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

by The New York Times

  The animation of the city this week is partly due to the crowds of visitors who have crossed the Channel to spend the Easter holidays with British officers and men on leave from the front. The mingling of uniforms, the mixture of languages, the movement in the streets, the throngs in the cafes and theatres, create an atmosphere of gayety and vivacity belying the sandbags, the shuttered shops, the “abris” against air raids, the grim provisions on every side for the “defense passive.”

  They assure France that she is not alone. The fraternization of the French and British betokens an interdependence never felt in the last war. Even the gnarled old lady renting chairs in the Bois knows that it takes the armies and air fleets of both countries to match the German. “We must hang together or separately,” she says, defining Allied policy in a phrase she thinks she has invented.

  No war enthusiasms can be worked up among either people, but the Germans cannot really believe the worst will happen and the French think it can. They face open-eyed the horrors that may lie before them, profoundly pessimistic of the future yet determined to maintain a brave front and enjoy to the last minute the small pleasures of normal life—white bread, conversation, budding trees, a café on the terrasse in the first sunshine. France rises magnificently to emergencies, and this applies particularly to the women and the hard-eyed, tight-fisted peasants, above all to the peasants plowing this year the fields they have already seen devastated. “Will they come this way again?” they ask casually.

  Berlin is strangely silent. Unter den Linden is a deserted thoroughfare compared to the Champs Elysées. Few restrictions on the use of petrol are imposed in France. Private automobiles and taxis dash around corners in almost the usual number and confusion.

  In Berlin motor traffic is reduced to the minimum. Except for the buses burning synthetic oil, and laden trucks linked together in twos and threes to save fuel, the streets are empty. The people hurrying along the sidewalks seldom speak. They are all so preoccupied that even in company they seem to be walking alone. At night the silence deepens. To drive in the main streets in the black-out is like driving through a dark country lane. The buildings are completely blotted out and no sound issues from the invisible doors and windows. Groping along the tunnel-like streets you almost never hear a voice. Other gropers are shadows and footsteps.

  Even the big shops, crowded though they are with people hunting for something to buy, are very quiet. Departments offering millinery, jewelry, novelties, silk and luxury goods are well stocked; others are sold out. Wearing apparel is marked with the price in marks and “points” and customers are more interested in the number of points the article will subtract from their hundred-point ration cards than in its cost in money.

  The shop windows are filled with new goods in wide variety, but if you try to buy something so displayed you are told it is for “decoration.” In Germany it is the authorities who are putting up the front, and the window dressing explains the suspicion of some Germans that war stocks aren’t so plentiful as they are made to appear.

  In Paris there is plenty of noise and enough light at night to make circulation easy. Street lamps are only turned down, many doors are illuminated and curtains are carelessly drawn over the windows. There is no rationing system and apparently no shortage of goods. Food restrictions are applied by the simple device of prohibiting the sale of certain goods on certain days. There are three days without meat, other days without pastry, alcohol, sweets.

  Gourmets though they are, the French take their restrictions with a shrug while the Germans think and talk about eating all the time. The Hausfrau spends most of her time in the pursuit of food, and her scent is so sharp that if an enterprising merchant gets a supply of unrationed goods—nuts or oranges, for instance—a line a block long will form the instant he puts it on display.

  The Germans are shut up with themselves. They have no allies with whom to fraternize. The Axis never made for comradeship and the Soviet pact induces no influx of Russians in Berlin. Today Germany is almost as completely cut off from the world as Russia is. Behind the Westwall she has had her own way with most of the neighboring peoples, but in all his coups de force or diplomacy Hitler has not made a single friend for his country. Germany fights her war alone, and this isolation produces an atmosphere as different from that of France as the air in a sealed room from that of a breeze-swept field.

  MARCH 31, 1940

  JAPAN LOOKS TO WANG TO LAUNCH ‘NEW ORDER’

  By HUGH HYAS

  Wireless to The New York Times.

  TOKYO, March 30—Emerging from his fortress in the Shanghai French Concession, the only Chinese statesman who admits China has lost the war has assembled a government ready to sign a peace with Japan. One of the strongest political missions that ever left Japan will presently be in Nanking demonstrating to China and the world that Japan supports Wang Ching-wei.

  Those elaborate performances appear to many merely the curtain raiser for another puppet play. To Japan they are a carefully prepared and long-pondered move. If the great experiment succeeds it will justify the policy which has cost Japan much in lives and money and will force foreign powers to realize that the new East Asia has been born. If it fails—but to assume failure is akin to lèse-majesté in Japan.

  The outlook is wrapped in Yangtze mists but tell-tale signs to watch for are, first, the essential nature of the peace terms Japan is ready to sign with Wang when and if they are revealed; second, the amount of fighting power Chiang Kai-shek develops during the Summer. If the peace terms are such that sensible Chinese can feel that in losing the war they have not lost their country, peace will look very attractive to them. If next Summer Chiang Kai-shek can put fresh guerrilla armies all around Japan’s over-extended front, if next Fall the fourth Winter of the war looms with peace still at the rainbow’s end, Japan will have to review the situation.

  JAPAN’S AIM UNCHANGED

  In dividing China Japan does not admit that she is abandoning any of her objectives. Her aim still is to bring China as a unit into the “New Order” in East Asia under Japanese suzerainty. But three years of war have shown that China is too big to be swallowed at one mouthful and Japan bows to the logic of facts.

  Wang Ching-wei’s government offers what seems to Japan a solid basis for consolidating the gains already achieved. Chiang Kai-shek still has control of the larger part of the people and territory, but when material strengths are compared any semblance of equality is seen to be an illusion. The new Central Government dominates the entire coastline and its area includes 90 per cent of China’s railroads; this area produces 90 per cent of the customs revenue, 100 per cent of the sales revenue, 78 per cent of the cotton, 75 per cent of the horses and includes high percentages of China’s industrial, mineral and agricultural resources.

  Conclusion of peace in this area will, according to Japanese blue prints, lead to a sudden improvement in trade. International investments will again earn returns, loan payments will be resumed. Even if guerrilla warfare surges around the frontiers, peace and prosperity will gradually return within them. The democracies may refuse recognition but virtually all their contacts with China will be in the region Wang controls.

  The Japanese-sponsored Wang regime in China began in March, 1939.

  Chapter 3

  “THE SUN ALSO SINKS”

  April–June 1940

  After months of waiting, the Phony War ended in a sudden flurry of military action, not a major conflict between the three great powers facing each other, but yet another small war in Scandinavia, this time against Denmark and Norway, which began on April 9 with a sudden German invasion. A combined British-French force was sent to Norway to boost Norwegian resistance, but it was small and inexperienced. The Times covered the campaign in detail but rightly predicted by April 26 that the “Ill-Armed British Face Disaster.” As the world held its breath, the German armed forces finally launched an all-out attack in the West on May 10. For some days The Times treated the operation as yet another c
ampaign against small nations, in this case The Netherlands and Belgium. By May 11 there was even talk of Allied victory in the Low Countries.

  The same day The Times reported the fall of the Chamberlain government and the appointment of Churchill as the new prime minister. There followed a long report on a figure molded by his experience of war, a man later described by Times foreign correspondent Cyrus Sulzberger as “pudgy and not very large but somehow massive and indomitable,” the right man for the moment. There was little that Churchill could do to prevent the onrush of German armies, which managed to overcome the problems of topography on the narrow roads of the Ardennes forest by sending the new armored (Panzer) divisions through the wooded gap in the French defenses. By the time the British and French realized what was happening, it was almost too late.

  For reporters it was difficult to get a proper sense of what was happening, since official news reports were few and troop movements rapid and unpredictable. “Confusion Marks Battle of France” ran a headline on May 20, but the confusion soon gave way to a clearer picture. German forces raced toward the English Channel coast to encircle British forces and the left wing of the French army while the remainder of the French Army retreated south and west in disarray. Times reporter Harry Benny was with the British as they reached Dunkirk and watched the successful evacuation, “the one bright spot in the whole dark picture.” But the British flight doomed France, whose government abandoned Paris on June 10 and sued for an armistice seven days later. It was, wrote Times correspondent Drew Middleton some years later, “the most decisive campaign in six years of war.”

  The effect in America was immediate. On May 12 The Times carried the headline “Army Corps Moves 600 Miles in 6 Days,” but the story referred to troop movements in the United States, not Europe. A large U.S. army exercise tried to simulate what was happening in Europe using tanks and airplanes. The Times carried descriptions of German tactics and during June swung away from a long-term hostility to compulsory military service to throw its weight behind the idea of a proper “National Defense Program.” Secretary of State Cordell Hull warned his fellow Americans that in the long run isolation was futile. The country waited to watch the fate of Britain—“David against Goliath” as Hanson Baldwin, The Times’s military correspondent later put it.

  On June 4 Churchill gave one of his many famous speeches rallying his people to fight to the end. Six days later Italian dictator Benito Mussolini declared war on Britain and France, stabbing them in the back, as Roosevelt claimed. The future looked bleak. On June 30, in an editorial titled “The Sun Also Sinks,” The Times reflected that in the end for all great conquerors, from Alexander the Great to Napoleon, “the curtain has fallen on tragedy,” as it would do for Hitler, an optimism that was to be confirmed only after five long years of war.

  APRIL 2, 1940

  OSLO APPREHENSIVE ON PLANS OF ALLIES

  NAZI ACTION HELD SURE

  By OTTO D. TOLISCHUS

  OSLO, Norway, April 1—With grave apprehension but without any outward manifestation of alarm, Norway tonight awaited the speech of Prime Minister Chamberlain tomorrow, which is to elucidate the decisions of the Allied Supreme War Council regarding a strengthening of the Allied blockade and which, in doing so, may hold the issue of war or peace for Scandina via.

  The apprehension is based on announcements in part of the Allied press, backed by last Saturday’s speech by Winston Churchill, British First Lord of the Admiralty, which are interpreted to mean that the Allies are determined to stop German shipments of Swedish iron ore from Narvik through Norwegian territorial waters at all costs, if necessary by sending the Allied fleet into Norwegian waters and policing them against what the Allies denounce as German abuse of Norwegian neutrality.

  The German reaction to these intimations has left little doubt that Germany will take immediate counter-measures, and the recent flight of German planes over Norwegian territory is viewed here in the light of a German warning as to what might happen to the Scandinavian countries if they acquiesce in even a technical violation of their neutrality by Germany’s enemies.

  MOVE BY RUSSIA, TOO

  If Germany moves against Scandinavia, Russia is not expected here to stay behind. The report that Russia has demanded an immediate demobilization in Finland and that she is rushing the fortification of Baltic Port, her naval base in Estonia, even in advance of the scheduled time, is taken as confirmation of this view.

  As a result Norway finds herself in a fateful dilemma and prays that the bitter cup may pass her by once again. So delicate is the situation as regarded here that official quarters decline to make any comment until the Allied decisions are either announced or put into effect, and the Norwegian press is likewise abstaining from any expression of its opinion. Only the big headlines and the long reports from the Allied capitals testify to the importance of the issue, which is also the talk in all political and business circles, in clubs and at social gatherings.

  APRIL 3, 1940

  CHAMBERLAIN GAINS POPULAR STRENGTH

  Public Sees Him as Intent on Defeating Germany As He Was on Appeasing Her

  By ANNE O’HARE McCORMICK

  Special Cable to The New York Times.

  LONDON, April 2—On March 31, 1939, a year ago almost to the day, this correspondent sat in the gallery when Prime Minister Chamberlain rose slowly in the House of Commons and in one brief declaration abandoned the policy of appeasement and shattered historic British precedent by pledging Great Britain to go to Poland’s aid against aggression.

  That day battle really was joined between England and Germany and the breathless crowd that filled the House instinctively felt it. The atmosphere was tense with a mixture of elation and foreboding. The Prime Minister was pale, grave, visibly shaken as he deliberately reversed the course he had followed until that moment with single-minded tenacity.

  Today, after an eventful Easter recess, Mr. Chamberlain made another momentous declaration to the House. After the opening gun fired by First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill in his Saturday broadcast, the Prime Minister officially launched the Allied offensive on the economic front. No one who has been in England as the decision to prosecute the economic war to the utmost was translated into action can doubt that today’s declaration ushers in a struggle grimmer, more deadly, more full of hidden drama than the most spectacular military test. The British have chosen the line which they are sure they can fight hardest and hang on longest.

  A year ago Mr. Chamberlain risked war without really believing it was unavoidable. Today he announced a conflict that must involve all neutrals and engage all forces to go on to the end. The man with blinders, as he is called, is as intent on war as he was on peace.

  NEUTRAL DIPLOMATS ANXIOUS

  Yet the atmosphere of the House was less tense today than a year ago. Except for diplomats from neutral States, who listened anxiously, the galleries were almost empty. The Cabinet members sat crowded on their long bench, more young men among them than in recent years. The Prime Minister himself was never more vigorous, more confident than he appeared as he got up to declare a war to the finish. His voice rang as he read the declaration of Franco-British resolution to fight together to a common victory and provide for continuous cooperation in the establishment of peace, reconstruction and international order.

  REFLECTS AVERAGE MIND

  The outstanding fact of today’s session was its demonstration of the extent to which this rather commonplace figure, so lacking in showmanship or emotional appeal, dominates wartime England. If the British majority followed Mr. Chamberlain from appeasement to war and swing with him from the first uncertain phase of the conflict into its second phase, it must be because his movements accurately reflect the pace of the average British mind.

  Certainly his tenaciousness, whether for peace or war, is typical. Tenacity in the British people is the quality that pushes to the top in an emergency.

  “Old Neville’s so frightfully all these,” said a girl in the
gallery after today’s speech.

  Mr. Churchill did not appear on the government bench today. The First Lord of the Admiralty supplies all the brilliance in the wartime Cabinet and is now at the peak of popularity. There is less talk than there was a few months ago that he will displace the chief.

  Despite his age, despite strong currents of dissatisfaction with the methods of the government, despite doubts that an economic war on neutrals can be carried out as successfully as the policy makers seem to believe, public opinion apparently still prefers Mr. Chamberlain to direct the risky experiments of war to any of his possible successors.

  Wreckage from Luftwaffe air raids that secured the Nazi occupation of Narvik, Norway, in April 1940.

  APRIL 9, 1940

  NAZIS IN NORWAY

  NARVIK IS OCCUPIED

  Sweden Is Mobilizing

  Wireless to The New York Times.

  LONDON, April 9—The Paris correspondent of Reuters, British news agency, reported this morning that the Oslo radio had announced that German troops had debarked in Norwegian ports at 3 A.M.

  [Mrs. J. Borden Harriman, United States Minister to Norway, notified the State Department early this morning that she had been informed by the Foreign Minister that Norway considered herself at war with Germany.

  [Mrs. Harriman also reported that at 5:30 A.M. Norwegian shore batteries were still engaged in battle with four invading German warships that were trying to force entry into Oslo Fjord.]

  It was also announced that the Norwegian Government had left Oslo for Hamar, in Central Norway.

  Reuters further reported that the Germans had occupied the cities of Bergen and Trondheim.