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

by The New York Times

  It was emphasized there were no agreements about furnishing material or anything else, nor any threats or promises.

  The Italian Ambassador, Augusto Rosso, left in the morning for Moscow and Ivan Gorelkin, Soviet Ambassador, is coming back to Rome, thus ending a long period without such representation. The Italians were anxious to restore full diplomatic relations in this critical period, according to this writer’s informant, and the Russians agreed, but without compromising themselves.

  It thus appears that Premier Mussolini has embarked on this dangerous venture without really knowing what Soviet Russia will do in the long run.

  President Roosevelt’s speech clearly has come too late. There was nothing that the United States could do to halt this conflict, the Italians say. Whatever brake Mr. Roosevelt may have exercised was overcome by the momentum of the whole Fascist policy. Once it was set in motion, nothing could stop it.

  The Italians do not believe that the United States can affect the issue, whatever it does. They are sure American help cannot assume large proportions for many weeks, before which they believe the war will be over.

  Ever since the beginning of the war Signor Mussolini had said that when he came out on the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia the people of Italy would be speaking. From that moment it was known that when he spoke Italy would already be at war. So when the word finally went around to gather in the Piazza Venezia and all the squares of Italian cities and towns, no one could doubt what the announcement would be.

  The first resolute words that were spoken ended the long and nerve-wracking period of suspense, with its dramatic ups and downs, its days of hope and pessimism, but its always rising tension.

  Long ago your correspondent was able to say that Italy would be at war before June 20, probably between June 10 and 20. Sometimes it seemed that it was coming sooner, but never was there any hope that Italy would stay out of the war indefinitely.

  Immediately after the great gathering in the Piazza Venezia, the crowd surged up the Quirinal Hill to the palace, where the King awaited them, wearing his field uniform. As he stood on the balcony and saluted, the crowd shouted, “Savoia!” again and again.

  Already the Premier had spoken of Victor Emmanuel as “His Majesty the King and Emperor, who has always interpreted the soul of his Fatherland.” With those words ended any doubts that might have been held about the King’s feelings or actions. He has never thwarted any of the plans or desires of Signor Mussolini.

  JUNE 15, 1940

  REICH TANKS CLANK IN CHAMPS-ELYSEES

  Berlin Recounts Parade into Paris—Third of Citizens Reported Remaining

  By the United Press.

  BERLIN, June 14—German tanks today clanked across the Seine bridges, past the Arc de Triomphe and down the tree-lined Champs-Elysées into the heart of Paris at the head of the first cavalcade of invaders to enter the French capital in nearly seventy years.

  Flanked by armored cars, the dust-stained tanks swung triumphantly into Paris from the northwest at the head of Nazi units occupying the “City of Light,” German accounts of the event said.

  It was the ninth recorded invasion of Paris and the first since Bismarck’s legions trod the broad boulevards in 1871. The jubilant German press proclaimed the fall of Paris to be the “symbol of decision” in Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s Western offensive.

  [Berlin Nazis expected Adolf Hitler to visit Paris June 21, the twenty-first anniversary of Germany’s acceptance of the Treaty of Versailles, an Associated Press dispatch said.]

  ENTRY FROM NORTHWEST

  The advance into Paris, through the suburbs of Argenteuil and Neuilly and into the aristocratic western part of the city began early in the morning, the Germans said. It was exactly five weeks after the massive western offensive began with the German drive into the Netherlands and Belgium.

  The tanks rumbled between thin lines of tense and silent Parisians, the Germans said. Reports from the French capital estimated that probably a third of the city’s normal population of 2,800,000 had remained in Paris.

  Behind the tanks rolled anti-tank units, still dusty and laden with evidence of the furious fighting in which they had taken part to the north.

  As the long shadows of the early morning retreated, more and more Nazi contingents streamed into the capital, evacuated by French Armies hoping to save their beloved Paris from the fate of Warsaw.

  Motorized infantry, rising in steel-shielded trucks mounting machine guns to command the broad streets, converged from the Seine bridges to the Place de l’Etoile.

  In that hub from which radiate eleven streets stands the Arc de Triomphe and its tomb of the Unknown World War Soldier, where flickers the Eternal Flame.

  German reports indicated that the parade through Paris swung around the Arc de Triomphe to move down the Champs-Elysées. Speculation had suggested that the honor of being the first to march beneath that historic arch might be reserved for Germany’s self-styled first soldier, Adolf Hitler.

  The great arch, started in the course of the Napoleonic triumphs, is a 160-foot pile of stones, each bearing the name of a victory or a hero in French military history.

  Nazi officers at the head of the procession set their course for the headquarters of French officials still in the city, it was said, and formally took it over.

  The capital was like a city of the dead—shops closed, iron shutters in windows, those people who remained mourning in their homes and wondering what was coming.

  Police and civil guards patrolled the streets slowly, almost alone. They had handed in their rifles and pistols. They were now a completely civilian force.

  The German parade on the Champs-Elysées, June 1940.

  JUNE 16, 1940

  Editorial

  HITLER’S WAY AND OURS

  Why is Hitler winning such stupendous successes? Is there some black magic, some secret weapon or infallible prescription that enables this World War corporal to win Napoleonic triumphs? There are public men in this country, business men and ordinary men and women, who are sure they know the answer. They believe that Hitler is “competent” because he dispenses with faddists and theorists, because he is not shackled by red tape, because he knows what he wants and gets it. They are sure that this man “has something’” which the democracies lack and need and without which they will die.

  But Hitler has no magic wand. The reasons for his colossal military conquests have been plain for years, and should have been plain long ago to the countries that have now been overwhelmed. For seven years, as Mr. Otto Tolischus writes in today’s Magazine, Hitler has been mobilizing all the moral, military and economic resources of Germany “for the sole purpose of waging war with all means.” For this terrible purpose he has destroyed Germany’s economy, revolutionized Germany’s moral concepts, subsidized his informers and used unwitting dupes in every country, and has infected the youth of Germany with a fanaticism that has now stormed the barricades of the bravest democracy on the European Continent.

  It is no indictment of democracy to contrast Hitler’s “total” mobilization of Germany with the slow halting, halfhearted mobilization of the democratic countries. The be-all and end all of democracy is not waging war. Free men will never share General Ludendorff’s belief that “war is the highest expression of the racial life.” The goal of democratic peoples has been life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, in peace and freedom. Nor does it prove the failure of democracy to say that Hitler has been able to dispense with democracy’s cumbersome procedure. The method of cooperation, which is the essence of true democracy, is more difficult than the giving of a dictatorial order. The crack of a Hitler whip could never have solved labor problems or achieved social security for millions as well as the British and French and Scandinavian democracies did in the past generation, nor could it ever have built a mighty republic out of a continental wilderness in the New World.

  But the rights of democracy also demand the acceptance of democratic responsibilities. The real indictme
nt of democracy, now being written in smoke and flame and destruction across half of Europe is that free peoples in our time cared too little for their privileges, too little for their democratic duties. The leaders thrown up by Britain and France in recent years did not lead but lulled and soothed. They saw the German threat rising, but shrank from facing it. They heard good advice, but shut their ears. They knew how to win elections, but not how to strengthen and safeguard their democratic birthright. And because these inadequate leaders were freely elected and kept in power by the votes of free men and women, the peoples of the Western democracies cannot be acquitted of blame. They, too, preferred to keep their comforts and shrink from inconvenient truths. They were not ready until too late to make sacrifices for keeping their way of life—sacrifices that would have meant universal training in England, or more efficient industrial production in France. If they knew their responsibilities, they chose to evade them, as we in the United States evaded ours when we washed our hands of Europe in 1920, and built tariff walls around ourselves in 1922 and 1930, and decided that courage and idealism in international affairs were counterfeit coin.

  Democracy is now faced with frightful tests for which it never was intended. If it is to live it must marshal its strength with the same determination that its enemies have shown. The luxuries of indecision, of wishful thinking, of partisanship and petty bickering, have become deadly perils to the few free nations that still survive. This is no time for disbelieving in democracy but for proving a passionate faith in it by sacrifice, by clear vision and courage.

  JUNE 19, 1940

  Text of Prime Minister Churchill’s Address Before House Of Commons

  By The Associated Press.

  LONDON, June 18—Following is the text of Prime Minister Churchill’s war report today to the House of Commons:

  WILL RESTORE FREEDOM TO ALL

  If we are now called upon to endure what they have suffered, we shall emulate their courage, and if final victory rewards our toils they shall share the gain—aye, freedom shall be restored to all. We abate nothing of our just demands. Czechs, Poles, Norwegians, Dutch and Belgians, who have joined their causes with our own, all shall be restored.

  What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin. On this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization.

  Upon it depends our own British life and the long continuity of our institutions and our empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned upon us. Hitler knows he will have to break us in this island or lose the war.

  If we can stand up to him all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad sunlit uplands; but if we fail, the whole world, including the United States and all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister and perhaps more prolonged by the lights of a perverted science.

  Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that if the British Commonwealth and Empire last for a thousand years, men will still say “This was their finest hour.”

  JUNE 22, 1940

  EUROPE

  Hitler at Compiègne Opens Third Act of War Drama

  By ANNE O’HARE McCORMICK

  On such a day as yesterday, sunlit and still, many a traveler has driven through the green aisles of the forest of Compiègne to see the wagon restaurant where the armistice of the first World War was signed. Compiègne is a very formal forest; unlike the deep woods of Germany, always a little wild and mysterious, the old trees stand in straight, neat rows. Planted long ago, they remind you that order is as innate in the Gallic mind as it is extraneous to the Teutonic, so that German history is a chronicle of forced marches and follow-the-leader episodes—of order invariably imposed from on top or from without.

  Hitler could not resist this theatrical curtain for the second act of the Promethean drama he set in motion. He could not resist appearing in person to hand the terms of capitulation to the French delegates on the spot where the Germans made their surrender twenty-one years ago. He could not resist making the kind of curtain speech he thinks will read well in the history books. Hitler is increasingly conscious of his place in history; even before the heady victory over France and the Lowlands, he had begun to talk as if his mission was no longer merely to smash Versailles and extend German power, but to correct in one lifetime the mistakes of history. All the mistakes; he pants to impose order everywhere.

  AT THE PEAK OF HIS POWER

  Yesterday he was deeper in France than he had ever been before, and he could not have felt at home. The staid, level beauty of Compiègne is as different as possible from the romantic, savage scenery of his Magic Mountain. The defeated Frenchmen were too much at home. It must have rent their hearts to look out the car window at the bust of Foch and the sylvan allées where Louis Quatorze once hunted. But Hitler, too, was ill at ease; if the little Austrian inside the World Conqueror has any more qualms—and he can’t have overcome all the agonies of doubt that unnerved him before every decision—he must have wondered if force, a force springing out of disorder and a primitive impulse to destroy, could long overcome the measured, indigenous, centuries-deep order of France.

  Hitler at Compiègne, Hitler over France, must have been as incredible to Hitler as to the rest of the world. He has gone a long way since he stood on the balcony at Linz, scene of his first territorial conquest. He has gone a long way since he challenged France by a tentative expedition of ill-equipped troops into the Rhineland.

  Far less clear at the moment is the answer to the questions that will follow the French surrender. We face a conflict of sympathy and of conscience that will hurt and divide us, and may have considerable influence on our attitude toward the war. The use of France as a weapon against England, the use of the blockade against France—here is an element of confusion and division that will make the third phase of the struggle the most terrible test of all.

  JUNE 25, 1940

  HALT AT 12:35 A.M.

  Truce Goes into Effect Six Hours After Rome Notifies Hitler

  DEMANDS NOT TOLD

  By HERBERT L. MATTHEWS

  By Telephone to The New York Times.

  ROME, June 25—The Italo-French armistice was signed last evening at 7:15, Rome time. Twenty minutes later Foreign Minister Count Ciano, on behalf of the Italian Government, notified the Reich. Thus fighting ceased at 12:35 this morning, French time [7:35 P.M. yesterday in New York.]

  [Italian troops began to march into the Savoy and Nice sectors of France this morning, according to The United Press. In London an authoritative source said the terms of the French-Italian armistice included occupation of the province of Savoy; withdrawal of all French troops from the Alpine passes; occupation of the Riviera, including Nice; occupation of Corsica; withdrawal of the French from Tunisia; surrender on the Tuniaisn-Libyan frontier; occupation of Jibuti, French Somaliland, and the railroad running from there to Addis Ababa, and extension to Italy of the same economic and financial agreements made with Germany.]

  It was with the knowledge that for four days the French Army had been engaged in battle with the Italians in the Alps that the French plenipotentiaries studied the Italian terms, communicated with their government at Bordeaux and argued all afternoon with the Italian delegates. Finally they yielded and General Charles Huntziger put his signature to the armistice, which was signed for Italy by Marshal Pietro Badoglio, Chief of the General Staff.

  The ceremony took place in the Villa Incisa, the same house in which the armistice terms were given to the French delegates Sunday.

  The plenipotentiaries are scheduled to leave at 10 o’clock this morning on the same plane that brought them from Munich.

  FRENCH OBJECTIONS INDICATED

  Although nothing has been given out about the Italian terms, it has been obvious today that they contained some details to which the French were objecting. After all, it is a grave responsibility for the plenipotentiaries to keep thei
r country at war and see more Frenchmen killed, more territory devastated and occupied while they are discussing a truce. One must suppose that only very grave demands could have caused hesitation.

  Sunday evening it could hardly have taken General Mario Roatta, army corps commander, more than ten minutes or so to read the Italian terms to the French plenipotentiaries. That seemed to show the Italian demands were not as extensive or complicated as the German. It was therefore believed the armistice with Italy would be largely a formality. Yesterday’s events showed that such an interpretation was incorrect.

  That became obvious as the hours passed and, instead of the plenipotentiaries leaving the Villa Incisa, high officers in small black Fiat automobiles drove in and out, evidently carrying messages back to Premier Mussolini in the Palazzo Venezia. Even after signing, the plenipotentiaries continued their discussions. An hour and a quarter later they had not left the villa.

  QUIETEST SPOT TO BE FOUND

  The Villa Incisa is as quiet and secluded as any spot could be only twelve miles from Rome. Like the Villa Manzoni, where the French delegates spent most of their time and from which they telephoned Bordeaux, it is on the Via Cassia, which goes to Viterbo.

  The two correspondents of The New York Times were alone at the gate of the Villa Incisa when the French delegates arrived at 3:42 P.M. The Italian delegation had already been there for twenty minutes. A few carabinieri were standing about, but otherwise there was no sign to show that history was being made a few hundred yards up the side road. There were eight cars in the French group, escorted by two motorcycle carabinieri in front and in the rear.