The Pittsburgh Press (December 7, 1943)
Americans sweep to rim of heights fringing main road to Rome; 8th Army forces crossing of key river
By C. R. Cunningham, United Press staff writer
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Other Allied planes pound bridge near Rome, hit guns in Albania
By James E. Roper, United Press staff writer
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Meeting with President of Turkey may mean push north from Thrace
By Robert Dowson, United Press staff writer
London, England –
President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill were reported conferring with President İsmet İnönü of Turkey in Cairo today in what may be a prelude to an Allied offensive in the Balkans, possibly in part through the Turkish “backdoor.”
The German Transocean News Agency broadcast a report attributed to Ankara that İnönü was returning from Cairo and a special session of the Turkish Cabinet would be held immediately.
The authoritative British Press Association, in what amounted to tacit confirmation of Axis reports of the conference, said it was expected the deliberations would “have almost as important an effect on the course of the war as the first Cairo and the Tehran Conferences.”
Promise offensive
The Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin declaration in Tehran significantly promised that new operations would be undertaken against Europe “from the south” and there was every indication that the “Big Three” discussed the possibility of bypassing the Aegean, Crete and Rhodes by striking directly into southeastern Europe from Turkish Thrace.
The Press Association said it was presumed that Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Churchill and the Turkish leaders were discussing the Anglo-Turkish Pact of 1939 which bound Turkey to help Britain in the event that aggression by a European power led to war in the Mediterranean.
The Press Association’s diplomatic correspondent said:
Ankara observers state the possibilities Turkey will enter the war are increasing and Russia, whose relations with Turkey markedly improved recently, is known to have stressed the importance of Turkish intervention.
Nazi mass troops
The diplomatic correspondent doubted, however, that Turkey would officially enter the war in the immediate future. Other sources suggested that if Turkey did decide to throw in her lot with the Allies, she would hardly announce it until Allied forces have taken up dispositions that would protect her from any sudden Axis attack.
Hungarian sources in Stockholm said yesterday that German troops were moving through Bulgaria toward the Turkish frontier zone.
The Press Association said “reliable overseas reports” indicated that British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, Turkish Foreign Secretary Numan Menemencioğlu and Harry Hopkins, President Roosevelt’s special assistant, were also participating in Anglo-American-Turkish conferences.
Would push from Italy
Cairo reports have implied that Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean, and Gen. Sir Henry Maitland Wilson, British commander in the Levant, both of whom would presumably be involved in any Balkan operation, were also in Cairo, recently if not presently.
Any Allied drive through Turkey into the Balkans would probably be accompanied by a thrust across the Adriatic from newly-won bases in southern Italy into Yugoslavia for a pincer offensive.
A United Press dispatch from Cairo, which passed the strict British censorship there, said the Arabic press was speculating broadly on Turkey’s future role, though Allied authorities refused to comment on the situation.
Among the principal questions discussed by the newspapers, the dispatch said, were:
By the United Press
Axis propagandists today described the Tehran Conference as a sellout by Great Britain and the United States and a “diplomatic victory” for Marshal Stalin, said second front mention was vague and declared the Allies would have realized their intentions against Germany long ago “if they had been able to do so.”
The Nazi home radio belittled the statement following the conference as “even more meager and empty than the announcement issued in Moscow,” referred to the principals as “the American big capitalist, the English Tory and the Bolshevik dictator.”
Prime Minister Churchill, the radio said, was “bringing up the rear in keeping with the satellite role to which England has sunk.”
Berlin broadcasts wondered why an appeal was not made to the German people and said Germany would not lay down her arms until victory was won.
In the first Japanese reaction, the Dōmei News Agency said an attempt to “destroy German morale on the basis of the successful propaganda used against Italy will be futile: and declared that the communiqué “doesn’t in the least affect Japan’s determination to crush the United States and Britain.”
DNB, the German news agency, said the Tehran communiqué was a “farce” and that it indicated that Mr. Churchill and President Roosevelt were “capitulating all along the line to Soviet demands.”
Cairo, Egypt (UP) –
President Roosevelt in two speeches to American soldiers in Iran said that he, Premier Joseph Stalin and Prime Minister Winston Churchill at a “very successful” Iran conference made plans to win the war as soon as possible and work for a world “for our children” in which war would cease to be a necessity, it was announced today.
Early last Thursday, just before he left Tehran, the President addressed “walking” patients at an American post hospital and later American troops at an Iranian base.
They were friendly, chatty speeches calculated to cheer men far from home.
‘Very successful’
The President said:
I have had conferences with Marshal Stalin and Prime Minister Churchill during the past four days – very successful, too – laying plans insofar as we can to make it unnecessary for us again to have Americans in Iran just as long as we and our children live.
I got here four days ago to meet with the Marshal of the Soviet Union and the Prime Minister of Great Britain to try to do two things.
The first was to lay military plans for cooperation between our three nations looking forward to winning the war just as fast as we possibly can and I think we have made progress toward that end.
Must win first
Our other purpose was to talk over world conditions after the war – to try to plan for a world for our children when war would cease to be a necessity. We have made great progress in that also. But, of course, the first thing is to win the war.
In addressing the hospital patients, the President said:
This place is a good deal like home. I landed about 10 days ago. This is the nearest thing to the United States I have seen yet.
The President said of plans for a warless world:
I think that is worth fighting for, even being sick for, in Iran.
Cairo, Egypt (UP) –
The staff officer from Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s headquarters participated in the Cairo Conference and is now on his way back to report, it can be revealed today.
This officer, whose name cannot be published, told the United Press he had presented a detailed picture of Gen. MacArthur’s strategy and operations to Prime Minister Churchill, President Roosevelt and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.
Turning to the status of the Pacific Theater on the second anniversary of Pearl Harbor, this staff officer from the Southwest Pacific commented:
We are no nearer the Japanese mainland than we were a year ago, but this has not been our chief aim.
What we’ve been trying to do is cut off the Japanese lifeline, especially to the Dutch East Indies. Rather than made a head-on attack on the Japanese mainland against well-defended shores which the Japanese would prefer, we have been hitting his four weak points – oil, air strength, merchant shipping, and naval shipping.
Yank planes, ships pound Bougainville area
By Brydon C. Taves, United Press staff writer
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File charges or impeach Knox and Stimson, Clark demands
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A sniper in his sights means another notch on this Marine’s rifle as he fires at a Jap amid the shambles of Tarawa. Although the Marine Corps caption did not indicate the sniper, the arrow shows an object that might be the enemy. Notice the gun in the background.
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Blasted out of action, this big Jap heavy turret-type gun used to defend Tarawa Island in the Gilberts failed to keep the Marines off. Notice the body of the Jap beneath the hole in the reinforced concrete blockhouse, an example of the defenses on the island.
700,000 Army items must be packaged properly and boxed in it
By Ruth Finney, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Russo-British-U.S. drive on continent expected within 4 months
By Edward W. Beattie, United Press staff writer
London, England –
Military observers said today that the United States, Britain and Russia will probably hurl at least five million men against Europe within the next four months in the offensives promised by the Tehran Declaration “from the east, west and south.”
Weather conditions and the difficulty of bringing together the greatest concentration of shipping in history for the invasion of Western Europe will probably delay the climatic offensives until nearly the end of the first quarter of 1944, most observers believed.
To require 60 divisions
The successful invasion of Western Europe alone, as distinct from coordinated offensives in Southern and Eastern Europe, will probably require at least 60-70 divisions – 900,000 to 1,050,000 men – and up to six million tons of shipping to transport and supply them.
In addition, thousands of planes must be held in reserve to soften the enemy defenses and protect the attacking troops. It is likely, also, that new weapons never before used by the Allies will be unveiled in the assault.
Unless Germany suddenly cracks wide open, the invasion will involve casualties, comparable to some of the big offensives of the last war.
Have 25,000 planes
Behind the five million Anglo-American-Russian troops marked for participation in the three-way assault on Axis Europe and probably one million reserves, stand another 20 million Allied fighting men scattered around the world, but nevertheless acting as surely for the Tehran pledge to beat Germany to her knees.
The United States, Britain and Russia could also call upon something close to 25,000 first-line planes and on massed navies nearly four times as large as anything which could be brought against them.
Obviously, only a fraction of the war potential of the United States, Britain and Russia will ever be brought against Germany. Even the vast Russian front could not accommodate the whole Red Army, which might be anything up to 10 million men.
Germany probably still can muster about 300 divisions, many of which are badly undermanned and second-rate, but altogether equal to any army man for man. She has an air force estimated at 6,000 first-line planes but suffering from the wasting effects of four years of war and on the defensive on all fronts.
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U.S. Navy joins offensive against Marshalls
By William F. Tyree, United Press staff writer
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The three-power declarations from the Tehran Conference come as a kind of anticlimax. That is unfortunate. Certainly, the fact of a successful meeting of the Big Three is in many ways the most important event since the United States entered the war, for upon such unity of the major allies depend military victory and a durable peace. It should be easy for all of us to understand that on this of all days, the second anniversary of Pearl Harbor.
One reason for the feeling of disappointment after reading the Tehran texts is that the publicity buildup was so long and so extreme that no conference communiqué, however significant, could have been other than an anticlimax. The meeting had been talked about for months. Since the Moscow Conference of foreign ministers, it had been a certainty.
Then the enemy, by clever espionage and guessing, made the premature announcements which took away any remaining element of surprise. Allied mishandling and delay in the official announcements didn’t help. Finally, the very success of the Cairo Conference, with its sensational declaration of the planned dismemberment of the Japanese Empire, tended to overshadow the Tehran meeting which followed.
All those reactions are understandable. But they are superficial. What matters is that Marshal Stalin, Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt have been able to make far-reaching commitments for victory, which no other persons on earth could make and which Stalin would not make except face to face.
That means, in political terms: An agreement to “work together in the war and in the peace that will follow,” a reaffirmation of the “principles of the Atlantic Charter” and of the rights of small countries in “the world family of democratic nations,” and specific sovereignty assurances to Iran, where British and Russian interests have been in conflict.
The chief purpose of Tehran was to hammer out a joint strategy and close liaison. The Big Three announce:
We have reached complete agreement as to the scope and timing of operations which will be undertaken from the east, west and south.
If this understanding is maintained, they do not exaggerate in boasting that this “guarantees that victory will be ours.”
By Bertram Benedict, editorial research reports
In two years of war, the United States, with its allies, has come from defeat and retreat to full victory over Italy, and to almost imminent anticipation of victory over Germany, which probably will have been achieved before this time next year. The defeat of Japan may take at least two more years.
Bernard Covit, a correspondent recently returned on the Gripsholm after almost 18 months of internment in Japan, warns the United States not to expect final victory over Japan until after three more years, possibly five – unless the Soviet Union enters the war against Japan.
Gen. Marshall, in his report on the U.S. Army from July 1, 1941, to June 30, 1943, places the high tide of Japanese conquest in the Southwest Pacific at the time of the Battle of the Coral Sea, May 7-11, 1942, five months after Pearl Harbor. Less than a month later, a Japanese advance on Midway Island was decisively thrown back. Gen. Marshall reports:
The battles of the Coral Sea and Midway restored the balance of sea power in the Pacific to the United States… The enemy offensive had definitely been checked.
U.S. gains initiative
With the landing on Guadalcanal and Florida Islands on Aug. 7, 1942 – eight months after Pearl Harbor – the United States took the offensive in the Pacific. On May 30, the British had opened their large-scale air offensive on Germany with the heavy bombardment of Cologne.
By August 1942, Rommel’s drive on Egypt had been stopped. On Oct. 23, 1942, the British 8th Army opened its decisive offensive in North Africa; from Nov. 8-11, U.S. forces, with British and Fighting French aid, opened their offensive in Northwest Africa.
Before the first anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the Russian armies had stopped the German invaders at Stalingrad, and had taken the offensive which still continues, and which has regained about 80% of the Russian territory occupied by the Germans since 1941.
At the time of Pearl Harbor, the Army and Navy of the United States had a strength of about 2.5 million men. Two years later, the number has increased more than fourfold, to about 10.5 million.
In two years (up to Dec. 2, 1943, not including 1,092 deaths in the recent Gilbert Islands occupation), the deaths from battle were 27,481. In the 200 days of actual combat in the 19 months of American participation in World War I, the deaths from hostilities were almost twice as great – 50,300.
One-third as many wounded
The wounded and missing in action in the first two years of the present war number 71,846 (up to Dec. 2 last, not including 2,680 wounded in the Gilberts). In the 200 days of actual combat in World War I, American wounded numbered 206,000. The Armed Forces in the present war also have had 27,642 taken prisoner.
At home, the cost of living for wage-earners rose about 15%. In food alone, the rise was about 25%.
At the time of Pearl Harbor, the national debt was $55 billion. Two years later, it is around $175 billion, over three times as high.
On Dec. 7, 1941, the national income paid out was at the annual rate of $106 billion; on Dec. 7, 1943, it was at the rate of $155 billion.
The actual cost of war operations over two years has been $127 billion, although some of the non-war expenditures has been undoubtedly due to war. The first two years in World War I cost the United States $22 billion.
Renegotiation issue ends public hearings; little change expected in total as provided in House bill
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By Ernie Pyle
Allied HQ, Algiers, Algeria – (by wireless)
All along the endless American ferry network that stretches in a dozen entwining lines around the globe one main worry obsesses our troops. And that is they feel they are not doing enough to help win the war.
At these posts, so far from enemy action, life becomes pleasantly routine and monotonous, and finally a sense of frustration sets in. the men live in usually excellent permanent quarters. They have good food and all the physical comforts – and nothing ever happens. Gradually they get a feeling of backwash.
They’re ashamed of fighting the war so comfortably and so many thousands of miles from danger. they are worrying about facing the homefolks after the war, and saying they served throughout the war in a place where they bathed every day, slept on mattresses and never missed a meal.
It’s orders, sir!
There’s a saying all along the route of the Air Transport Command which expresses their feelings about being where they are.
The saying goes:
Take down your service flag, mother, your boy is in the ATC.
In one camp the boys felt this so keenly that the editor of the camp newspaper asked me if I could say something to sort of reassure them that they really were contributing their share. And I could say so honestly. Manning these fields that hand our flow of bombers and fighters on toward the combat zone is just as vital as manning a frontline field. Without it, the planes would never get there.
Soldiers are sent; they aren’t asked. It’s not these boys’ choice or fault they happen to be where they are. And as for what the people at home think, I’ve found they don’t really distinguish much between frontline and some remote area. I’ve known soldiers stationed for a year in Morocco, nearly a thousand miles from the fighting, whose parents and friends thought they were bleeding and dying.
A quick and sure cure
Just so long as you’re overseas the folks at home give you all the credit. Somebody has to man these remote outposts, and it’s just the fall of the cards that brought some soldiers there instead of into the frontlines. I see nothing shameful about living well as long as you’re not depriving somebody else. I see no virtue in suffering unless it helps somebody else.
Now and then you get a groucher who complains bitterly about the place he is, how tough life is there and how he’s like to be back home.
One officer along the way said when he got a fellow like that, he just assigned him a job unloading hospital planes bringing wounded back from Africa, and the fellow was soon cured.
Other boys themselves usually shut up a groucher pretty quickly for it is their consensus that fighting monotony and sometimes malaria is still better than fighting bullets and bombs. And that although they’d rather be at the front, they’re actually mighty lucky to be where they are and should be grateful even though a little ashamed.
The mere fact that this worry and sense of shame is so universal throughout the ferry fields seems to be unarguable proof that the average American soldier is still an alright guy.
A heritage of the war
Actually, in many parts of the world where our troops are stationed, malaria is almost as great an enemy as the Germans or Japs. The wounded will not be the only aftermath of the war.
Scores of thousands of our men will return home to be sick for years from disease picked up despite all medical precautions in these steaming, filthy corners of the globe.
On this trip we came into one field in the American tropics at the tail end of a malaria scourge. For some reason it has been much worse this fall than the previous year. Fifty-five percent of the personnel had been down with malaria. Tropical Africa is swarming with medical sanitary specialists sent over from America to see it doesn’t happen again next year.
They’d rather speed peace
On the Central African coast, soldiers who have been overseas a year are now getting 10-day furloughs. They are flown to rest camps in the north. It isn’t so much that they need rest as a change from the monotony. The rest camps are lovely places, but dull.
What the average American soldier wants on leave is female companionship and a little bottled stimulation, both of which are very limited in these parts. I’ve heard lots of soldiers overseas say they would rather not have a furlough or go to a rest camp if by not going they could get home that much sooner.