Army, Navy casualties put at 257,779
207,283 victims are soldiers
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U.S. moves to ostracize Argentina from neighbors
Non-recognition policy, if long continued, may force change in sentiment
By Hal O’Flaherty
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Charges denied by Argentina
Discrimination laid to United States
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Pinkley: Hitler stakes everything on Norman battle
Nazis countermand strategy of generals
By Virgil Pinkley, United Press staff writer
SHAEF, London, England –
I have been informed by credible authority that the Nazis have countermanded the strategy of top generals of the general staff and have staked virtually their entire future on halting the Americans and British at the present line in Normandy.
They’ve made it an “all or nothing” affair.
This decision is at wide variance with the determination of Field Marshal Karl Gerd von Rundstedt – now reported a victim of the blood purge of German generals opposing Hitler – to fall back behind the Seine and Loire Rivers should the Allies establish a bridgehead in Normandy.
Would force detour
Von Rundstedt’s view was that such a move would have compelled the Allies to go the long way around south of Paris to get at the German Army. With all the main bridges on the Seine and Loire down and transportation hamstrung by months of Allied bombardment, this would have left the Allies a difficult supply problem.
Simultaneously the Germans would have been fighting from shortened supply lines.
The Nazis countered this argument according to my informant, with the assertion that the prestige value of a do-or-die stand at the base of the Normandy Peninsula outweighed practical military factors.
Rush divisions
So Adolf Hitler and his party generals rushed most of the crack panzer divisions in Europe into Normandy to grind themselves against the Allied force. Elite SS and grenadier outfits were placed in the frontlines. In one sector near Caen, 15 to 20 divisions were crammed into a 12-mile front to greatest concentration of manpower in military history.
Repeatedly they threw these crack troops into limited counterattack hoping to gain time in which to patch up the crumbling Eastern and Italian fronts; time in which to achieve a stalemate and a negotiated peace; time in which frantically to push scientific experiments on novel weapons such as the flying bombs.
Slows Allies
The result of this German resistance has been to slow Allied progress down to a backbreaking and frequently disheartening task of grinding down the German men and material. It is difficult to measure these Allied gains hour by hour and day by day, but Allied officers here believe that once the hard crust is broken, they will roll rapidly toward Paris and the Reich frontier.
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s forces are tearing at the vitals of the German Army in the Battle of Normandy and achieving at an unexpectedly early phase the ambition to meet and defeat the German Army in the field.
U.S. thrust has makings of beachhead breakout
British reverse, which puts Montgomery on the spot, may be serious, writer says
By William H. Stoneman
SHAEF, London, England –
The American advance west of Saint-Lô has definitely broken through the Germans’ main positions in that area and has produced the first real promise of “something interesting” which the Allies have enjoyed since the fall of Cherbourg.
For the time being, it is not wise to speculate on the extent and direction of the American advance, but nobody can deny that it has the makings of that breakout from the beachhead which we have been waiting all these weeks.
Unpleasant British reverse
Meanwhile, the British have suffered an unpleasant and perhaps serious reverse in the area southwest of Caen, across the Orne River from the scene of the British-Canadian offensive which was launched Tuesday.
While the British-Canadian offensive was fading out against furious opposition, the Germans west of the river suddenly staged a little offensive of their own capturing the town of Esquay and nearby Hill 112, which is seven miles southwest of Caen.
Commands triangle
Hill 112 commands a large part of the triangle between the rivers Orne and Odon, southwest of Caen, and unless it can be recaptured the British forces at Maltot and Éterville will be embarrassed. The triangle must be held or the Germans can threaten the flank of the British and Canadian forces, south of Caen, on the other bank of the Orne.
The British-Canadian offensive south of Caen was bogged down and stopped due largely to the excellent defensive nature of the ground held by the Germans. Gen. Sir Bernard L. Montgomery must now be in a considerable quandary; he has simply got to break the stalemate south of Caen and it just does not look as if he could.
Somebody must do it
If he cannot, then they will have to find somebody who can.
If Gen. Montgomery should go – and we have no reason to believe he will at this juncture – his logical successor would be the Allied commander-in-chief in Italy, Gen. Sir Harold H. L. G. Alexander, his former chief during the Libyan desert campaign.
Alexander’s success in Italy and his great personal popularity have combined with our lack of progress in France to put him in the spotlight. Montgomery certainly cannot stand much more delay on the British front.
Point of view –
Censors have to be very careful
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Jane Withers, Lupe Velez signed for Broadway show
By Jack Gaver
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Editorial: ‘Is this trip necessary?’
Maybe the ODT’s slogan writer will be interested in Democratic Chairman Hannegan’s announcement that a committee including one person from each of the 48 states and one from each territory and possession will call on President Roosevelt, soon after he returns to Washington, to notify him that he has been nominated for a fourth term. For our part, we can hardly wait to see how surprised Mr. Roosevelt will be.
Editorial: Better Senators
“Cotton Ed” Smith’s defeat in the South Carolina Democratic primary and J. W. Fulbright’s lead in the four-way primary contest in Arkansas should raise the level of the U.S. Senate.
Mr. Smith represented the worst in the Senate, and thanks to his 36 years of seniority, the “Dean’s” power for evil had full rein. Governor Johnston, though taking the same white supremacy line as Mr. Smith, is better in most respects. Mr. Fulbright, as a freshman member of the House of Representatives, made history with his international organization resolution. We hope this brilliant ex-president of the University of Arkansas will win the senatorial runoff primary if one is necessary.
As usual in state contests in a presidential campaign year, politicians and dopesters are trying to read national significance into these primary results. The voters apparently were fed up with two old officeholders and wanted a change – Senator Hattie Caraway of Arkansas, who was given her late husband’s office 12 years ago, ran a poor last in the field of four.
Using age and change as the test, these primaries might indicate a popular drift, but since the pro-Roosevelt Johnston beat the anti-Roosevelt Smith in South Carolina and FDR was not the issue in Arkansas, there doesn’t seem to be any clear evidence of a national trend.
Heath: Mr. Dewey gets help in writing his speeches
By S. Burton Heath
While Peter Edson is absent from Washington, Mr. Heath’s series from Albany is being substituted.
Albany, New York –
During the next three months you are going to hear and read a lot of speeches by Thomas E. Dewey as the campaigns for the Presidency. You may be interested to learn how these will be prepared. I can give you a pretty good idea.
Let’s suppose that Governor Dewey has accepted an invitation to speak in your city on a certain date.
He will call into conference about half a dozen men. They will probably include Eliott Bell (former member of The New York Times editorial board and for several years Mr. Dewey’s personal adviser on financial matters), James C. Hagerty (former political reporter for that paper), Paul Lockwood (longtime intimate friend and associate), John Burton (since 1938 Mr. Dewey’s chief research assistant), Charles Breitel (his former law partner), Hickman Powell (writer who has been associated with every campaign Mr. Dewey has made).
Mr. Bell is now his superintendent of banks, Mr. Hagerty his executive assistant, Mr. Lockwood his secretary, Mr. Burton his budget director, Mr. Breitel his counsel, Mr. Powell is research specialist on farm problems for the GOP National Committee.
Free-for-all
To this group, Mr. Dewey may present a very tentative first draft of the projected talk. More probably he will tell them in broad terms what he proposes to say. If any disagree, there may be a free-for-all without gloves until substantial accord can be attained.
Then one or more of the subordinates will volunteer or be asked to prepare a draft. If more than one is written, the best material from all will be combined by somebody – often Mr. Powell – into a single version.
One participant tells me:
There is no pride of authorship in the members of this group, though sometimes we will fight for a phrase of which we are proud.
This working version combines Mr. Dewey’s ideas (as modified, often, by the discussion) and the facts and figures obtained from or checked with the most accurate sources to be found. Mr. Dewey is a “bug” on checking all data.
There is another get-together on this draft. If the speech is to be a major opus, somewhere along the line four other men are liable to be called in. These are George Medalie (who first brought Mr. Dewey into public life), Roger W. Straus (mining expert and philanthropist), John Foster Dulles (expert on international affairs) and National Chairman Herbert Brownell.
As the campaign goes on other consultants will be added. A speech to be made in California, for example, would be taken up with one or more trusted advisers from that state; one for the Midwest would be gone over with persons who know at first hand the problems and sentiments of that region.
Mrs. Dewey enters
At about this stage Mrs. Dewey looks over the draft. One regular participant cannot recall a single speech which she did not see shortly before the final version was prepared. Nor is her part perfunctory. She makes suggestions as to both content and form, and often they are taken.
At last, a draft, now pretty well worked to correct length, is taken by Mr. Dewey into seclusion. From it as raw material he dictates – or writes in longhand with pencil on legal-size ruled yellow paper pads – his own words. He may, and often does, lift a smooth phrase intact – Mr. Powell and Mr. Burton are good at catchphrases, but so is Mr. Dewey himself. Some of the best are his own.
He dictates or writes methodically and meticulously. His principal editing job consists of chopping long sentences into shorter ones and arranging his phrases so that when delivered they will fit into the rhythm of his speaking style.
The acceptance speech was a partial exception to this procedure. He started on that Tuesday morning, locked in a room in the Executive Mansion. That evening he went over it with Messrs. Bell, Lockwood, Powell and Hagerty and smoothed it out on the plane flying to Chicago.
Yanks turn to thoughts of home as they ‘sweat out’ Nazi barrage
Here’s what 12 facing death said
By Tom Wolf
On the Normandy front, France – (special)
This is a near stenographic report of the conversation of 12 men pinned down for two hours by as vicious an artillery barrage as the Germans have yet loosed in Normandy.
The men are part of a company of combat engineers who were sent in to a recently captured town only a few hours after the first infantry units. When the barrage started, they dived behind a partially wrecked building. All are sweating despite the ground dampness. Conversation comes in gulps followed by long, uneasy silences which are usually ended by profanity after an especially heavy barrage.
This, then, is what men talk about at the front when their lives hang on the trajectory of the next shell:
¶ “Why the hell isn’t the Air Corps up there today bombing those gun positions?”
¶ “The fliers probably are lapping up mild and bitter in London and saying, ‘Oh, those poor, poor boys in the infantry!’ I’ll stand any one of them a drink any place any time.”
¶ “My old man was in the trenches in the last war.”
¶ “The Colonel says we’ll be here for Christmas.”
¶ “Who said this town’s been taken?”
“The Major.”
“Well, this is the last time they’ll get me up here just because the Major says the place is taken. There’s only one way to tell if a place is taken. When you see the Major in the town, then it’s taken.
¶ “Where’s our artillery we hear so much about? Why aren’t they giving those Hun guns a working over?”
¶ “After this war is over, I’m going to have a six months’ drunk.”
“Only six months?”
Afraid of firecrackers
¶ “Man, back where I live there was a fellow who used to go fishing every Fourth of July. He was afraid of firecrackers. Now I know how he feels. I’ll never shoot another cracked in all my life.”
¶ “You volunteered, Jim. You should be the last to kick.”
“Yeah, you volunteered. For what?”
“Yes, what are we fighting for?”
“Well, if we weren’t fighting them over here, we’d have to be fighting them over there sooner or later.”
¶ “Wonder if this building will take it!”
“Well, it’s been okay all morning. They probably have an observer right on the roof here. No one’s been up there to look.”
“I hope they have. They wouldn’t try to hit him.”
¶ “Before we left England, they got to us to make out our wills. Had to say who we wanted to collect our insurance. Now I know why.”
“Bet my old man would be tickled to death to get the money. I never was any use to him anyway.”
If they get back home
¶ “Boy, if I ever get back to my little old town, I’ll never leave its city limits again as long as I live.”
“Yes, someone ought to tell Roosevelt that he just calls us back home, we’ll police up his place for the rest of our lives.”
“Yeah, even after that Easter egg roll.”
¶ “How long have we been in line?”
“Forty-three days.”
“Forty-three, baloney. Forty-four.”
A soldier, covered with sweat, jumps behind the protection of the wall, too. He swears, slumps to the ground in frightened exhaustion. Someone asks him.
¶ “Where are they falling?”
“About five inches away. all over that damn road. Got lots of our boys. The medics sure are sweating it out back there.”
“Man, my hat’s off to those medics. Nothing scares them.”
Yanks draw fire
¶ “This is a pretty rugged building.”
“Yeah, and I always thought I was pretty rugged, too, but this is too damned rugged for me.”
¶ “What’s that noise coming this way?”
“Tanks.”
“Well, get those things away from here. They draw more fire than anything.”
¶ “Boy, look at all those bottles in the cellar. All empty.”
“I sure would like to drink.”
¶ “I sure would like to be home.”
“When I get home, I’m going to stay drunk.”
And the conversational cycle began all over again.
Doolittle periled by own bombers
General over France on D-Day
London, England –
The North American Newspaper Alliance has just learned that Lt. Gen. James H. Doolittle piloted a P-38 Lightning up and down the French invasion coast on D-Day to see how the bombing was going.
He remained in the air observing the operations on the coast until he suddenly realized that it was only five minutes before zero hour, when the terrific bombing attack in support of our invading forces was to have begun. This first massed bombing, it is said, approximated 5,000 tons of explosives unloaded on the enemy.
Gen. Doolittle was obliged to get of the way with all possible speed, since the bombing attack was to be delivered from above the clouds on account of the thick weather. Had he not left the area promptly there was great danger that because of the nature and weight of the attack of bombers flying above him out of sight, his plane might have been destroyed by a descending missile.
He remained over the invasion coast, however, long enough to examine the line, and on his return to a British base stated that not a single bomb fell on our troops. Gen. Doolittle described the air attack as a magnificent piece of work.
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Somewhere in Normandy, France – (by wireless)
At the edge of a pasture, sitting cross-legged on the grass or on low boxes as though they were at a picnic, are 13 men in greasy soldiers’ coveralls.
Near them on one side is a shop truck with a canvas canopy stretched out from it, making a sort of patio alongside the truck. And under this canopy and all over the ground are rifles – rusty and muddy and broken rifles.
This is the small arms section of our medium ordnance company. To this company comes daily in trucks the picked up, rusting rifles of men killed or wounded, and rifles broken in ordinary service. There are dozens of such companies.
This company turns back around a hundred rifles a day to its division, all shiny and oily and ready to shoot again.
They work on the simple salvage system of taking good parts off one gun and placing them on another. To do this, they work like a small assembly plant.
The first few hours of the morning are given to taking broken rifles apart. They don’t try to keep the parts of each gun together. All parts are alike and transferable, hence they throe each type into a big steel pan full of similar parts. At the end of the job, they have a dozen or so pans, each filled with the same kind of part.
Scrub parts in gasoline
Then the whole gang shifts over and scrubs the parts. They scrub in gasoline, using sandpaper for guns in bad condition after lying out in the rain and mud.
When everything is clean, they take the good parts and start putting them back together and making guns out of them again.
When all the pans are empty, they have a stack of rifles – good rifles, all ready to be taken back to the front.
Of the parts left over some are thrown away, quite beyond repair. But others are repairable and go into the section’s shop truck for working on with lathes and welding torches. Thus, the division gets 100 reclaimed rifles a day, in addition to the brand-new ones issued to it.
And believe me, during the first few days of our invasion, men at the front needed these rifles with desperation. Repairmen tell you how our paratroopers and infantrymen would straggle back, dirty and hazy-eyed with fatigue, and plead like a child for a new rifle immediately so they could get back to the front and “get at them so-and-sos.”
Sergeant invents gadget
I sat around on the grass and talked to these rifle repairmen most of one afternoon. They weren’t working so frenziedly then for the urgency was not so dire. But they kept steadily at it as we talked.
The head of the section is Sgt. Edward Welch of Watts, Oklahoma, who used to work in the oil fields. Just since the invasion he’s invented a gadget that cleans rust out of a rifle barrel in a few seconds whereas it used to take a man about 20 minutes.
Sgt. Welch did it merely by rigging up a swivel shaft on the end of an electric drill and attaching a cylindrical wire brush to the end. So now you just stick the brush in the gun barrel and press the button on the drill. It whirls and, in a few seconds, all rust is ground out. The idea has been turned over to other ordnance companies.
The soldiers do a lot of kidding as they sit around taking rusted guns apart. Like soldiers everywhere, they razz each other constantly about their home states. A couple were from Arkansas, and of course they took a lot of hillbilly razzing about not wearing shoes till they got in the Army and so on.
One of them was Cpl. Herschel Grimsley of Springdale, Arkansas. He jokingly asked if I’d put his name in the paper. So, I took a chance and joked back. “Sure,” I said, “except I didn’t know anybody in Arkansas could read.”
Everybody laughed loudly at this scintillating wit, most of all Cpl. Grimsley who can stand anything.
Later Grimsley was telling me how paratroopers used to come in and just beg for another rifle. And he expressed the sincere feeling of the men throughout ordnance, the balance weighing in favor of their own fairly safe job, when he said:
Them old boys at the front have sure got my sympathy. Least we can do is work our fingers off to give them the stuff.
Rifles are touching sight
The original stack of muddy, rusted rifles is a touching pile. As gun after gun comes off the stack, you look to see what is the matter with it–
Rifle butt split by fragments; barrel dented by bullet; trigger knocked off; whole barrel splattered with shrapnel marks; guns gray from the slime of weeks in swamp mud; faint dark splotches of blood still showing.
You wonder what became of each owner; you pretty well know.
Infantrymen, like soldiers everywhere, like to put names on their equipment. Just as a driver paints a name on his truck so does a doughboy carve his name or initials on his rifle butt.
The boys said the most heartbreaking rifle they’d found was one of a soldier who had carved a hole about silver dollar size and put his wife’s or girl’s picture in it, and sealed it over with a crystal of Plexiglas.
They don’t, of course, know who he was or what happened to him. They only know the rifle was repaired and somebody else is carrying it now, picture and all.
Pegler: Refugee crisis
By Westbrook Pegler
New York –
President Roosevelt recently announced to Congress as an accomplished fact, his decision that “approximately” 1,000 continental European refugees who have reached southern Italy, “predominantly” women and children, would be brought here and given asylum in a vacant Army camp in the East. They would be returned to their homelands “upon the termination of the war.”
Any objection will be met instantly with a tragic story of the persecution of innocent children who cannot even understand why they and their humble parents are so horribly mistreated. Thus, it would seem as though only children and their inoffensive and helpless mothers would be admitted, although Mr. Roosevelt’s qualifying word “predominantly” would leave room for a number of men, as well.
In November 1942, Mr. Roosevelt proposed that our immigration laws be suspended entirely for the duration of the war. This request was denied by the House Ways and Means Committee.
Francis Biddle, the Attorney General, urged the Committee to agree on the ground that otherwise we would have to pay ourselves a head tax of $8 on every prisoner of war brought here for detention. It was even suggested that dignitaries of our Allies would be subjected to embarrassing formalities in clearing immigration stations.
Biddle’s concern unnecessary
There is no record of the exclusion of any prisoner of war for lack of the $8 head tax. Neither has there been any report of the detention of any accredited agent of any of our Allies. So, Mr. Biddle’s concern on these two points seems to have been entirely unnecessary.
Although the Committee did reject the President’s proposal, his recent announcement regarding the 1,000 refugees, delivered in the form of a message, cited no legal authority for his action. Mr. Roosevelt just said that “I determined that this government should intensify its efforts to combat the Nazi terror” and that, “accordingly I established the War Refugee Board, composed of the Secretaries of State, Treasury and War” to translate “this government’s humanitarian policy into prompt action.”
“Therefore,” he continued, “I wish to report to you today a step which I have just taken…” and so forth, announcing the importation of the 1,000 refugees. There was no intimation that 1,000 would be all. With equal authority, wherever derived, Mr. Roosevelt may admit 500,000 who need not be “predominantly” women and children and who if “predominantly” women, might be Communists or Fascists.
Many once supported Hitler
It seems to be forgotten, although it remains a fact, that many of those in Europe who were later persecuted for various reasons found Fascism and Hitlerism very agreeable at the beginning. It should be remembered that the Communists of Germany, who are now included among the pitiable victims of Hitler’s barbarity, had been fairly barbarous themselves and so greatly admired Hitler that all six million of them, under instructions from Moscow, voted for Hitler in his final rise to power. They put them over because they believed in totalitarian government.
Meanwhile, mainly in the great exodus immediately preceding the war, this country received a large but unknown number of refugees, including many women, as temporary visitors with a tacit understanding that we were winking at our own law. The understanding was that once they were in, they could stay; and although we can’t know their particular, individual political activities back home, we do know that they didn’t pass our tests.
All of them will presently be admitted to settle permanently by taking a little trip to Canada and reentering as immigrants. This is the plan now.