America at war! (1941–) – Part 4

The Pittsburgh Press (September 23, 1944)

Rescuers near air army; Yanks capture Stolberg

Patton smashes Nazi attacks to the south, knocks out 320 tanks
By Virgil Pinkley, United Press staff writer

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Driving to the rescue of a trapped airborne force near Arnhem, Holland, the British 2nd Army today reached one encircled unit on the south bank of the upper branch of the Rhine. The U.S. 1st Army captured Stolberg, but to the south was forced back across the Luxembourg border near Diekirch. The U.S. 3rd Army defeated the Germans in a tank battle in the area bounded by Château-Salins, Dieuze and Lunéville. The U.S. 7th Army of the 6th Army Group crossed the Moselle River below Épinal and drove against Belfort.

Bulletin

SHAEF, London, England –
A wild battle raged between Nijmegen and Eindhoven in Holland today as massed German forces led by 200 tanks drove a wedge across the British 2nd Army corridor between the two towns. Latest reports to headquarters said the issue was still in doubt.

SHAEF, London, England –
British tanks and armored cars careened through a blazing four-mile corridor of German guns to the south bank of the upper branch of the Rhine today, rescued a trapped band of paratroopers there and drove for the Arnhem bridge in a desperate race to relieve the main airborne force pocketed across the river.

Front reports said the highway span over the upper Rhine to Arnhem was still standing when the British armor reached the river after a wild ride up the Nijmegen–Arnhem highway from Elst, four miles to the south.

The British tank columns loosed a heavy barrage of cannon and machine-gun fire on German positions around the trapped airborne force in Arnhem, and headquarters spokesmen said the situation inside the town had improved considerably with the arrival of the relief party on the south side of the river.

The wearied sky troops were still fighting grimly and well to keep their foothold in the doorway to Germany, but it was admitted that their situation, after more than six days of close-quarters slugging, was touch and go.

A dramatic radio message from the airborne commander in Arnhem said the morale of his troops was high and that they would hold out in their “patch of hell” until relieved, but observers believed relief must come quickly.

Elsewhere on the long front, the battle of the German border was going well. U.S. 1st Army troops captured the ruined German factory town of Stolberg, 6½ miles east of Aachen, after one of the bitterest house-to-house fights of the campaign.

On the U.S. 3rd Army front to the south, Lt. Gen. George S. Patton’s tanks and tank destroyers inflicted a smashing defeat on a powerful German armored force that attempted to throw them back from the Meurthe River line.

United Press writer Robert Richards reported that the Nazis broke off the battle this morning after losing at least 60 tanks in the past 24 hours, running their losses well above 320 panzers for the last 10 days.

But the Allies’ main bid for a swift and decisive breakthrough into Germany was being made on the Dutch lowlands at Arnhem, and the fate of the entire offensive rested momentarily on the courage of the dwindling band of paratroops north of the Rhine and the British tank men on the south bank.

United Press writer Ronald Clark said exceptionally fierce fighting was in progress in the Arnhem area this morning as the encircled paratroops beat off repeated German tank and infantry attacks.

Nazis battle hard

The Nazis were throwing everything they had in the way of men, tanks and guns into an all-out attempt to wipe out the sky troops before the relief column could break through.

The first rescuing tanks and armored troop carriers reached the Rhine about 5:00 p.m. Friday evening and a pooled dispatch from a correspondent with the main force in Arnhem said they linked up with an outpost of the airborne detachment and began shelling targets designated by the airborne commander.

The critical question was whether the British could take the Arnhem bridge intact – the airborne troops were believed holding the north side of the span and the Germans the south end – or would have to make an assault crossing of the Rhine under enemy fire.

Bridge intact

All accounts reaching headquarters this morning indicated the bridge was intact, although the possibility remained that the Germans might blow it up before retiring.

Savage fighting still raged along the flanks of the Allied spearhead thrusting up from the Belgian border to Arnhem, and one strong German force threw a flying wedge across the corridor late yesterday, threatening the head of the British 2nd Army’s armored thrust.

The enemy attack smashed across the main Eindhoven–Nijmegen highway between Veghel and Uden, about 13 miles north of Eindhoven.

British troops immediately countered the flanking blow but latest reports said the situation was confused.

Battle at Elst

A violent battle was also in progress at Elst where the Germans, after being thrown out of Nijmegen, set up a bristling block of tanks and artillery to prevent the Allies from getting reinforcements through to Arnhem.

British Tommies straddling the turrets of their tanks and crouching in armored troop carriers burst through the Nazi screen and infantrymen followed up to hold open the gap for an additional flow of reinforcements.

German artillery commanded the highway north of Elst, laying down a murderous crossfire on the British armor all the way to the Rhine.

Clouds hamper aid

Low-hanging clouds and mist continued to hamper the Allied effort, making it all but impossible to ferry in supplies to the beleaguered column at Arnhem or to throw any strong aerial force against the Nazi blockade.

More than 100 miles to the south, the U.S. 1st Army hammered out an important victory inside the Siegfried Line beyond Aachen, wiping out the last organized German resistance in Stolberg, which the enemy had converted into a “little Cassino” of fortified homes and barricaded streets.

The desperate German defense of the town was attributed to their anxiety to remove an aircraft parts factory. Nazi engineers were spotted dismantling the plant, but there was no immediate indication that they had succeeded in getting its equipment out.

Repel Nazis

Elsewhere along the border there was little change in the opposing battle lines as far south as the Lunéville–Château-Salins area east of Nancy, where Gen. Patton’s 3rd Army veterans sent the Germans reeling back toward their Siegfried Line after giving them probably the worst armored beating since D-Day.

A dispatch from Mr. Richards said the Battle of the Moselle was rapidly becoming the battle of the Seille as the Germans took advantage of rain and mud to dig in all along the latter, tiny river, which lies five miles east of the Moselle, from above Metz to Momeny.

The Allied headquarters communiqué confirmed front reports that U.S. 1st Army troops had been forced to give ground in the area east of Diekirch. Field dispatches said the Americans withdrew to the Our River line in that sector, indicating they had been driven back across the German border into Luxembourg.

Armies link up

On the southern flank of the 3rd Army line, Gen. Patton’s troops linked up with U.S. 7th Army forces south of Épinal and forced crossings of the Moselle at many points against stiffened resistance.

Other 7th Army units won small gains in a battle arc looping barely 10 miles from Belfort, on the historic southwestern invasion route to Germany.

Along the French Channel coast, Canadian troops cleared the last Germans from Boulogne, rounding up some 7,300 prisoners and establishing Britain’s first direct supply line across the Strait of Dover since 1940.

Puppet regime of Philippines declares war

U.S. planes blast ships off Mindanao
By Frank Tremaine, United Press staff writer

British drive into Po Valley beyond captured Rimini

Yanks widen breach in center of Gothic Line in drive toward Apennine Pass in Italy

Allies in Germany erase Nazi laws

Tight control placed over occupied region

americavotes1944

Roosevelt speaks to nation tonight

First ‘political talk’ to be on air at 9:30

Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt tonight will make his first avowedly political appeal for reelection to a fourth term in a speech to the AFL Teamsters Union that was expected to challenge what he considers Republican campaign “misrepresentations.”

Mr. Roosevelt speaks over nationwide (NBC and CBS) radio facilities from the banquet hall of Washington’s Statler Hotel where more than 700 leaders of the AFL union will gather at the call of their president, Daniel J. Tobin.

Mr. Roosevelt’s address will be broadcast at 9:30 p.m. ET over KDKA and WJAS.

This will be Mr. Roosevelt’s first self-labeled “political speech,” and the radio time will be paid for by the Democratic National Committee.

To refute charges

In view of the manner in which Mr. Roosevelt accepted fourth-term renomination, his address was expected to be aimed primarily at refuting the accumulating charges brought against his administration by New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican presidential candidate, and other leading Republican figures.

When the President accepted the nomination on July 20, he said:

I shall not campaign, in the usual sense, for the office. In these days of tragic sorrow, I do not consider it fitting. Besides, in these days of global warfare, I shall not be able to find the time to report to the people about matters of concern to them and especially to correct any misrepresentations.

Next speech Oct. 5

The President’s next political speech is set for Oct. 5 when he will speak to Democratic Party workers through the country in another radio address.

Very few top-strata government leaders such as Cabinet members will be at the dinner tonight. Most of the official guests will be heads of government agencies with which the union has had wartime dealings – J. A. Krug (acting War Production Board chairman), Manpower Commissioner Paul V. McNutt, and War Labor Board Chairman William H. Davis.

Guests from the ranks of labor will include AFL President William Green, as well as representatives of several firms holding contracts with the union.

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americavotes1944

Wider job and age security promised U.S. by Dewey

GOP nominee also pledges medical assistance to needy, aid to returning servicemen

Los Angeles, California (UP) –
Governor Thomas E. Dewey ended the West Coast phase of his election drive today after an address last night before 90,000 persons, who packed the Los Angeles Coliseum to hear him attack the Roosevelt administration for not going far enough in providing social and economic security.

He surpassed proposals of preceding Republican presidential nominees in advocating a five-point program for expansion of unemployment and old-age pension coverage, medical aid for the needy, job placement, and aid for returning servicemen.

Declaring that his program should be started at once as an important step toward peacetime security, Governor Dewey proposed:

  • Extension of old-age insurance to include farm workers, domestics, employees of non-profit enterprises, government workers and the self-employed.

  • Extension of unemployment insurance also to those groups not now protected.

  • Return of government employment services to the states as soon as practicable.

  • Medical service for the needy, in cooperation with medical men.

  • Establishment of state and local veterans’ service agencies to guide returning soldiers to jobs and educational opportunities.

“Here is a program to pick up and carry forward an American system of social progress,” he said.

Governor Dewey rejected the thought that social progress is an invention of the present administration.

He argued:

It is nothing new for Americans to be concerned about social progress. Social progress in America did not begin in 1933. It began when the first settlers came to this country. It has been as insistent as the growth of our country. It is in our blood today.

Governor Dewey recognized problems in extending social security coverage and said it would be necessary to change the method of collecting social security taxes to avoid imposing a bookkeeping burden on small employees. But he promised such problems “can and will be solved.”

Physicians’ aid wooed

On the subject of medical service for the needy, he said the program should be worked out with the cooperation of medical men.

He said:

There can be no group better able to advise on medial care than the medical profession. Yet, unhappily, this is the very group which the New Deal has managed to alienate.

Heading eastward for one more major speech, at Oklahoma City next Monday, Governor Dewey said he had found in his trip across country unprecedented national unity. He said that uppermost in the minds of all is a determination to win a crushing victory over Germany and Japan. After that, he said, the people want a lasting peace and American participation in a permanent world organization for peace.

americavotes1944

In Boston speech –
Bricker favors a World Court

Then force if needed, candidate proposes

Boston, Massachusetts (UP) –
The United States must be ready to unite with other nations to prevent by force the outbreaks of small wars which might lead to a third great World War should “persuasion or economic pressure” first fail, Ohio Governor John W. Bricker said today.

The Republican vice-presidential candidate, speaking before the Massachusetts State Republican Convention, charged that the New Deal administration’s international policies of “day-by-day expediency” had led the nation into the present war.

World Court favored

He proposed the establishment of a World Court to arbitrate and conciliate international disputes. Small wars, he said, lead to “worldwide conflagrations” and economic sanctions must be applied at incipient trouble points.

He said:

When this cannot be done, our country must be willing to join with others if necessary to prevent small wars from becoming big ones.

This country, he said, furnished material “and power with which to make war” to Japan while sending money to China. Hitler, he added, came to power when the New Deal did, but the government did “not make any effort to keep orderly peace in the world” and maintain national security.

‘Boondoggling’ assailed

“We squandered our substance in boondoggling and took no heed of gathering war clouds,” Governor Bricker said. He added that the United States could go far in eliminating the causes of war by giving “constant and unselfish attention to matters of discriminatory trade agreements, excessive tariffs, monopolies and cartels, exchange wars and other barriers to international trade and commerce.”

Governor Bricker will speak tonight at Norwalk, Connecticut, and return to Ohio tomorrow for a week’s rest before beginning a 9,000-mile Western tour.

Spending assailed

In a speech at Bangor, Maine, last night, Governor Bricker asserted that the Roosevelt administration had spent three times as much money as all the other Presidents combined, and promised that a Republican victory in November would “put an end to the orgy of spending.”

Governor Bricker said George Washington spent only $34 million; James Madison $176 million; James Polk $175 million; Abraham Lincoln $3,335,000,000; William McKinley $2 billion, and Woodrow Wilson $46 billion. The speaker emphasized that he was quoting figures on money spent by war Presidents.

“Franklin Roosevelt, during his 12 years,” Governor Bricker said, “has spent the astronomical sum of $360 billion.”

He asserted that at the end of 1944, the public debt will be $258 billion compared to $22.5 billion when Mr. Roosevelt took office, and with every person in America now obliged to pay an average of more than $100 a year in federal taxes.

Spellman celebrates mass in old German church

1,000 G.I.’s and natives hear archbishop thank doughboys for ‘job they are doing’
By Jack Frankish, United Press staff writer

Japs booby-trap bodies of Marines

Attach grenades to Yanks on Peleliu
By Richard W. Johnston, United Press staff writer

Bowles upset by OPA data on steel pay

Study of effect on prices secret

americavotes1944

High production urged by Wallace

Program to avert unemployment asked

Troy, New York (UP) –
Vice President Henry A. Wallace asserted last night that wartime high production levels, more than 50 percent above those of 1940, must be retained after the war if 17 million unemployed is to be averted.

Mr. Wallace told a rally sponsored by the United Labor Committee for Roosevelt that a post-war national income level of $170 billion must be maintained to achieve satisfactory living standards.

He offered Russia’s employment standards as a yardstick.

Challenge hurled

He said:

When this war is over, we shall have one more chance to prove that our form of government is best.

Remember, after this war there will not be unemployment in Russia. We’ve got to do as well as they. We must do better or step back.

To ensure continued high production levels after the war, Mr. Wallace said:

It is enormously important that there be in power a truly liberal party based on the unity of labor and agriculture.

GOP policy hit

He charged the “high command of the Republican Party” with attempting to split labor and agriculture by playing on the farmer’s fear of labor and by encouraging the laborer in the belief he has nothing in common with the farmer.

Speaking at a luncheon of the National Citizens Political Action Committee in New York yesterday, Mr. Wallace said:

If liberalism goes under in Washington for so long as it did after the 1920 election, the situation of the world as a whole would be so dark there would be the gravest danger of necessity for more bloodshed.

Responsibility rests with the Democrats, he said, because “there is no danger that the Republican Party will become liberal.”

Dewey slashes back at Wallace

Los Angeles, California (UP) –
Governor Thomas E. Dewey slashed back yesterday at an inference by Vice President Henry A. Wallace that he would have to placate the isolationists to win the presidential election in November.

“It is too bad when people who know better don’t stick to the truth,” Governor Dewey told a press conference after a reporter had asked for comment on Mr. Wallace’s speech Thursday night in which the Vice President said isolationists would support the Republican ticket and that the GOP nominee would be forced to placate them “just as Harding placated the isolationists in 1921.”

Businessmen barred from military zones

Headquarters replies to British charge

Cowboy actor told to pay blonde’s hospital expenses

‘Testimony against girl involves too many men,’ judge sighs, delaying final ruling

americavotes1944

PAC supports GOP in Vermont race

Boston, Massachusetts (UP) –
Spokesmen for the CIO Political Action Committee said today that their organization was actively supporting U.S. Senator George D. Aiken (R-VT) for reelection, but denied that another Republican senatorial candidate, Massachusetts Governor Leverett Saltonstall, was receiving similar support.

At Burlington, Andrew Jenkins, Vermont state chairman of the CIO-PAC, said his group was backing Senator Aiken “because he is a good man who has done more or less for labor.”

At Boston, a spokesman for Joseph Salerno, regional director of the CIO-PAC, said:

The report that we are supporting Governor Saltonstall is not true. We are violently opposed to his opponent [Democratic Mayor John H. Corcoran of Cambridge] but have not got actively behind the Governor because he has said that, the more he sees of Governor Dewey, the better he likes him.


Support of PAC rejected by union

New York (UP) –
A resolution calling for support of Sidney Hillman’s Political Action Committee was rejected by a three-to-one vote today by Local 39, International Union of Marine and Shipbuilders Workers of America (CIO), which has a membership of about 20,000 employees in the Todd Shipyards, Brooklyn.

The rejection came after the local voted to endorsed President Roosevelt for a fourth term, and after union president Ernest Rudloff warned that a refusal to support the PAC “would hurt labor throughout the country.”

The vote was taken after it was proposed, but not voted upon, to levy union members $1 each for support of PAC activities.

americavotes1944

‘Unpreparedness’ laid to New Deal

Bridgeport, Connecticut (UP) –
Rep. Clare Boothe Luce (R-CT) charged last night that America’s war preparedness was hampered until Germany attacked Russia in June 1941, by influential New Dealers and present members of the CIO Political Action Committee “who burp noisily whenever Joseph Stalin gets indigestion.”

“That is one reason why we are taking such a long and bloody time to defeat Germany and Japan today,” she said.

Opening her reelection campaign in industrialized Bridgeport, Connecticut headquarters of the PAC, Mrs. Luce asserted that Bridgeport PAC director Sam Gruber was one of 63 lawyers of the American Peace Mobilization who in 1940 sent telegrams to President Roosevelt and the House Military Affairs Committee calling for defeat of the Selective Service Bill.

Recalling that PAC chairman Sidney Hillman and even President Roosevelt had pledged complete liberation of Poland two years ago, she asked the reason for their “strange silence” about the restoration of a free Poland in the face of Russian opposition now.

Mrs. Luce described her Democratic opponent, Attorney Margaret Connors as a “New Deal rubber stamp” and offered her own record in Congress as evidence she was “neither reactionary nor isolationist.”


Anti-4th-termers to close session

Washington (UP) –
The newly-formed “National Agriculture Committee,” an anti-fourth-term organization headed by Senator Ellison D. “Cotton Ed” Smith (D-SC), prepared to conclude a two-day meeting today and carry to the country its battle cry of “farmers for freedom.”

Senator Smith, defeated recently for renomination to the chamber in which he served 36 years, said the primary objective of the new group was to get out the farm vote for the Republican Dewey-Bricker ticket.

Ralph Moore, former official of the Texas Grange, was elected secretary of the new committee.

Editorial: We must correct this

Editorial: He prefers anonymity

americavotes1944

Editorial: Worth repeating

President Roosevelt was once Governor of New York. During that period, he was confronted with a proposal for expansion of state powers at the expense of local control of local affairs. This is what he had to say about that proposition:

I cite this as an illustration of the present dangerous tendency to forget a fundamental of American democracy, which rests on the right of a locality to manage its own local affairs; the tendency to encourage concentration of power at the top of a governmental structure, alien to our system and more closely akin to a dictatorship or the central committee of a Communist regime. We have met difficulties before this, and have solved them in accordance with the basic theories of representative democracy. Let us not now pursue the easy road of centralization of authority, lest some day we discover too late that our liberties have disappeared.

Brother, you can say that again!

Edson: Cotton Ed front for new ‘revolt’ among Democrats

By Peter Edson

Ferguson: According to ability

By Mrs. Walter Ferguson