Völkischer Beobachter (July 10, 1944)
Zwischenergebnis der Schlacht in Italien –
Die Front südlich von Florenz
Rund 500 Kilometer an Küstenverteidigung eingespart
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Zwischenergebnis der Schlacht in Italien –
Geistige Freiheit des Papstes bedroht –
Druck auf den Vatikan
Von unserem Berichterstatter in der Schweiz
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US-Verluste im Fernen Osten und Pazifik –
Der lange Weg bis Tokio
Madrid, 9. Juli –
An die pessimistischen Erklärungen Roosevelts über den Verlauf des Krieges in China knüpft der Neuyorker Korrespondent der Agentur Efe an, die Worte Roosevelts haben in der nordamerikanischen Öffentlichkeit Unruhe hervorgerufen, schreibt Lucientes. Die Neuyorker Zeitung Journal American halte es für ausgeschlossen, daß sich die Situation in China in den nächsten Monaten bessern könnte. Die Transportschwierigkeiten Tschiangkaischeksseien zu groß. Die Wiedergewinnung der Burmastraße würde an dieser verzweifelten Lage ebenfalls nichts ändern, sagt die genannte Zeitung.
Auch die übrigen Blätter Neuyorks brächten zum Ausdruck, daß der Weg bis Tokio noch sehr lang, hart und kostspielig sein werde. Die Eroberung nur eines Teiles der Insel Saipan habe den Nordamerikanern fast 10.000 Mann Verluste gekostet. Dies sei nach dem eigenen Urteil der amerikanischen Journalisten aber erst der Anfang. Man habe bisher überhaupt noch keine Bekanntschaft mit den großen Armeen Japans oder auch nur eines Teiles derjenige, die in China, Mandschukuo, auf Java, den Philippinen und den Malaien stünden, gemacht.
Zerstörte Träume
Über die Wege in der Normandie ziehen die Flüchtlinge. Was sie mit Mühe und Not haben retten können aus den Trümmern ihrer Häuser, bergen sie in ihrem wenigen Gepäck. Ganz außer Fassung, viele die maßlose Angst vor den niedersausenden Bomben noch in den Augen, gehen sie gejagt ihren Weg.
Ihre Dörfer und Städte lagen weit hinter der Front. Aber plötzlich, an einem sonnenklaren Sommernachmittag, dröhnten die Verbände mit den Kreisen auf den Flügeln dunkel und drohend über die engen Straßen und pittoresken Plätze. Innerhalb einer Viertelstunde war das Städtchen eine Hölle von Rauch und Feuer. Wer noch den Keller hatte erreichen können, erstickte unter den niederstürzenden Trümmern. Nur die konnten sich retten, die ins freie Feld geflohen waren.
Jetzt ziehen sie auf den normannischen Wegen. Aber noch nimmt ihr Elend kein Ende. Bei einer Kurve, als das Gebüsch aufhört und man über die wogenden Roggenfelder eine freie Sicht hat, kommen britische Jäger in geringer Höhe über die traurige Kolonne. Wütend funken die Bordwaffen. Kinden beginnen zu weinen, Frauen schreien und rennen nach dem schützenden Gebüsch zurück.
Zitternd vor Angst und Entsetzen suchen sie, nachdem die Flieger verschwunden sind, nochmals die Reste des Hausgeräts. Sie haben nicht die Kraft, weiterzugehen, ein paar hundert Meter weiter kann ihnen dasselbe passieren. Vollkommen zerschlagen bleiben sie am Rande des Weges sitzen. Ihr Blick sucht nervös den Himmel ab. Kommen sie da schon wieder?
Es ist eine Welle von unsagbarem Leid über die Normandie gekommen. Sie hat alle schönen Träume von einer „schnellen, schmerzlosen Befreiung“ auf grausamste Weise zerstört.
NSK.
Innsbrucker Nachrichten (July 10, 1944)
Erbitterte Straßen- und Häuserkämpfe in Caen
Missglückte feindliche Durchbruchsversuche in Italien – Wilna gegen zahlreiche Angriffe behauptet – Zwei britische Schnellboote versenkt
dnb. Aus dem Führerhauptquartier, 10. Juli –
Das Oberkommando der Wehrmacht gibt bekannt:
Die große Abwehrschlacht im Raum von Caen griff im Laufe des gestrigen Tages auf die Stadt selbst über. Nach erbitterten Straßen- und Häuserkämpfen, in denen unsere Truppen dem Feind schwerste Verluste zufügten, drückte der Gegner unsere Linien auf den Südrand von Caen zurück. Bei Crainville scheiterten feindliche Panzerangriffe. In einer Einbruchstelle beiderseits der Straße von Caumont–Caen sind die Kämpfe noch nicht abgeschlossen. Zwischen Airei und Sainteny konnte der Feind nur geringen Geländegewinn erzielen. Südlich La Haye-du-Puits wurden mehrere feindliche Angriffe abgewiesen, westlich des Ortes feindliche Bereitstellungen durch zusammengefasstes Artilleriefeuer zerschlagen.
Bei den Kämpfen der vergangenen Woche im Südwestteil der Halbinsel Cherbourg haben sich die Kampfgruppe der 77. Infanteriedivision unter Oberst der Reserve Bacherer und die Kampfgruppe der 243. Infanteriedivision unter Oberst Klosterkemper besonders ausgezeichnet.
Im französischen Raum wurden wiederum 239 Terroristen und Saboteure im Kampf niedergemacht.
Vor der niederländischen und nordfranzösischen Küste versenkten Sicherungsfahrzeuge der Kriegsmarine in der Nacht zum 9. Juli zwei britische Schnellboote, beschädigten vier weitere schwer und erzielten zahlreiche Treffer auf mehreren anderen Booten. Ein eigenes Fahrzeug ging verloren.
Im Golf von Saint-Malo zwangen Vorposten feindliche Zerstörer zum Abdrehen und beschädigten einen von ihnen.
Das „V1“- Vergeltungsfeuer auf London dauert mit nur geringen Unterbrechungen an.
In Italien zeichneten sich unsere an der westlichen Küstenstraße bei Volterra, Poggibonsi, Arezzo und an der adriatischen Küste eingesetzten Truppen gestern erneut durch besondere Standhaftigkeit aus. Trotz Einsatzes überlegener Infanterie- und Panzerkräfte, die durch starke Artillerie- und laufende Luftangriffe unterstützt wurden, gelang dem Feind nirgends der erhoffte Durchbruch durch unsere Front, In einigen örtlichen Einbruchsstellen hielten die Kämpfe am gestrigen Abend noch an.
Im Osten ließen die Angriffe der Sowjets bei Kowel nach dem hervorragenden Abwehrerfolg unserer Truppen an Heftigkeit nach. Erneute Durchbruchsversuche wurden zerschlagen.
Westlich Baranowicze fingen unsere Divisionen die mit starken Infanterie- und Panzerkräften vordringenden Bolschewisten in erbitterten Kämpfen an der Szczara, beiderseits Slonin, auf. Die Verteidiger von Wilna behaupteten die Stadt gegen zahlreiche, von Panzern unterstützte Angriffe des Feindes und fügten ihm hohe blutige Verluste zu. Nordwestlich Wilna wurden die Sowjets im Gegenangriff zurückgeworfen. An der Straße Kauen–Dünaburg sind bei Otena heftige Kämpfe im Gange. Gegenangriffe unserer Truppen hatten Erfolg. Nordwestlich Polozk scheiterten die Durchbruchsversuche mehrerer sowjetischer Schützendivisionen am zähen Widerstand unserer Truppen.
Bei den schweren Abwehrkämpfen im Raum von Orscha hat sich Major Lampfrecht, Kommandeur einer hamburgischen leichten Flakabteilung, durch beispielhafte Tapferkeit ausgezeichnet.
Starke Schlachtfliegergeschwader griffen in rollenden Einsätzen in die Erdkämpfe ein, setzten zahlreiche sowjetische Panzer und Geschütze außer Gefecht und vernichteten mehrere hundert Fahrzeuge.
In der Nacht führten Kampf- und Nachtschiachtflugzeuge wirksame Angriffe gegen den sowjetischen Nachschubverkehr. Besonders in den stark belegten Bahnhöfen Korosten, Olewsk und Rowno entstanden große Brände in Betriebsstofflagern und heftige Explosionen.
Ein nordamerikanischer Bomberverband warf gestern verstreut Bomben im Raum von Ploesti.
Einzelne, feindliche Flugzeuge warfen in der letzten Nacht Bomben im rheinisch-westfälischen Raum.
Seestreitkräfte, Bordflak von Handelsschiffen und Marineflakartillerie schossen in der Zeit vom 1. bis 10. Juli 86 feindliche Flugzeuge ab.
Supreme HQ Allied Expeditionary Force (July 10, 1944)
Communiqué No. 69
Following the devastating bombing yesterday morning, armor and infantry thrusting down all roads leading into CAEN from the north and west have forced the enemy out of the town back to the line of the river ORNE. This advance was supported by naval gunfire and rocket-firing aircraft based in NORMANDY. Fighters from Britain ranged to the south and east of the town, effectively checking enemy attempts to bring up reinforcements. Reports received indicate that the enemy has suffered heavy casualties in this operation.
Patrols have crossed the river ODON a short distance above its junction with the ORNE.
In the west, an advance on both sides of the CARENTAN–PERIERS road brought Allied troops close to the village of SAINTENY.
The bridgehead over the river VIRE was further widened and strengthened in spite of stiff enemy resistance.
Small formations of fighters and fighter-bombers on patrol in the area PARIS to SAINT-LÔ and to the south attacked bridges and transport at MANTES, GASSICOURT, MONTFORT-SUR-RISLE and LESSAY. Rail embankments at BOURTH and bridges behind the enemy line were also attacked during the period from noon to midnight. Five enemy aircraft were destroyed for the loss of five of ours.
During the late evening, light bombers attacked a bridge and a rail junction north of POITIERS, ferries between QUILLEBEUF and DUCLAIR and bridges, trains and road transport east of the battle area.
In yesterday morning’s operation by escorted heavy bombers, six enemy aircraft were destroyed by our fighters. Three of our bombers and three fighters are missing.
Communiqué No. 70
In the CAEN sector, the fighting has extended to the area south of the ODON river. From the ODON bridgehead our troops have advanced through the villages of ÉTERVILLE and MALTOT. Enemy strongpoints, which were bypassed in our advance yesterday, are being systematically eliminated.
Southwest of CARENTAN, our troops advancing along the road toward PÉRIERS have liberated the village of SAINTENY. South of TILLY and south of LA HAYE-DU-PUITS, strong German armored counterattacks have been repulsed and a number of their tanks destroyed.
Widespread attacks on the enemy transportation system were carried out last night by our light bombers. Seventeen trains and associated targets on rail lines leading to the battlefront were damaged or set on fire.
Our fighter-bombers operated in the LESSAY and SAINT-LÔ sectors this morning, attacking gun positions and strongpoints.
U.S. Navy Department (July 10, 1944)
CINCPAC Communiqué No. 77
Guam Island was shelled by light surface units of the Pacific Fleet on July 8 (West Longitude Date). Defense positions and buildings were damaged, and several small craft along the beaches were hit.
Carrier aircraft of a fast carrier task group attacked Guam and Rota island on July 9. At Guam, military objectives at Piti Town were hit, and anti-aircraft batteries and coastal guns bombed. Anti-aircraft fire ranged from moderate to intense. One of our aircraft made a water landing and a destroyer rescued the crew. At Rota Island, rockets and bombs were used against objectives in Rota Town and the airstrip, and gun emplacements were strafed.
Liberators of the 7th Army Air Force bombed Truk Atoll on July 8. Several enemy aircraft were in the air but did not press home an attack. One Liberator received minor damage from moderate anti-aircraft fire. Corsair fighters and Dauntless dive bombers of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing attacked Jaluit, Maloelap and Wotje in the Marshalls on July 9.
The Pittsburgh Press (July 10, 1944)
British capture three towns, key height south of Caen
Yanks advance mile, extend bridgehead in central Normandy
Two initial objectives captured, Caen and La Haye-du-Puits, British and U.S. forces today continued to advance along the road to Paris. The Yanks pushed 2,000 yards south of La Haye (1), captured the towns of Le Désert and Cavigny and drove to within five miles of Périers (2). The British and Canadians extended their beachheads across the Odon River, captured three villages and a key height, and pressed toward the Nazis’ Orne River line (3).
SHAEF, London, England –
British and Canadian forces slashed into the exposed German flank below captured Caen today and drove forward through three fortified villages to within less than half a mile of the Orne River defense line due south of Caen.
Gen. Sir Bernard L. Montgomery’s 2nd Army, striking again while the mop-up of the Caen area was underway, stormed through Éterville, Maltot (near Esquay) and Bretteville-sur-Odon in advances up to about a mile and overran the hotly-contested height called Hill 112 commanding the Orne–Odon salient below Caen.
U.S. forces advancing down the mid-Normandy highway toward Périers captured Sainteny, five miles southwest of Carentan, and other U.S. units expanded the bridgehead across the Vire for an average gain of a mile, reaching a point only 7,000 yards from Saint-Lô.
The expansion of the Vire bridgehead almost brought the front in line with the general battle zone through the Caumont–Saint-Lô area, and a headquarters spokesman said Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley’s drive there “shows considerable long-term promise.”
Threaten encirclement
The British-Canadian armored force cutting in below Caen like a giant scythe began developing a possible encirclement maneuver against the German troops holding out in the Faubourg-de-Vaucelles, southern suburb of Caen.
The high ground captured by the Imperials between the Odon and Orne Rivers was the key to the entire Caen sector, and the victory put the final seal of the conquest of the great inland port.
A spokesman, however, emphasized that the Germans were still fighting fiercely all along the Normandy front, but had been obliged to throw in reserves they had been trying to build up for a showdown.
Orderly withdrawals
It was emphasized that wherever the Nazis were giving ground, they were doing so by orderly withdrawals, and nowhere was there a sign of disorganization in the enemy ranks or large-scale disengagement.
With the seizure of Hill 112 between the Orne and Odon, the British were able to command the highway running south and slightly west from Caen, leaving only the Caen–Falaise highway in German hands and relatively free of interference.
In the immediate area of Caen, which fell yesterday, German strongpoints which had been bypassed in the final assault on the city were being cleaned out.
Counterattacks held
West of Caen, the Germans counterattacked, but were held everywhere by the British.
The Americans who captured Sainteny pressed on down the road from Carentan toward Périers, the road hub controlling the territory between Saint-Lô and the west coast.
To the northwest, the Germans counterattacked strongly in the area of La Haye-du-Puits, captured yesterday, but the Americans beat off the blows and destroyed a number of enemy tanks.
Front dispatches disclosed that Gen. Montgomery’s tanks and infantry, supported by warships and rocket-firing planes, had cleared a six-mile stretch of the north bank of the Orne in Caen and on either side of the city.
Couldn’t wreck bridges
A headquarters spokesman said the final stages of the British advance into Caen were so rapid that the Germans were not believed to have had time to destroy all the bridges across the Orne.
The British first pushed across the Odon River some five miles southwest of Caen nearly two weeks ago and so developed their threat to the Orne River that the Germans committed a major portion of their armor there.
The line swayed back and forth during five German counterattacks, but the British held firmly to their bridgehead.
Americans also advance
One column of the U.S. 1st Army at the western end of the 111-mile front pushed 2,000 yards south of La Haye-du-Puits, another seized Le Désert and Cavigny, three miles southwest and three southeast respectively of Saint-Jean-de-Daye, and a third drove down the Carentan-Périers road.
Headquarters acknowledged that the Germans had made a minor gain in violent counterattacks on the Mount Castre plateau southeast of La Haye, though the Americans still held high ground there.
The liberation of Caen cleared away one of the strongest obstacles on the highway and railway from Cherbourg to Paris 120 miles to the east, and gave the Allies a first-class port which had a peacetime capacity of two million tons of cargo a year. Caen, the largest city yet captured by the Allies in France, had a peacetime population of 50,000, some 20,000 more than Cherbourg.
Once well across the Orne, however, Allied armor can fan out across rolling country without a natural defense obstacle for 20 miles. Any German attempt to make a stand short of a ridge running northwest from Falaise, 20 miles southeast of Caen, to the Caumont area was expected to touch off an armored battle that may determine the length of enemy resistance in western France.
Caen was little more than a crumbling mass of ruins when it fell into British hands yesterday, but its port installation and the Orne Canal leading seven miles northward to the sea were believed largely intact.
Yanks finish conquest of Saipan Island
Win base in range of Japan, Philippines
By William F. Tyree, United Press staff writer
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii –
Completion of the conquest of Saipan in the bloodiest fighting of the Pacific War established U.S. forces today within bombing range of Japan and the Philippines.
Saipan, with two large airfields and deepwater harbors, opened a new springboard for further amphibious operations westward to the China coast and eventually to Japan itself.
The complete conquest of the 75-mile-square island, administrative center of the Marianas, was announced late yesterday by Adm. Chester W. Nimitz who said U.S. Marines and Army troops broke the last organized resistance by the Japs in the northern tip of Saipan Saturday.
11,300 Japs buried
The 25-day campaign for Saipan resulted in heavy losses to both the United States and Japan.
Of the enemy’s estimated 20,000-30,000 men originally on the island, more than 11,300 of them were buried by U.S. forces and hundreds taken prisoner.
Although U.S. losses for the campaign were not disclosed, Adm. Nimitz had previously announced that in the first 14 days of fighting, the United States suffered 9,754 casualties, of which 1,474 were killed, 7,400 wounded and others missing. It was believed, however, that the casualties were on a smaller scale since then.
Operations to continue
Adm. Nimitz’s communiqué gave no indication of the size of scattered enemy remnants still on Saipan, but operations to dig the stragglers out of the hills and caves will probably continue for some time.
Additionally, thousands of other Japs scattered through the remaining Mariana Islands from Guam in the south to Pagan in the north were virtually isolated by the conquest and faced continual aerial bombardment with little hope of assistance from home.
The final breakthrough of the Jap lines at the northern edge of Saipan was accomplished Saturday afternoon by battle-hardened veterans of the 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions and the 27th Infantry Division, most of the latter from New York State.
Follows suicide charge
The end of the campaign came two days after the trapped Japs made a desperate break from their hopeless positions and drove more than a mile down the western coast to near the town of Tanapag before they were stopped. More than 1,500 enemy troops were killed in the assault.
While Saipan was won at the expense of the greatest personnel losses the United States has suffered in any Pacific campaign, the conquest was considered one of the most important because of its strategic location at the apex of a triangle with the Philippines and Japan proper.
On Saipan, the largest island yet taken in the Central Pacific, the Americans gained control of two airfields – Isely and Marpi – within 1,499 miles south of Tokyo and 1,470 miles east of the Philippines.
Can harass Japs
Possession of the island enables Adm. Nimitz to protect his air and naval power deep into the last big sea area farther westward under Jap control and open bases for submarines closer to the fields where they have been harassing enemy supply lines since the war started.
With these lines narrowed by Adm. Nimitz’s strides through the Central Pacific and Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s advances in the southwest, the Japs faced a threat of a further pinch of supplies to their home industries.
The campaign on Saipan was perhaps the costliest yet suffered by the Japs. Since it opened on June 14, the Japs lost their key base in the Western Pacific, together with the entire garrison, and more than 1,000 planes and 100 ships destroyed or damaged.
Raid Guam, Rota
Adm. Nimitz disclosed that carrier-based planes again attacked Guam and Rota, south of Saipan, Friday and Saturday, while a U.S. combat patrol shot down nine Jap fighter planes apparently attempting to fly from Guam to Yap, in the Carolina Islands.
Six twin-engined Jap planes were destroyed on the ground and probably two others near Agana on Guam. The Americans lost one fighter and one torpedo bomber in the two-day raid.
A Jap Dōmei News Agency broadcast said U.S. planes raided Guam, Rota and Tinian yesterday and that “several” cruisers and destroyers shelled Guam.
Bombers sweep northern France
Robot plane bases hammered by RAF
By Walter Cronkite, United Press staff writer
London, England –
Hundreds of British Lancaster bombers, with a fighter escort, swept over northern France early today in what was believed new attacks on the German robot bomb launching installations, while tactical forces again hit enemy communications behind the Normandy battlefront.
An Air Ministry communiqué identified the RAF targets only as “military objectives,” but coastal observers reported the great fleets of planes took only an hour and a half to shuttle over the straits, indicating the targets were somewhere nearby.
The communiqué said RAF Mosquito bombers attacked a synthetic oil plant at Buer, in Prussia, last night. Both operations were carried out without loss.
Other Mosquito forces, together with Bostons, carried out pre-dawn raids on at least 18 trains, railways and bridges over the Seine, directly behind the enemy lines, and harassed road convoys, at one point surprising a 10-mile-long convoy of trucks near Chartres.
Fighter-bombers strafed and bombed German reinforcements moving across pontoon bridges several miles from the mouth of the Seine.
Despite bad weather, which sometimes forced fighters down to less than 300 feet, Allied planes yesterday made 3,500 sorties, including attacked by rocket-firing RAF Typhoons on German strongpoints just ahead of the troops in Caen.
Down three fighters
Only one formation of German planes was encountered over Normandy yesterday. Australian Spitfires engaged 40 enemy fighters between Lisieux and Cabourg and shot down three of them without loss.
Adverse weather hampered aerial operations from Italy, although Flying Fortresses and Liberators, with escorting fighters, hit the Ploești oil fields in Romania.
Romania’s second largest refinery at Concordia Vega, on the north side of the fields, was covered by a smokescreen, but Liberators sighted several explosions and reported columns of oil smoke 18,000 feet high. The other target was the Xenia refinery, to the northwest, which was set afire by Flying Fortresses.
Mustangs made a separate offensive sweep over the area and downed most of the 14 German planes knocked out in the raid.
Americans seize Livorno outpost
Threaten to turn Nazi line in Italy
By Reynolds Packard, United Press staff writer
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Roosevelt on spot on Wallace fate
Ultimate control of party at stake
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
Washington (UP) –
Vice President Henry A. Wallace returned today from his 23,000-mile roundtrip to Asia, and the White House announced that he would confer this afternoon with President Roosevelt, who must decide whether Mr. Wallace will be on the Democratic ticket again this year.
The necessity of so deciding confronts Mr. Roosevelt with one of the momentous problems of his career – whether it compel the Democratic National Convention to renominate the Vice President. The convention starts July 19 in Chicago.
On his return here, as on his arrival in Seattle yesterday, Mr. Wallace had nothing to say about his own political destiny. He issued a statement that he was glad to be back and said that “this is the first time I have liked Washington weather.”
In a 20-minute radio address in Seattle, he had urged a “New Deal” for China and close collaboration between this country and “the new world of the Northern Pacific and Eastern Asia.”
It was reported in Seattle that Mr. Wallace has made no plans to attend the Democratic convention.
Mr. Roosevelt’s ability to control the convention and to have Mr. Wallace on the ticket is unquestioned.
What the President must decide is whether it would be wiser to avoid the bitterness that Mr. Wallace’s renomination would create or to accept some other running mate who might surrender to the Conservative Democratic organization if Mr. Roosevelt died in office and were succeeded by the Vice President.
That is about all there is to the uproar about Mr. Wallace, although in the public dispute now raging over the vice-presidential nomination there is little if any acknowledgment that all hands are thinking about ultimate control of the party organization.
1940 bitterness recalled
Mr. Roosevelt is 62 and if reelected, he would be 66 on leaving office. The possibility of his death in office, therefore, is something both he and his Democratic opponents consider in approaching the vice-presidential problem.
Mr. Roosevelt rammed the former Iowa Republican down the throat of the 1940 Democratic Convention with the explanation that he wanted a man of “that turn of mind” on the ticket with him. The compelling factor, however, was the President’s intimation that he would not accept the nomination himself unless Mr. Wallace was on the ticket.
It was a bitter show in 1940, with Mr. Wallace sitting grimly on the platform, blistering under the boos and clutching the speech of acceptance which he was never permitted to deliver.
Identical conditions today
Almost identical conditions now prevail except that the anti-fourth-term, anti-Wallace forces are more angry this time. They have been frustrated in their effort to get rid of Mr. Roosevelt and have settled upon Mr. Wallace as a compromise sacrifice.
The final pre-convention gesture of opposition to Mr. Wallace came over the weekend from the Virginia State Democratic Convention which instructed delegates to Chicago to vote against his renomination. The delegates have no presidential instructions.
No one here doubts that Mr. Roosevelt will control the convention in every respect. But it is equally certain that there will be bitter minority opposition not only to Mr. Wallace, but to the President’s renomination.
Some may take a walk
The Credentials Committee will seethe in contests, notable whether pro- or anti-Roosevelt delegates from Texas shall be seated. The South wants to restore the rule requiring nominations be made by a minimum two-thirds majority. There is angry fear in the South that the Northern Democrats, allied with labor and controlling great city organizations, will try to write into the platform a commitment on racial equality.
It is possible that some delegates may take a walk – as Senator Ellison D “Cotton Ed” Smith (D-SC) did in 1936 when a Negro preacher offered a convention prayer. But the majority of the delegates will vote for Mr. Roosevelt’s renomination, unless he forbids it, and for anything else he wants, including Mr. Wallace – if he wants him.
Oregon to vote for Wallace
Washington (UP) –
Willis Mahoney, former mayor of Klamath Falls, Oregon, and Democratic candidate for Senator from Oregon, predicted today that a majority of delegates to the Democratic National Convention from his state will vote for the renomination of Vice President Henry A. Wallace.
Mr. Mahoney also predicted that President Roosevelt will “overwhelmingly carry the Pacific Northwest” if he seeks a fourth term.
Although Mr. Wallace’s name did not appear on the ballot in the May Democratic primary in Oregon, some 11,800 Democrats wrote his name in for the vice-presidential nomination, Mr. Mahoney said.
You can still lend your help –
War Bond Drive extended; $21 million more needed
War correspondent Ralph Heinzen to speak tonight in move to spur campaign
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Nazis face more secret weapons
SHAEF, London, England (UP) –
The Americans have several new secret weapons to use in their march to Berlin, Maj. Gen. Harry Benton Sayler, chief ordnance officer for the European Theater, disclosed today.
Among them, he said, is a gun with a range so great that the usual low-speed observations planes are useless as “eyes” for it and regular fighters will be used instead.
Gen. Sayler said:
We recently opened fire for the first time with the longer-range weapon against German headquarters. A pursuit plane was used fro observation. The fliers saw the German personnel trying to get away in cars and went down and shot them up.
Some of the new weapons have been used successfully in Normandy, Gen. Sayler said, but others are being held in reserve and details of them have not been released.
Gen. Sayler said that while Cherbourg was not ready yet to receive supplies in great quantities, “we hope soon to get supplies going directly to France from the United States.”
Nazis in France packing bags
Troops told to send belonging home
By Paul Ghali
Bern, Switzerland –
German officers garrisoned in the south zone of France on June 27 received orders to pack up their belongings and send them to Germany immediately. Each man was allowed to keep only 11 pounds of personal baggage. Shipments began on July 1.
This is private information just received by your correspondent from a most reliable source in France.
French military experts here believe that this news confirms recent reports that the Nazis are preparing for the eventual evacuation of France. But they also feel that the decree may well mean that several, if not all, German divisions in the south of France are making final preparations for forthcoming battles.
The total number of Wehrmacht divisions in the south zone is estimated by these experts at 18.
One thing appears certain. This German luggage, which presumably contains the booty of four years of pillage in France, will gave a long and hectic journey before it reached its destination. Communications from central and western France have become so disrupted that it recently took Dr. Braillard, Vichy delegate to the International Radio Broadcasting Committee, 50 hours to reach Lausanne from Paris, a trip which, before the war, required only seven or eight hours.