Action urged on food pact
Organization will show nations how to solve problems
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ON THE RECORD —
High comedy will mock Nazi rule on Paris
By Dorothy Thompson
Today it is difficult to recapture the feeling that gripped the world in June 1940 when Paris fell, and with Paris, France, men’s hearts and minds were paralyzed. Even in America, months before this war had become our own, there was anguish, and a terrible fear that as far as continental Europe was concerned, Western civilization had gone.
Militarily, there was no continental counterbalance. Russia stood aloof, neutral, mysterious. There were few who believed Britain could survive, or do more than hold out for a compromise peace. With the fall of Paris, America had become more isolated than in her entire history – a big island, covered only by a little island, rocking under siege.
In a political sense it was the great breakthrough of fascism, that seemed chosen by destiny to rule the world. In Paris, a quick-eyed camera caught a picture of Adolf Hitler in a capering mincing dance of joy.
So overwhelming was the German force, so swift and disastrous the defeat, that it seemed like an act of nature and at the outset was accepted with a kind of fatalism, as something preordained. In that moment the Germans appeared, even to their victims, as supermen. As they marched through the city, tall, clean, superbly clothed, with the shining rivers of their strange, gleaming, irresistible machines, they awakened a reluctant admiration. From Vichy, Pétain’s wavering voice deepened the French feeling of inferiority. Perhaps it was in the logical nature of things that the strong should win and rule.
Thus, a capricious woman, mastered against her will, may feel a certain dependency and security in the strength and desire of her master. There was something of that, for a brief moment, in France. Who knows? It might have lasted – if the master had not started to reeducate her. That is always the German mistake.
And ordinary men do not remain supermen for four years. A parade isa one thing; an occupation is another. Parisians began to see Germans with their boots off. A successful occupation army must understand the country and the people whom it rules. The Germans could not understand Paris. When they ceased to be conquering tourists, they were homesick strangers. Bit by bit they became not only oppressive, but ridiculous.
In the latitude of the spirit, it is farther from Berlin to Paris than from Berlin to Moscow or London.
The spirit of Paris is wiry and tough; the German spirit heavy and brittle. Parisians are conventional but not disciplined; tolerant but exclusive; skeptical but not credulous; witty, not humorous; lucid, and never sentimental.
Paris is the city of Pissarro, Seurat, Utrillo, who convey its beauty in light and vibrancy, a manner of seeing and painting that no German has ever mastered, in art or in life. Despite that it was mental but graceful. Nothing is overblown; everything is in moderation. Moderation is so un-German that the Germans make vices out of their very virtues, committing, as George Bernard Shaw remarked back in 1901, hideous crimes but always and only in the name of duty. The Parisians care little for “order.” But they have equilibrium. Nor is their laugh the belly-howl of farce, but the fine grin of comedy. in Paris, the satyr is a satirist.
Thus, years from now, when the sufferings of these four years are dimmed, I am sure it will be no French tragedian who will immortalize the four years of German occupation, but a new Moliere, making of it a high comedy – the kind of comedy that destroys, forever, with irony.
The crumbling of the German prestige began with the Parisians long before their armies began to disintegrate. Paris continued to belong to the Parisians. The Germans were everywhere and everywhere on the outside. They wanted to be liked. They strutted their stuff. They wooed the already conquered. When that happens, however, a man is lost. Rejected, the Germans resumed the masterly role and shot those who repulsed them. but nothing is more ridiculous than a superman, wavering between presenting bouquets and battering down the door.
I am sure that the Parisian feeling today is, “Thank God the British and Americans are coming to remove these idiotic bores.”
The Germans in Paris have suffered far more than a military defeat. They have suffered a psychological defeat, which in the long run will trouble and confuse them more. Not even defeat will do most to break the German spirit, but defeat coming atop years of unchallenged victory – and victory that proved pure illusion.
Pegler: Debate
By Westbrook Pegler
New York –
A studious observation of the controversies of the last few years in our country bring it home to me that we no longer debate, if we ever did in my time, but confine ourselves to claim, or boast, and accusation. That is to say, in an ancient political phrase, we point with pride and view with alarm. But seldom, even in Congress, are issues actually debated.
A New Deal orator or journalist will say, for example, that President Roosevelt is a great friend of labor and cite the Wagner Act as proof of his militant love for the working man. He presumes that it will be conceded that the Wagner Act is all that he says it is. Other men and women, of contrary opinion, might like to argue that this law is dangerous to labor, meaning the people who work for wages, although a great boon to the professional organizer and union politician and to the New Deal party.
But the question is never debated, head-on. The New Dealer makes his claim in the course of a speech or article and rushes on to insist that therefore Mr. Roosevelt should have the workers’ votes.
The one who insists that the Wagner Act deliberately exposes workers to oppression, exploitation and intimidation by the union and that behind it all is a cunning scheme to hitch labor in chains to Mr. Roosevelt’s chariot, does so in another form, over another hookup or in another publication. The point is that they never meet in public, whether on platform or printed page, and argue the issues in detail, speaking strictly to the subject, as Huey Long used to say.
In that form or oratory which passes for debate, Huey was a master, himself. For that matter, he was a great debater in the true meaning of the word, as good lawyers agreed who heard his argument before the 1932 Democratic Convention. But in speaking to the whole public. Huey actually won over multitudes by showing contempt for their intelligence. Thus, in one oration over the air he got his best effect by smearing Hugh Johnson as a chocolate soldier who had never snapped a cap. This was unfair and irrelevant. It was unfair because everyone who knew Johnson knew he was not a dandy, or chocolate soldier but downright slovenly and that one of the great disappointments of his life in the Army had been his inability to get overseas with a command. But the whole reference had absolutely nothing to do with the subject under discussion.
In one of big Bill Thompson’s campaigns in Chicago, a rather austere opponent who had been sticking to the issues patiently and conscientiously in an effort to arouse the people to intelligent consideration, found all his earnest presentation offset by Thompson’s ribaldry. Thompson said his opponent had egg on his necktie, which may have been true, but still had no bearing on the subject. Finally, Thompson’s opponent let fly with a roar one night that Bill had the hide of a rhinoceros and the brain of a baboon. That wowed them, although it did not win for him. But it touched Thompson more than anything else that had been said of him in the campaign.
I have been told that a Southern Senator first won his seat by campaigning in an old Model-T flivver in misfit clothes and waving at the crowds a bill of fare from one of the expensive Washington hotels which listed such luxuries as caviar at $3 a portion and steak at $8 for four. He would explain that caviar was just nothing but fish eggs and imported from Red Russia at that, and point out that honest, God-fearing people, were lucky to sell a cow, on the hoof, for $8. I am not sure that he was selling out his constituents to “the interests” so as to be able to buy imported fresh eggs at $3 an ounce. The whole idea was one of suggestion. The successful candidate, incidentally, is a man who has been noted for his fastidious dress and luxurious living in Washington in the years since he was first elected.
During the convention of the two big parties in Chicago, many speakers sounded off on many subjects, promising or condemning. But the only possibly way to weigh the opposing claims and charges was to wait until the Democrats were through and then go back over the text in the papers which, of course, nobody did. Not a word was said in defense or answer in either convention. Every speaker just claimed, promised or attacked, with no facilities provided for disproof.
Debate is abandoned in our politics, unless you count those squalling radio forums in which the speakers seldom have a chance to prepare arguments and are subject to hecklement with loaded questions.
West Virginia Senator sees U.S. veering to National Socialism
Chicago, Illinois (AP) –
Senator Chapman Revercomb (R-WV) said today that “I warn, without excitement, but with fairness, that there are signposts in our own country that point towards National Socialism.”
“That generally finds its growth out of a broken economic structure and a desire by a group to rule over and dictate to the people,” Revercomb asserted in a prepared address before the national encampment of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
Declaring that the national debt “threatens to reach the gigantic sum of $267 billion,” Revercomb said that:
There are some who have adopted the philosophy of a government by taxing and spending and regulating.
It appears that there are some who would continue the theory of taxing and spending and regulating, even for the days to come. That is a dangerous course. With some justification, caution was thrown away in spending for war. But that can find no sound basis when war has ended.
Pacific air war tempo increased
Halmahera plastered in 135-ton raid
By the Associated Press
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U.S. raid on oil refineries sets off fierce air battles
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Single off Kurowski’s glove robs Max Lanier of no-hit game
Browns’ lead intact in loss to Niggeling with Yankee assist
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Hull, Dulles meet today
Bipartisan support of world security plan is at stake
Washington (AP) –
The possibility of bipartisan support for current efforts at post-war world security comes to a head today in an unprecedented meeting between Secretary of State Cordell Hull and John Foster Dulles, Governor Thomas E. Dewey’s foreign policy advisor.
Preliminary to his afternoon session with the Secretary (scheduled for 3:30 p.m. ET) Dulles sought the advice of two Republican members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Austin (R-VT) and Vandenberg (R-MI), in morning conferences.
Austin is known as a supporter of American peace organization efforts which culminated in the present Soviet-British-American talks here, and Vandenberg said yesterday that the talks had started under the “happiest possible prospects of good effect.”
The session today moved toward detailed analysis of Russian, American and British plans for organizing the world for peace. All three proposals were presented to yesterday’s meetings and officials familiar with them said they showed broad areas of agreement.
The main problems developed for future discussion were apparently the extent of authority to be proposed for small nations and the kind of commitments for the use of force if and when it is necessary to suppress aggression.
Dulles arrived late yesterday and at a press conference gave some broad indications of possible developments in his talks with Hull. He brought, he said, his own ideas and those of Governor Dewey, the Republican presidential nominee, on organizing world peace.
Expects Hull to report
Depending on how the meeting with Hull develops, he expected to present those ideas to the Secretary and he made it clear that if they were in conflict with the American plan, as already presented at Dumbarton Oaks, he might suggest some eleventh-hour alterations. However, he said he did not know what the plan is and could not say in advance whether changes would be suggested.
Asked whether he intended to remain here for the duration of the Dumbarton conversations he said he would “go very far to comply with any request made by Secretary Hull, subject to keeping in touch with Governor Dewey.
Whether he stays or not, he made it clear, he would expect that Hull would keep him and Dewey constantly informed of the progress of the Dumbarton talks because “I think it would be difficult to cooperate without definite information.”
Cooperation in the sense of Republican support for the peace organization plans worked out under the Democratic administration, Dulles said, does not mean complete removal of the subject from campaign discussion. He said it should not preclude “free public discussion” by political leaders in the months ahead.
Dewey plans talking tour
Two-month drive may take him into most states in union
Albany, New York (AP) –
Governor Thomas E. Dewey’s aides went ahead today with plans for a two-month drive that may take him into a majority of the states of the Union.
The Republican presidential nominee has already announced he will speak in Philadelphia Sept. 7 and Louisville, Kentucky, the following day on what has come to be regarded here as the beginning of a full-fledged campaign swing that may carry him westward to the Pacific Coast later in the month.
Senator Ed H. Moore (R-OK) said after a conference with Dewey yesterday that the GOP nominee would fill a date in Oklahoma City about Sept. 25. Moore added it was his understanding this stop would be made on the return from a West Coast tour.
Thus, the beginning of the active phase of the first wartime campaign since 1864 may find Dewey and his running mate, Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio, in full stride while President Roosevelt bides his time. Mr. Roosevelt said when accepting a fourth-term nomination he would not campaign in the usual way, but would be ready to answer any “misstatements” the Republican nominee might make.
Senator Harry S. Truman (D-MO), the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, has complained that Republicans “have nothing to do but throw bricks,” asserting that all of the campaign speechmaking would probably be done by the GOP.
Roosevelt too busy
Truman, who was to address the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Chicago today and who has arranged to speak in Detroit on Labor Day, said President Roosevelt is too busy running the war to campaign and that he himself has a job to do in the Senate. Truman will accept his nomination and speak in Lamar, Missouri, Aug. 31.
If this made any impression on Dewey’s aides, they gave no sign and Herbert Brownell Jr., Republican National Chairman, went ahead with detailed arrangements which are expected to produce a lengthy itinerary soon for both Dewey and Bricker.
The New York Governor has said he would be in Massachusetts before the campaign is over and has been invited to Maine with some indications he might accept. In the Midwest, he has been invited to Indiana, where Bricker will speak at French Lick, on Sept. 9, Ohio, Illinois and Michigan. Governor Harry F. Kelly of Michigan said he was assured Dewey would talk there.
A West Coast trip will take Dewey into an important political battleground, for both sides admit that California is in the doubtful class and neither is sure of winning the Pacific Northwest.
The Pittsburgh Press (August 23, 1944)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
On the Western Front, France – (by wireless)
You may have wondered how that British pilot happened to be found after lying for eight days unnoticed, trapped in his wrecked plane.
Well, as I told you, a bullet had clipped the balls of his right-hand forefingers, clear to the bone. He had put his cream-colored handkerchief over them to stop the bleeding. As the wound dried, the handkerchief stuck to his fingers, and to pull it off would have been painful. It still stuck to his fingers all through the ordeal of getting him out; It was still elapsed in his hand as the ambulance jeep drove away with him.
To go back, through the days of his waiting he had that handkerchiefed right hand stuck through a little hole in the plane’s side, moving it slowly back and forth.
Just after I had stopped that day to talk to Lt. Ed Sasson in the field, two mechanics from an armored division came down the road in a jeep. They were looking at the wrecked plane as they drove along, and suddenly they saw this slight movement. They stopped and went over to make sure, and they found inside there one of the brave men of this war. That’s when they came running for us.
The two boys to whom this British flight lieutenant owes his life are Sgt. Milton Van Sickel of Brainard, Minnesota, and Cpl. William Schinke of Gresham, Nebraska.
At last, we had the pilot out of the plane and on a stretcher under a wing. The doctor took some scissors and started cutting away his clothes. It must be hot in those cockpits in flight, for the pilot wore nothing but short trousers and a blue shirt.
The doctor cut off the pants and then the shirt. The pilot lay there naked. He was a man of magnificent physique.
The calves of his legs were large and athletic. In the calf of the left leg was a round hole as big as an apple. But to our astonishment, there was no deterioration of flesh around it. The wound was already healing perfectly. The leg wasn’t even burned, as he had told us. What then could it have been that we smelled in the plane?
We turned him over and then we saw. His back was burned by spilled gasoline, from his shoulders to the end of his spine. It was raw and red.
He had been forced to lie on it all the time, unable to move. At last festering had started, and then gangrene. We could see the little blue-green moldy splotches. That was what we had smelled. He didn’t know about that. The odor had developed inside his little cubbyhole so gradually that he hadn’t been aware of it. He was shocked by the smell of fresh air, but he still didn’t know about the other. He had been worried only about his leg.
I don’t know what the doctor really thought. The pilot was obviously in wonderful physical shape, considering such an ordeal. The doctor told him so. But he looked a long time at that gangrenous back, and then they temporarily bandaged it.
As they were working on him, the doctor asked if the pilot had a wallet or any papers. He said yes, his had been in his hip pocket. The doctor lifted the blood-smeared pants and cut the wallet out with a pair of scissors. From the other pocket he cut a silver cigarette case.
“That’s good, old boy,” the pilot said. "I’m grateful that you found that.”
We asked him if he had a wrist watch. He said yes, but it had fallen off and was probably in the debris where he had been lying. But we couldn’t find it, and finally gave it up.
As he lay on his stomach on the stretcher, they tied a metal splint around his wounded leg. While they were doing this, I bathed his head again in water from a canteen.
A soldier lit another cigarette and gave it to him. It dropped through his fingers onto the wet grass, and became soaked. I lit another one and put it in his fingers.
He took a long, deep drag, and put his head down on the litter and closed his eyes. The morphine finally was making him groggy, but it never did put him out.
The cigarette burned up almost to his fingers. An officer said, “It’s going to burn him,” and started to pull it from between his fingers. But the pilot heard and lazily opened his eyes, took another puff, and with his thumb pushed the cigarette farther out in his fingers. Then he closed his eyes again. He lay there for a few minutes like that.
Then again, he rolled those great eyes up and said to me:
“What date did you say this was?” I told him.
“That’s wonderful,” he said. “My wedding anniversary is just three days away. I guess I’ll be back in England for it yet.”
The medics were all through. They covered the naked pilot with a blanket and carried him to the road. Everybody in our little crowd loved the man who had the heart to be so wonderful.
As they put the stretcher down in the gravel road, waiting for the jeep to turn around, one of the armored division soldiers leaned over the stretcher and said with rough emotion:
If you’d been a damn German, you’da been dead five days ago. Christ, but you British have go guts!
Völkischer Beobachter (August 24, 1944)
Tschiangkaischek drängt zur Entscheidung
USA fürchten Japans starke Festlandsstellung
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Die Absetzbewegung im Westen
vb. Berlin, 23. August –
Die Schlacht in Frankreich wandert langsam weiter nach Osten. Die deutschen Verbände, die sich durch den Sperrriegel zwischen Argentan und Falaise durchgekämpft haben, konnten sich inzwischen mit dem Gros der Heeresgruppe Rommel wieder zusammenschließen, die sich fechtend nach Osten zurückzieht. Der Feind drängt scharf nach und versucht gleichzeitig von Süden her, die linke Flanke unserer Truppen anzugreifen.
Es lassen sich beim Gegner in Nordwestfrankreich zurzeit drei Hauptstoßrichtungen unterscheiden. Die eine geht aus dem Raum zwischen Lisieux und L’Aigle nach Osten, die zweite zwischen Breteuil und Saint-Andrè nach Norden und die dritte zwischen Pacy und Vernon nach Nordwesten. Der gegenwärtige Hauptkampfraum kann etwa als ein Viereck angesehen werden. Die eine, die schmälste Seite, wird von einem Stück Kanalküste gebildet, eine zweite Seite des Rechtecks von der Seine und die beiden anderen von den eigentlichen Kampffronten.
Das bedeutet nicht, daß nicht auch außerhalb dieses Hauptkampfraumes gefochten würde. Von beträchtlicher Wichtigkeit sind dabei zunächst die Vorgänge bei Mantes. Hier sind die Amerikaner bereits vor einigen Tagen über die Seine gesetzt und haben beträchtliche Kräfte auf das nördliche Seineufer schaffen können. Das Ziel dieser Bewegung liegt auf der Hand. Der Gegner wollte auf dem nördlichen Seineufer möglichst schnell vorankommen und hier den deutschen Truppen die Straße nach dem Osten verlegen. Diesem Versuch ist ein deutscher Angriff entgegengetreten. Die Nordamerikaner sind hier auf den Fluss zurückgeworfen worden.
Vorstöße schneller amerikanischer Truppen sind nicht nur nordwestlich, sondern auch südlich von der französischen Hauptstadt zu beobachten. Auch hier hat der Feind die Seine erreicht. Am weitesten ist er noch weiter südlich vorgedrungen, wo er in der Gegend von Sens die Yonne erreicht hat. Es sind vor allem die Amerikaner und nicht die Engländer, die von der Gegenseite aus dem schnellen Bewegungskrieg führen. Ein Urteil darüber ist erst möglich, wenn nähere Umstände bekannt sind. Auf jeden Fall ist es unwahrscheinlich, daß man in London diese Tatsache mit großem Vergnügen sieht.
Ganz im Süden drängen die gegnerischen Invasionstruppen immer mehr nach Westen zu. Ohne Zweifel haben sie die Absicht, in das Rhonetal zu gelangen und von hier aus längs dem Lauf des Flusses nach Norden vorzudringen, mit dem Fernziel Lyon. Hier leisten unsere Truppen hinhaltenden Widerstand mit dem militärischen Ziel der Verzögerung.
Es ist deutlich, wieviel Entsagung und zugleich doch wieviel kämpferische Hingabe die gegenwärtige Entwicklung von unseren Truppen im Westen fordert. Sie müssen sich zurückziehen, das wissen sie, aber sie dürfen dem Gegner das Vordringen nicht zu leicht machen. Er muß immer von neuem gezwungen werden, starke Kräfte aufzuwenden und dabei Zeit zu verschwenden. Nur so kann das Ziel der Errichtung einer neuen Kampffront weiter rückwärts erreicht werden. So werfen sich die deutschen Bataillone immer von neuem dem Feind entgegen, so bereiten sie ihm immer von neuen unliebsamen Überraschungen, so helfen sie durch ihren tapferen Kampf den Absichten der obersten Führung.
Das beschleunigte Tempo im Pazifikkrieg –
Zwischen Honolulu und Saipan
Von unserem Marinemitarbeiter
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Innsbrucker Nachrichten (August 24, 1944)
Härteste Abwehrkämpfe in Ost und West
Amerikaner an zwei Punkten über die Seine zurückgeworfen – Sowjetangriffe im mittleren und nördlichen Abschnitt gescheitert
dnb. Aus dem Führerhauptquartier, 24. August –
Das Oberkommando der Wehrmacht gibt bekannt:
In der Normandie wiesen unsere Truppen am Touquesabschnitt, im Raum von Lisieux und weiter südlich alle Angriffe des Gegners ab. Eine feindliche Kampfgruppe, die westlich Évreux nach Norden vordrang, wurde von unseren Panzerverbänden angegriffen und zum Stehen gebracht. Schlachtgeschwader unterstützten diese Kämpfe und griffen den feindlichen Übersetzverkehr sowie Panzer- und Fahrzeugkolonnen mit guter Wirkung an. Zwei Seinebrücken wurden durch Bombentreffer zerstört. In Luftkämpfen wurden zwölf feindliche Flugzeuge abgeschossen.
Nordwestlich Mantes warfen unsere Truppen die Nordamerikaner bei La Roche–Goyon unter hohen Verlusten über die Seine zurück und säuberten die Flussschleife südlich dieses Ortes vom Feind.
Nordöstlich Fontainebleau wurden über die Seine übergesetzten feindlichen Kräfte im Gegenangriff auf das Flussufer zurückgeworfen.
In der Nacht führten Kampffliegerverbände einen wirksamen Angriff gegen Évreux. Starke Brände und Explosionen wurden beobachtet.
An der südfranzösischen Küste leisten die Besatzungen von Marseille und Toulon überlegenen feindlichen Kräften verbissenen Widerstand.
Nördlich der Durance sind harte Kämpfe mit feindlichen Kräften im Gange, die versuchen, sich unseren Absetzbewegungen im Rhonetal vorzulegen.
Im französisch-italienischen Alpengebiet dringen unsere Kampfgruppen gegen den zähen Widerstand leistenden Terroristen über die Passstraßen nach Westen vor. Der Maddalenapass ist nach hartem Kampf wieder in unserem Besitz.
London und seine Außenbezirke liegen weiter unter dem schweren Feuer der „V1.“
In Italien fanden außer reger beiderseitiger Aufklärungstätigkeit keine größeren Kampfhandlungen statt.
In der Adria torpedierten Schnellboote auf der Reede von Ancona ein feindliches Torpedoboot.
In der Ägäis versenkte einer unserer Unterseebootjäger zwei feindliche Unterseeboote.
Im Süden der Ostfront drang der Feind mit motorisierten Infanterie- und mit Panzerverbänden bis in den Raum beiderseits des unteren Pruth vor. Auch am mittleren Sereth sind bei Roman heftige Kämpfe im Gange.
Nordöstlich Warschau zerschlugen Verbände der Waffen-SS im harten Kampf zahlreiche Angriffe der Bolschewisten. Zwischen Bug und Narew wurden die starken Angriffe der Sowjets in erbitterten Waldkämpfen zum Stehen gebracht.
Im Einbruchsraum von Modohn wurde der Feind weiter zurückgeworfen. Westlich des Pleskauer Sees scheiterten erneute heftige Angriffe der Bolschewisten. Durchbruchsversuche mehrerer sowjetischer Schützendivisionen in Richtung Dorpat wurden aufgefangen.
Schlachtfliegerverbände vernichteten allein im Nordabschnitt der Ostfront 60 feindliche Panzer, 15 Geschütze und über 100 Fahrzeuge. In heftigen Luftkämpfen wurden an der Ostfront 54 feindliche Flugzeuge abgeschossen.
Bei der Abwehr eines Angriffs sowjetischer Flugzeuge gegen das Gebiet von Petsamo und des Varangarfjords wurden durch Jagdflieger und Flakartillerie der Luftwaffe weitere 29 feindliche Flugzeuge zum Absturz gebracht.
Unterseebootjäger versenkten im Schwarzen Meer östlich Konstantza ein sowjetisches Schnellboot.
Nordamerikanische Bomber griffen mehrere Orte im Großraum von Wien an. Durch Luftverteidigungskräfte wurden 28 feindliche Flugzeuge, darunter 21 viermotorige Bomber, vernichtet.
In der Nacht griffen sowjetische Bomber das Stadtgebiet von Tilsit an.
Einzelne britische Flugzeuge warfen Bomben auf Köln.
Zum heutigen OKW-Bericht wird ergänzend mitgeteilt:
Ein vielfach bewährtes Flakkorps der Luftwaffe unter Führung von Generalleutnant Reimann erzielte in den schweren Abwehrkämpfen im großen Weichselbogen den 3.000. Flugzeugabschuss seit Beginn des Ostfeldzuges. Im gleichen Zeitraum vernichteten Einheiten dieses Korps 2600 sowjetische Panzer. Oberleutnant Hartmann erhöhte am gestrigen Tage mit dem Abschuß von acht Sowjetflugzeugen die Zahl seiner Luftsiege auf 290.
Supreme HQ Allied Expeditionary Force (August 24, 1944)
Communiqué No. 138
Southeast of PARIS, Allied forces have reached the vicinity of CORBEIL and MELUN, and reconnaissance elements are 15 miles east of SENS. Farther south units are east of MONTARGIS, after crossing the LOING River.
The Allied envelope drives toward the Lower SEINE continue.
Units advancing northward have liberated ÉVREUX and are now several miles beyond the city. Other units have reached CONCHES after freeing VERNEUIL.
A thrust northeast from MONNAI progressed about five miles and a drive northeastward from ORBEC reached the village of THIBOUTIERE.
Several bridgeheads have been made across the river TOUQUES. Fighting continued in the area of LISIEUX where the enemy had taken up strong positions dominating the eastern exit from the town. In the PONT-L’ÉVÊQUE area, enemy resistance was stubborn and between there and LISIEUX heavy mortar fire was brought down on our troops crossing the river.
The enemy’s dwindling road, rail and water transport systems were attacked by our aircraft yesterday. Fighter-bombers destroyed more than 500 motor transport in the woods and on the roads in the ELBEUF–LOUVIERS area, and sank 15 river barges at TOURNEDOS-SUR-SEINE.
Both flak and enemy air opposition were encountered along the river, and as far east as SENS where our fighters gave support to the ground forces. Seventeen enemy planes were destroyed in the air in this sector and 12 others damaged. Fifteen of our aircraft are missing.
In the CAMBRAI–LILLE area, railyards and canal barges were attacked effectively and without loss.
Fires resulted from attack be a small force of medium bombers on a fuel dump near ROUEN.