Editorial: Time for quick decisions
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America Firsters name G. L. K. Smith, Romer
Detroit, Michigan (UP) –
The America First Party last night nominated Gerald L. K. Smith of Detroit and Harry Romer of St. Henry, Ohio, as presidential and vice-presidential candidates respectively.
The nominations on first ballots followed adoption of a 40-point platform. Some 300 of 1,800 qualified delegates attended the two-day convention that adjourned last night.
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Paris, France – (by wireless)
Eating has been skimpy in Paris through the four years of German occupation, but reports that people were on the verge of starvation apparently were untrue.
The country people of Normandy all seemed so healthy and well fed that we said all along: “Well, country people always fore best, but just wait till we get to Paris. We’ll see real suffering there.”
Of course, the people of Paris have suffered during these four years of darkness. But I don’t believe they have suffered as much physically as we had thought.
Certainly, they don’t look bedraggled and gaunt and pitiful, as the people of Italy did. In fact, they look to me just the way you would expect them to look in normal times.
However, the last three weeks before the liberation really were rough. For the Germans, sensing that their withdrawal was inevitable, began taking everything for themselves.
There is very little food in Paris right now. The restaurants either are closed or serve only the barest meals – coffee and sandwiches. And the “national coffee,” as they call it, is made from barley and is about the vilest stuff you ever tasted. France has had nothing else for four years.
If you were to take a poll on what the average Parisian most wants in the way of little things, you would probably find that he wants real coffee, soap, gasoline and cigarettes.
Eating problem for writers
Eating is the biggest problem right now for us correspondents. The Army hasn’t yet set up a mess. We can’t even get our rations cooked in our hotel kitchens, on account of the gas shortage.
So, we just eat cold K-rations and 10-in-l rations in our rooms. For two days most us were so busy we didn’t eat at all, and on the morning after the liberation of Paris some of the correspondents were actually so weak from not eating that they could hardly navigate.
But the food situation should be relieved within a few days. The Army is bringing in 3,000 tons of food right away for the Parisians. That is only about two pounds per person, but it will help.
In little towns only 10 miles from Paris you can get eggs and wonderful dinners of meat and noodles. Food does exist, and now that transportation is open again Paris should be eating soon.
Autos were almost nonexistent on the streets of Paris when we arrived. That first day we met an English girl who had been here throughout the war, and we drove her for some distance in our jeep. She was as excited as a child, and said that was her first ride in a motorcar in four years. We told her that it wasn’t a motorcar that it was a jeep, but she said it was a motorcar to her.
Outside of war vehicles, a few French civilian cars were running when we arrived but they were all in official use in the fighting. All of these had “FFI” (French Forces of the Interior) painted in rough white letters on the fenders, tops and sides.
Average guy didn’t fare too badly
Although it appears that the Germans did conduct themselves fairly properly up until the last few weeks, the French really detest them. One woman told me that for the first three weeks of the occupation the Germans were fine but that then they turned arrogant. The people of Paris simply tolerated them and nothing more.
The Germans did perpetrate medieval barbarities against leaders of the Resistance movement as their plight became more and more desperate. But what I’m driving at is that the bulk of the population of Paris – the average guy who just get along no matter who is here – didn’t really fare too badly from day to day. It was just the things they heard about and the fact of being under a bullheaded and arrogant thumb, that created the smoldering hatred for the Germans in the average Parisian’s heart.
You can get an idea how they feel from a little incident that occurred the first night we were here.
We put up at a little family sort of hotel in Montparnasse. The landlady took us up to show us our rooms. A cute little French maid came along with her.
As we were looking around the room the landlady opened a wardrobe door, and there on a shelf lay a German soldier’s cap that he had forgotten to take.
The landlady picked it up with the tips of her fingers, held it out at arm’s length, made a face, and dropped it on a chair.
Whereupon the little maid reached up with her pretty foot and gave it a huge kick that sent it sailing across the room.
They died so France could live again; a telephone girl – a mother – Jacqueline
Robert shot it out with Gestapo; Jean’s love was killing Vichyites
By André Lebord (as told to Leland Stowe)
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Most soldiers to vote ballots of their states
Cooperation of legislature, speedy Army handling to make it possible
By Charles T. Lucey, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Washington –
Notwithstanding all the controversy over the federal soldier-vote ballot a few months ago, cooperation of the states and speedy Army handling of overseas voting apparently will result in a vast majority of soldiers voting the ballots of their states.
The job of getting ballots to more than four million men overseas is the biggest thing of its kind ever attempted.
Posters aid voting
Fast as is the action in France, many thousand ballot applications are pouring in from there. In troop headquarters in Burmese jungles, in Italy, the Marianas and France. Posters are up telling soldiers how they may vote.
Thirty more state legislatures have granted more liberal soldier vote provisions, and the federal ballot is now considered chiefly as supplemental, available to overseas soldiers of 20 states which have authorized its use if state ballots have not reached them. even when the federal ballot is used, state ballots, on which the soldier may vote for state and local offices, as well as federal, may be used later to supersede it.
Distributes cards
The Army distributes cards to all soldiers on which they may apply for ballots of their own states (this has been done). If they wish to vote, soldiers fill out these cards and forward them to secretaries of state in their home states. The state determines each soldier’s eligibility, forwards his ballot to him individually, and when he has voted, the ballot is returned by individual letter to his voting district.
If an overseas soldier has applied for his state ballot by Sept. 1 and has not received it by Oct. 1, and he is from a state where the federal ballot has been authorized, he may ask for one and vote for President and Vice President, Senator and Congressman.
Ballots flown back
If the soldier later receives his state ballot, he still may vote it, and if it reaches his home state before the closing date for receiving absentee ballots, his federal ballot will be thrown out and his state ballot counted.
The Army is distributing five posters to instruct and facilitate soldier voting.
State ballots are in specially-marked envelopes and the Army carries them by plane to and from all theaters. Federal ballots have been distributed in bulk, sometimes by ship, but all will be returned by plane.
Except for a small executive staff at the top, the soldier voting project is being managed through regular Army channels. Soldier voting officers have been sent to all theaters.
Stokes: U.S. conducts investigation into cartels
Control sought over monopolies
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Industry urged to tackle job of distribution
System needed to keep up with production
By Edward A. Evans, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Reading Eagle (August 31, 1944)
Pegler: Slavery
By Westbrook Pegler
New York –
You know how it is when you go to the library to look up one subject and get lost in another.
I never did get what I went for and almost forgot what it was I wanted, digging into old debates on Negro slavery.
These wrangles were only a hundred years ago, which is only twice your age when you are 50, and not such a formidable stretch of time as it seems when you are younger, and yet, in England, there was great agitation for the abolition of the slave trade from Africa and of slavery in the United States by men who were, in practical manner of speaking, slaveholders themselves, in their own country. This point was brought out in one document by a man who was interested in the preservation of slavery and though I tried to chase it down I never found the reply, much less a refutation.
He said a certain noble lord who was agitating himself with humane tremors over a problem which many Americans held to be strictly our own affair, was actually holding white English workers in bondage in his coal mines, while living on the fat of the land himself. The mines then. at least, were not equipped for ventilation or fire-prevention and the occupational risk of the miners was great, what with asphyxiation, explosions and fires. Moreover, the men worked a 12-hour day, which meant that for about eight months of the year they never did see daylight, except on Sunday, and were becoming purblind like the ponies they worked with, or a deepwater fish. Their wages were peanuts although there might be some margin in the fact that, even down to 1914, a shot of Scotch in an ordinary London bar cost only four cents, and other necessaries of life were proportionately cheap, and it seems that they couldn’t lay up a cent for depression periods which came unexpectedly. My Uncle George, who seems to have been a Methodist clergyman and abolitionist of some importance in this country along toward the ‘60s, related in his life and times, published by the Wesleyan Methodist Publishing House, of Syracuse, in 1879, that this old man had two wives (consecutively, of course) and 25 children, of whom Uncle George never saw more than 15 at a time, and that he went to work helping his mother spin hemp in his dad’s rope-walk in London when he was only four years old. Then he ran away to sea at the age of eight and he tells of some prodigious swimming around Bermuda when a small boat broke loose and he had to go after it; so I have sometimes suspected that Uncle George was a bit of a liar around the edges because you don’t learn swimming in a rope-walk or working as a ship’s boy. I don’t mean he actually was my uncle, but, with that name, he couldn’t have been far removed.
This Englishman in the slavery debate insisted that the slaves in Jamaica, where his interests were, were better off than the white men in this noble lord’s mines because they were fed enough to keep them in fair shape as property, whereas the miner had to feed himself and, when he went on relief in slack times, got only four cents a day. I gather that this four cents was for the whole family, not per head, and moreover, this mine owner didn’t pay it, nor the government, but the parish or church.
Then, he said, this lord had the gall to propose that during depressions the husbands should be sent elsewhere, away from their wives, so that they wouldn’t beget more children to grow up and complicate the problems of unemployment and overpopulation; and even to try to impose a rule forbidding men to marry before the age of 35, for the same reason. If a man did marry prematurely, he was blackballed from the mines.
Of course, this was strictly counterpunching, which is not the war to win a fight, and England continued to agitate against slavery in our country, a precedent for some of our later intrusion in certain affairs of European nations, while white Englishmen in their own country actually were much worse off than many of the Negro slaves. Here we are again, for example, running a terrible force over ghettos in Europe as though we had no ghettos of our own. And, for another thing, like the noble English lord, here we are hollering down fascism, with our professional unioneers leading the chorus, while many of the loudest and angriest crusaders against the foul philosophy, notable Mr. Roosevelt and Sidney Hillman, are imposing on our country regulations and restrictions straight out of the book of Benito Il Bum.
Address by Senator Harry S. Truman Accepting the Democratic Nomination
August 31, 1944, 10:30 p.m. EWT
Mr. Chairman, members of the notification committee and fellow citizens:
I am deeply honored to have been named as the Democratic Party’s candidate for the Vice Presidency and accept with humility and a prayer for guidance that I may perform honorably and well whatever tasks are laid before me.
Upon being nominated for the office of Vice President of the United States, my first wish was to express my appreciation to the members of the Democratic Party.
I have wanted since then to address my fellow Americans everywhere, regardless of party, so that I might offer a statement concerning the critical times that lie ahead.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt is my leader and Commander-in-Chief. In the past I have supported the policies formulated by him to protect and advance the welfare of our nation. I will continue to do so and will continue my efforts to make certain that those policies are carried out promptly and efficiently by those entrusted with their administration.
We have long been engaged in a desperate struggle to preserve our liberties and to safeguard the American way of life. Many of our brave citizens have given their lives to win for us the certainty of victory, now assured. All of us now toil and sacrifice to win this most terrible of all wars. Victory is now in sight. Our courageous, well trained and completely equipped soldiers and sailors are beating down the enemy wherever he can be found. Their unequaled valor under the greatest leadership ever given a fighting force guarantees this victory.
The task of the government has been to provide that leadership, as well as the foresight which will enable victory to be won as soon as possible. When victory is won, government must provide for our returning veterans and our war workers an assurance that their sacrifices were not in vain; that they will return to a country worth fighting for; that they will have an opportunity to earn a good living; and that the same humane principles and policies for the protection of the average man and woman carried out under Franklin D. Roosevelt for the past twelve years will be continued under his leadership.
Although victory may be close at hand, it must still be won. Our enemies are still numerous and well equipped. They have the advantage of fighting on the very threshold of their homes. We must fight in every climate and on every terrain. We must transport our Armed Forces and their equipment – and maintain them – thousands of miles from our shores. Our enemies are fanatical and desperate. They chant hymns of hate and utter threats that before they succumb they will destroy the foundations of our civilization, so painfully and slowly erected by the hard work of generations of mankind.
The carrying out of plans already made to overwhelm the enemy, and the formulation of new policies as the occasion demands, require the coordination of all our resources and all of our people. The skill and ability of the military, of business, of labor and of agriculture must all be directed with initiative, with courage, with foresight and with experience, just as they have been since the emergency actually began. We know from the success of our efforts to date that under the continued leadership of President Roosevelt these objectives will be accomplished.
Under his leadership, we have met one crisis after another, in peace and war. In each of these crises, we have had anxious moments when we faced the fearful possibilities of national disaster. No one can ever forget the prayerful moments that preceded our successes in Africa, in Italy, in France and in the Pacific. Those successes were possible because our fighting men had what they needed, where they needed it and when they needed it. Much of the credit for this must be given to the wise decisions of the President.
None but the most uninformed question the fact that Franklin Roosevelt did make those vital decisions in collaboration with the great leaders of our war allies. Those decisions brought about the greatest succession of victories in the annals of warfare.
Tomorrow’s challenge is today’s problem. The proven leadership of our successes must continue. The fortunes of the future for which our boys have fought, bled and died must not be endangered by entrusting them to inexperienced hands. There is no substitute for experience, which can be gained only through years of application and service.
I am confident that the people of the United States, and I know that the people of my own state of Missouri, may be trusted in this vital hour to choose their President from a standpoint of proven experience and qualification. They will not choose for President, by political chance, a man who lacks experience.
In the struggle to rid the world of the enemies of democracy, the firing of the last shot on the battlefield marks but a beginning. Military victory over Germany is but a step. Military victory over Japan, though it may follow with all possible speed, will be but the completion of one turn in a long road.
War has taught us that, whether we like it or not, we cannot build a wall of isolation around the United States. Our very existence depends upon the establishment and maintenance of a sound and just peace throughout the world.
If you ask the historian why we failed to bring about a lasting peace after World War I, he will answer: “A partisan struggle for political power.” Let us remember the warning of Woodrow Wilson. He stressed that in an effort to make peace partisan politics should be adjourned.
“Partisan politics,” he said, “has no place in the subject we are now obliged to discuss and decide.” His wisdom has been proved by the test of time.
We have another historical parallel today. Make no mistake about the fact that once again we also have among us a group of isolationists as determined, as bitter, and as dangerous as the band who set themselves against the League of Nations and gave to Wilson’s peace in 1920 a stab in the back.
Much work has been performed in the task of building for peace. The peace we seek is partly made. While the main task is yet ahead of us, world peace was actually in the process of making many months, even years ago.
The administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt was preparing the ground to support this peace structure when, against the bitter criticism and dire warnings of the isolationists and their press, Mr. Roosevelt first proposed Lend-Lease.
This peace was in process many months ago when two men met in mid-Atlantic and drew up a charter, a set of principles for peace that have been cited and used as guides by both Democrats and Republicans alike ever since they were first set forth.
This peace was being made at Casablanca, at Moscow, at Québec, at Cairo, at Tehran. It was being made last week in our own nation’s capital. It will be made in many other places, at many other times. It is a continuing process, already years underway, still years in prospect. We are, in our effort to make this peace, very definitely in midstream.
And this peace has been given life movement and certainty by the high resolve of the men who are making it. Neither time nor space nor the personal hazards of a world at war have been allowed to interrupt it.
The destruction that already has occurred and that which is reasonably certain to occur before the war finally is won will make this a most difficult task. The people of the earth will have to rebuild a new and greater prosperity from the ashes of the efforts of the many generations that preceded them. The nations, great and small, must adjust themselves to these new conditions, and must find a sane and sensible means of living together in friendship and with mutual advantage. We comprise but a small percentage of the people of the earth, and we shall have to guide the way with wise counsel and advice if we expect to play our full part in establishing a good and an enduring peace.
The end of hostilities may come suddenly. Decisions that will determine our future for years, and even generations to come, will have to be made quickly. If they are made quickly and wisely by those who have had years of experience and the fullest opportunities to become well informed with respect to our national and international problems, we can have confidence that the next generations will not have to spill its blood to rectify our mistakes and failures.
It takes time for anyone to familiarize himself with a new job. This is particularly true of the Presidency of the United States, the most difficult and complex job in the world. Even in peacetime, it is well recognized that it takes a new President at least a year to learn the fundamentals of his job. We cannot expect any man wholly inexperienced in national and international affairs to readily learn the views, the objectives and the inner thoughts of such divergent personalities as those dominant leaders who have guided the destinies of our courageous Allies. There will be no time to learn, and mistakes once made cannot be unmade. Our President has worked with these men during these trying years. He talks their language – the language of nations. He knows the reasons which govern their decisions.
Just as he respects them and their opinions, so do they respect him. At no time in our history has a President possessed such knowledge of foreign leaders and their problems. None has ever so completely won their confidence and admiration.
Winning the war and concluding the peace are only part of the task facing us during the next four years. We must also reestablish our own domestic economy.
To win the war we have shifted millions of workers hundreds and thousands of miles from their old homes; we have built thousands of fine new factories and equipped them with tens of thousands of the best machine tools; we have increased enormously our facilities for manufacturing basic commodities; we have evolved new processes for shaping materials, and new uses for those materials.
We cannot go back to our pre-war status, for it is impossible to reshuffle our people into the old pattern. Nor can we throw in to junk heaps $20 billion worth of new plants and equipment. Only by using them can we hope to provide good jobs for our brave fighting men when they return, and for our splendid war workers. With those plants we shall make more and better goods. We shall combine full employment with an even higher standard of living. By utilizing new methods and products discovered during the war, and by encouraging further research and invention, we shall insure the position of the United States as a leader of world progress.
The achievement of the goals the administration has set for the post-war nation will not be easy. Already some selfish interests are complaining. If they can, they will prevent new independent enterprises from acquiring these plants, from hiring workmen and from putting into civilian production a flood of consumer goods at prices within the reach of all.
We must not accept the kind of thinking that during the 1920s kept Muscle Shoals and other World War I plants idle.
The administration proposes to see to ft that these plants are sold or leased on fair terms to those who will use them to manufacture consumer goods, and to create employment for our fighting men and our men and women war workers.
If we devote the same ingenuity to production for peace in America that we have given to the making of engines of destruction, in this war, our future will be secure. But to do this will require energy and courage. The forces of reaction, and the selfishness of those who always fear any kind of change, will have to be overcome. We cannot go back, as we tried to do in 1920. We cannot stand still. We must go forward.
On all these great issues we know that President Roosevelt will take a progressive and courageous position, because his past record of able and forthright action speaks for itself.
As early as October 5, 1937, when few of us dreamed that war was approaching, Franklin Roosevelt in a speech at Chicago, warned that the peace and freedom of 90 percent of the world’s people were being jeopardized by the remaining 10 percent, who were threatening a breakdown of all international law and order. You need not be reminded that he was then called an alarmist and a warmonger by the isolationists and their press – the same group that now seeks to block every advance he makes for the welfare of the country.
Despite strong opposition, he pushed through the national defense program. He steered a course toward preparedness. Through his efforts we obtained Selective Service that enabled us to train a great army and to discover and supply its needs. Countless thousands of lives were saved by this one prophetic act. He advocated Lend-Lease, which enabled the British and others to let contracts that gave us a full year’s start on war production. He declared a national emergency that enabled our own defense program to make progress beyond anything ever before achieved in the history of the world. I need not recall to you the vitriolic violence of the opposition to these measures – nor the identity of those who opposed them.
Franklin Roosevelt set production goals that were ridiculed as fantastic and misleading. For example, his request in June 1940 for 50,000 planes. But under his leadership those goals were attained and even surpassed. Industry, labor and agriculture were coordinated and did cooperate to produce this inspired achievement.
Without this kind of leadership and preparation what would have been the fate of our nation? Who can tell how many more years would have been required to win the war, and at what greater cost in lives?
On this greatest of all issues, the defense of the country, President Roosevelt was years ahead of his time, just as he was years ahead of his time when he fought for freedom from want and forced through protective legislation for labor, social security for the aged, work relief for the unemployed, and a farm program which saved the farmers. Just as he battled to protect the savings of small depositors and for security regulations to prevent a repetition of the financial excesses of the ‘20s that brought on the depression.
You remember the battles he fought to accomplish all this, and you know the sources of his opposition. His opponents are still the same. But which of these great programs are they now willing to tell you they propose to destroy? Those programs have stood the acid test of the years, and the President’s opponents dare not openly attack them.
Ask yourselves whether you dare to entrust the further development and growth of these great social reforms to those who not only were without the ability to develop these programs but who even lacked the foresight and courage to support them.
Ask yourselves whether you dare to entrust the negotiation of the peace of the world to those who are not familiar with world affairs.
The welfare of this nation and its future, as well as the peace of the whole world depends upon your decision on November 7.
You can’t afford to take a chance. You should endorse tried and experienced leadership – you should reelect Franklin D. Roosevelt President of the United States.
Völkischer Beobachter (September 1, 1944)
Moskau oder London und Washington –
Wohin treibt de Gaulle?
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Erbitterte Schlacht an der Westfront
Berlin, 31. August –
An der Westfront ging die Schlacht am 30. August mit wachsender Erbitterung weiter. Die Angriffe der Briten, Nordamerikaner und ihrer Hilfsvölker ordnen sich um die Seine, den Oise-Aisne-Abschnitt und das Gebiet der Vesle und oberen Marne, Unter sehr schweren Angriffen gelang es dem Feind, an der Seine beiderseits Les Andelys Boden zu gewinnen und längs der Straße Verno–Gisors in unsere Linien einzudringen. Hart nördlich Gisors wurde er durch Gegenangriffe aufgefangen und in schweren Kämpfen abgeriegelt. Der von Pontoise aus nach Nordwesten vordringende Gegner wurde etwa auf dem halben Wege von Gegenstößen gefasst und zum Stehen gebracht.
Das nunmehr hinter den feindlichen Linien liegende Paris erweist sich durch die verworrenen innerpolitischen Zustände, die der vom Gegner aufgeputschte Pöbel geschaffen hat, als starke Belastung für die Operationen der Invasionstruppen. Die Stimmung der hungernden Bevölkerung der Millionenstadt ist weiterhin äußerst gespannt. Sie merkt jetzt die Folgen der Zerstörung des Eisenbahnnetzes, für die britisch-nordamerikanische Bomber verantwortlich zeichnen. Mit großer Sorge sehen sie der weiteren Entwicklung entgegen.
Hart umkämpft ist auch der Raum nordöstlich Paris. Zwischen Pontoise und Laon konzentrierten die Nordamerikaner die ihnen hier zur Verfügung stehenden Truppen an drei Stellen und konnten im Zusammenwirken mit sehr starken Bomberverbänden in unsere Riegelstellungen eindringen. Der schärfste Druck erfolgte in Richtung auf Laon, dass der Gegner im Laufe des Mittwochnachmittags in nördlicher und nordöstlicher Richtung durchschritt.
Am südlich anschließenden Abschnitt entfalteten die Nordamerikaner gleichfalls starke Aktivität. Auch hier lassen sich drei Hauptangriffsrichtungen erkennen. Die erste ging über Reims nach Norden und Nordosten. Von Châlons aus stieß der zweite Keil nach Nordosten vor, während der drifte Angriff von Vitry-le-François aus nach Südosten gegen den Marnekanal erfolgte. Auf der ganzen Front sind schwere Kämpfe im Gange. Immer wieder versuchen unsere Truppen die vorgedrungenen feindlichen Panzerkeile in Flanke und Rücken zu fassen. Mehrfach vernichteten sie noch hinter den vorgeprellten Spitzen Munitions- und Treibstoffkolonnen. Jeden Kilometer, den die Nordamerikaner an Aisne und Marne gewinnen, müssen sie mit erheblichen Ausfällen an Menschen und Material erkaufen. Um einige von feindlichen Bombern zertrümmerte Ortschaften wurde mit besonderer Erbitterung gerungen. In einer von ihnen besetzten Grenadiere des Heeres und der Waffen-SS die noch stehenden Häuser und warfen aus den Fenstern Minen und geballte Ladungen auf die anrollenden Panzer. Dadurch verloren die hier vorgehenden Nordamerikaner mehr als die Hälfte ihrer Kampfwagen.
In Südfrankreich suchen die Anglo-Amerikaner weiterhin in die Bewegungen unserer Gruppen hineinzustoßen. Ihre Absicht, südlich Valence unsere Nachtruppen am Übergang über den Drôme zu hindern, scheiterten unter erheblichen Verlusten für den Gegner. Hier und nordöstlich Valence, wo die Isere aus dem Gebirge heraustritt, vernichteten unsere Truppen eine Reihe von Panzern und Panzerspähwagen und gewannen vorübergehend von Terroristen besetzte Stützpunkte zurück. Trotz des mit diesen Kämpfen verbundenen Zeitverlustes erreichten unsere Truppen ihre gesteckten Tagesziele.
Montgomerys Befehlsgewalt beschnitten –
USA dominiert in Frankreich
Stockholm, 31. August –
General Eisenhower gab am Donnerstag bekannt, daß General Bradley und General Montgomery beide unter seinem Oberbefehl ebenbürtig als Armeegruppenbefehlshaber tätig sind.
Die Nachricht bedeutet Montgomerys Degradierung oder doch eine erhebliche Beschneidung seiner Befehlsgewalt, unzweifelhaft auf Kosten des englischen Prestiges.
Seit längerer Zeit war von einer derartig verkappten Degradierung Montgomerys die Rede. Die jetzige Bestätigung besagt, daß Eisenhower in Zukunft zwei Unterbefehlshaber haben wird, und zwar in Gestalt der Generale Bradley und Montgomery. Montgomery ist, wie man sieht, durch diese Kombinationen aus seiner bisherigen Stellung als alleiniger Befehlshaber der verbündeten Landstreitkräfte unter Eisenhower verdrängt und bekommt den Amerikaner Bradley neben sich gesetzt, der ihm schon bei Durchführung der Operationen ständig den Wind weggenommen hat.
Daß ausgerechnet der großsprecherische und stets auf Reklame bedachte Montgomery sich diese Herabsetzung gefallen lassen muß, ist für ihn selbst und die englische Öffentlichkeit, die ihn bisher als ihr Idol betrachtete, eine bittere Pille. Sie muß von den Engländern widerspruchslos hingenommen werden, weil London genau weiß, daß man mehr denn je ganz in Abhängigkeit von den USA steckt.
Eisenhower unterstehen damit drei gleichgestellte Unterführer: General Montgomery als Chef der 21. Armeegruppe mit der 2. britischen und 1. kanadischen Armee, einer polnischen Division und ein paar kleineren Verbänden, General Bradley als Chef der 12. Armeegruppe, der die 1. und 3. amerikanische Armee und die Gaullistische Division Ledere angehören, und General Patch mit der 7. amerikanischen Armee. Patch war bisher im Generalstab Maitland Wilsons tätig.
Alle Beschönigungsversuche können nichts an den für ganz England peinlichen Ergebnis ändern, daß der Mann, den England für seinen großen Feldherrn hielt und gern zu einem neuen Wellington machen wollte, als einer von mehreren an einen untergeordneten Platz versetzt wird.