as quite satisfactory. Our superiority over France seems to be operating as effectively as the superiority we have held in the skies over Italy. The question, “Where is the Luftwaffe?” is more than a sarcastic taunt at the moment. Our commanders really would like to throw what they can do to engage and smash the German fighter force.

There is satisfaction in official circles over the Russian military offensive. It is learned that plans were made some time ago as to what the Russians would do when we opened up in the west. The Russians have fulfilled their part of the plans.

Informed circles here predict that Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels will make further frantic efforts to split the Allies before the tottering Nazi castle collapses.

They gravely and sincerely hope that no Americans will fall for this enemy line. Allied unity, it is stressed, is of utmost importance, both in Europe and in the Pacific.

Baldwin: No. 1 strategic triumph

Fall of Cherbourg judged beginning of the end for German war machine
By Hanson W. Baldwin

London, England – (June 27)
The capture of Cherbourg three weeks after the first landing in Normandy represents the greatest Allied strategic triumph of the war.

It may well be written by future historians as a decisive victory, for Cherbourg’s loss probably means the beginning of the end for the Germans. If anything can be forecast in war, it seems to mean – unless the enemy has “secret weapons” of undreamed-of potentialities – that the Germans have lost their last chance for victory or even for averting defeat.

This is not to say that the enemy has “thrown in the sponge” or that he is likely to do so soon. In one sense, the bitter, week-long defense of Cherbourg by second-rate troops and the hard, slow fighting in Normandy are disappointing. Tactically we can expect only more of the same; just as Cherbourg’s capture took somewhat longer than we had hoped and expected, so future battles in France are likely to be protracted and difficult.

Nevertheless, June 27 must go down as a red-letter day for the Allies, for Cherbourg’s fall means the bankruptcy of German strategy.

Single hope fading

For more than a year, German strategy has been plain. Adolf Hitler has made every possible effort to strengthen his forces in the west, some of his best generals and his best troops were assigned to France and the Low Countries; the German strength in these countries was increased from about 32 to more than 60 divisions, partly at the expense of other areas, since Stalingrad, Germany has been pinning her hopes for a limited victory upon one event and one alone: the repulse of the Allied invasion of the West.

Hitler hoped to make our repulse so bloody and so definite that he would win a great moral and psychological victory as well as a military one. His western flank thus freed of threat, he then undoubtedly planned to concentrate all his strength against Russia and force a negotiated peace.

There was never much doubt that when the Allies attempted the invasion of Western Europe, they could get ashore. But there was some doubt about our ability to hold a foothold; despite the German boasts about the impregnability of the Atlantic Wall, it is known that Field Marshal Gens. Gerd von Rundstedt and Erwin Rommel counted chiefly upon a counterattack to repulse the Allied invasion. Our quick penetration of the Atlantic Wall at considerably less cost than anticipated has now been followed by the capture of a port.

The German defense of the West has been based upon the defense of ports, for they knew, as we knew, that if the Allies were to retain their foothold in France, they had to have a port. If there was ever any doubt of this, the heavy storm of a week ago dispelled it.

Gale hampered unloading

It has now been revealed that a 75-mile gale from the northeast blew squarely on the invasion beaches in the Bay of the Seine and almost halted unloading for three and a half days. This gale was part of the freakish June weather – the most unusual in 25 years – which has hampered our unloading of supplies and reinforcements and air activities. So far most of the weather “breaks” have been against us.

It was for these reasons that the capture of Cherbourg this morning was hailed with relief by our supply experts. It is realized that German demolitions and the bombings and bombardments to which the port had to be subjected before German resistance was stamped out will probably delay full use of the port for some time.

But Cdre. William Sullivan, USN, the salvage expert who helped raise the Normandie and who was in charge of clearing North African and Italian harbors, is already at work in Cherbourg, together with Army engineers and British experts.

Nothing the Germans were able to do can prevent us from using the sheltered anchorages inside the Cherbourg breakwaters. A great granite breakwater 650 feet wide on a rubble base and 20 feet wide at the top protects the outer roads; smaller breakwaters give added protection in the inner harbor. The measurements of the entrances to the outer breakwater are one and a half miles by three-quarters; the outer harbor was not and probably could not be blocked completely.

The docks and unloading facilities may be wrecked, but they are of far less importance than the breakwater, for a sheltered anchorage for our ships and relatively smooth water for our small craft are what the Allies need, as last week’s gale proved.

Gateway to France

We now have that anchorage. That is to say, we shall shortly have a gateway into France through which supplies and reinforcements can be sent continuously in greater and greater quantity regardless of the weather. In addition to the facilities of Cherbourg, we have our landing beaches, over which so far, a truly phenomenal number of men and tons of equipment have been landed, and the small but important facilities of a dozen little ports between Cherbourg and the Orne River.

All this means that our foothold in France is now absolutely secure. Regardless of enemy counterattacks that may yet develop the Germans can no longer hope to throw us into the sea.

It was not possible to make such certain statements until Cherbourg was captured. Even a more protracted defense of that port by the enemy, if coupled with more bad weather, might have proved embarrassing to us.

Now we are certainly in France to stay. The Germans will try – and may be able – to contain our beachheads and to bottle us up in the Cotentin Peninsula in a sort of second Anzio, but they cannot expel us. That in itself is a great, probably a mortal, blow to German strategy.

The capture of Cherbourg means, therefore, in my opinion, the beginning of the end in Europe. It does not mean the end; a battle has been won, not the campaign. But the French, Russian and Italian offensives and our air bombardments are great hammer blows toward that end.

The enemy will try to prolong the agony of war. But after Cherbourg, the knowledge of the bankruptcy of German strategy must become more and more evidence to the German people.

8168

McMillan: Hours of shelling hack British path

Creeping, barrage booms in wake of static blasting as Tommies carve gains
By Richard D. McMillan, United Press correspondent

With the British forces in France – (June 27)
Hundreds of guns, spaced a few yards apart, opened a barrage today over a front of several miles. After they had pounded the German positions for two and a half hours, the infantry went over to take village after village in hand-to-hand fighting.

After days of pouring rain, the weather improved and the troops looked to their planes to sweep down to aid them in softening up the innumerable German strongpoints in their path.

At the attack hour, the big “Monty” barrage was changed to a creeping one. Every three minutes, the barrage was advanced 100 yards ahead of the troops.

Fighting is developing, the British attack is gaining momentum and it looks as if the offensive front is going to expand.

The British advance has been made against stubborn opposition and tough positions. In the countryside, the Germans are in trenches and bunker defenses. In the villages, they are fortified in strong stone houses, which must be attacked by the infantry one by one. Resistance seems to be intensifying.

Fierce fighting raged around the village of Rauray, three miles southeast of Tilly-sur-Seulles. It was from this area that the Germans launched their counterattack.

The troops have had to fight through mud almost as bad as that I saw in Flanders in World War I.

A comparative lull on the British part of the front had permitted the building up of reserves in armor and in bringing up infantry reinforcements, and the British now pack a powerful punch. Further, they were cheered by the American capture of Cherbourg.

Greene: Charred tanks litter roads

By Roger D. Greene, Associated Press correspondent

At the British front in France – (June 27, 7:15 p.m.)
A heavy tank and infantry battle between the British and Germans raged tonight a few miles west of Caen and southwest of that stronghold, and moving up to the front I saw evidence that German armored formations had taken a terrific beating near Saint-Manvieu.

In a single field, there were many charred hulks of German tanks, their gun muzzles twisted, steel sides burst by direct British hits and frameworks reddened by fires which had consumed their crews.

German guns had checked the British advance at Saint-Manvieu during the night, but now the British were moving again. They had taken Cheux, Saint-Manvieu, Colleville and other hamlets.

Vilander: Naval guns hit west of Caen

By Everett Vilander, United Press correspondent

With a British naval task force – (June 26, delayed)
At 8:15 this morning, I watched the 15-inch guns of the monitor Lord Roberts open up in support of British and Canadian ground troops driving on Caen.

Within the next 100 minutes, they had poured 60 tons of high explosives into the concentrated area near Carpiquet Airfield, about three miles west of Caen, at a range of less than ten miles.

This was the first important naval bombardment on the eastern flank of the coastline in support of advance forces since D-Day.

West of us, the battleship Rodney pumped 16-inch shells throughout the morning at the prearranged target, just ahead of our advancing infantry and tank troops.

Since early morning, at least one warship has been firing constantly, and as I write, everything movable on this ship is bouncing like a Mexican jumping bean. The Roberts is firing over our heads and the other warships around us keep up a thunderous rocking of noise.

The cruisers Argonaut and Diadem, working with aerial spotters, fired sporadically all morning at German batteries northwest and north of Caen.

The Germans brought up numerous mobile guns and shelled the anchorage with increasing intensity from positions in the woods near the coast east of the Orne River, causing a number of casualties but little damage to our ships. The counterfire did not hinder our unloading operations, however.

Nearby the cruiser Belfast, in collaboration with an aircraft observer, engaged a shore battery, but there have been no reports on the effectiveness of the shelling.

8169

Germans sobered by Allied blows

Triumphs in France, Russia and Italy bring warnings of serious dangers
By Raymond Daniell

London, England – (June 27)
The Allied triumphs in Italy, Russia and the Cherbourg Peninsula are having a sobering effect on German propagandists who only a few days ago were vaunting the rather apocryphal success of their “secret weapon.”

Now their tune is that Germany’s plight is grave indeed and that the time has come for every German to shed his last drop of blood that “Europe may live” and escape that chaos that awaits it if Russia and the Western Allies smash Germany’s “protective wall.”

German spokesmen seemed to agree today that, with the fall of Cherbourg, the Allies’ rapid advance northward in Italy and the Russians’ great westward drive, the war had entered the decisive phase. That view is shared here, where it is believed that the Red Army’s summer offensive has as its purpose a complete breakthrough of the German defenses. Now that the Allies have a firm foothold in the west, British as well as German military experts feel that the final phase of the war is beginning.

Soon after Cherbourg’s fall, a German Foreign Office spokesman was quoted as saying that the time had come when it would be seen whether “this is the last hour for Germany or her big chance.” He predicted that the decision would be reached quickly. Germany, he said would adopt defensive measures everywhere except in the south, where, he pointed out, her allies are “threatened.”

Lt. Gen. Kurt Dietmar gave cold comfort to German radio listeners tonight. He said that, despite heavy attacks by a superior enemy on three fronts, Germany could hold her own “because we have to.”

Capt. Ludwig Sertorius took a less gloomy view. He said that, now that Cherbourg had fallen, more landings were to be expected. Events, he predicted, will justify the German commanders’ judgment in holding back their operational reserves instead of “frittering them away” in an attempt to reinforce Cherbourg.

Berne, Switzerland – (June 27)
The breakdown of relations between the German Army and the Propaganda Ministry was further accentuated today by the surprise and fear with which the announcement of the loss of Cherbourg was greeted by the German people, neutral dispatches from Berlin said tonight.

The Propaganda Ministry is solely responsible for this state of affairs, the Tribune de Genève said.

For, during two whole years, it insisted to the public that the Atlantic Wall was invincible. Today the man in the street recalls yet another slogan that it issued at the beginning of the invasion: If the Allied soldiers could not seize a large port [the reference at the time was apparently to Le Havre], their men would be thrown back into the sea. Today the man in the street in Germany is told that the Allies have that large port – Cherbourg – and he does not pass that fact over lightly.

The Propaganda Ministry has given undue prominence to German war correspondents’ dispatches from the Normandy beachhead, all emphasizing the “technical superiority of the Allies’ High Command.” Today one reads that:

The Allies have superiority in manpower, in the air, on the sea and in matériel, as against which we are pitting only our fanatic ardor in an effort to compensate our present status.

More Canadians volunteer

Ottawa, Canada – (June 27)
Since the invasion of France, it is reported, there has been a big rise in the number of volunteers for overseas service. All men overseas are volunteers.

8170

Poletti arrests 198, ousts 3,750 as purge of Rome Fascists begins

Lists disqualifications for officeholders and sets up appeal commission of two Italians from each of six parties
By Herbert L. Matthews

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8171

Allied bombs hit all over Europe

U.S. and RAF ‘heavies’ strike in Pas-de-Calais and Poland, Italy, Reich and Balkans
By David Anderson

SHAEF, England –
Clearing weather late yesterday enabled formations of both U.S. and British heavy bombers to resume their attacks on the Nazis’ flying bomb bases in Pas-de-Calais while missions against enemy military objectives near the Normandy front were carried out by the lighter planes of the U.S. 9th Air Force.

Solid accomplishments of Allied airpower were effected over Hungary, Yugoslavia and Poland.

Several hundred Royal Air Force bombers flew out soon after last midnight in the direction of France.

The RAF struck “in great strength” at targets in France, said a British announcement early Wednesday.

The lull in activity of the air forces based in Britain, due entirely to poor flying conditions, did not affect the Mediterranean Theater, whence the U.S. 15th Air Force sent 500-700 Flying Fortresses and Liberators for attacks on targets in the Budapest area and at Brod, a key railway town in Yugoslavia.

Stiff Luftwaffe opposition was reported in the Budapest area.

Monday night, British Halifaxes and Wellingtons of the Italy-based forces bombed the Aquila oil refinery at Trieste, the largest refinery in Italy.

Blow from bases in Russia

The blow in Poland was by daylight Monday, when our “heavies” from the bases in Russia of the Eastern Command, U.S. Strategic Air Forces, blasted a Nazi synthetic oil plant at Drohobych in the Galician region. U.S. and Soviet fighters flew as escort.

One clearly defined objective of the 9th Air Force planes operating on the periphery of the Normandy battle zone is the Nazi system of filling stations. Our medium bombers and fighter-bombers methodically search out and destroy enemy fuel dumps.

Two Thunderbolts failed to return from missions that included attacks on railroads, rolling stock and Nazi road transport near Alençon, Laval and Rennes in an area some 120 miles from east of the Normandy front to Nantes on the estuary of the Loire River.

The 8th Air Force employed up to 250 Fortresses and Liberators that pounded the enemy’s pilotless plane emplacements in the Pas-de-Calais area, using both visual and instrument bombing. Five heavy bombers and three fighters were lost.

Defense against the flying bombs has been a preoccupation of the Air Defense of Great Britain and the 2nd Tactical Air Force, two RAF commands. Their efforts were supplemented by the Bombed command, which sent out Halifaxes with a strong fighter escort yesterday afternoon on an attack in northern France.

8172

CHIUSI RECAPTURED BY BRITISH FORCES
Eighth Army drives nine miles to Castiglione – gains on east shore of lake

Americans push ahead; battle enemy below Siena and drive up west coast as opposition stiffens

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8173

Asks more U.S. newsmen

London paper wants increase in those with British troops

London, England – (June 27)
Commenting on the grumbling over the lack of publicity in American newspapers for the part British and Canadian troops have played in the battle for Normandy, Lord Beaverbrook’s Daily Express said today:

Now, why not have a few more American newspaper correspondents accredited to the British fighting forces in France? At present there are only three. These few bear witness faithfully to the quality and valor of the British, but many more Americans await the chance.

8174

De Gaulle’s visit set early in July

President approves the dates selected by general; French optimistic

Washington – (June 27)
Gen. Charles de Gaulle, head of the French Committee of National Liberation, is expected to visit Washington between July 5 and 9. President Roosevelt said today that the general had suggested these dates and that he was informing him that the time was satisfactory.

When the President pleaded ignorance of the effectiveness of the French resistance movement in Normandy because he had not yet been there for first-hand observation, he was asked whether he was contemplating such a trip. The President laughingly replied that he was not talking in terms of implication.

8175

Stalin lauds U.S. for aid to Soviet Union

Cites ‘remarkable’ production job in long interview with Johnston and Harriman
By W. H. Lawrence

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U.S. honors heroic cities

Scrolls to Leningrad and Stalingrad presented by Roosevelt

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8176

Japanese stiffen all across Saipan

Bypassed pockets in mountain caves harass U.S. soldiers and Marines
By Howard Handleman, International News Service

Aboard joint expeditionary force flagship, Saipan, Mariana Islands – (June 27)
Japanese infantry resistance stiffened all along the island-wide front this morning as Marine and Army forces reached a sector possibly chosen for the beginning of Japan’s last-ditch defense of Saipan.

Five heavily defended Japanese pockets have already been bypassed on Mount Tapochau, from whose peak the American line pivots to the beaches on the eastern and western sides of the island. The pocketed Japanese are defending caves from which they harass and slow the U.S. advance.

U.S. Marines and soldiers have destroyed 36 Japanese tanks and captured 40, the United Press said. Though the Japanese are employing mobile artillery and tanks in numbers never seen before in the Central Pacific, there has not yet been an actual tank battle.

The Japanese defense line bends from the north slopes of Tapochau down into Garapan on the west and through Donnay Village on the east shore. Snipers and machine-gunners hiding in Garapan houses and cellars fought patrols venturing beyond U.S. lines into the southern outskirts of the town.

The U.S. advance was spilling over lightly defended areas and slowing against the heavily resisting sectors to conform to enemy defense lines.

This line roughly cuts inland to the center, indicting a Japanese defense in depth and possibly presaging a battle phase even more bloody than that of the first two weeks of the Saipan invasion, during which the Japanese retreated, avoiding infantry clashes, but pounding the Americans with mortars and artillery.

Saipan, already ranking with the roughest Pacific battles, threatens to develop into a terrible campaign of bloodletting, with fighting in streets, houses, mountains, forests and cane fields, combining the worst terrain features of all the Pacific battlefronts. The Japanese still hold about half the island, giving both forces room for maneuvering, although U.S. Marines and soldiers hold every speed advantage because of superior mechanization. Their roadways are greatly improved over the Japanese-held roads.

The Americans continue to hold complete sea and air superiority. The enemy is still making light night raids.

Japanese ground opposition is a different thing. Mountain pockets are holding up the advance in spots that are almost impregnable. One was a blind ravine, a huge hole in the mountain, lined with caves, each of which carried a death threat for Marines probing cautiously over the ravine floor. Litter evidenced recent occupation of the ravine by the Japanese, who left clothing, rations, cigarettes and ammunition.

It was this kind of pockets behind and the mountain and mortar and small-arms fire ahead that slowed the progress. Pocketed caves had to be hit head-on by guns exposed to counterfire from the caves. Each pocket became a deadly small-scale battlefield for the men assigned to clean out the caves with small artillery and flamethrowers.

8177

Liberators attack airdromes in Pacific

New Guinea and Carolines hit – four cargo ships struck

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8178

FALL OF MOGAUNG A DOUBLE VICTORY
Capture by Allies cuts off Japanese pockets and eases overland communications

Myitkyina’s end near; Americans gain inside city as the Chinese cut flanks to complete foe’s isolation
By Tillman Durdin

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NOMINATION TODAY SOUGHT FOR DEWEY
Sponsors of draft movement accelerate convention to permit Albany-Chicago trip

Vice Presidency an issue; new national committee is expected to meet tomorrow to elect chairman
By James A. Hagerty

Chicago, Illinois – (June 27)
Supporters of Governor Dewey took steps today to accelerate the Republican convention by nominating the candidates for President and Vice President tomorrow afternoon with both nominees accepting tomorrow night.

Sponsors of the movement to draft Governor Dewey for the presidential nomination expect this to be done unless there are unexpected difficulties in the selection of a vice-presidential candidate.

The Dewey supporters hope to make the nominations for President and Vice President tomorrow afternoon. This will permit Governor Dewey to leave Albany by plane in time to accept the nomination at an evening session.

Under the convention rules, seconding speeches will be limited to four for each candidate. With Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio and LtCdr. Harold E. Stassen, former Governor of Minnesota, the only other candidates to be presented, it is hoped that the nominating and seconding speeches will not take more than three hours and that the roll may be called on the first ballot immediately afterward without recess.

Nomination time is estimated

This would permit the nomination for President to be made by 2 or 3 o’clock in the afternoon, which would give ample time for Governor Dewey to reach Chicago.

Governor Dwight H. Green of Illinois will meet Governor and Mrs. Dewey and his party on arrival at the Chicago Airport and escort him to the Stadium.

Governor Dwight Griswold of Nebraska is scheduled to nominate Governor Dewey. Mayor Theodore R. McKeldin of Baltimore and Rep. Leonard W. Hall of New York have been selected to make seconding speeches.

Other seconds of Governor Dewey’s name will be made by a Midwestern and a woman delegate from the Midwest or Far West yet to be selected. Sponsors of the Dewey candidacy have been somewhat embarrassed by the number of requests from delegates for permission to make seconding speeches but have been obliged by the rules to restrict themselves to four.

Leaders in the campaign to nominate Governor Dewey estimated that he had in sight about 900 votes of the 1,057 total. J. Russell Sprague, New York National Committeeman, was informed today that the Kentucky delegation would not present Governor Simeon S. Willis for the presidential nomination and that the 22 votes of that state would be cast for Mr. Dewey.

Committee to meet tomorrow

If the program of the Dewey group is followed, there will be a meeting of the new national committee Thursday at which a new chairman will be elected. If Mr. Sprague had not declared himself unavailable because of the restrictions imposed by the Nassau County Charter upon his continuing as county executive, a post which he does not want to resign, he would be chosen, it is stated.

With Mr. Sprague unavailable, speculation centers on Herbert Brownell Jr., close friend of Governor Dewey and chairman of the law committee of the New York State Republican Committee, or State Chairman Edwin F. Jaeckle.

Selection of a national chairman from the Midwest would be gratifying to that section, and the name of Rep. Charles A. Halleck, who placed Wendell L. Willkie in nomination at the Philadelphia convention four years ago, has been mentioned. By party custom, the nominee is entitled to name the national chairman. The New York Governor, however, has let his sponsors know that he intends to consult members of the National Committee and other party leaders before making his suggestion.

Mother awaits Dewey

Arrives in Chicago to join son on his great day

Chicago, Illinois – (June 27)
Mrs. George M. Dewey of Owosso, Michigan, who has never witnessed a political convention, will be on hand tomorrow morning when the roll call of states begins for nominees for the Presidency. The mother of the outstanding candidate, Governor Dewey, motored here today with friends from home.

Confronting reporters and photographers in a suite at the Stevens Hotel, Mrs. Dewey answered many questions about her own life as a homemaker and Red Cross worker at Owosso and about the past, present and probable future of her son, whose great day she will share tomorrow.

If he won the election, she was asked, would she live in the White House? She gasped a bit and retorted, “Well, I might not be invited. But I suppose I’d be there at least part of the time.”

Owosso, a town of 16,000, was rather agitated at the prospect of a hometown boy as a presidential nominee, Mrs. Dewey admitted. Her telephone had been ringing without cessation up the time she departed this morning, she said.

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NEW DEAL LABELED ‘FASCISM’ BY MARTIN
Tells convention people must give Republicans more help in fight on regimentation

To ‘free Democrats, too; House leader denies charge his party has no program, lists its main points
By James B. Reston

Chicago, Illinois – (June 27)
The Republican Party is fighting the arrogant and bureaucratic dictatorship which is leading the people to national bankruptcy and complete regimentation, but the Republicans must have more help from the people if they are to hold the lines of constitutional government, Joseph W. Martin Jr., House Minority Leader, told the Republican National Convention today.

Mr. Martin, who was elected permanent chairman of the convention, emphasized that the Republicans had a constructive policy, based on the Constitution, private enterprise and collaboration with the other countries of the world, to lead the United States back to a “sound, prosperous peacetime basis.”

He said:

We are in more than one war. In one of those wars, our sons and daughters are against the German and the Jap. But there is another war here at home. It is a war between two eternally hostile ideologies. One idea is that of a free society – the society of free men creating their wealth with the instrumentalities of free enterprise under the protection of a representative republic.

The other is the conception of the regimented and planned society living upon vast streams of government debt and taking its shape and destiny from the directives from a bureaucratic elite under the command of a self-inspired leader. You may call it anything you wish. In Europe, they call it Fascism. Here we call it the New Deal.

Fight to ‘free’ Democrats

Mr. Martin sought to distinguish between the New Deal and the Democratic Party.

Mr. Martin said:

The Democratic Party which we have known and with which we have honorably struggled on so many fields. But which was a party of Americans, who believed in the American system, has lost its own powers over its own destiny. The Democratic Party has been captured by a minority, whose philosophy it despises. It has become a prisoner of the New Deal.

Thank God some of its leaders realize this and have had the courage to revolt. This election, curiously, is not merely a fight to put the Republicans into office, but, by a strange twist of fate, it is also a fight to emancipate the Democrats.

After repeating the policy of the Republican Party as defined by the Republican members of Congress in September 1942, Mr. Martin said that whenever criticism was leveled at the New Deal administration, the reply invariably was that the Republicans had no program. He insisted that the Republicans had carefully thought out what they would do when they were elected, and this program could be summed up in part by the following points. The Republicans would, he said:

  • Restore to Congress its responsibility and function as the people’s special instrument of control over their government and their public officials.

  • Restore responsibilities in matters of local concern to the state and local governmental subdivisions.

  • Produce “genuine economy” in government. Mr. Martin said:

To achieve that we will eliminate administrative non-essentials. No one can pretend that under the New Deal there will ever be retrenchment in governmental costs. The New Dealers just don’t believe in it.

  • Establish a taxation system that would not only be as simple and equitable as possible but a system designed to “stimulate industry and create jobs for the people,” a system of taxation “on a revenue basis and not for punitive purposes.”

  • Under a Republican administration, “labor will retain all the essential rights and just privileges it has gained.”

  • Make it possible for private capital to be permitted and encouraged to venture in the post-war period into renewed and expanded production.

  • Continue humane and beneficial economic and social advantages.

  • Provide “adequate benefits” for the men and women of our military services and make certain they are promptly available.

The House leader indicated that the Republicans would attempt to make the Communists’ support for a “fourth term” an issue in the presidential election. The “coalition” of the Communists with the CIO Political Action Committee in favor of another term for Mr. Roosevelt was, Mr. Martin said, “an insolent challenge” to the people of the United States.

He said:

This challenge has been insolently and boldly issued to the people of America. It presents a vital issue of this campaign.

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Democrats deride opponents’ planks

Congressmen in Washington call them an avalanche of words

Washington (AP) – (June 27)
Democratic Congressmen derided, today, Republican Party platform proposals with expressions such as “an avalanche of words” and “a straddle,” while their Republican colleagues applauded the planks as “dandy.”

Rep. Robert Ramspeck (D-GA), House Majority Whip, said that the Republican proposals as approved by the Platform Committee “sound like the same old Republican runaround.” The platform, he said, “is full of ambiguous words from which it is possible to construe almost any meaning desired.”

Rep. Walt Horan (R-WA) expressed approval of the platform throughout. He said:

I think it is a dandy and one of which the party can be proud. It increases my confidence in the Republican leadership.

Rep. Clarence Cannon (D-MO), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, described the foreign policy declaration as “merely an avalanche of words, so stated that anyone could read into it anything they cared to believe.”

Opposing his view, Rep. Marion T. Bennett (R-MO) analyzed the statement on foreign policy as being “as specific and as well outlined as is possible at this stage of our relations with other nations.” He said that it was “a much better plan than as yet advocated by any of the opposition.”

Senator Lister Hill (D-AL) called the foreign policy statement “a straddle to catch both isolationists and internationalists.”

Senator Elbert D. Thomas (D-UT) said he believed that the platform was written “in a spirit of wishful thinking.”

He stated:

The plank on veterans covers ground that already is law. I am glad the Republican Party has made declarations that are very close to the aims of the present administration in regard to peace. That indicates the Republicans in Congress will be helpful in bringing about a fair peace.

The plank calling for an end of rationing and price-fixing was described by Rep. Brent Spence (D-KY), chairman of the House Banking Committee, as “designed to gain a few votes, and it means nothing.”

Mr. Spence said:

Anybody knows that the program is only temporary and will be discontinued as soon as the emergency is over.

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Platform praised by party leaders

Some want Dewey to clarify it as Senators, Governors voice general satisfaction

Chicago, Illinois – (June 27)
The reaction here to the Republican platform was favorable.

Criticism about the “ambiguity” of the party’s declaration on foreign policy was prevalent earlier, but after the platform was approved, Governors, Senators and other delegates said they were satisfied with the main features of the declarations.

Governors of some Eastern states, who had been expected to be critical of what Wendell Willkie has termed the “ambiguity” of the foreign policy pronouncement, were unanimous in declaring that they would “go along” with the committee’s final report.

Governor Edge of New Jersey, who had threatened a floor fight on the plank said he would not raise his voice against it. He decided to rely upon the interpretation which Governor Dewey would put upon the declaration.

Senator Reed (R-KS), while abiding by the party declaration, said he thought that the statement on foreign policy might have “contained fewer words” and expressed the wish that the party had adopted the Mackinac statement as “far more succinct and expressing Republican feelings better.”

Framers voice satisfaction

Senator Taft, chairman of the Resolutions Committee, which has labored since Wednesday to draft the platform, declared himself “well satisfied” with it and added:

The declarations presented to this convention have been framed with more care and greater seriousness than ever were devoted to the platforms of any previous conventions.

Senator Austin (R-VT), head of the group which shaped the foreign policy plank, said that the platform would “represent a marked advance in both domestic and foreign policy toward the establishment of security, peace and prosperity.”

Senator Danaher (R-CT), commending “the mutuality we seek among nations,” said:

The platform is a remarkable achievement and presents sound and cogent American doctrine. The people will support us, as our views are their views.

Senator White (R-ME) praised the platform as “dealing soundly and effectively with the problems of America and the world.”

Senator Ball (R-MN) said the foreign policy plank was not in terminology which he would have chosen, but that he considered it a strong statement, particularly if the candidate endorsed “the positive and not the negative implications.”

Senator Hawkes (R-NJ) maintained that the party’s expression on foreign policy was in line with the sentiments of most Americans.

Rep. Hamilton Fish (R-NY) approved the foreign policy plank as reflecting the determination of the American people “to win the war and go a long way to preserve the peace through international cooperation.”

Edge cites Dewey’s approval

Governor Edge of New Jersey made no secret of his disapproval of the foreign policy plank, but expressed his faith in Governor Dewey’s interpretation of it.

He said:

From a layman’s standpoint the platform, especially on foreign policy, could be clearer. However, I am informed that Governor Dewey has accepted this text, and further I am quite positive that our nominee-to-be will carry out the pledges made in his speech on foreign relations to the newspaper publishers two months ago.

I have every confidence that Governor Dewey will enlarge and amplify the party’s position on this foreign policy plank, just as other nominees have done in the past with involved platform expressions.

The appearance of the Governors of many of the leading Republican states before the foreign policy subcommittee last night apparently resulted in helpful changes. Certainly, there can be no question that by an adequate force Governor Dewey means a military force when necessary.

Governor Saltonstall of Massachusetts expressed satisfaction with the platform in its entirely but added that he would be interested in hearing Governor Dewey’s interpretations of one or two of the planks, including that on foreign policy.

Governor Martin of Pennsylvania said that the platform was “all right” and that the foreign policy plank “embodied the Mackinac Charter.”

Governor Sewall of Maine termed the platform “a good document, the best statement you can reasonably expect in view of the conflicting opinions” and Governor Blood of New Hampshire declared that it was “one of which the Governors can unite and elect Dewey.”

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Predicts Dewey victory

Arthur T. Vanderbilt sees ‘handsome majority’ in November

Chicago, Illinois (AP) – (June 27)
Arthur T. Vanderbilt of New Jersey, delegate-at-large and dean of the New York University Law School, one of the men behind the campaign to make Governor Dewey the Republican presidential nominee, predicted today that he would win by a “handsome majority” in November.

Mr. Vanderbilt said:

Our best friends smiled three months ago when we said Dewey would be nominated on the first ballot, but everybody concedes it today. They will probably smile when we say he will be elected in November, but personally I haven’t the slightest doubt.

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MRS. LUCE ASSAILS ‘BUMBLEDOM’ TREND
She says women no less than men resent practices ‘distorting our democracy’

Hails ‘G.I. Joe and G.I. Jim;’ declares party best fitted to serve men who return and vindicate men who die
By Kathleen McLaughlin

Chicago, Illinois – (June 27)
Once again, a woman had the last word, and Rep. Clare Boothe Luce, who spoke it, also made it the most effective of the evening at the Republican National Convention. Her ringing address was undeniably the peak of the program as she arraigned the Democratic Party and warned her own party to prepare for the homecoming of the G.I. Joes.

Spotlighted by many kliegs, the playwright and legislator was a cynosure of attention from every corner of the crowded hall. She was simply clad in a short-sleeved, navy dinner dress, with a crisp white plastron caught at the throat into a narrow white bow.

Her voice, clear and penetrating, reached every point in the hall and the close of her speech found the crowd on its feet acclaiming her with shouts and waving banners while Chairman Martin summoned a mixed chorus to serenade her with “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.”

Theme of war and peace

Addressed to the convention but aimed beyond the tiers of delegates and visitors at all the women of the country whose hears and thoughts are with their men in uniform, her speech carried an indirect plea for support of the man the Republicans will nominate as the man best fitted to insure a quick homecoming and a secure future for those in the Armed Forces.

Proclaiming her credo that “American women do not wish their praises sung as women any more than they wish political pleas made to them as women,” Mrs. Luce asserted that women “feel no differently from men about the ever-growing threats to good government.”

She declared:

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.

The G.I. Joes, she insisted, wanted the country to be secure from here out, not only because, no matter how confused people at home were, he knew what he was fighting for, but to vindicate and avenge G.I. Jim, his pal who was “immobilized by enemy gunfire – immobilized for all eternity.”

Memorial for ‘G.I. Jim’

Of G.I. Jim, she said:

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.

The objective of the convention, she went on, was to nominated a candidate for President “who will make sure that Jim’s sacrifice shall not prove useless in the years that lie ahead.

She added:

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.

She flung a direct challenge at the Roosevelt administration by questioning whether the war might not have been averted or whether, once proved inevitable, it might not have been lessened in horror by better preparation.

She noted that Republican Presidents had been “overconfident” during the 1920s that sanity would prevail abroad.

She added:

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. No Republican President gave these promises which were kept to their ears, but broken to their hearts.

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President laughs again when asked ‘the’ question

Washington – (June 27)
President Roosevelt laughed off the fourth term question again today.

A reporter asked at his news conference if there was anything he could say today on the Democratic candidate for President.

The President threw his head back and laughed, then turned to the questioner and said, “So they saddled that one on you today.”

It had been some time since “the” question had been asked. Some correspondents, knowing the President’s way of sometimes blanketing Republican convention news with major news of his own, had thought that the eve of Governor Dewey’s nomination might strike him as an opportune time to make his announcement.

But Mr. Roosevelt apparently thought otherwise.