America at war! (1941–) – Part 4

1094

U.S. State Department (September 11, 1944)

Tripartite luncheon meeting, 1:30 p.m.

Present
United States United Kingdom Canada
President Roosevelt The Earl of Athlone Prime Minister Mackenzie King
Mrs. Roosevelt Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone
Prime Minister Churchill
Mrs. Churchill

According to Mackenzie King’s notes, the conversation “turned largely on discussion of personalities,” including General de Gaulle, Madame Chiang, and Marshal Stalin. The same source indicates that the conversation also touched upon the feelings of Roosevelt as head of the strongest military power in the world, on what might have happened if Hitler “had got into Britain,” on Roosevelt’s chances of reelection, and on the length of Mackenzie King’s prime ministership.

1095

Leahy-Churchill conversation

Present
United States United Kingdom
Admiral Leahy Prime Minister Churchill

Churchill, on the day of his arrival at Québec, spoke to Leahy about the participation of the British fleet in the Pacific war and “was told that its offer had been accepted.”

1096

Roosevelt-Churchill meeting, early afternoon

Present
United States United Kingdom
President Roosevelt Prime Minister Churchill

The Log indicates that Churchill joined Roosevelt in the latter’s map room at the Citadel “for a review of the latest war news.” The discussion also included naval problems in the Pacific and the difficulties of supply there.

1097

TIME (September 11, 1944)

Nazi in defeat

In the Dauphine Alps, rod-backed Maj. Gen. Otto Richter, a Nazi who had tried to be like a Junker, led a group from his disorganized German 198th Division into an American ambush. Before he could say Achtung, he was a U.S. prisoner.

In a clump of trees, he sat stiffly and sullenly in the front seat of a U.S. jeep – and acted out his version of how a German general should meet defeat. He refused to talk to anybody below his rank. Beside him sat a G.I. driver, staring ahead and nonchalantly popping his gum. Back of him sat one of his captors, a young lieutenant.

Once again, the lieutenant asked the general his name.

“I don’t have to tell you,” snapped the general, in his best imitation of the Potsdam manner, and clamped his jaw.

“OK, be stubborn,” grinned the lieutenant. He turned to the MP escort in the jeep behind him. Said he: “If this guy makes a break, just plug him.” The jeeps whisked off to the rear. Maj. Gen. Richter stared straight ahead.

1098

The Pittsburgh Press (September 11, 1944)

Yanks shell German city

U.S. 1st Army nears Aachen, anchor of Siegfried Line
By Virgil Pinkley, United Press staff writer

map.091144.up
At rim of Germany, Allied guns today pounded the Siegfried Line, Luxembourg, capital of the duchy of that name, was occupied by U.S. troops (1), while to the south the 3rd Army launched a “mystery offensive” in the Metz–Nancy area toward the Rhineland. At the northern end of the line (2), U.S. forces were close to the German border east of Liège, while the British to the north drove across the Dutch border. On the coast, the battle for the Channel ports continued (3). In South-Central France (4), a French-American force was less than 16 miles from the Belfort Gap into Germany and occupied Dijon.

SHAEF, London, England –
The U.S. 1st Army has captured the city of Luxembourg in a drive bringing a long stretch of the Siegfried Line under artillery fire, and British troops were reported today to have smashed through the Albert and Escaut defense lines into Holland.

A Nazi radio commentator hunted that the 1st Army might be storming the great Dutch fortress city of Maastricht as Lt. Gen. Courtney H. Hodges’ men massed before the German border and laid down a crushing barrage on Aachen, stronghold anchoring the Siegfried Line.

Field dispatches said Ronald Clark, in a dispatch from the 2nd Army front, said patrols crossed the Dutch border this morning in an advance favored by brilliant sunshine after a bridge across the Escaut Canal was seized late yesterday.

Crashing through the Escaut Canal, the last Belgian barrier, the British troops plunged on a mile and a half to and over the border for what front reports described as the first penetration of Holland. The Dutch government in London reported a week ago that Breda fell in a British invasion of Holland north of Antwerp.

The enemy hint that the Americans might also be in Holland was contained in a broadcast by Ludwig Sertorius, Nazi military commentator. He said:

Hodges tried to drive forward his tank formations into the Aachen basin. At Maastricht, as well as near Verviers, he met stubborn German resistance.

Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was revealed to have conferred Sunday at Brussels with Marshal Sir Bernard L. Montgomery after conferring the day before with Maj. Gen. Troy Middleton, commander of the U.S. VIII Corps at Brest.

The security blackout still obscured front operations, and word from the armies was skimpy as the Allies drove through the final miles before Germany itself on a 200-mile front from North Belgium to Nancy, in France.

Batter foe along Moselle

Marauders and Havocs of the 9th Air Force supported the U.S. 3rd Army, waging a bitter battle along the Moselle River.

Six German field pieces were knocked out in the Marauder-Havoc assault on the enemy heavy guns along the east bank of the Moselle. Germand headquarters and a signal center on the Metz area were also attacked.

A Stockholm dispatch quoted the Nazi-controlled Scandinavian Telegraph Bureau as saying that German engineers were preparing to blow up all important buildings in Aachen and evacuate the city. Nazi authorities appealed to the inhabitants to destroy everything if the city “should fall into enemy hands,” the dispatch said.

Shell Germany

U.S. Long Toms and other artillery was reported shelling German soil from a dozen frontier outposts after the capture of Luxembourg – the third Allied capital liberated since D-Day – and a sweep toward the border 10 miles beyond.

The Army newspaper Stars and Stripes said in Paris that the first shells fell at Bildchen, a little less than a mile across the German border, after a 1st Army advance to the area of Limbourg, 13 miles east of Liège and eight and a half miles from the border.

One 1st Army column drove 10 miles north of Luxembourg City to Mersch where it locked in a swirling battle with German tanks and infantrymen, while other spearheads stabbed out to the east toward the Nazi frontier and southeast toward the Moselle River.

Battle for every yard

Veteran German troops, fighting now with their backs to the West Wall in the black certainty that a breakthrough at this point would spill invaders into their homeland, battled for every yard, but headquarters said Gen. Hodges’ victory-flushed men were pushing ahead everywhere.

The 1st Army drive threatened momentarily to roll over the flank of the strong German forces defending the Moselle River crossings in the Metz–Nancy area, where Lt. Gen. George S. Patton’s U.S. 3rd Army had already launched a “mystery offensive” aimed at the Rhineland.

Gen. Hodges’ troops in Luxembourg were only an hour’s forced march from the German towns of Trier (Treves) and Saarburg at nightfall yesterday. Farther to the north, other 1st Army columns were barely 25 miles from the Reich in the Ardennes Forest area eight miles east of Marche. Still another force 15 miles to the south was reported east of Saint-Hubert.

Stands on plateau

The city of Luxembourg, situated on a high, rocky plateau, formerly was one of the strongest bastions in Western Europe, but had been demilitarized since late in the 19th century. When the Germans overran the Duchy in 1940, they found it defended by an army of 300 men – most of them members of the army band.

Headquarters withheld all information on the progress of Gen. Patton’s attack, but it was indicated that the fiery 3rd Army leader had brought up his armored and artillery reinforcements and had thrown his full striking power into the Battle of the Moselle.

Dive bombers attack

Dive-bombing Allied planes raked the German battle lines with bombs and gunfire, and the great “Long Toms” of the U.S. armies hurled salvo after salvo across the frontier forward positions just behind charging tanks and troops.

U.S. and British gunners at the northern end of the assault line in Belgium were also pounding German soil from emplacements barely six miles from the Reich.

The barrage raked and tore at Nazi rearguards falling back across the shattered canal lines that formed the last natural barrier short of Germany.

U.S. tanks and riflemen knifed almost 20 miles east of captured Liège to the Eupen area, and a United Press dispatch from that sector said fast-moving artillerymen had started shelling Aachen.

Gain above Liège

Other 1st Army troops fanned out more than 21 miles above Liège to take Hasselt, linking up with the right flank of British forces driving across the Albert Canal toward the Durch frontier.

Northwest of the British line, tens of thousands of cornered Nazis broke from the North Sea ports in a panicky attempt to escape across the Scheldt River estuary into Zeeland, only to be slaughtered by low-flying RAF rocket-firing planes.

British armored patrols were disclosed to have rounded up more than 12,000 fleeing Germans in that area last Thursday, Friday and Saturday. More than 2,500 Nazis were taken by the U.S. 1st Army in the drove through Belgium and Luxembourg, and the two bags raised German losses since D-Day to some 500,000 men killed, wounded and captured.

Battle along Channel

Meanwhile, the battle of the Channel ports continued unabated as diehard garrisons held on grimly under a torrent of bombs and shells to delay their use by the Allies to the last possible moment.

Canadian troops inched forward through the outer works of Le Havre against a fanatical band of Nazis who took an unprecedented blasting from warplanes yesterday. The bombardment was climaxed in the evening when a great fleet of RAF heavies dropped more than 5,000 tons of bombs, probably the biggest aerial blow in history.

Equally bitter fighting continued around the besieged Breton port of Brest where U.S. troops made slight gains yesterday under cover of a shattering naval barrage from the 15-inch guns of the British battleship HMS Warspite and the monitor HMS Erebus.

Observers along the British Channel coast reported great naval activity off the French shore last night and the Berlin radio said Allied forces had been repulsed in an attempted seaborne assault on Le Havre. There was no confirmation.

1099

ROOSEVELT AND CHURCHILL MEET
Stalin unable to attend ‘victory conference’

President and Prime Minister to stress speeding defeat of Japan

Québec, Canada (UP) –
President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill began a momentous “victory conference” in Québec today and announced that Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin had been invited to the meeting but could not come while the Soviet armies are “developing their offensives against Germany increasingly.”

Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill arrived here this morning, expressing their pleasure over the rapid and favorable development of the war on the Allied side.

They were hardly established in the historic fortress citadel of Québec when it was announced that Stalin likewise had been asked to attend this meeting but had been unable to do so.

Text of message

Mr. Roosevelt’s press secretary, Stephen T. Early, released the following message from Stalin to the President and Prime Minister:

At the present time when the Soviet armies are fighting battles on such a broad front, developing their offensives increasingly, I am deprived of the possibility of traveling out of the Soviet Union and of leaving the direction of the army for the shortest period. All my colleagues agree that this is quite impossible.

Mr. Early said Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill fully understood why Stalin could not leave Russia at this time.

To cover wide field

The invitation to Stalin reflected the fact that the Roosevelt-Churchill discussions will cover a wide field, including post-surrender plans for Germany, although it was made plain that the conference’s major military endeavors will be pointed toward speeding victory over Japan.

The meeting has been called the “victory conference” and Mr. Churchill emphasized that theme in almost his first words of greeting to the President.

“Victory is everywhere,” he said when they met at the obscure Wolfe’s Cove railroad siding before settling down in the Citadel fortress for the duration of the meeting.

“When everything you touch turns to gold,” Mr. Churchill said of the recent continuing Allied war successes, “there is no need crying out about Providence.”

After meeting at Wolfe’s Cove where their trains were parked side by side, the Roosevelt and Churchill parties proceeded by motor to the Citadel, the historic fortress where they met in August 1943. After receiving formal military honors on the parade ground, they adjourned to their respective quarters in the Citadel.

News may be scarce

The military nature of the conference was stressed by Mr. Early, who told a news conference:

The recent inspection tour of the Pacific by the President, his conferences with Adm. Nimitz, Gen. MacArthur and the commanding general of the Alaska and Aleutians area, were but a preliminary, a very necessary one, to the conference beginning today.

As you all very well know, this is largely, if not exclusively, a military conference. There may be a disappointing volume of news. If there is, it will be for that reason. This is made necessary for security.

Mr. Roosevelt’s train arrived at Wolfe’s Cove at 9:00 a.m., an hour ahead of schedule, and he remained aboard his private car until Mr. Churchill arrived more than an hour later.

Mr. Churchill walked across four railroad tracks to where the President waited for him in a large open touring car.

“Well, hello,” the President greeted the Prime Minister, “I’m glad to see you.”

“Eleanor’s here,” the President added, referring to his wife.

Mrs. Churchill, who was with the Prime Minister, was on the opposite side of the car, spied Mrs. Roosevelt and shouted, “Hello, there.”

‘Frightfully sick’

“Did you have a nice trip?” the President asked Mr. Churchill, who replied by telling him that although there were three days of “beautiful weather,” he was “frightfully sick” part of the time aboard ship.

Traveling with the President were Adm. William D. Leahy (his chief of staff), VAdm. Ross T. McIntire (his physician and Surgeon of the Navy), and his military and naval aides, Maj. Gen. Edwin M. Watson and RAdm. Wilson Brown.

Top U.S. military men here included Gen. George C. Marshall (Army Chief of Staff), Adm Ernest J. King (commander-in-chief of the U.S. Fleet) and Gen. H. H. Arnold (Army Air Forces chief).

Roosevelt loses weight

Similar top British staffs came from London and Washington for the important talks – which are expected to cover a wide field, but with emphasis on Allied post-surrender plans for Germany and a speedier victory over Japan.

Mr. Roosevelt confessed to Mr. Churchill that he’d lost a little weight, and the Prime Minister in turn said he, himself, had lost some color recently.

Canadian Prime Minister W. L. Mackenzie King and the Earl of Athlone, Governor-General of Canada, welcomed Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill.

The sunshine of a bright autumn morning bathed the river and the citadel as the President and Prime Minister drove in the open autos under close escort to the citadel.

This conference, their tenth, enters a more difficult sphere than some of the previous sessions because the wars both in Europe and Asia have reached critical stages in which military planning becomes more involved with semi-political matters.

Russia big factor

While the meeting will be predominantly military, the military decisions must be keyed to top-level designs that only Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill can make.

Thus, on the European front, the decisions that must be made on military occupation and enforcement of peace terms are bound up with the questions of how much power Russia is to have over how much of Eastern Europe.

And the war against Japan has advanced so far ahead of schedule that urgent decisions must be made now for better integration of the British and American efforts.

Indian question up

That involves delicate matters of American dissatisfaction with the British effort from their Indian bases and the need for a top overall command such as Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower holds in Europe. Undoubtedly such a post would go to an American.

Neither Russia, China nor France will be represented here, but it was expected that many of the Roosevelt-Churchill recommendations will be submitted to them for approval.

The possibility of an agreement between Mr. Roosevelt and the Prime Minister for an American-British-Soviet administration of the post-surrender Reich was seen here.

Russia, however, might be averse to such a commission since it is interested in territorial revision and the importation of millions of Germans to rebuild devastated areas of the Soviet Union.

May partition Germany

Another suggestion heard was that Germany might be partitioned into two administrative zones – one to be under the joint jurisdiction of the United States and Great Britain and the other under Russia. Whatever decision is made here concerning Germany, Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill will have to bear in mind Russia’s interests despite the latter absence from the gathering.

The presence of top British military leaders and their opposite numbers in the U.S. High Command who were assumed to be coming with Mr. Roosevelt, indicated that military decisions of the utmost importance would be made.

Of special significance was the inclusion in the Churchill entourage of Maj. Gen. R. E. Laycock, chief of the British combined Operations Command. This pointed to great amphibious undertakings.

Since the need for such operations no longer exists in Europe, British participation with the United States in seaborne assaults on the Jap Empire was suggested.

With Mr. Churchill were his wife and Lord Moran, his physician.

1100

French capture transport hub

Dijon taken in drive toward escape gap

…

1101

130 Nazi planes shot down in air battles over Reich

Record bag made by U.S. fighters as Luftwaffe is goaded into action first time in months

…

1102

Bing sings – Yanks dream of Christmas, peace, home

Dinah Shore’s there too, and thanks the men for use of the pasture, a windy stretch of mud

…

1103

I DARE SAY —
Journey to the sunrise

By Florence Fisher Parry

…

1104

Pearl Harbor case attacked again

…

1105

Washington girl is Miss America

She’s Venus Ramey, 19 and red-tressed

…

1106

americavotes1944

Lewis may state Presidency views

UMW chief will keynote convention
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer

Washington –
Watch tomorrow’s meeting of the United Mine Workers of America convention in Cincinnati for a tip on John L. Lewis’ presidential campaign year plans and views.

Mr. Lewis, UMW president, will keynote the convention tomorrow. His speech should indicate how active he expects to be, if at all, in the campaign to put Governor Thomas E. Dewey in the White House.

Endorsing Mr. Dewey would not come easily to the mien chieftain and he may not do so. But his union publications have spoken favorably of the Republican presidential candidate and if Mr. Lewis does not support Mr. Dewey, he will have no candidate at all this year.

The break between Mr. Lewis and President Roosevelt after the 1936 election, in which Mr. Lewis caused labor loans and gifts of $500,000 or so to be advanced to the New Deal, has never mended.

Four years ago, Mr. Lewis formalized the breach by endorsing Wendell L. Willkie, the GOP presidential candidate.

At that time, Mr. Lewis summoned the CIO, of which he then was the lead, to follow his leadership and promised to resign if Mr. Willkie lost. He made good on that pledge when the returns were in.

Some months ago, during the pre-convention campaign, Mr. Willkie told a group of newspapermen here that he would repudiate Mr. Lewis’ support if he were renominated this time and it were offered. He said he regretted not having done so in 1940.

There are about 500,000 UMW members. Mr. Lewis was unable to swing the big CIO behind the Republican candidate in 1940, but his hold on the miners is stronger. They have on occasion followed him with spectacular political effect.

About 190,000 UMW members vote in Pennsylvania where Mr. Roosevelt is currently believed to have an advantage and where Mr. Dewey must overtake and pass him if he is to win next November.

Insurgent bloc maps drive against Lewis

Edmundson group seeks autonomy

…

1107

americavotes1944

On matter of war –
Administration failed people, Dewey claims

President did nothing to prepare, he says

Des Moines, Iowa (UP) –
Governor Thomas E. Dewey charged here today that the Roosevelt administration “did absolutely nothing to prepare the American people for war.”

Mr. Dewey made the charge in a news conference shortly after his arrival here for conferences with party leaders. He added that the administration now claims it saw the war was coming.

During the questioning on foreign policy, arising from a magazine article by the 1940 GOP presidential nominee Wendell L. Willkie, Governor Dewey agreed that foreign policy and domestic policy are inseparable, because strength at home regulates American influence in foreign affairs.

No preparation in eight years

He said:

The tragedy of the present administration is that we have an administration seeking reelection now which was eight years in office while all these tremendous forces were rising toward war, which did absolutely nothing to prepare the American people for war.

And, at the end of those eight years in office, the administration still had a limping unproductive economy with 10 million unemployed and absolutely no military preparations for these events, which it now claims it foresaw. As a matter of fact, we had an army of 75,000.

Mr. Dewey told reporters that one of the reasons for his visit to Iowa was to discuss with its people and its leaders the “critical farm problems that will face this country when the war is over.”

Distribution to take planning

When newspaper reports from Washington detailing the huge food surplus the government may be holding at the end of the war were called to his attention, he said there was no doubt but that “we will have accomplished a tremendous stockpile.”

He said it would require enormous planning to distribute this surplus without glutting the market and giving the American farmer a bad year.

He was asked:

Does that imply that some sort of food distribution agency may be continued as a part or section of your cabinet?

Reconversion question

Mr. Dewey said:

Certainly, the job will have to be done. Whether it is done through special agencies or how is a matter I will discuss in speeches later in the campaign, and it will have to be done skillfully, otherwise it would rot the while distributing system.

Mr. Dewey was also asked about the report on reconversion problems by War Mobilization Director James F. Byrnes. He said he hadn’t studied it carefully, but he hoped “the proposal will mean action and not mere words because it is very late.”

Asked whether he meant “action along the lines of the report,” he said: “At least it’s a start.”

Greeted by 4,000

Governor Dewey was greeted at the railroad station by a crowd estimated at 4,000 persons.

As he has in every stop so far on his 6,700-mile coast-to-coast campaign swing, he assailed what he calls the “defeatist philosophy of the present administration.”

He promised that a new administration would bring “equality among labor, industry and agriculture, which we must have.”

Swinging back into action campaigning after a weekend visit with his mother at his Owosso, Michigan, birthplace, Governor Dewey scheduled day-long conferences with party chieftains and leaders of half a dozen voting blocs in Des Moines.

Next speech in Seattle

It was his bid for the 10 electoral votes of a state which has been carried by a Democratic presidential candidate only three times since 1872 – in 1912 by Woodrow Wilson and in 1932 and 1936 by President Roosevelt.

Governor Dewey leaves tonight for a two-day visit at the Valentine, Nebraska, ranch of former Governor Samuel R. McKelvie, where he will meet Nebraska and South Dakota political leaders for private conferences. His next major address is scheduled Sept. 18 at Seattle.

Governor Dewey spent a quiet weekend at the home of his mother, Mrs. George M. Dewey, at Owosso.

1108

americavotes1944

Democratic leaders convene in Chicago

Chicago, Illinois (UP) –
Democratic leaders from 22 Midwestern and Southern states opened a three-day meeting today with officials of the National Campaign Headquarters.

National Chairman Robert E. Hannegan told the group that the conference would “develop in detail a state-by-state program to assure a maximum registration and a maximum outturn at the polls in November.”

1109

In Washington –
Jobs for 54 million called minimum need for post-war economy

House committee also recommends broad revisions in wartime tax lead

…

1110

americavotes1944

Dewey raps FCC’s radio censorship

Washington (UP) –
The Federal Communications Commission should have no right of radio censorship nor control over the content of radio programs, Republican presidential nominee Thomas E. Dewey said today in a copyrighted interview published by Broadcasting Magazine.

He said:

When the FCC starts to control program content, free radio goes out the window. The government no more belongs in this field than in the field of the newspaper and magazine.

He added that he favors a new law which would restrict the FCC to regulation of technical facilities.

Address of Dewey assailed by Myers

Allentown, Pennsylvania –
Rep. Francis J. Myers, in an address before the Lehigh County Democratic Committee here last Saturday, blasted the presidential campaign address delivered Thursday night by Governor Thomas E. Dewey in Philadelphia.

He declared:

It was a speech that might well have been prepared by Hitler or Goebbels; a deliberate planned effort to divide our people in the midst of war; and a premeditated plan to frighten the mothers of our gallant servicemen.

Mr. Myers charged that Governor Dewey’s speech was “cheap and contemptible,” and also “was the beginning of Thomas E. Dewey’s end.”

1111

De Gaulle forms new cabinet

Senate president gets key post

…

1112

Austria warned it’s time she helped Allies

Hull says aid will bear on her future

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1113

americavotes1944

PAC in battle in Maine election

Portland, Maine (UP) –
The CIO Political Action Committee’s attempt to unseat three Republican Congressmen was the highlight today as Maine voters went to the polls in the nation’s first state election of this presidential year.

The PAC has opposed all three Congressional incumbents, waging a particularly aggressive campaign in the first district where Andrew A. Pettis of Portland, president of a CIO shipyard union, seeks the place of Rep. Robert Hale of Portland. In the other districts, David H. Staples, member of the Brotherhood of Railroad Engineers, opposes Rep. Margaret C. Smith of Skowhegan, while Rep. Frank Fellows of Bangor is opposed by Ralph E. Graham of Brewer.

Also at stake is the governorship, traditionally held by a Republican. Republican State Senate President Horace A. Hildreth and Democrat Paul J. Jullien are the gubernatorial candidates. Republican Governor Sumner Sewall is retiring.