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

by The New York Times

  As 8 o’clock approached there had been no movement for so long that spectators were beginning to get impatient. They thought that the Graf Spee would remain at anchor until after dark. They turned their attention to the brilliant sunset behind the gray warship. The stillness of twilight settled down.

  Suddenly at 7:55 P. M. that stillness was shattered by a tremendous, deep, dull explosion. It could be heard all over Montevideo. A great cloud of gray smoke burst out of the ship and hid it.

  Great sheets of brilliant flames then shot toward the sky and settled down to their task of destroying what had been one of Germany’s proudest naval units.

  JANUARY 5, 1940

  BRITISH RESTAURANTS WILL SERVE FREELY

  Rations Coupons Won’t Be Needed For Ham, Butter, Tea Orders

  Special Cable to The New York Times.

  LONDON, Jan. 4—People who have to buy meals away from home will be able to go into a restaurant, canteen, coffee stall or club and order ham, bacon, bread and butter and tea without parting with any ration coupons, it became known here yesterday. It had been announced earlier that half a coupon would have to be surrendered for each meal with bacon or ham.

  The butter supply to caterers will be calculated on the basis of one-sixth of an ounce with each meal served. The best use of the allowance will be left to the judgment of caterers, and it is not proposed that they shall be required to divide it equally over each meal.

  Two-sevenths of an ounce of sugar will be allotted to restaurants for each customer. Half the allowance is intended for cooking requirements and for service at table for sweetening purposes, and the other half for each cup of hot beverage, such as tea, coffee or cocoa.

  One caterer thought that one-seventh of an ounce for tea would mean two lumps of sugar for a man who wanted a cup of tea, with perhaps three lumps for a man ordering a pot.

  During the World War no butter was allowed for afternoon light tea or cups of hot beverage.

  For home consumption the weekly ration of uncooked bacon or ham will be four ounces per head.

  JANUARY 5, 1940

  JEWS LAY TORTURE TO NAZIS IN POLAND

  PUBLIC FLOGGING ALLEGED

  Special Cable to The New York Times.

  LONDON, Jan. 4—Tales of Jews shot and tortured in Poland, as well as reports of fines amounting to impoverishment imposed by Nazis on Jews in sections of that country occupied by Germany, are reaching Jewish organizations here.

  Some of these stories, which reach London through Paris, where Jewish relief headquarters for Poland are established, and through Baltic countries, repeat the familiar pattern of Nazi action when Chancellor Hitler occupied Austria and Czecho-Slovakia. As recounted by the Jewish organizations, some of these stories follow.

  In the neighborhood of Lodz, according to one eyewitness, Jews are being treated with unusual harshness. At Zgierz, where there was a wealthy Jewish community, all Jewish textile works and stores have been confiscated and turned over to Nazis. It is said one Jew named Zissman was buried alive for resisting the Nazis and another named Kalynski shot for resisting forced labor.

  Polish Jews being marched through a street in Warsaw by Gestapo troops in 1940.

  No Jews are allowed on the streets before 10 A. M. and a system of forced labor has been instituted. While at work the Jews are forced to sing their songs and shout “Jews are the cause of the present war.” Both synagogues in the town were burned, it is said.

  Jewish sources cite excerpts from reports by the German police in Lodz itself—excerpts, Jews say, that have been printed in the Schlesische Zeitung of Breslau. The police are quoted as saying there have been wholesale executions in Lodz and at least 100 Jews shot. The German police, it is added, reported that 1,000 Jews surrounded a synagogue when the police wanted to search it and hundreds were killed when the police opened fire. The synagogue was burned.

  WHIPPED IN PUBLIC

  In Sieradz, according to these reports, ten Jews, one a woman, were publicly whipped for not saluting storm troopers. In Kolo several Jews, including a rabbi and some of his students, were reported whipped for stealing. At Radom, the police are said to have reported that 3,600 Jews are awaiting trial for hiding arms.

  According to Nazi police reports cited by Jews in London, an officer’s job is simplified by the fact that many Jews commit suicide as soon as the police come to search their homes. There have been many killings because Jews resist with clubs and axes, the police are said to have reported.

  According to Jewish reports that do not cite any German sources as authority, Chelm, second city in the province of Lublin, where there were estimated to be 25,000 Jews, has been the scene of repeated outbreaks. All Jews between the ages of 18 and 55 must register with the government and there have been many arrests, it is said here. Two Jewish physicians have been shot, according to information here.

  In the Lublin area, according to these same circles, conditions are equally bad. The Germans are said to have announced their intention of making this area a ghetto. According to estimates here, 30,000 Jews have been added to the 35,000 who were there originally. On all these people a collective fine of 620,000 zlotys in gold has been levied as a penalty for the maintenance of a secret wireless station, it is said.

  All Jews in the area must wear a large six-pointed star and none is allowed to practice a profession or engage in trade. Synagogues are being used to house incoming Jews and the Jewish theological seminary is said to have been turned into a Storm Trooper barracks and made a center for anti-Semitism. Sixty per cent of the young Jews have fled from Lublin, London hears, and all Jews have been forced into the Jewish quarter.

  400,000 NAZI FAMILIES FOR POLAND

  BERLIN, Jan. 4 (UP)—The Reich Bureau for Settlement announced today that plans were being completed for the settlement of 400,000 German families from the old Reich in conquered Polish territories annexed by Germany.

  These re-settlements will be in addition to 50,000 Germans re-settled from the Baltic States and 100,000 from the Russian share of Eastern Poland, who already are being “repatriated.”

  JANUARY 7, 1940

  WHY THE RUSSIAN ARMY HAS BOGGED IN FINLAND

  By HAROLD DENNY

  Wireless to The New York Times.

  HELSINKI, Finland, Jan. 6—It is now a little more than a month since Soviet Russia invaded Finland and this model capital saw Soviet planes fly overhead and drop bombs on its streets and houses. Undoubtedly Joseph Stalin’s design was for a “Blitzkrieg,” in Russian “molnyenosnaya voina.” It has not turned out to be one. In more than a month of fighting, in which Stalin has sacrificed many thousands of Russians, the Red Colossus, with a population of 180,000,000 persons and an area of one-sixth the land area of the globe, has only damaged the borders of this small country of fewer than 4,000,000.

  The Russians have advanced a few miles on the Karelian isthmus and they are held back below Viipuri (Viborg). Fighting is going on every day on the isthmian front, but to the best of our knowledge here there has only been a loss of men and equipment for the Russians. They have made incursions into the Far North, but these have brought no important military advantage and their offensive there seems to have been frozen up by the intense cold. On the “waist of Finland,” they have just taken one of the severest beatings in history and hardly can attack there seriously again for some time. Further south, but north of Lake Ladoga, the Finns have carried the war into Soviet territory.

  FINISH FIGHTERS TIRED

  The Russians are doing badly in comparison with what might have been expected—and the Finns are doing astoundingly well. But though one finds an air of supreme confidence in all ranks of the Finnish Army, the country is still in deadly danger.

  Front-line Finnish officers and men consider that on the basis of performance thus far a Finn is worth ten Russians and they estimate, probably with exaggeration, that casualties have been in the ratio of twenty Russians to one Finn. But if it is a heroic army which still faces the Soviet troops across
the frozen wastes in these Arctic and sub-Arctic regions, it is also a tired army. Most of all, the Finns need men for relief.

  The bulk of the Finnish troops have been in the line for a month. There are units which have been on active service for thirty days without relief—under great hardship and with little sleep. Yet the Finnish leaders simply cannot let this front-line personnel go back to civilized comfort for a rest; its numbers are too few. They are providing what rest they can by transferring men who have had an overshare of hard fighting to quieter sectors and replacing them with others whose task has been less heavy. But front-line troops need more than that.

  Volunteers are now arriving from Sweden. How many we are not told. There will be a place for all who can be sent.

  IN NEED OF MUNITIONS

  The Finns also need more munitions of every kind, especially airplanes (and they must have pilots also) and artillery. After a month of war, they are holding out at their fronts with remarkable energy and tenacity, but they also are hoping that help will reach them before they are overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

  Now, what about the Russians? Why is it that the Red Army, with its million and half of regulars, its many millions of reserves and its great quantities of equipment, has now stalled against a country which is only a patch alongside the Soviet map?

  Like several others here now who have had trips to the Finnish-Russian front, I have seen many parades in Moscow, and for the past five or six years the thrilling part of them has been the military spectacle. There were soldiers parading while fleets of bombing planes flew over them, and hundreds of tanks and other war machines rolling past. The troops that marched—we realized they were the pick of the Soviet Union, young men of the Communist party—were outstandingly smart. The tanks, ranging from whippets to gigantic land-battleships, looked unbeatable. The planes covered the whole city.

  It never occurred to us that Russia would go to war with Finland or any other small Baltic country; yet it has, and thus far in every essential element it has met defeat.

  What are the reasons for this defeat? One, of course, is the Finns’ unexpected power of resistance. Another is the fantastically chaotic distribution system of the Soviet regime. Another is the childish Soviet reverence for anything mechanical. Another is the devastating effect of the 1937 purge in the Red Army and of the whole Soviet structure—in other words, a present shortage of brains.

  TANKS HALTED

  As for the tanks, they appeared so invincible in the Moscow Red Square and the Russians themselves thought they were. Yet they now seem thoroughly vulnerable to any enemy who is willing to stand his ground. The Finnish fronts are littered with these modern juggernauts, and to open the door of one of them is to encounter grinning skeletons of the crew burned to death.

  There can be little doubt that Stalin much underrated the Finns when he ordered the march into their country. And so the first troops the Finns encountered were Russian colonial soldiers, the men of Central Asia. Better troops have since been put in—such poor devils as those who were massacred on the ice of Lake Kyanta just before the New Year.

  I have talked to some of these better troops, prisoners of the Finns on the isthmus front. They presented a convincing picture of an unwilling advance against an enemy who they had been told would torture them if they were captured; of action under the threats of officers who could shoot them if they failed to advance.

  QUESTION OF BREAKDOWN

  These men are not like the confident army we saw in Moscow. Their morale is so bad—even if one admits that they are only the poorest troops the Soviets had—and the letters found in their possession composed such a picture of discontent that one wonders how Stalin can put this adventure through without a breakdown.

  No one, however, who has known Russia in the past believes it is likely to break down completely, for the simple reason that it has been in a chronic state of breakdown for years and yet nothing has happened. The Finns know this better than any people in the world outside Russia.

  JANUARY 14, 1940

  CHAMBERLAIN’S GRIP FIRM AFTER SHAKE-UP

  Remains in Full Command in Britain With No Formidable Rival in Sight—Social Upheaval Is Foreseen

  By HAROLD CALLENDER

  Wireless to The New York Times.

  LONDON, Jan. 13—Soon after dismissing Leslie Hore-Belisha as War Secretary, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in a speech this week hinted that he intended to remain the head of the government until the war ended.

  The Cabinet change resulting from a clash of personalities within the government and the army revealed the persistence of the criticism that is one aspect of the freedom for which the British believe they are fighting.

  The Prime Minister’s grim determination and confidence in his staying power were characteristic of his country.

  The future of the government depends above all upon the progress of the war. If the struggle is prolonged there doubtless will be further shifts, even major crises, but they will be accompanied by discussion and debate.

  This procedure is in accordance with a kind of traditional suspicion that no government can run the country properly unless it is constantly goaded, nagged and advised by the Opposition in Parliament and critics outside—a suspicion that forms the foundation of democracy as the British understand it.

  WIDE FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

  The freedom of expression in Britain after four months of war is amazing when compared with that in France today or in the United States in 1917–18. Recently published articles have blamed the Chamberlain appeasement policy for the outbreak of the war, while many letters to the newspapers have dwelt more upon Britain’s than upon Germany’s faults.

  In Left Wing publications there has even been considerable debate as to whether this war merits public support.

  There has just appeared under the imprint of 1940 a new edition of Lord Ponsonby’s book, “Falsehood in Wartime,” which is a severe indictment of the veracity of British propaganda in the last war and inferentially of the veracity of all official propaganda.

  Meanwhile, from Conservative quarters have come attacks on bureaucracy and suggestions that the government has not yet faced important strategic or economic problems.

  If Mr. Hore-Belisha demands it, Mr. Chamberlain will be obliged to explain to the House of Commons why he dismissed a Minister who was energetic but a bit too showy and too ambitious to suit the army and some of his colleagues.

  PREMIER’S RESPONSIBILITY

  Whether or not he explains the lack of harmony between Mr. Hore Belisha and Viscount Gort, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, and General Sir Edmund Ironside, chief of the Imperial General Staff, the Prime Minister must assume the responsibility for the dropping of Mr. Hore-Belisha. This he feels competent to do. He has never run a war before, but feels confident of his ability in directing this one.

  From determination to see it through Mr. Chamberlain seems to have gained a kind of rejuvenation. His voice is stronger and has a greater ring of self-assurance than formerly. He has not the slightest doubt about the rightness of the British cause or about Britain’s ability to win.

  His speeches are not very eloquent or inspiring and not so deftly phrased as Winston Churchill’s and they reveal more than a trace of complacency.

  But Mr. Chamberlain is in full command without a formidable rival as yet and enjoys greater support in the country than when he was striving for peace by Munich methods. The man who made so many concessions for appeasement has got the bit in his teeth and is now as determined to defeat Adolf Hitler as he once was to conciliate him.

  Mr. Chamberlain’s strength lies in the fact that in both these policies he has represented major currents of British opinion. Some would have had a showdown earlier. Some Conservatives now favor a negotiated peace with Herr Hitler. There has been and will be much criticism of Mr. Chamberlain, as there would be of any one in his place. But he seems to be firmly established in the saddle for the present.

  JANUA
RY 19, 1940

  CHINESE REPORTED DRIVING FOR CANTON

  One Force Said to Be Only 10 Miles North of City

  HONG KONG, Jan. 19 (AP)—Chinese today reported fresh successes on the Kwangtung front in South China, where their accounts pictured Chinese forces driving spearheads from different directions toward Canton.

  They said their troops had recaptured a station on the Canton-Hankow Railway, thirty-three miles north of Canton, and caused 500 Japanese casualties, while another force was heading toward Kongtsun, only ten miles north of Canton.

  Japanese were silent on the Kwangtung situation, but said their soldiers were making rapid progress in a fresh offensive in the Tapieh Mountains of North Hupeh, Central Chinese province.

  They reported Kaocheng, the principal Chinese stronghold in the region, had been captured and Chinese forces put to flight with Japanese in close pursuit.

  PEIPING, Jan. 18 (AP)—A settlement was reported today to have ended an outbreak of fighting between the regular Chinese forces of General Yen Hsi-shan and his new communist-influenced volunteers. Frequent friction between these elements of the army in Southern Shansi Province had been reported, but foreign military advices discounted reports of a civil war or any widespread fighting.

  JANUARY 25, 1940

  Editorial

  JAPAN’S UNCHANGING AIMS

  Embarrassed silence has been Tokyo’s only reaction to the “peace terms” reported to have been signed by Wang Ching-wei, Japan’s puppet leader in China. Mr. Wang’s pro-Japanese friends in Shanghai explain that a “gentleman’s agreement” was signed on the Japanese side by “unofficial” representatives of the Japanese Government, “with the approval of the Japanese Army.” Since no denial has come from the civilian leaders in Tokyo, it will be instructive for Americans to see what sort of “terms” Japan’s agents in China say they have signed.