The New York Times Book of World War II, 1939-1945

by The New York Times

  If this second Armageddon endures and spreads, the damage wrought may be equally titanic. The whole world, as if mined for destruction, is contemplating the possibility of an explosion which will involve its costliest possessions, material, intellectual and spiritual, and do incalculable damage not merely to every human being on the planet but to long generations yet unborn.

  In recent years men, facing the possibility of such a cataclysm, have frequently said that a new world war would be “the end of civilization.” They have declared that, partly through the subsequent crises it would provoke, it would “destroy human culture.” The idea has just been emphatically repudiated by Dr. Eduard Benes, the former President of Czecho-Slovakia, who better than most men knows the meaning of the word destruction. But it has been put forward so frequently and with such emphatic pessimism that it is worth a brief examination. Conceive of another four years’ war, setting the whole world aflame, and piling new destruction on old ruins, adding vast new graveyards to those already dotting Europe. Would civilization or even great parts of it be extinguished?

  Let it be said at once that the part of civilization represented by great monuments of art and architecture can—and all too easily may—be destroyed. Europe is filled with these monuments and filled also with fleets of bombers. A single air raid might wipe out all Oxford University, and with it a source of beauty, graciousness and inspiration which it took seven centuries to build. One well-planted shell would reduce Sainte Chapelle to a memory over which artists would grieve a thousand years hence. Italy is one of the treasure-houses of the human race. It would take but a few weeks’ bombardment by fleets of racing planes to leave Florence a rubble heap, Rome a few square miles of smoking ashes, Venice some ruins sliding into the Adriatic; their towers, temples, palaces and museums forever vanished. New buildings could be erected, new galleries stocked with new works of art. But the human race would be permanently the poorer for what it had lost; life would be thinner and bleaker, and one important element of civilization would be irremediably weakened.

  Let it be said also that if by the phrase “destruction of civilization” it is meant that one phase or cycle of civilization may be terminated, that also is possible. It is more than that; it can now be called inevitable. We are doubtless face to face with a new era in human culture. The first World War put an end to the century of comparative peace that had followed the Napoleonic conflicts, to the swift material and scientific advance of that hundred years, to the lurching but nevertheless seemingly irresistible advance toward democratic self-government throughout the world. It ushered in a period of moral lassitude, political chaos, economic storm, religious and racial persecution that would have seemed incredible to advance residents of the Western Hemisphere in 1900. After the French Revolution, the age of reason; after the World War, the age of unreason—and the new conflict cannot but add new and darker mazes to the Temple of Confusion.

  These two terrible struggles, which future historians may well call the beginning and end of a thirty years’ war—for fighting has never really ceased since 1914—are undoubtedly compelling mankind to turn not a new page but a new chapter. They mean the end of one civilization and the emergence of another, which at least in its beginnings will be baser, harder and darker.

  But fortunately the talk of destroying civilization does not need to be taken literally and completely. Civilization is now a many-rooted, widely ramifying growth, indestructible by anything short of a planetary disaster. If it survived the downfall of Athens, the barbarian conquest of Rome, the so-called Dark Ages, the endless religious and dynastic conflicts, it can survive even two world wars.

  The real danger is not that civilization will be destroyed, but that it will be crippled for generations and perhaps centuries. If this new war lasts long, an iron age will be inaugurated when it closes.

  Europe as a continent may no longer hold the easy primacy which has been hers in the past. And it may not be merely the New World which will gain ground. There is danger that the depletion of European manhood, if pushed much further, will permanently weaken the Caucasian stock in its competition with black and yellow races; that Asia and Africa by sheer default of the present leaders will take a new rank in world affairs. European strength cannot withstand the drain of successive periods of butchery without exhaustion, and some of the resulting changes may go further than peoples of European blood will like to contemplate.

  The next great lines in the history of civilization are to be written in blood. When the battle has been fought and its successful outcome assured, then it will be time to think of a new world order for strengthening and protecting civilization; an order in which, it is to be hoped, the United States will play a more courageous part than it did after the war of 1914-18, a role befitting its strength, its culture and its concern for the destinies of the human race.

  SEPTEMBER 10, 1939

  Sales of Maps Soar Here

  Rand McNally & Co., publishers, announced yesterday that more maps had been sold at its store at 7 West Fiftieth Street in the first twenty-four hours of the European war than during all the years since 1918. The announcement said fresh supplies of maps were being rushed daily by planes from factories working on a day-and-night schedule.

  SEPTEMBER 12, 1939

  POLES UNPREPARED FOR BLOW SO HARD

  The following dispatch is by a member of the Berlin staff of The New York Times who was allowed to visit the German armies in the field in Poland and to send this account:

  By OTTO D. TOLISCHUS

  Wireless to The New York Times.

  WITH THE GERMAN ARMIES IN POLAND, Sept. 11—Having hurled against Poland their mighty military machine, the Germans are today crushing Poland like a soft-boiled egg.

  After having broken through the shell of Polish border defenses, the Germans found inside, in comparison with their own forces, little more than a soft yolk, and they have penetrated that in many directions without really determined general resistance by the Polish Army.

  That is the explanation of the apparent Polish military collapse in so short a time as it was gathered on a tour of the Polish battlefields made by this correspondent in the wake of the German Army and, sometimes, in the backwash of a day’s battle while scattered Polish troops and snipers were still taking pot-shots at motor vehicles on the theory that they must be German. But such is the firm confidence of the Germans that a cocked pistol in front of the army driver is held to be sufficient protection for the foreign correspondents in their charge.

  STAND MADE AT BORDER

  Even a casual glance at the battlefields, gnarled by trenches, barbed-wire entanglements, shell holes, blown-up roads and bridges and shelled and gutted towns, indicates that the Poles made determined resistance at the border. But even these border defenses seem weak, and beyond them there is nothing.

  It is a mystery to both Germans and neutral military experts on the tour with the writer that the Poles made no provisions for second or third lines and that in retreat they did not make any attempt to throw up earthworks or dig trenches such as helped the Germans stop the Allies after the Marne retreat in 1914.

  In fact, the only tactics the Poles seemed to have pursued in the retreat were to fall back on towns from which, later, they were either easily driven out by artillery fire or just as easily flanked. But presumably neither their number nor their equipment, which, judging from the remnants thrown along the road of retreat, was pitifully light as compared with the Germans’, permitted them to do anything else in view of the enormous length of the border they had to defend.

  Again God has been with the bigger battalions, for the beautiful, dry weather, while converting Polish roads into choking dust clouds on the passage of motor vehicles, has kept them from turning into mud as would be normal at this time of year; this has permitted the German motorized divisions to display the speed they have.

  But the Germans have proceeded not only with might and speed, but with method, and this bids fair to be the first war
to be decided not by infantry, “the queen of all arms,” but by fast motorized divisions and, especially, by the air force.

  The first effort of the Germans was concentrated on defeating the hostile air fleet, which they did not so much by air battle but by consistent bombing of airfields and destruction of the enemy’s ground organization. Having accomplished this, they had obtained domination of the air, which in turn enabled them, first, to move their own vast transports ahead without danger from the air and, second, to bomb the Poles’ communications to smithereens, thereby reducing their mobility to a minimum.

  NO BLACKOUT IN CONQUERED ZONE

  Today the German rule of the air is so complete that, although individual Polish planes may still be seen flying at a high altitude, the German Army has actually abandoned the blackout in Poland. It is a strange sensation to come from a Germany thrown into Stygian darkness at night to a battlefront town like Lodz, as this correspondent did the night after the Germans announced its occupation, and find it illuminated although the enemy is only a few miles from the city.

  With control of the air, the Germans moved forward not infantry but their tanks, armored cars and motorized artillery, which smashed any Polish resistance in the back. This is easy to understand when one has seen the methods of open warfare attempted by the Poles and an almost amateurish attempt at digging earthworks for machine-gun nests.

  To German and neutral experts the Poles seem to have clung to eighteenth century war methods, which, in view of modern firing volume and weight, are not only odd but also futile. This does not mean that the Poles have not put up a brave fight. They have, and the Germans themselves freely admit it.

  As a purely military matter, the German Army is the height of efficiency. It moves like clockwork, without hurry and apparently almost in a leisurely manner. Yet that army moves with inexorable exactitude. The roads into Poland are jammed but not choked with heavy vans and motor trucks carrying food and munitions, while the Poles have to depend mainly on their smashed railroads or on horse carts. Bombed bridges are soon passable for the Germans and they move forward quickly. Communication lines follow them almost automatically.

  Poland may not be lost yet and may be even able to offer further resistance by withdrawing into the eastern swamp. But as long as the present disparity between the military resources and her will to fight exists she faces terrible odds.

  Polish prisoners of war captured in September, 1939.

  SEPTEMBER 13, 1939

  W. & J. Starts Courses on ‘Second World War’

  By The Associated Press.

  WASHINGTON, Pa., Sept. 12—President Ralph C. Hutchison announced today that Washington and Jefferson College had started studies of the “second world war” designed to help prevent the “mass hysteria” which he said had characterized the conflict of 1914-18.

  Dr. Hutchison expressed the belief that Washington and Jefferson having an enrollment of about 500, was the first college to offer such studies “to help this generation understand better than did their fathers when they entered the first World War.”

  Three faculty members will teach four war courses bearing full college credit and ranging from the cause of the hostilities to the accompanying propaganda.

  SEPTEMBER 16, 1939

  LINDBERGH URGES WE SHUN THE WAR

  He Tells Nation That if We Fight for Democracy Abroad We May Lose It Here

  By FRANK L. KLUCKHOHN

  Special to The New York Times.

  WASHINGTON, Sept. 15—An appeal to the American people to maintain this country’s isolation from the European war, and from European struggles, was made tonight in a radio speech by Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh. “If we enter fighting for democracy abroad, we may end by losing it at home,” he said.

  It was the first formal speech made by the flier since Aug. 28, 1931, when he addressed Japanese dignitaries in Tokyo, and the National Broadcasting Company, the Columbia Broadcasting System and the Mutual Broadcasting System all carried his words.

  Colonel Lindbergh followed in the steps of his father, the late Charles A. Lindbergh, Representative from Minnesota and one of the few to vote against the entry of the United States into the World War in 1917, when he said:

  “I am speaking tonight to those people in the United States who feel that the destiny of this country does not call for our involvement in European wars.”

  SAYS OCEANS GIVE PROTECTION

  Colonel Lindbergh declared that the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were still barriers for the United States, even against modern aircraft, and added that “we must band together to prevent the loss of more American lives in these internal struggles of Europe.”

  “If we take part successfully,” he asserted in speaking of the European war, “we must throw the entire resources of our entire nation into the conflict. Munitions alone will not be enough. We cannot count upon victory merely by shipping abroad several thousand airplanes and cannon.

  “We are likely to lose a million men, possibly several million—the best of American youth. We will be staggering under the burden of recovery during the rest of our lives. And our children will be fortunate if they see the end in their lives even if, by some unlikely chance, we do not pass on another Polish Corridor to them.”

  The flier held that if war brought new dark ages to Europe, the best service this country could render humanity would be to act as the bulwark for the type of civilization Europe has known. He held that by staying out of war itself this country might even be able to bring peace to Europe more quickly.

  DECLARES TROOP AID “MADNESS”

  Our safety does not lie in fighting European wars, Colonel Lindbergh declared, but rather in the internal strength of the American people and their institutions. In this connection he asserted that “as long as we maintain an army, a navy and an air force worthy of the name, as long as America does not decay within, we need fear no invasion of this country.”

  There is no halfway policy possible for this country, he said. He held that if this country enters the quarrels of Europe during war, it must stay in them in peace as well. He characterized as madness “the sending of American soldiers to be killed as they were in the last war,” if we turn the course of peace over to the “greed, the fear and the intrigue” of European nations.

  This country was colonized by men and women who preferred the wilderness and the Indians to the problems of Europe, he stated, adding that “the colonization of this country grew from European troubles and our freedom sprang from European war.”

  Charles Lindbergh argued for American isolation in September, 1939.

  George Washington clearly saw the danger ahead and warned the American people against becoming entangled in European alliances, the colonel said, noting that this policy was followed for over one hundred years. Then in 1917 we entered “a European war.”

  “The Great War ended before our full force reached the field,” he said. “We measured our dead in thousands. Europe measured hers in millions. A generation has passed since the armistice of 1918, but even in America we are still paying for our part in victory—and we will continue to pay for another generation.”

  Colonel Lindbergh warned against propaganda “foreign and domestic,” as well as “obvious” and “insidious” with which he said this country would be deluged.

  Much of our news is already colored, the colonel asserted. Americans, he said, should not only inquire about the personality, interests and nationality of every writer and speaker, but should ask who owns and who influences the newspaper, the news picture and the radio.

  He made no reference to the arms embargo in the Neutrality Act.

  Colonel Lindbergh made his address into the microphones in a hotel room.

  SEPTEMBER 16, 1939

  DIPLOMATS CROSS THE POLISH BORDER

  Envoys Say Refugee Conditions Are Desperate, With the Danger Of Famine

  CERNAUTI, Rumania, Sept. 15 (AP)—Foreign diplomats fleeing war-torn Poland arrived here tonight with repor
ts of a tremendous new German drive through Southeast Poland designed to cut off Poland from Rumania.

  The new southern offensive was reported being built up with vast numbers of reserves pouring in from Germany, while the air attack was being accelerated.

  Extensive fighting was reported in the region of Lwow, largest city in Southeastern Poland, which lies slightly more than 100 miles northeast of the Polish-Rumanian frontier.

  The caravan of diplomats that arrived at this town just across the Polish border included the United States Ambassador to Poland, Anthony J. D. Biddle; Mrs. Biddle, their daughter, Peggy Thompson Schultz, and Mrs. Biddle’s secretary, Mary McKenzie. It was their fourth move since leaving bomb-wrecked Warsaw.

  Others in the party of sixty that reached here at 6 P.M. included Mme. Josef Beck, wife of the Polish Foreign Minister, and their three children, and diplomatic representatives of Brazil, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, Japan, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

  Cernauti, already over-crowded, offered few accommodations and most of the diplomatic refugees arranged to leave quickly for Bucharest. Mme. Beck is on her way to Paris.

  The diplomats said they had left Zaleszcyki, an emergency Polish Government headquarters, because of threatened raids by German planes. They reported planes flew over the town yesterday and there were numerous alarms, but no bombs were dropped.

  The diplomats reported that refugee conditions in the vicinity of Zaleszcyki, a village on the Polish-Rumanian border, were becoming desperate, with indications of a possible famine among those fleeing before the Nazi war machine.

  Members of the diplomatic group said Germany apparently now was determined to cut off Poland from Rumania, regardless of the price to be paid for a swift advance. A touch of the rainy season already appeared to spur the new offensive and complete it before operations were bogged in mud.