The Pittsburgh Press (December 7, 1944)
Editorial: Three years and–
On this third anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the European war is in its final phase and the Pacific enemy has been driven back to his intermediate defenses. We have come a long way. But the victory road ahead is hard and bloody.
It is just six months since Gen. Eisenhower did the “impossible” in the cross-Channel invasion. Hitler has lost Western Europe, much equipment and a million and a quarter of his best troops. The Allies are advancing inside Germany.
When victory will come depends partly on the ability of our Russian allies, who have carried the heaviest load to date, to break the long stalemate on the Vistula. Though the Russian advance on Budapest and Vienna is important, like our Italian campaign, only a drive across Poland can bring speedy victory. For that is the short road to Berlin and also to Silesia, Hitler’s second industrial center. Gen. Eisenhower will knock out the Ruhr, as he is now smashing the Saar, and thus stop German production, if a Russian offensive takes Silesia and prevents Hitler from shifting more reinforcements from east to west.
In the Pacific, despite a temporary delay in Gen. MacArthur’s Philippine campaign, we are ahead of schedule. From Saipan and other bases, our naval and air forces are cutting Jap lines and bombing Tokyo. Only in China is the enemy winning.
We go into the fourth year of war with great strength, but also some weakness.
Most important, neither enemy intrigue nor internal stress has weakened the grand alliance. Our own country has remained united despite a hard-fought political campaign. Allied military power and productive capacity are vastly superior. Allied military leadership is tops. The fighting quality and spirit of our men is superb.
Allied weakness includes imperialist policies of European powers, which increase political divisions in liberated European countries behind Allied military lines – and which prevent most Asiatic peoples from fighting for the Allies, as are the Filipinos. A second Allied weakness is that destruction in Allied European countries, and the long strain in Britain, will leave the United States – after German defeat – the only relatively fresh power to finish Japan.
The worst weakness is in long-suffering China. That is partly caused by Jap strategy, by China’s years of travail, by internal Chinese politics and inefficiency, and by American-British failure to establish supply routes. Now that Americans bases in eastern China have been lost, and the enemy is within striking distance of Chungking and of Kunming, our last hope of an interior supply base, the Generalissimo and President Roosevelt are frantically trying to save the situation – with some success. Unless we can regain Chinese bases for the knockout blow against Japan, our military chiefs agree the war will be much prolonged.
But the Allied weakness which should worry us most – because it is the only one we at home can do much about – is the American letdown. While many of us think the war is won and act accordingly, the blood banks are low, War Bond sales to individuals are slow, and the production shortage extends to 40 percent of all military items.
The Germans and Japs only count on an American letdown preventing Allied victory. Of course, they are wrong. But until we get our second wind, until the home front is able to keep up with the heroic fighting front, we shall delay victory. For every ally and every front depends on American production.