The Pittsburgh Press (July 21, 1944)
Invaders meet moderate opposition after 17-day air and sea bombardment of foe
By Frank Tremaine, United Press staff writer
…
Rain stops big-scale action in Normandy; foe retreats to escape encirclement
By Virgil Pinkley, United Press staff writer
SHAEF, London, England –
British and U.S. troops plunged ahead through six villages today despite a downpour which drowned out big-scale action on the Normandy front, and German armor was reported pulling back from the nose of the breakthrough salient southeast of Caen under an encirclement threat.
Canadian troops drove forward a few hundred years from Saint-André-sur-Odon to capture the neighboring village of Saint-Martin-de-Fontenay a little over four miles south of Caen. Five villages scattered along the British and American fronts had been taken earlier.
Both Allied and German troops soaked miserably in their slit trenches while a 36-hour downpour continued.
Canadians stop attack
The Germans threw in a sharp counterthrust against the Canadian front below Caen, but were turned back.
To the west, British forces slogged ahead 1,000 yards south of the Caumont–Tilly-sur-Seulles road.
A United Press dispatch from the Caen front reported that the battle “is still going well” with the definite failure of the German counterattack, and “it is now safe to say that the Allied offensive is over the hump.”
As Rommel pulled back his armor from the plains southeast of Caen to avoid the threat from strengthened British positions on either side, the Germans depended mainly on their anti-tank and other fortifications to stem the British push, and only short-lived clashes of armor were reported.
The battle of Troarn on the left flank of the Caen pocket continued into its second day, with British assault forces fighting ahead from the captured rail station on the edge of the town.
On the left flank, other British forces were fighting street battles in Évrecy, southwest of Caen, and the village of Bougy, a mile and a half to the northwest. Saint-André-sur-Orne was captured yesterday, clearing the bank of the river four miles due south of Caen, and to the west a drive more than four miles below Tilly-sur-Seulles overran the village of Monts.
U.S. forces closing in on Périers, central base of the German defenses on the 1st Army front, captured Sèves (two and a half miles north of Périers), Raids (on the Carentan–Périers highway four miles to the north), and Le Mesnil-Eury (eight miles southeast of Périers on the Saint-Lô highway).
Altogether the Allied armies scored gains or pinched off German pockets in 13 sectors, most of them line-straightening operations along a 90-mile fighting front.
The new advances carried British troops five miles due south of Caen along both banks of the Orne, and at most places they were less than a mile apart on either side of the river.
The Channel was lashed by a storm, which, with the rain in the fighting areas, almost completely halted aerial support for the British and U.S. troops.
Friday, July 21 12:30 p.m.: Selection of vice-presidential candidate 9:15 p.m.: Final session – Adoption of resolutions of thanks to the host city
Missouri Senator claims 600 first-ballot votes as New York swings to him
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
Chicago Stadium, Chicago, Illinois –
Strong-lunged party orators placed a dozen or so vice-presidential candidates in nomination at the Democratic National Convention today while friends of Henry A. Wallace and Senator Harry S. Truman hastily canvassed delegations for first-ballot votes.
The fight for a place on the ticket as President Roosevelt’s 1944 running mate centered around the larger delegations as the New York group, with 96 votes to cast adopted a resolution favoring the Missouri Senator.
By midday, several names had been placed in nomination. The first was Senator John H. Bankhead (D-AL), who was named by Senator Lister Hill a few minutes after the roll call started. The second was Senator Harry S. Truman (D-MO) whose name was placed in nomination by Senator Bennett C. Clark when Arizona yielded to Missouri amid a chorus of boos from Wallace supporters.
The third name placed in nomination was that of Senator Joseph C. O’Mahoney (D-WY) who was named by Wyoming Governor Lester C. Hunt.
After Mr. Hunt’s speech, delegate Martin V. Coffey of Ohio made his seconding speech for Senator Truman, although the poll had shown more Wallace than Truman voted in the delegation.
Mitchell nominates Wallace
Iowa’s former Chief Justice, Richard F. Mitchell of Fort Dodge, made the nominating speech for Mr. Wallace.
Mrs. Emma Guffey Miller, Democratic committeewoman from Pennsylvania, saying. “I guess I’m what the Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey would call a tired old woman,” seconded the nomination of Mr. Wallace.
“Mr. Wallace made that office what the Founding Fathers intended, ‘First assistant to the President,’” Mr. Mitchell told the Convention today in his speech to renominate his fellow Iowan.
‘Did not sit by’
Mr. Wallace deserves renomination, he said, because “the Democratic Party does not give the Vice Presidency as a consolation prize,” but to a man who sees clearly his role as a leader and a man of action.
Mr. Mitchell said:
He [Wallace] did not sit idly by and let his Commander-in-Chief carry the whole burden of war forced upon us by a treacherous foe. No, instead he became the special messenger of the President, taking the American way of life to the peoples of other countries.
When the name of Vice President Wallace went into nomination, the convention raised its banners in a crazy dance and ignored Chairman Samuel Jackson. Three big white balloons carried aloft the sign, “the People Want Wallace.”
Band strikes up
Wallace signs blossomed all over the floor, in the balcony, and in the halls. The band struck up “Iowa, Where the Tall Corn Grows” and the marchers made more noise for Mr. Wallace than they did yesterday for President Roosevelt.
Four years ago, when Mr. Wallace was nominated at Mr. Roosevelt’s insistence, the angry convention gave him no chance to make the acceptance speech he had prepared. The demonstration lasted 11 minutes.
‘Not going to Munich’
Georgia Governor Ellis Arnall, seconding the nomination of Vice President Henry A. Wallace, declared today that this is not the time for compromise and that the Democratic Party is not going to Munich to appease those who abhor its policies.
Mr. Arnall said:
The enemies of Franklin Roosevelt, unable today to assail the President, have sought through vicious attacks upon his friend and comrade to weaken the forces of Democratic liberalism.
Mr. Wallace, he said, had been true to the policies and the ideals that saved America from chaos in 1933 and he has been faithful to the man whom Americans in three elections have chosen as President.
Defends farm policies
Mr. Arnall defended the Vice President against criticism that he is a dreamer, a visionary, an idealist. These are not damning words, he said, because “where there is no vision, the people perish.”
Mr. Arnall said Mr. Wallace’s farm policies had restored to usefulness 30 million acres of land, had doubled the cash income of farmers, and had provided the food and raw materials with which we are winning the war.
Repudiation of Mr. Wallace, Mr. Arnall said, would be a rejection of the party’s domestic policies which averted calamity in America and restored prosperity.
Mayor Edward J. Kelly, on behalf of the Illinois delegation, nominated Senator Scott W. Lucas (D-IL).
Truman claims 600 votes
Senator Truman’s aides said he had been promised Massachusetts’ 34 first-ballot votes, bringing to 600 the total they claim have been pledged to the Missourian. A “good chunk” of Illinois’ votes were also pledged for Truman, but on the second ballot.
With Mr. Roosevelt nominated for a fourth term, it remained for the delegates to settle a contest between the left and right wings of the New Deal-Democratic Party and either renominate Mr. Wallace or retire him to Iowa.
Wallace claims of strength were voiced by Harold Young, the Vice President’s secretary and campaign manager, who said that since yesterday, his man had increased his total of promised votes to 580, nine votes short of a majority.
The Massachusetts decision to go for Senator Truman on the first ballot was the best of news for the Missourian. This was one of the largest blocs of votes that had been uncommitted on the first ballot.
The President accepted his fourth-term renomination last night after a routine process of afternoon balloting. The score was:
| Roosevelt | 1086 |
| Byrd | 89 |
| Farley | 1 |
The surprised delegates learned, as the President talked, that his radio speech was being made from a West Coast naval station. They will be more surprised to read in the papers today that the President passed through Chicago last Saturday and conferred with Chairman Robert E. Hannegan of the National Committee.
The President directly answered the campaign charge of New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican presidential nominee, that he and his administration are tired and quarrelsome old men.
He told the jam-packed stadium crowd:
The people of the United States will decide this fall whether they wish to turn over this 1944 job – this worldwide job – to the inexperienced and immature hands, to those who opposed Lend-Lease and international cooperation against the forces of aggression and tyranny, until they could read the polls of popular sentiment; or whether they wish to leave it to those who saw the danger from abroad, who met it head-on, and who now have seized the offensive and carried the war to its present stages of success, to those who, by international conferences and united action have begun to build that kind of common understanding and cooperative experience which will be so necessary in the world to come.
Mr. Roosevelt said the “1944 job” was to win the war fast and overpoweringly, to form international worldwide organizations including provision for the use of armed force to prevent war, and to build an adequate national economy for returning veterans and all Americans. He said his administration had been working on all of those projects.
President is calm
Not long before he spoke, his great ideological adversary, Hitler, was telling a startled world that some of his army officers had been tossing bombs at him. The Hitler speech was a substantial background for the President’s sure confidence in victory.
But the President’s voice was the only calm note around this convention. The left-right wing contestants are set for battle and have begun to slug. Mr. Hannegan talked to President Roosevelt by telephone from the Blackstone Hotel in midafternoon yesterday and subsequently summoned an evening press conference at which he made public the document which has come to be known here as “The Letter.” It was short and to the point, dated from Washington on July 19:
Dear Bob:
You have written me about Harry Truman and Bill Douglas. I should, of course, be very glad to run with either of them and believe that either one of them would bring real strength to the ticket.
Always sincerely,
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
Letters are a mystery
The letter raised a number of unanswered questions, principally as to the time and place it was written. Mr. Roosevelt was not in the White House in Washington on July 19, even though the letter as released by Mr. Hannegan was so dated. Actually, in the early morning of that day, the President was arriving at the West Coast naval station from which he addressed the convention last night.
The thought occurred to some here that he may have written the letter welcoming either Mr. Truman or Justice Douglas as a running mate at the same time and place that he composed another famous letter received here. This other letter was addressed to Senator Samuel D. Jackson (D-IN), permanent convention chairman, and was made public on July 18.
Program also calls for ‘peace forces’
By Dean W. Dittmer, United Press staff writer
Chicago, Illinois –
A 1,200-word platform calling for an international alliance of nations “with power to employ armed forces when necessary” to preserve peace, and a mandate to Congress to exert its full powers to protect the right of minorities “to live, develop and vote equally with all citizens” was approved by the Democratic National Convention last night.
The racial equality plank, approved by the Platform and Resolutions Committee over the opposition of Southern states, declared:
We believe that racial and religious minorities have the right to live, develop and vote equally with all citizens and share the rights that are guaranteed by our Constitution. Congress should exert its constitutional powers to protect those rights.
The foreign policy plank pledged this country to join “with the other United Nations in the establishment of an international organization based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all peace-loving states… for the prevention of aggression and the maintenance of international peace and security.”
To enforce the peace, “the nations would maintain adequate forces to meet the needs of preventing war and of making impossible the preparation for war,” and “with power to employ armed forces when necessary to prevent aggression and preserve peace.”
Other planks include:
Maintenance of an international court for the settlement of disputes between nations.
Support of the Atlantic Charter and the Four Freedoms and the principles enunciated therein.
Opening of Palestine to Jewish immigration and for “a free and democratic Jewish commonwealth.”
Legislation to assure equal pay for equal work for women, and a recommendation for submission of a constitutional amendment on equal rights for women.
Federal legislation to assure stability of production, employment, prices and distribution in the bituminous coal industry.
Federal aid to education administered by the states.
Endorsement of President Roosevelt’s use of water in arid land states for irrigation.
Non-discriminatory transportation charges and a request for early correction of inequities.
Enactment of legislation giving fullest self-government to Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, and the eventual statehood of Alaska and Hawaii; and extension of the right of suffrage to residents of the Districts of Columbia.
Post-war program
For post-war programs, the committee recommended:
Full benefits to servicemen and women with special consideration for disabled, to assure employment and economic security.
Price guarantees and crop insurance to farmers; parity for agriculture with labor and industry, promotion of success of small independent farmers, aid to home-ownership of family-sized farms, and extension of rural electrification and broader domestic and foreign markets for agricultural products.
Adequate compensation for workers during demobilization.
Enactment of additional humanitarian, labor, social and farm legislation as may be needed and repeal of “any law enacted in recent years which has failed to accomplish its purpose.”
Promotion of small business, and earliest possible release of business from wartime controls.
Simplification of tax structure and reduction or repeal of wartime taxes as soon as possible.
Encouragement of risk capital new enterprise and development of natural resources in the West and other parts of the country and reopening of Western gold and saver mines “as soon as manpower is available.”
Race issue raised
Also declaring for a free and untrammeled press, the committee expressed its belief “in the world right of all men to write, send and publish news at uniform communication rates and without interference by governmental or private monopoly and that right should be protected by treaty.”
At the Platform Committee meeting, Southern Democrats, led by former Texas Governor Dan Moody, sought to bring a minority report on the racial equality plank before the convention, but the plan was thwarted when only eight of the necessary 12 states signed the minority report. States signing the report were Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas, Virginia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and South Carolina.
The group sought to add to the committee language a clause reserving the authority to determine “qualifications of their voters and to regulate their public schools and attendance therein” solely in the states “in the absence of a constitutional amendment ceding such powers to the federal government.”
President crosses nation leisurely in special train; stops at Hyde Park and Chicago
By Merriman Smith, United Press staff writer
With President Roosevelt at a Pacific Coast naval base –
President Franklin D. Roosevelt began his formal fourth-term campaign here last night in the heavily armed might of this Navy base in a manner that underlined his plans to seek reelection as a wartime Commander-in-Chief.
Mr. Roosevelt came cross-country by train, traveling in strictest wartime secrecy and broadcasting his acceptance speech to the Chicago Democratic Convention from his special train. He was surrounded only by his top military and naval commanders and, aside from a special train, his leisurely transcontinental trip had none of the usual campaign year trappings.
Wartime security regulations prevent exact description of the President’s whereabouts, but he explained to the convention and a nationwide radio audience in his address that he was at a West Coast naval base “in the performance of my duties under the Constitution.”
His broadcast was made tonight from a spacious railroad car. The President’s microphones were placed on a small table at one end of the car. When he finished his speech, he ran through the highlight passages again for newsreel cameramen.
Because of the secrecy surrounding the trip cross-country, there were no crowds at waystations except a few railroad people.
Members of the President’s party included his wife, Adm. William D. Leahy (chief of staff to the Commander-in-Chief), VAdm. Ross T. McIntire (Mr. Roosevelt’s physician and Surgeon General of the Navy), Maj, Gen, Edwin M. Warson (secretary and military aide), RAdm. Wilson Brown (naval aide), Judge Samuel I. Rosenman (counsel to the President), Elmer Davis (Director of the Office of War Information), and Miss Grace Tully (the President’s private secretary).
White House correspondents for the United Press, Associated Press and International News Service were also with the President.
Fala is a giveaway
As in previous secret wartime trips, Fala, the President’s Scottie, was a dead giveaway. People staring at the train during service stops got the idea quickly when they saw Fala trotting up and down beside the train. At the stop in Chicago, a railroad yard worker said to a member of the President’s party, “If I’m getting nosey, tell me, but isn’t that Fala?” The word spread quickly that Mr. Roosevelt was aboard.
As an added precaution against premature disclosure of the President’s whereabouts, the name of the railroad company was painted off the cars. This is because the train consisted of Baltimore & Ohio equipment and it would have seemed strange to see a B&O train on the West Coast.
It required 30 tons of ice every 24 hours to operate the air conditioning system on the presidential train.
Stops at Chicago
Mr. Roosevelt left Washington July 13 and swung through 16 states at a loafing 30-mile clip, resting and handling a lot of paperwork, including the composition of his address. During the trip he made two major stops – one on July 14 for nine hours at his Hyde Park, New York, home and again in Chicago on July 15 for a few minutes when he saw Robert E. Hannegan, National Democratic Chairman.
While traveling, Mr. Roosevelt remained in constant touch with Washington and probably Mr. Hannegan, too. Special telephones were put aboard his car several times a day.
The President’s activity at this base, aside from working on his speech, included few official engagements. One was inspection of training activities in the vicinity. Mr. Roosevelt arrived here before dawn on July 19 and a cordon of sentries quickly took up positions around the train. Otherwise, there was little to indicate his presence.
Filthy little Japs found among dead on island given tender care by Marines
By Keith Miller, North American Newspaper Alliance
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Germans bombard port of Livorno
By Reynolds Packard, United Press staff writer
…
Nazi bestiality to women bared
By Helen Kirkpatrick
Cherbourg, France –
The unspeakable treatment accorded the Russians by the Germans has left a lasting impression upon all Frenchmen who witnessed it.
One resistance leader here told me:
We’ve had a hard time, but the Russian people have suffered more than any other. We know; we’ve seen.
Plight desperate
The Germans, it seems, brought hundreds of Russian women into Cherbourg to work on the docks and railroads, unloading, digging and building. There were at least 1,000 of them.
Their plight was desperate. They were assigned no living quarters, given no clothing and little food. Some wore only burlap bags. Many dropped dead during the winter. French patriots used to sneak out at night to give them food.
Women used as slaves
The Germans used these Russian women as slaves; armed guards drove them to and from work. Among the last batch to reach here, according to my informant, were a doctor, a pilot in the Red Air Force and a young mother, who carried her one-year-old baby with her to work.
“These women were real martyrs,” said the resistance leader. “Need you ask what we French think of the Germans?”
Chennault’s fliers bolster Chinese
By A. T. Steele
…
Rome, Italy (UP) –
U.S. Army authorities have completed preparation for conducting a presidential election among the soldiers in all commands of the North African and Italian theaters of war.
Three hundred voting officers have been appointed and by Tuesday, it was said, there will be 500 commissioned officers prepared to handle the many complications of conducting an election more than 3,000 miles from home. Each officer will receive two days of special training in the soldier ballot and voting procedure.
Army authorities are maintaining the strictest of political neutrality in making certain that every soldier learns how to properly cast his ballot. In this connection, it was announce, “the first big job will be the distribution of postcard applications for state ballots during the first week of August.”
Mr. Roosevelt can be either a wartime President and Commander-in-Chief above partisanship, or he can misuse that position as a candidate for a fourth term. Last night, he took advantage of his office to launch a political campaign from a naval base. For months the Republicans had predicted that he would do something like that. We did not believe he would be so crude. We were wrong.
Not that there was anything new in his formal acceptance speech. He used the same I-am-above-politics pose in his advance acceptance from the White House earlier this month, the same Commander-in-Chief excuse for his candidacy. But that he would time a military inspection trop for a partisan appeal to his party convention did not seem quite up to his protestations as expressed in his letter to Chairman Hannegan.
“I shall not campaign in the usual sense for the office,” he said last night. “In these days of tragic sorrow, I do not consider it fitting. In these days of global warfare, I shall not be able to find the time.”
But he found time to route his military train through Chicago for a secret conference with his political chief of staff. He found time to dictate the party platform. He found time from his naval base inspection to run the partisan convention by phone through his party henchmen. He found time to make a partisan campaign speech.
Fortunately, the conduct of the war will not suffer too much. For our real military commanders are forbidden to be political candidates and do not run parties for personal power.
Of course, Mr. Roosevelt does not think he is being partisan. Granted the indispensable idea, the only partisanship is opposition to him. If you vote for him, you transcend party. As he said last night, “in the last three elections the people of the United States have transcended party affiliation.” Or as his spokesman, Convention Chairman Jackson, put it in warning against a Roosevelt defeat: “We must not allow the American ballot box to be made Hitler’s secret weapon.”
Certainly, that is not a “campaign in the usual sense.”
If you hadn’t heard or read it, you could hardly believe it.
Senator Samuel D. Jackson, Democratic Convention Chairman, went the full limit to make a party issue of the war. Here are his exact words:
A change in national administration in time of war… is frightening to contemplate. It is dangerous to make… [It] might well prove to be the tragedy of this generation… Our people will not gamble with the lives of their sons…
But how many battleships would a Democratic defeat be worth to Tōjō? How many Nazi legions would it be worth to Adolf Hitler? Frankly, could Goebbels himself do better to bolster Axis morale than the word that the American people had upset this administration… We must not allow the American ballot box to be made Hitler’s secret weapon!
There it is. If you dare vote against a fourth term, you “gamble with the lives” of our sons, you give aid to the enemy, you make the election “Hitler’s secret weapon.” Treason?
Isn’t that going just a little too far even for a spokesman of the indispensable Commander-in-Chief?
For many months, there has been little doubt that the Nazis have been operating extermination camps in Upper Silesia, but official confirmation has just come from two European relief committees with headquarters in Switzerland. They give figures showing that in the two years ending last April, more than 1,715,000 Jewish refugees were put to death.
In addition, hundreds of thousands have been executed elsewhere, and many have died under the inhuman conditions prevailing during their removal to the camps. Since April, at least 400,000 Hungarian Jews have been sent to the execution halls.
Extermination has been the prime weapon in Hitler’s feindish plot to control Europe. There has been little difference between the execution chambers using poison gas and the firing squads using bullets. Even famine has been promoted to decimate populations in the occupied lands.
In the darkest days of barbarism, centuries ago, more inhuman treatment of conquered populations would have been hard to find.