The Pittsburgh Press (August 22, 1943)
Bickel: Parley plans double punch against enemy
Jab into Western Europe, smash at Japan may come together
By Karl A. Bickel, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Québec, Canada – (Aug. 21)
The Roosevelt-Churchill conference took a sudden shift to the East today.
Rumors that Lt. Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell had arrived were a dime a dozen. British Eastern military experts were said to be on the ground. Swinging from the political repercussions of the meetings the “dope” ran to soldiers and sailors, naval changes and a fiercely up stepped tempo in the military planning.
One fading functionary said, as he revived himself on a Scotch and soda:
Our boys are dead on their feet from work.
The strategists are talking about a quick one-two, a short left-arm military jab on the European west coast and a long right swing in the Far East. The Kharkov battle, it is held, has again been underestimated. It was originally regarded as a desperate drive for the capture of a great Soviet city and German strongpoint preliminary to chasing the Germans to the Dnieper.
May break back
Today, the military experts here say that Kharkov is vastly more than that. Kharkov, they assert, is proving to be the point where Stalin is literally breaking the back of the mightiest of the German armies. If the Russians capture Kharkov and secure a real breakthrough, they have either smashed or enclosed the German armies to the south, freed the Caucasus and so endangered the German hold on the Crimea as to make it impossible to hold.
The Dnieper will no longer be sufficient protection and Hitler’s armies may well have to roll back onto Polish and even East Prussian soil. This ism of course, the most optimistic viewpoint but there is no question but that the tempo of things today is vastly swifter than yesterday, that the note is all military.
Stalin’s insistence, that the Western Front is the only front, is still potent with the captains and the kings on the hill, but the war is being regarded as a one-front war now from Russia to Tokyo.
Change strategy
Some observers indeed saw indications of the development of a new strategy involving the abandonment of the theory calling for the initial crushing of Hitler and the slower process of smashing Hirohito.
Instead, they envisaged destruction of Japan on approximately the same time schedule as Berlin. This would have obvious advantages, permitting the democracies to come into the peace conferences with the tremendous asset of a conquered Japan free and clear of any Soviet liens. The United States and Great Britain would then have a stronger position than that of uneasy minority stockholders in the assets of a global war.