Arizona, Montana vote in primaries
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Taylor: Democrats really afraid of trend in critical states
By Henry J. Taylor, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Perkins: Democrats to heed labor demands ahead of white-collar plea
It’s safe bet the organized 15 million will get more than the unorganized 20 million
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
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Wallace denounced by Smith followers
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Allen: Running mate for Roosevelt means VP – not Eleanor
And as long as No. 2 spot is wide open race, how about George Burns for the job?
By Gracie Allen
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Fate of Wallace delivered in a pale green envelope
Anonymous messenger hands letter, dated July 14, to Senator Jackson
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Texas delegation battle shifted
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2,000 planes rip Germany in U.S. pincer assault
Fliers from Britain hit robot experimental plant; Italy-based raiders attack in south
By Walter Cronkite, United Press staff writer
London, England –
Two U.S. air fleets, totaling about 2,000 planes, struck from Britain and Italy today at Peenemünde, birthplace of Germany’s flying bombs, another Baltic experimental station, the great aircraft center of Friedrichshafen, and the Memmingen Air Base 60 miles southwest of Munich.
The U.S. 8th and 15th Air Forces teamed in the pincer attack on northern and southern Germany. The raid mounted from Britain may have interrupted work on rocket projectiles which Stockholm newspapers speculated might be aimed at the United States.
Crewmen of the nearly 750 Flying Fortresses and Liberators reported that they planted their bombs squarely on the Peenemünde and Zinnowitz targets, touching off great columns of smoke over the mysterious plants.
Three land in Sweden
Stockholm dispatches said three Fortresses landed near Malmö.
Italian headquarters announced the double-barreled raid on Friedrichshafen and Memmingen. Bern reported heavy explosions were audible from the direction of Friedrichshafen, but no German planes were seen in action against the Allied bombers. One U.S. bomber landed at the Dübendorf Airdrome in Switzerland.
The Flying Fortresses and their escort of 500 fighters sent a great weight of blockbusters and incendiary bombs crashing down on laboratories and other buildings at Peenemünde, 60 miles northwest of Stettin, and Zinnowitz, both on the Baltic Sea coast.
Weather good
Other unidentified targets in Northwest Germany were also hit by the 8th Air Force armada, which flew out from Britain in the first good weather in many days.
The fighter escort in the raid on North Germany shot down 21 enemy planes and lost two.
Crewmen said they saw their bombs crash on three buildings, comprising the target, where the Germans were understood to manufacture chemicals for use in connection with their flying bombs.
The raid on Peenemünde was the first since RAF bombers hit the town on the night of Aug. 17, 1943, killing several of Germany’s top scientists in a surprise attack that was believed to have set back experimental work on robot bombs by a number of months.
Making new robots
It was possible that the experimental stations at Peenemünde and Zinnowitz were now engaged in manufacturing and testing rocket projectiles which Swedish reports said carry 10 tons of explosives and are 25 times more destructive than the present jet-propelled missiles.
The air correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph said yesterday that reports the Germans have robot projectiles powerful enough to be sent to New York “cannot be completely disregarded.”
British four-engined Stirlings and Halifaxes last evening attacked robot bomb installations on coast of northern France while Mosquitoes raided Berlin. All bombers returned safely. A fighter which helped escort the bombers to northern France was lost, but the pilot was rescued.
Despite the heavy attacks on launching platforms in northern France, the Germans continued to hurl their robot bombs against London and southern England and additional damage and casualties were reported both last night and today.
College damaged
Censorship restrictions were lifted to permit disclosure that robot bombs recently had damaged the 325-year-old Dulwich College in London, though no casualties resulted.
For three hours after midnight, the southeast coast rocked under the vibration of a heavy bombardment across the strait and some reports said the salvoes of big guns could be heard among the crash of bombs.
With clearing weather, the Allies opened their large-scale air activity this morning over the Normandy battlefront, with strong forces of U.S. Marauders and Havocs ranging over the British front shortly after dawn to smash at tank and vehicle concentrations.
During the night, 2nd Tactical Air Force Mosquitoes bombed bridges over the Seine, including the important one at Vernon, and attacked river barges with cannon. Intruders destroyed at least one German plane during the night.
Fly 3,000 sorties
Supreme Headquarters announced that in yesterday’s 3,000 sorties, of which nearly 1,000 were in direct support of troops, 24 German planes were destroyed at a loss of 10 Allied aircraft.
Approximately 250 German fighters were reported over the battlefront yesterday, although they confined most of their activities to hit and run strafing of troops rather than aerial combat.
Victory in 1944 ‘quite likely,’ Monty asserts
Things are going well, general declares
London, England (UP) –
Gen. Sir Bernard L. Montgomery said in a broadcast from France last night that it is “quite likely” the Allies will knock Germany out of the war this year.
Recalling that when he spoke to his officers on the eve of D-Day, he told them “if we do our stuff properly this year in this business, we shall have Germany out of the war this year.” Gen. Montgomery added: “I still hold to that.”
The commander of the Allied invasion armies in France said:
Things are going very well, generally speaking. The great victories on the Russian front, with immense numbers of Germans being written off, are very excellent.
Everything is going well, yet you know as well as I do that the German who is fighting us is a very great fighter defensively.
Gen. Montgomery said that he visited a hospital recently where a badly wounded German prisoner was told that only a blood transfusion could save him.
“He saw the bottle of blood and asked: ‘Is that British blood?’” Gen. Montgomery said.
Told that it was and that he would die if he did not submit to the transfusion, the Nazi said, “All right I will die.” Gen. Montgomery said:
And he did. That will show you the sort of man we are fighting – fanatical Nazis who feel like that.
Yanks in black gang cheer as Nazis shell destroyer
U.S. Navy survivor camp, England (UP) –
Three members of a “black gang” below decks in the destroyer USS Glennon cheered while German shells pounded their sinking ship off the Normandy beaches.
They had not heard an order to “abandon ship” and thought the explosions were from their own guns returning the German fire.
They were rescued at the last moment by LtCdr. John D. Bulkeley, Pacific hero, who raced his PT boat through choppy waters under heavy German fire and took them off the sinking ship.
Petty Officers William Venable, 42, of Mayodan, North Carolina; Francis Dauber, 33, of Elizabeth, New Jersey; and John Valkenberg, 22, of Paterson, New Jersey, were below when an explosion damaged the Glennon in the early morning darkness.
The Glennon broke at the stern and propellers and settled into sand so firmly she could not be pulled off by tugs.
German shore batteries spotted the crippled destroyer at dawn and began sending 155mm shells across her decks.
Orders ship abandoned
Cdr. Cal Johnson of Baltimore, Maryland, ordered the ship abandoned except for a skeleton crew which was instructed to repel German raiders if they tried to board the ship. When the German barrage increased and all hope of saving the ship was abandoned, Cdr. Johnson ordered all hands off the vessel.
Down in the engine room, Petty Officers Venable, Dauber and Valkenberg, sweating to keep up steam and put out a fire in the aft section, did not hear the order.
“Give ‘em hell, boys,” shouted PO Venable above the roar of what he thought was his own ship returning the fire.
Finds ship deserted
Aboard a rescue ship, Cdr. Johnson discovered three of his men missing. Meanwhile, the “black gang” had discovered its plight when PO Valkenberg went to the galley for coffee and found the ship deserted and “all hell popping.”
The ship was barely afloat when Cdr. Bulkeley reached it. The missing “black gang” was standing calmly on deck.
Cdr. Johnson again gave the order to “abandon ship” and the three clambered down a ladder to the PT.
Dewey to visit GOP leaders in Pittsburgh
July 31 conference scheduled here
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Lewis aide asks for Dewey votes
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Editorial: Mr. Roosevelt’s convention
The Democratic National Convention opens tomorrow with all the suspense of a thrice-told thriller, and as much reality. Speakers will recite well-remembered lines, and delegates will arrive at their make-believe decisions written by an author who is not there. If some forget their cue, they will be prompted if they make faces at the stage manager or stick out their tongues at the audience, in revolt or boredom, that will not matter much – the end will be the same.
Mr. Roosevelt in effect has even accepted the nomination in advance. A bit hard, perhaps, on the dignity of delegates trying to give reality to the show, but effective withal. There is no other possible candidate – for 10 years he has killed off politically every potential successor as rapidly as one arose.
He has also written most of his own platform. So, the delegates will not have to bother with policy decisions. It is said to be a well-polished document, first outlined by his chief scribe, Judge Rosenman, and then rewritten by Mr. Roosevelt himself. Maybe room has been left here and there for lesser men to fill in the chinks, and a little argument may arise over that humble labor, but the completed product will have the symmetry which only a single architect can achieve. Compromises, to be sure, but his own.
Doubtless that is only fair to the candidate. For he has decided it is better politics for him to make few campaign speeches, thus denying to himself the customary candidate’s privilege of recasting the party’s platform as he goes along.
Anyway, the Democratic platform is singularly unimportant this year. Mr. Roosevelt’s record, for better or for worse, is the actual platform. His promises won’t count. The most naïve voter will not suppose that this candidate can provide more wisdom or efficiency, if returned to the White House, than he has already shown while in office. Being a fourth-term aspirant thus has its disadvantages. Whatever the platform verbiage or the nominee’s maneuvers, his candidacy perforce boils down to a four-word appeal: “More of the same.”
Whether that appeal will elect Mr. Roosevelt again depends less on him and his party than on Mr. Dewey and the Republicans. “More of the same” is not good enough for many independent voters – how many, will be determined chiefly by Mr. Dewey ability to convince the dissatisfied voters that a younger and freer administration would be more progressive and efficient than the same old bureaucracy under the same one-man rule.
Because that would-be indispensable man is not as young or as vigorous as he once was, which increases the possibility that he would not finish his fourth term if elected, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee must be picked consciously as a potential President. Hence the unusual public and party concern over the second man on the ticket, who may become first. Mr. Roosevelt, nothing loath, is taking care of that too. He gave Mr. Wallace a perfunctory pat on the back, but then said he was leaving the choice open to the delegates.
However, no running mate can be chosen without his approval. In 1940, he forced the unpopular Mr. Wallace on the unwilling convention. But his aides – who have to make the delegates take it and like it – are begging him to be more considerate of the convention’s pride this time. Apparently, he has agreed. But if he refrains from dictating his choice openly, he will OK the man in secret – hands-off gestures in public notwithstanding.
Even in the best-bossed convention – and there has never been one like this -* there is always a chance of minor revolt and a few delegates breaking away. Texas now threatens to do just that. But this would not upset the convention’s preordained decisions. For the Southern politicians as a whole have one thing at least in common with the other delegates, including the New Deal office-holders and the Kelly-Flynn-Hague machines: They must accept Roosevelt dictation or else.
Such is this command performance for the candidate who says: “I would accept and serve, but I would nor run in the usual partisan, political sense. But if the people command me…” Certainly there is nothing “usual” about this performance. Neither is that the kind of “command” Mr. Roosevelt says he craves from the American people.
Background of news –
Second invasion front Nazi’s chief worry
By Col. Frederick Palmer
A threat to the German defense of a more serious breakthrough than that of the Russian armies on the Eastern Front is that of a second invasion front in the west. It is this which may be the decisive front of the war in Europe and speed the end.
The haunting question for Hitler and his generals is not limited to an “if and when” a second front comes. They must prepare on the basis that it is bound to come while they wonder where.
In the very threat Gen. Eisenhower holds a master Allied trump card to play at the right moment on the offensive, while all Hitler’s trump cards on the defensive are already on the table. For Hitler in not having enough divisions in reserve to hold this second front in addition to enough to hold the Normandy front would invite disaster. The one which he could not pin down could make the breakthrough.
Of the 60 divisions the Germans are reported to have in France, 25 or 30 are already massed on the Normandy front. These are gradually losing ground, although yet far from any decisive extent.
Can’t draw on Russian front
Hitler can hardly afford to draw on his Russian front to reinforce the other divisions he has in France. These divisions are all he has to meet a second front and to suppress the growing patriot forces within France.
The present front in France is 100 miles long. The Gothic Line to which the Germans are withdrawing in Italy, back of Livorno and Florence, is the same length. The ground favors infantry tactics in defense. There are hedges, hills and walls for cover.
Compared to the 200-mile front the Germans are defending in France and Italy, they are already under Russian attack over a 1,000-mile front and may have to face it on an additional 500 miles. This is a patent reason why they should shorten their Eastern Front when they are in danger of having to meet another and possibly two more fronts in the west.
Counting that they have 20 divisions in Italy, 60 in France, and those in Yugoslavia and in home garrison and training, the Germans cannot possibly have more than 150 divisions on the 1,500-mile Eastern Front. Where they may have one division to every 10 miles in the east, they have one division to a mile and a half on the Normandy front.
Once the breakthrough comes
This can largely account, after they were outmaneuvered by the first impact of the Russian offensive, for their depending upon desperate resistance by strongpoints to protect their withdrawal. There were openings along that long, thinly-held German front in the east for free tactical movements in which Russian cavalry could follow through and even break through. The ground, the terrain, favors fluid warfare.
On the Normandy Front, the terrain helps to lock the door on fluid warfare and would exclude the use of cavalry as sheer suicidal insanity. The fight there remains as infantry grapple.
It is not unlikely that before our soldiers on the Normandy Front see Paris the Russian armies will have Warsaw and have swept across old Poland to the old German border in Silesia. But once the breakthrough comes in the west, we can move across France as swiftly as the German armies did in 1940.
Another D-Day in preparation may be worse news for Hitler than the first one.