Millett: Male census declines
Available men are getting scarce
By Ruth Millett
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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.
Wolfert: Going slowly past fallen comrades, infantry trudges into jaws of death
Each of them knows somebody in crowd will get it, but not him
By Ira Wolfert
With the U.S. infantry west of Saint-Lô, France – (delayed)
The infantry they still say is Queen of Battles. When the infantry wants to cross a road here, it goes like this:
Airplanes and artillery take them by the hand, a big, dull upheaving thump of bombs gets in its way among the bat-like crack of shells, then the infantry grunts itself up onto its two legs and the fellows put their legs in front of them, one after the other and they walk, dragging behind them a train weightier than a train on a queen’s dress. Radio stud and telephone wires, wire layers and spreaders, lance poles, heavier guns, vehicles for all this and for ammunition, rations, ambulances, blood plasma, bulldozers, trucks full of crushed rocks and cots of officers and the typewriters of war correspondents.
The road the fellows went across today was the main road running east from Périers down to Saint-Lô, a hard surfaced country road, twisting and narrow, but first class all the same and the kind a country boy could really spank his auto along. There is a lump of high ground just north of it that the Germans held this morning and then a few miles southeast of it down in that part of the Cherbourg Peninsula they call French Switzerland, there is commanding ground that the Germans hold in force with plenty of howitzers there that can go into the deepest hole after a man and blow him out of there in pieces.
Gray morning at front
It was gray this morning at the front. The infantry and artillery had taken some of the murder out of their promenade and it didn’t look as if the airplanes could work today. Rain which had been dripping down greasily from the skies for days had stopped finally but the sky still hung low and wet-looking over the countryside.
Then the sky began to lift, very slowly, but all in one piece like the curtain of a show and the infantry watched it go up and watched the sun wear at it with its light and heat and wear it thinner and thinner until at last the gray was the color of threadbare cloth and they could see the pale-yellow overlay of the sun through it.
There were miles of people watching in silence the slow inch by inch lift of their ceiling of sky, from 6 o’clock in the morning on. At 6 o’clock, the sky’s ceiling seemed to lay on your face, then at 7 o’clock your face was clear of it and was clinging like with gray fingers to trees and so on and on, lifting higher and higher until at 11:40 the first airplanes came over and the infantry knew for sure that its legs were going to get a workout.
Artillery gets answer
The artillery was pounding good by this time and there was some answer from the Germans. The Nazis were searching the roads and back areas. Searching is a word artillery people like to use but it’s more like clawing. Four of five shells come down on you like a paw and rake you. Then a swift clawing paw rakes alongside of you and in back. It’s a flurry of swift-clawing paws like an animal striking out because you’ve come too close and you hug where you are and stay still and then when its quiet crawl closer. You can’t see the animal and he can’t see you, but there is the feeling in you that you can hear his frightened, dangerous breathing as you crawl closer.
The bombers ran across the sky like girls and vapor blew behind them as if there were skirts blowing in the wind. Then they swooped down and the sound of their bombs dropping all in a packet drummed across the fields and drummed beating wildly up and down the silent country lanes.
Bombs take long time to fall
Flying Fortresses came after them, they sailed with the silvery, gleaming like ships in line each formation of 12 shooting a white smoke flare that dropped the rough skies of foaming yarn. Their bombs took a long time to fall. They came from very high up and the sound of them took a long time to reach us. When it came it was like drumming again, a very wild, drunken, unmusical drumming with an upheaving effect to it like a buried multitude beating up against the surface of the earth. The blasts were ironed out by the two or three miles between us and the bombs so that all they did was to fill our ears a little bit and flap out trousers against our legs.
The infantry now stepped off against the German hedges. They walked erect and they went about a hundred yards every three minutes. There were some fellows killed, a few more wounded but not many.
Pulled our when planes came
Most of the Germans had pulled out when the airplanes came over. They knew we meant business and that arithmetic was against them. They knew that if they stayed, they must inevitably be killed and that was the arithmetic of it. The only thing they could gain by dying was time.
The German command had to decide whether that time was worth buying with the lives of their men there or wherever it would be more useful to pull them out and open a little hole in the line, then ring the hole with big guns and blow men down who ventured into it.
Decide to open hole
The German command decided to open the hole. They made it like a giant maw there and the infantry, knowing exactly what it was, walked steadily into it, going at about 100 yards every three minutes, standing erect and pausing to fire only when fired upon by small arms, not stopping for howitzer shells or mortars but going through the dust and pelting dirt of that opening with white faces and eyes running from side to side as though gripped in their sockets and bodies standing straight up. That part of it at least was the way men would walk.
The queen of battles pulled its train along through the muddy, dirty country lands. You couldn’t see anything of it before the battle, it was hidden in all the fields.
Slowly comes out
Then slowly it began coming out into the lanes, big snorting trucks, spewing squelches of mud from their massive wheels and skittering little jeeps, motorcycles and columns of men stopped under the loads of radios and bundles of wire and heavy mortars and bazookas all covered with green flowering twigs, filling the lanes, coming like a ghost army out of their invisible hiding and going slowly past the dead, looking slowly at the silent wounded coming back, wrinkling their noses over the stink of killed cattle rotting in the fields, watching a wounded cow limp past a herd that had fallen in a row, followed in his limping by a calf that nuzzled her mutely and going along, going along all this time past the broken teeth of the mouth the Germans had opened for them.
Weren’t firing much
Everybody knew he was going into the German mouth. The Germans weren’t firing much today, they were afraid to give away their positions to our artillery planes circling as slowly as falling leaves overhead. But planes come down at night and then the German guns rimming the mouth like jaws will try to clamp down.
The job is to break off those jaws from inside the mouth. The infantry filled the mouth by late this afternoon. They crossed the road and got in beyond in it, then they waited for the jaws to clamp down so that they could break them off there. In the outpost line beyond the infantry those fellows knew that tonight, while the German artillery was firing, German patrols would come out and try to capture some of them so that their intelligence could find out just what kind of an attack this was.
Some will wind up dead
In the moonless darkness tonight, the attempt will surely have some success, some of those fellows out there tonight are going to wind up dead and some are going to become prisoners. There will be German dead too. The outpost sit very quietly in their holes. Each of them knows someone or two or a half dozen of them are not going to be there by the time you read this. Each thinks it’s the other fellow who is going to get it and the Germans assembling for their patrol now somewhere behind the hedges think the same thing. Somebody in the crowd is going to get it but not him.
Hillman’s propaganda mill geared for 4th term grind
New version of Political Action Committee will spend large slice of CIO’s money
By Henry J. Taylor, Scripps-Howard staff writer
New York –
With the curtain down on the Democratic Convention, the enlarged fourth-term propaganda section of Sidney Hillman’s Political Action Committee now comes to the center of the stage.
Its slice of the CIO’s $3-million fourth-term campaign fund has been appropriated. It will be spent over local signatures and in the name of the National Citizens’ Political Action Committee.
On June 13, testifying before the Senate Campaign Investigating Committee, Mr. Hillman conceded that unions are prohibited from contributing to the campaign funds of candidates for federal office. The impression grew that the CIO-PAC, with its 100,000 shop stewards as organizers, was put on ice and that a National Citizens’ PAC would replace it.
The CIO-PAC, however, continued under full steam. Mr. Hillman formed the new group as an umbrella over the original committee. “Broadening the interest,” Mr. Hillman called it. In this way he avoided legal limitations on further CIO-PAC fourth-term expenditures as soon as Mr. Roosevelt was officially up for federal office as a result of his nomination.
So direct fourth-term campaign expenditures of the CIO-PAC now stop and the NCPAC gets an appropriation. Two million copies of an organizational handbook, Political Primer for All Americans, are being distributed through organized labor circles from 14 regional offices. It’s a folksy treatment on how to get out the vote. The slogan is “Love thy neighbor – and organize him.”
More than 100,000 PAC posters featuring “FDR – Our Friend” are ready for war-plant bulletin boards, PAC precinct clubs and meeting places of foreign-language groups. Print orders are already reported to call for 10,000 pounds of newsprint and 22,000 pounds of broadside and pamphlet paper.
With the collaboration of five members of Mr. Hillman’s official family – Orson Welles, Paul Robeson, Edward G. Robinson, Marc Connelly and Ben Hecht – the PAC has produced an indoctrination movie in multiple prints for local distribution. It’s entitled Hell-Bent for Election, and Mr. Hillman’s associates say it will reach and instruct 15 million people.
The heavy end of the propaganda brain-trust consists of Max Lerner of the newspaper PM, editor Bruce Bevin of The New Republic, publisher Freda Kirchwey of The Nation, radio commentator Dr. Frank Kingdon and Roscoe Dunjee, publisher of the Black Dispatch. Foreign-language writers and specialists on race matters in the South fill out the group which is still expanding.
4th-term team strong in left field
CIO-Democrat players trained by New Deal
By Daniel M. Kidney, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Washington –
President Roosevelt’s CIO-Democrat fourth-term team will go into the finals this fall with plenty of New Deal-trained political ballplayers in left field with the farm and labor groups.
Chief among them is Calvin B. Baldwin, known as “Beany,” who is now assistant director of Sidney Hillman’s Political Action Committee. His offices are with Director Hillman of New York.
Former FSA chief
Mr. Baldwin was head of the Farm Security Administration during its most trying times. His administration was under constant criticism in Congress. He resigned to become a civilian administrator in Italy, but before leaving for abroad, he switched to his present position.
When Mr. Baldwin started work for the PAC, he took some of the Farm Security staff with him. Chief among them was Dr. George Mitchell, who had been assistant administrator. He is now in charge of PAC organization in the South.
When the PAC was expanded to include other than CIO unionists, one of the new directors named was President James G. Parton of the National Farmers Union. This organization also has a prominent New Deal-trained organizer in Aubrey Williams, who headed the now-defunct National Youth Administration.
Other New Dealers join
Another New Deal-trained Farmer Unionist is Russell Smith, the organization’s “legislative agent” (lobbyist) here. A one-time newspaperman, Mr. Smith was with the Bureau of Agricultural Economics and later the Bureau of Economic Warfare of which Vice President Henry A. Wallace was the head.
Pioneer among the New Dealers to enter the labor organization field was Donald Montgomery, now consumers counsel with the United Auto Workers, the largest CIO union.
He resigned his consumers counsel post with the Agriculture Department to become active with the CIO group.
Stokes: South Carolina vote quiets tumult of ‘Southern revolt’
‘Cotton Ed’ Smith’s defeat indicates politicians do not speak for people
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Washington –
The tumult of the so-called “Southern revolt” at the Chicago Democratic Convention by Texans and some others fades away into more true perspective when the people go to the polls, as they did in South Carolina Tuesday.
It is no minor political incident when the people of South Carolina, after 36 years, deposed “Cotton Ed” Smith, dean of the Senate. For no man is so much a symbol of anti-New Dealism, none so unforgiving of the Roosevelt regime, as the blunt and uncompromising man with the bristly mustache.
This would appear to indicate that perhaps the politicians who speak for the dominant business and economic interests and who serve in handpicked delegations at national conventions, do not truly represent the people of the South.
South Carolina good index
South Carolina is a good index, but it is not isolated.
This mild revolution among the people, which has gone along while the political leaders were plotting their little plots, has been showing itself for some months. In happened in Alabama and Florida in early May when New Deal Senators Lister Hill and Claude Pepper won against aggregations of finance in noisome campaigns in which the Negro issue was exploited against them.
It happened when Rep. Joe Starnes (D-AL), a member of the Dies Committee, was defeated with the help of the CIO. It was sensed by Rep. Martin Dies (D-TX) when he withdrew in the face of threats embodied in war workers who had moved into his district and were organized by the CIO. It happened to Texas last Saturday when Rep. Richard M. Kleberg, a bitter-end anti-New Dealer, was defeated.
Mrs. Caraway loses out
On Tuesday, Mrs. Hattie Caraway, the only woman Senator, was defeated in Arkansas, and a fresh young political figure, Rep. J. W. Fulbright (author of the international collaboration resolution passed by the House some months ago), emerged as top contestant for her place, with a runoff necessary, however.
Also, Negroes voted in the Arkansas primary, in keeping with the Supreme Court decision which other Southern states have tried to flout. This may prove a significant precedent.
The Texas revolt, of course, has not been whisked away by a New Deal victory in South Carolina – far from it. The anti-Roosevelt electors who are bound by their state convention to cast their votes for someone other than President Roosevelt are determined men. That dilemma for the New Deal still exists.
But the South Carolina result yields evidence that a majority of Southern people are not in sympathy with rampant anti-New Deal leaders, which undoubtedly applies to Texas and probably will reveal itself in the November convention – if those who are for President Roosevelt get a chance.
South Caroline Governor Olin Johnston, who defeated “Cotton Ed,” has been generally sympathetic with New Deal aims, and has had the support of labor, though on the “white supremacy” issue, he stands alongside “Cotton Ed” and can bawl just as loudly.
Dewey lists 15 issues for governors
Candidate seeks end of ‘chaos’
Albany, New York (UP) –
Governor Thomas E. Dewey, Republican presidential nominee, said today he would place a sweeping program before the St. Louis GOP Governors’ Conference next week in an effort to “bring agreement out of chaos which has existed between the federal government and the states for 12 years.”
Mr. Dewey’s program, which was approved by his running mate, Ohio Governor John W. Bricker, includes 15 major issues:
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Public expenditures.
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Public health.
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Administration of unemployment insurance.
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Administration of employment services.
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Relationship between unemployment insurance and employment services.
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Labor, the sphere of influence of the national government as contrasted to local government.
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Public works, the extent to be financed and supervised by the various units of government.
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Highways.
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Regulation of insurance.
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Ownership of national lands.
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Water and flood control and the conservation of national resources.
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The National Guard, whether it shall be returned to the states in the post-war era or remain federalized.
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The whole problem of federal and state tax coordination.
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Agriculture, the extent to which agriculture, soil conservation and controls, if any, should be administered by the national government or the states regionally.
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Veterans affairs.
Mr. Dewey and Mr. Bricker conferred until late last night on the issues and organization of the Republican drive for the Presidency and Vice Presidency and resumed their talks at the breakfast table.
Mr. Dewey and Mr. Bricker, it was said, believe they must make a definite bid for support from organized labor. Mr. Bricker said the swing to the Republican ticket was already underway in labor ranks and that he believed the “extreme activities” of labor leader Sidney Hillman would drive many Democrats to the GOP column.
Mr. Dewey leaves Albany tomorrow for his farm in Pawling, New York. He will go to New York Sunday and then to Pittsburgh, where he will meet Pennsylvania Congressmen. He will reach St. Louis Tuesday or Wednesday.
Völkischer Beobachter (July 28, 1944)
Seibert: Wir schaffen es!
Es hat keinen Deutschen, der diesen Namen verdient, in den letzten Wochen und Tagen gegeben, der nicht von schweren Sorgen erfüllt gewesen ist. Ernste Nachrichten von allen Seiten: In der Normandie die Landung der westlichen Invasionsmassen – die Landung als solche geglückt. In Italien ein verhältnismäßig rasches, wenn auch weit hinter den feindlichen Erwartungen bleibendes Zurückfallen. Im Osten ein titanisches, auch für uns verlustreiches Ringen mit umfangreichen Gebietsaufgaben. Und schließlich am 20. Juli jener heimtückische Schlag aus dem Dunkel, der uns um Haaresbreite des Führers beraubt hätte. Sprechen wir es offen und klar aus: Niemals seit Beginn dieses Krieges sind unsere Nerven und Herzen einer schwereren Belastungsprobe ausgesetzt gewesen wie in diesem Juli 1944.
Nichts zeugt stärker von der unverwüstlichen Lebenskraft, die der Nationalsozialismus in der geschichtlich so kurzen Ära seines Wirkens der Nation der Deutschen eingeimpft hat, als die heute schon weithin sichtbare Tatsache, daß der Stoß vom 20. Juli nicht zum „Gnadenstoß“ für unsere Sache geworden ist, sondern neue Kräfte aus uns geboren und neue Energien in uns wachgerüttelt hat. Erst in der größten Not zeigt sich, was wirklich in einem Menschen steckt. Mit Völkern, nationalen Bewegungen und Revolutionen ist es nicht anders. Der Feind selbst hat seine hohe, durch bittere Erfahrung gewonnene Meinung vom Reich und der Wehrmacht Adolf Hitlers unfreiwillig bekundet, als er am Tage nach dem Anschlag seine Völker davor warnte, nun auf einen raschen Zusammenbruch der deutschen Front und der deutschen Heimat zu rechnen.
Wir sind nie beliebt gewesen in der Welt, aber man hat uns immer Außerordentliches zugetraut, im Guten wie im Bösen. Seit das Reich nationalsozialistisch geworden ist, hat sich diese Einschätzung unserer Fähigkeiten so gesteigert, daß selbst die rosigsten Prophezeiungen der Gegenseite stets mit dem warnenden Nachsatz versehen wurden: „Aber hütet euch vor der Illusion, daß die Deutschen bereits am Ende ihres Lateins seien!“ Selbst die unbestreitbaren Erfolge des Sowjetfeindes im Osten und das lange Ausbleiben deutscher Gegenschläge auf den übrigen Fronten, einschließlich des Luftkriegsgebietes, haben Bolschewismus und Plutokratie bis auf den Tag nicht von dem Druck der Angst zu befreien vermocht, so laut aus durchsichtigen taktischen Gründen dann und wann auch die Siegesglocken geläutet wurden. „V1“ ist denn auch prompt und mit sichtlicher Verstörung als der erste neue Prankenschlag des deutschen Löwen gebucht worden.
In seiner inhaltsreichen, von kalt beherrschter Leidenschaft getragenen Rede hat der neue Reichsbevollmächtigte für den totalen Kriegseinsatz uns nüchtern die materielle Voraussetzung für den Sieg geschildert. Er hat den Vorsprung angedeutet, den unsere Waffentechnik durch gänzlich neuartige Gedanken in den letzten beiden Jahren hinter den verschwiegenen Mauern der Laboratorien und Werkstätten erarbeitet hat – in diesen beiden Jahren, in denen das Rüstungsvolumen des Feindes uns mehr und mehr zu erdrücken schien. Dr. Goebbels hat ausdrücklich hinzugefügt, daß nüchterne Tatsachen ihn zu einer solchen Sprache berechtigen.
Der Führer hat uns durch seinen Erlass vom 25. Juli aufgefordert, das Höchstmaß von Kräften für Wehrmacht und Rüstung freizumachen. Er hat uns, in die Sprache des praktischen Alltags übersetzt, aufgefordert, noch mehr zu leisten als bisher. Er hat aufs Neue eine totale Mobilmachung befohlen.
Kann man eine totale Mobilmachung zweimal durchführen? Ist es möglich, das Heldentum der Front, die Leistung des Arbeitenden und die Beharrung der Heimat noch mehr zu steigern? Wir sind uns ganz klar bewusst, lass viele dies im ersten Augenblick verneinen werden. Und doch: jeder, der sich in seinem eigenen Arbeits- und Kameradenkreis aufmerksam umsieht, wird ohne weiteres Punkte finden, an denen personell und materiell noch mehr eingespart werden kann. Jeder, der mit einem Funken Selbstkritik begabt ist, wird bei genauem Zusehen die überraschende Feststellung machen, daß auch er selbst dieses oder jenes noch zusätzlich zu leisten und auf das eine oder andere noch zu verzichten vermag. Opfer und Leistungen sind relative Begriffe: vieles, was uns 1939 als eine außerordentliche Zumutung erschienen wäre, empfanden wir 1942 als etwas beinahe Selbstverständliches, und mancher Verzicht, der uns 1942 noch beinahe das Herz gebrochen hatte, erscheint uns heute nach den Erfahrungen des Bombenterrors als eine durchaus erträgliche Sache. Wenn wir von diesen persönlichen Erfahrungen an uns selbst und unseren Beobachtungen an der eigenen Arbeitsstätte auf das große Gesamtgefüge der kämpfenden Nation schließen, so werden wir die Frage nach der Möglichkeit weiterer Mehrleistung, nach der Durchführbarkeit einer neuen totalen Mobilmachung ohne weiteres, ohne Phrase und Selbsttäuschung bejahen können und müssen.
Wir sprachen unmittelbar nach dem 20. Juli hier von den unerquicklichen Zuständen, die da und dort in den Schreibstuben des Ersatzheeres eingerissen sind. Die Schuld daran trugen in starkem Maße jene Verbrecher an wichtigen Stellen des Ersatzheeres, die nun entlarvt und ausgemerzt worden sind. Aber vergessen wir nicht, daß das Nachlassen der kämpferischen Energie und des Einsatzwillens nicht nur durch Bösartigkeit einiger weniger verursacht wird: Jeder Mensch, von wenigen Ausnahmenaturen abgesehen, läßt mit der Zeit in seiner Leistung nach, wenn er ständig die gleiche Arbeit verrichtet und durch keine neuen Antriebe aufgerüttelt wird. Jedem Sportsmann ist diese Tatsache ebenso bekannt wie jedem Betriebsführer und jedem soldatischen Kommandeur. Der Stoß vom 20. Juli aber hat die ganze Nation erschüttert und jedem einzelnen die Größe der drohenden Gefahren, die er vorher nur halb bewusst um sich herum wachsen sah, enthüllt. Dieses grausame Erwachen hat unser Volk aber nicht gelähmt, sondern seinen beleidigten Stolz aufs Neue geweckt und es seiner Kraft wieder voll bewusstwerden lassen. Es fühlt das eiserne Muß, es erkennt mit festem Blick die großen Möglichkeiten und es antwortet deshalb auf den Anruf seines Führers mit dem Wort: Wir schaffen es!
THEODOR SEIBERT
Cherbourger Hafen macht Sorgen
Vico, 27. Juli –
Zu einem der schwierigsten Probleme der zuständigen Dienststellen gehört die Aufräumung des Hafens von Cherbourg, meldet der Marinefachmann der Sunday Times. Vor allem hätten die Deutschen in umfassendster Weise den Hafen von Cherbourg vermint.
In jedem nur denkbaren Teil der Gewässer einschließlich des äußeren und inneren Hafens sowie innerhalb der geschlossenen Hafenbecken fänden sich Minen, sei es in tiefem oder flachem Wasser, in toten Ecken oder auch auf den Hauptankerplätzen. Viele Minen standen irgendwie mit den Bojen in Verbindung, so daß jedes Schiff, das an einer solchen Boje festmache, in die Luft fliegen müsse. Minen seien auch im gesamten Strandgebiet verstreut. Die Säuberung des Hafens sei durch die vielen versenkten Schiffe noch erschwert worden. Besonders die toten Winkel der Molen und Wellenbrecher seien schwer von den Minen zu säubern.
Die wachen Augen
SS-pk. Langsam neigen sich zwei Hügel zueinander, deren Hänge mit dichten, grünen Getreidefeldern bestanden sind. Das Tal ist von einem schmalen Pappelwäldchen durchzogen, in dessen Schatten ein Bach dem Talausgang klickernd und hell zufließt. Auf dem Hügel nach Norden haben die ersten Linien der SS-Grenadiere sich eingegraben. Ihre Schützenlöcher fügen sich ebenso unmerklich dem Gelände ein wie die des Gegners. Allein das Wrack eines englischen Panzers, das links ab am Rande einer zerschossenen Straße gegen den Horizont steht, bietet ein deutliches Mal, wo der Kampf in den vergangenen Tagen hin und her gewogt ist. Im Schatten des vordersten Höhenzuges ist ein eiliges Kommen und Gehen, denn dort werden Verwundete verladen, Bereitstellungen bezogen, und dorthin auch schafft der Nachschub das zur Front, was in den Kämpfen verbraucht werden wird.
Wenn Kampfpause ist, herrscht im Tal idyllische Ruhe und ein Frieden, den man ungestört glauben könnte, wenn nicht die zerborstenen Stämme am Bach eine allzu deutliche Warnung aussprächen. Die Granattrichter werden von den Getreidefeldern unsichtbar in den Schoss der Erde aufgenommen.
Das Tal und die beiden Hügel liegen ständig unter gezieltem Beschuss, der spüren läßt, daß der Gegner von irgendeinem Punkt aus Einblick in das Gelände hat. Seit 24 Stunden sind unsere Grenadiere dabei, den englischen Artilleriebeobachter ausfindig zu machen. Vergeblich!
Dem alten Rottenführer, der vom Feldzug in Polen bis in die Tiefen der östlichen Steppen alles erlebt hat, was dieser Krieg dem Soldaten an Aufgaben überhaupt stellen konnte, will das nicht in den Kopf. Sein „Eigensinn“ ist in der Kompanie nicht als die störrische Willkür eines Widerspenstigen bekannt, seine Sturheit gilt vielmehr als das Zeichen eines erfahrenen Soldaten, der bisher noch mit jeder auch noch so schwierigen Lage fertig zu werden verstand.
Er nimmt sein Gewehr, macht sich aus dem schmalen Bunker der vordersten Linie davon und springt gebückt längs eines Grabens, der die Höhe des ersten. Hügels erreicht bergan. Die Pausen des Artilleriebeschusses muß er schnell und geistesgegenwärtig nutzen, wenn er nicht in den Feuerschlägen untergehen will. Nun liegt er oben und vor ihm breiten sich die beiden Hänge und das Tal, deren Lieblichkeit für ihn vollkommen versunken ist in jener besonderen Landschaftsbetrachtung des Krieges, in der es nur nach rein militärischen Gesetzen zu sehen gilt. Er späht das Gelände hinauf und hinab, doch kann er nichts entdecken. Er gibt es später selbst zu, daß es nichts Bestimmtes war, was er gesucht hat, sondern daß er sich allein von seinem Instinkt führen ließ, der ihn nun schon durch fünf Kriegsjahre begleitet hat. Er zupft sich einen Getreidehalm ab und nimmt ihn zwischen die Lippen. Er liegt, kaut und schaut.
Der Himmel in der Normandie ist in diesen Tagen wechselnd. Graue Wolken ziehen niedrig und zerfetzt über die Täler und Hügel des Landes. Jetzt braust von Norden her ein Windstoß das Tal hinauf und fährt in die Getreidefelder, daß die Halme wie die Wellen eines Meeres sich senken und wieder steigen. Gelb treten dabei die Granattrichter aus den grünen Wogen hervor, und dort – ein einziger Blick hat genügt – erspäht sein scharfes Auge zwischen dem Grün und Braun einen Fleck grauer Farbe, der nicht in die Landschaft zu gehören scheint. Langsam arbeitet er sich durch das Getreidefeld den Hang hinab. Immer wieder pfeifen, während er sich vorsichtig voranarbeitet, die Granaten des Feindes heran, um mit spitzem und bösem Knall vernichtend zu detonieren. Längst ist ihm wieder der graue Fleck im dichten Grün des Getreides entschwunden, aber er weiß, wo er ihn zu suchen und zu finden hat. Er durchläuft das Wäldchen und überspringt den Bach. Nun geht es wieder hügelan. Und plötzlich zeichnet sich vor ihm im Getreidefeld eine dunkle Stelle ab, die er lange beobachtet. Er hört leise Geräusche, die er nicht zu deuten vermag, deren Natur aber sein empfindliches Ohr als feindlich empfindet. Längst hat er das Gewehr zu sich herangezogen und den Sicherungsflügel herumgelegt.
Wieder nähert sich ein Windstoß dem Getreidefeld. Der Rottenführer geht langsam hoch, und jetzt, wo die große Woge des Sturmes die Halme beugt, erspäht er die Uniform eines Gegners. In der gleichen Sekunde bricht ein Schuss. Wieder hält die Erde den Soldaten in ihrem bergenden Arm, und er wartet, was nun geschieht. Doch das Getreidefeld bleibt still bis auf ein leises Stöhnen, das aus der Richtung des dunklen Fleckes zu ihm dringt. Mit wenigen Sätzen pirscht er sich heran. Der Feind hat seinen artilleristischen Beobachter mit einem kleinen Gerät in der Nacht vorgeschickt. Aus der Verborgenheit des Getreidefeldes hat der Beobachter das Feuer ins Ziel gelenkt. Fast in der gleichen Sekunde trommelt der Gegner ein wahlloses Störungsfeuer über das Tal und die beiden Hügel. Dann erlischt das Feuer, als wäre einer Lunge das Atmen vergangen.
Nach einer Stunde kehrt der Rottenführer aufrecht in seinen Bunker zu den Kameraden zurück.
SS-Kriegsberichter Dr. ROLF BONGS
Innsbrucker Nachrichten (July 28, 1944)
Steigende Heftigkeit der Abwehrschlacht im Osten
Erbitterte Kämpfe bei Saint-Lô – Im Zuge einer Frontbegradigung Lemberg, Brest-Litowsk, Bialystok und Dünaburg geräumt
dnb. Aus dem Führerhauptquartier, 28. Juli –
Das Oberkommando der Wehrmacht gibt bekannt:
Im Kampfraum beiderseits Saint-Lô setzten die Nordamerikaner ihren Großangriff den ganzen Tag über fort. Während ihnen östlich Saint-Lô einige unwesentliche Einbrüche gelangen, wurden unsere Truppen südwestlich der Stadt in erbitterten und beiderseits verlustreichen Kämpfen weiter nach Süden und Südwesten zurückgedrängt. Die Gegenangriffe zur Schließung der an einigen Stellen aufgerissenen Front sind im Gange. 75 Panzer wurden abgeschossen. Im Abschnitt von Caen führte der Gegner nur erfolglose Angriffe geringen Umfangs.
Jagd- und Schlachtfliegerverbände schossen in Luftkämpfen zehn feindliche Flugzeuge ab.
Torpedoflieger versenkten in der Nacht zum 27. Juli in der Seinebucht einen feindlichen Tanker von 4.000 BRT und beschädigten vier Transportschiffe mit 25.000 BRT und einen Zerstörer schwer.
Im Ostteil der Seinebucht erzielte eine Heeresküstenbatterie mehrere Treffer auf einem feindlichen Schlachtschiff.
Sicherungsfahrzeuge eines deutschen Geleits schossen vor der Loiremündung von acht angreifenden feindlichen Jagdbombern sechs ab.
Im französischen Raum wurden 42 Terroristen im Kampf niedergemacht.
Schweres „V1“-Vergeltungsfeuer liegt fast ununterbrochen auf dem Großraum von London.
In Italien tastete der Feind unsere gesamte Front durch zahlreiche örtliche Angriffe ab. Der Schwerpunkt der feindlichen Aufklärungsvorstöße lag im Abschnitt südlich Florenz und an der adriatischen Küste. Alle Angriffe wurden vor unseren Stellungen abgewiesen.
Seit den frühen Morgenstunden ist der Feind in breiter Front südlich Florenz erneut zum Großangriff angetreten. Heftige Kämpfe sind entbrannt.
An der Ostfront hat die große Abwehrschlacht zwischen den Karpaten und dem Finnischen Meerbusen an Heftigkeit noch zugenommen. Nachdem es dem Feind an verschiedenen Abschnitten gelungen war, zum Teil in unsere Front einzubrechen, wurden zur Kräfteeinsparung in einigen Abschnitten vorspringende Frontbogen zurückgenommen. Im Zuge dieser Frontbegradigung wurden nach Zerstörung aller militärisch wichtigen Anlagen die Städte Lemberg, Brest-Litowsk, Bialystok und Dünaburg geräumt.
In Galizien setzten sich unsere Truppen befehlsmäßig auf neue Stellungen im Karpatenvorland ab und schlugen dann alle Angriffe der scharf nachdrängenden Sowjets ab.
Westlich des San sind wechselvolle Kämpfe mit vordringenden feindlichen Angriffsspitzen im Gange.
Zwischen dem oberen Bug und der Weichsel wurden von Panzern unterstützte Angriffe der Sowjets in erbittertem Ringen nach Abschuß zahlreicher feindlicher Panzer abgewiesen.
Im Abschnitt Bialystok und Kauen scheiterten örtliche Angriffe der Bolschewisten. Nördlich Kauen sind heftige Kämpfe mit feindlichen Panzer- und Aufklärungskräften im Gange.
An der Front zwischen Dünaburg und dem Finnischen Meerbusen brachen wiederum zahlreiche schwere Angriffe verlustreich für den Feind zusammen.
Starke Schlachtfliegerverbände unterstützten die Abwehrkämpfe des Heeres und vernichteten in Tiefangriffen 71 feindliche Panzer und über 400 Fahrzeuge. In der Nacht waren der Bahnhof von Wilna und sowjetische Truppenansammlungen westlich Lublin das Angriffsziel schwerer deutscher Kampfflugzeuge.
Nordamerikanische Bomber führten einen Terrorangriff gegen Budapest. Durch deutsche und ungarische Luftverteidigungskräfte wurden 29 feindliche Flugzeuge, darunter 26 viermotorige Bomber, zum Absturz gebracht.
In der vergangenen Nacht warfen feindliche Flugzeuge Bomben auf einige Orte in Westdeutschland und in Ostpreußen. In der Stadt Insterburg entstanden Schäden und Personenverluste. Drei Flugzeuge wurden abgeschossen.