The New York Times Book of World War II, 1939-1945
Page 37
“While some voters felt that such an attempt would not come for two years or more, nearly half of those who thought an invasion might come at all said they expected it ‘immediately after an English defeat’ or ‘within a year’s time.’
“The institute put the following question to a cross-section of men and women in each State: ‘Mr. Bullitt, our Ambassador to France, says that if Great Britain is defeated the Germans will invade the United States. Do you think they will?” The replies were:
Think they will……………42%
Think not…………………45
Undecided or no opinion…13
“Whether Hitler plans an attack on the United States or not, a popular belief that he is preparing such a blueprint would have a tremendous influence on United States policy.
“The survey also found that a majority of those who were able to define fifth column activities and who had definite opinions on the subject of fifth columns in the United States thought that such activities already were under way.
“The institute’s question asked: “Without mentioning names, do you think there are any fifth columnists in this community? The replies of those able to define fifth column activities were:
Yes……………48%
No………………26
Don’t Know……26
“‘We’re not getting excited about it out here,’ said a Midwestern voter, ‘but we’re not going to be caught napping.’”
SEPTEMBER 18, 1940
R.A.F. ‘POURS HELL’ ON ITALIAN FORCES
Fascisti Pay Heavy Price For Rapid Thrust into Egypt as British Fall Back
By JAMES ALDRIDGE North
American Newspaper Alliance
CAIRO, Egypt, Sept. 17—There will not be any crystallization of the front in Egypt for some time yet. As the Italians make bigger stitches with their needlepoint entry, British evacuation continues and Italy’s crack armored units are quickly filling the vacuum.
For the first time in the war, Italy boasts that her navy is preparing to take combined action with the land forces, and shelling of British coastal positions is expected in the next few days. But as sure as Italy tries this, there will be a naval reception awaiting her that she has not dreamed of.
Today the real strength of the Italian thrust was manifested for the first time. Royal Air Force planes flying over Bagbag caught Italian armored concentrations in groups and poured hell on them. Through gaps made in the barbed-wire border defenses the Italians are cascading heavy equipment indiscriminately. They have pulled the barbed wire of the first few miles clean away to give them quicker transport.
BRITISH PATROLS DEADLY
As the sun lifted itself over the horizon this morning, a red haze covered the biggest field of dead on Egyptian soil in half a century as light spilled itself on the Britons’ night’s work. All night long British harassing patrols darted across the stony desert in the bright moonlight. Because you can’t muffle the noise of motors, any Italian move in the still desert night is easily detected and the British, like picadors, struck Premier Mussolini’s bull many times.
Italy’s needle point so far is between Bagbag and Sidi Barrani, about fifty-five miles inside the Egyptian-Libyan border. Now the main British advance troops are trying to blunt the Italian point. Superior by far in numbers and equipment, the Italians have up to now had the advantage of thrusting along a road that it is not strategic for the British to defend. With mechanized, armored vehicles, it is fairly easy to extend this thread along the coast.
The most advanced Italian vehicles seem to be tiny, flat tanks equipped to fire only frontward and built entirely for quick advance work. In long columns, like a black stream of ants, in small groups, they come along the seacoast. Based on what I have seen, approximately one mixed division seems to be making the attack.
At least ten infantry battalions, each of about 1,000 men, are in the thrusting division. The Italians allow to this one corps of tanks, medium, light and heavy, as well as armored cars. In the first line of vehicles they have placed heavy 75 mm, anti-aircraft guns on the cars and pompom quick firers.
As the armored vehicles make feelers ahead, the artillery is coming up behind and being established at the foot of the hills just off the sea. In the rear the Italians are establishing camps in positions that have been chosen for “stability” rather than a Blitzkrieg.
SEPTEMBER 22, 1940
GERMANY STILL DELAYS INVASION OF ENGLAND
By CHARLES M. LINCOLN
“The people of England are very curious and ask, ‘Why in the world don’t you come?’ We are coming. People should not always be so curious. When the British say, ‘Why doesn’t he come?’ my answer is: Keep your shirts on. He is coming.” Thus Der Fuehrer, Sept. 4. Perhaps he is coming, but England is beginning to doubt that Hitler is a man of his word. To record that another week has gone without an attempt by Germany to invade England is becoming monotonous. The navy waits; a million five hundred thousand soldiers wait. They would welcome a straightout fight. They believed they would have come to grips long before this. They now think that perhaps there will be no fight; that Germany will delay or postpone the adventure. And they believe that, if it is further delayed or indefinitely postponed, the Royal Air Force will have been the explanation.
That Hitler has really abandoned his dearest dream cannot be safely assumed. He may make the attempt at any moment. He may never make it. What is going on right now between himself and the governmental and military groups which surround him we cannot know. But more and more, in Berlin, are heard the words “in the Spring,” “Britain is vulnerable elsewhere,” “the Mediterranean.” Yesterday a highly placed German said, in Berlin: “Let’s leave open for the moment whether the Britain of the future may be regarded as European.” What do these, and similar expressions, coming from the German capital, signify? They certainly do not resemble the bombast of a few months ago. Whether Germany is to defer, or put aside, her attempt to invade England remains unanswered. But it would seem, from what has thus far transpired, that if the attempt is to wait upon mastery of the Royal Air Force and the breaking of the British people it will have to wait a long, long time.
SEPTEMBER 27, 1940
MEETING IN BERLIN
By The United Press.
BERLIN, Sept. 27—Germany, Italy and Spain will sign a document of “historical importance” at noon in Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s new chancellory, it was stated early today by a reliable Nazi source.
The document’s contents were not disclosed, but it was hinted that it would have great bearing on the “final phase” of the war against Great Britain and future phases of the Axis’s “new European order.”
The document, it was said, will be executed by the German Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop; the Spanish Minister of Government, Ramon Serrano Suñer, and the Italian Foreign Minister, Count Ciano.
[An important Japanese-German agreement will be announced today in Tokyo and Berlin, according to a message telephoned to Shanghai by The Associated Press bureau in Tokyo. The censor interrupted the conversation, but the Tokyo bureau was able to answer “no” to the question whether the agreement meant that Japan was becoming a belligerent in the European war.]
The representatives of the three nations, in addition to discussing the future course of the war in Europe, also are expected to take up its spreading ramifications in the Far East.
Count Ciano, now en route to Berlin, will return to Rome on Saturday after attaching Italy’s signature to the new document, it was said.
SECRECY IS MAINTAINED
For days, since the arrival of Señor Serrano Suñer in Berlin and his talks with Chancellor Hitler and Herr von Ribbentrop, the Nazi press has been saying that Spain is “approaching the hour of great decision” with broad hints that Generalissimo Francisco Franco might be on the verge of entering the war.
Great secrecy was maintained as to the contents of the predicted “historical document,” but it was emphasized
that the tri-power talks in Berlin today would be of unquestioned far-reaching importance.
The newspaper Nachtausgabe jeered at London’s comment on the continuation of the Italo-German talks in Rome last week, saying “it always has been the method of British politics to proclaim impending great actions by the enemy and then claim a victory when they didn’t occur.”
The general attack “against the entire way of living forced upon the world by the British Empire” is occurring at the same time that the Axis statesmen are working out “a new European and African order,” the news paper continued.
“London knows very well that this new order does not involve a copy of British imperialistic methods of the past century, but a general plan reaching far into the future of European humanity in which we aim not only at the possession of some territories or gold and sources of supply, but at the securing of Germany’s and Italy’s positions of domination in a fully and newly ordered healthy Europe.”
SEPTEMBER 27, 1940
JAPAN UNDETERRED BY U.S. EMBARGO HELP TO REICH IS HINTED
By HUGH BYAS
Wireless to The New York Times.
TOKYO, Sept. 27—The embargo on scrap metal and the new loan to China are universally interpreted here as retaliation by the United States against Japan’s policy in Indo-China. The press apparently is convinced that Japan has arrived at a point where increasing United States opposition will be encountered.
“It seems inevitable,” says the newspaper Asahi, “that a collision should occur between Japan, determined to establish a sphere of self-sufficiency in East Asia, including the Southwest Pacific, and the United States, which is determined to meddle in affairs on the other side of a vast ocean by every means short of war.”
Asahi declares that Japan has made full preparations to deal with the situation that the scrap embargo creates. Even more drastic economic reprisals by the United States are expected, and the newspaper Yomiuri reports that the government of Prince Fumimaro Konoye is preparing for the cessation of Japan’s raw silk exports.
Arrangements are being made, according to the newspaper, to use all Japan’s silk at home. Japan’s sales of raw silk to the United States is this country’s largest source of foreign currency and their suspension would be a staggering blow to Japanese economy.
It is noteworthy that no newspaper suggests that Japan’s policy might be modified to reduce United States opposition. It is clearly understood that Premier Konoye’s government is completely committed to its present policies and that while it remains in power nothing can be expected but a continuation along present lines.
Yomiuri finds a sinister design in the fact that the United States loan is being allocated to China’s foreign exchange fund. This implies, according to the newspaper, that the United States is trying to control China economically, thus taking Britain’s place in China’s financial world and allowing United States capital to “eat China’s heart.” The newspaper adds that “this is a development that Japan cannot tolerate.”
HELP TO REICH THREATENED
TOKYO, Sept. 26 (AP)—Japan, convinced finally that the United States stands unalterably opposed to her “legitimate” expansion in the Orient, can be expected to give Germany active support if America enters the European war, a highly qualified informant said today.
The United States, he said, has followed a strong policy of opposition to Japan even at times when Britain offered conciliation and Japanese hopes for an agreement with Washington seem futile.
The informant, a Japanese with close government connections, indicated that Japan, facing the possibility of conflict to the south and east, was ready to mend her long-strained relations with Soviet Russia to keep her northern and western flanks free from menace. A Japanese-Russian non-aggression pact is not unlikely, he said.
“Japan is and always will be opposed to communism,” he went on, “but this does not mean that a working agreement cannot be effected.
“Japan has consistently sought only peaceful economic penetration in the Far East. Our sphere of action lies here and we prefer not to send troops and warships to various corners of the Far East to guarantee that penetration.
“The United States consistently has attempted to block Japan. Even during times when the British offered conciliation, American policy has increased in strength.”
The Japanese leaders appear to have manoeuvred themselves into a perilous situation that they cannot handle. Their position is made more difficult by the fact that they have propagandized the home public into believing the empire to be invincible and that nothing can check its expansion and ultimate success.
Chapter 5
“HITLER WILL DECIDE LAW OF NEW EUROPE”
October–December 1940
The last months of 1940 saw the war opening out from the British-German aerial struggle that ended the threat of invasion. Unwilling to play second fiddle to Hitler in Europe, Benito Mussolini determined to take advantage of Britain’s preoccupation with the bombing to launch his own campaigns in the Mediterranean theater. A large Italian army under Marshal Rodolfo Graziani crossed the Egyptian border and menaced the Suez Canal. Then on October 28 Italy launched an unprovoked invasion of Greece. The Times reported two days later that the Greeks had halted the offensive. By late November they had crossed into Albania and threatened the Italians with defeat. On November 14 British seaplanes attacked the Italian fleet at Taranto, inflicting serious damage. Then in December the British Commonwealth armies in Egypt launched a major operation code-named “Compass” against the Italians, routing them completely and netting 130,000 prisoners. In this distant theater there was at last the whiff of an Allied victory.
The reality for Britain was nevertheless the Blitz, which continued night after night through the last months of the year. Most of the time London was the target, but in November and December the German bombers turned against provincial towns as well. In October The Times ran an article on life in wartime Europe reflected in a number of letters, including one from an Englishwoman on the “Bombing of a Family,” who claimed that her household had become more optimistic about the war despite being bombed out twice. Raymond Daniell, in the Times’s London Bureau, found that people really did get used to the bombing. He too was bombed out of his apartment and transferred The Times operation to the Savoy Hotel. After some weeks running to shelters, he experienced a “bomb-fright cure” and from then on slept in his bed regardless of the bombing all around him. In his wartime memoir of the Blitz, he recalled that ruthless bombing was not “as bad in reality as it is in anticipation.” There was, he observed, no sign of panic among London’s civilian population. The Times reporting on the bombing faded away during October and November to be overtaken by other news, except for the devastating attack on Coventry on November 14, which captured the popular imagination in Britain and the United States as much as the bombing of the capital.
At the top of the domestic agenda was Roosevelt’s reelection on November 8 for an unprecedented third term, which The Times had not been enthusiastic about. Roosevelt was now pushing for large-scale American rearmament: “Vast Arms Output Seen for ’41” was the headline a month before the election. Ten days after Roosevelt’s return to the White House the first American draftees entered the Army and a few weeks later the redoubtable Admiral Ernest King was appointed commander of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, a sure sign that greater American involvement in the Atlantic submarine war was now more than just a possibility. On December 29 Roosevelt broadcast his famous fireside chat in which he committed the United States to become “the arsenal of democracy,” a prelude to the plan to introduce legislation for what was called “Lease-Lend,” a program to supply the countries fighting the Axis powers with the goods and materials they needed. If Americans had to be reminded of the enemy they faced, news arrived in December about the creation of the Warsaw Ghetto, where the Jewish population of the city was walled up in an area in which they were forced to work and live with little contact with the outside
world. The report was only a glimpse of the harsh reality now facing the large Jewish population living in the German-occupied area of Poland, most of whom would be killed over the following three years.
OCTOBER 4, 1940
BRITAIN TO REOPEN BURMA-CHINA ROAD
LONDON, Oct. 3 (UP)—Prime Minister Winston Churchill received the Chinese Ambassador, Quo Tai-chi, tonight at 10 Downing Street and was believed to have informed him of Britain’s intention to reopen the Burma road Oct. 17.
It was believed they also might have discussed the question of further British financial and economic assistance to China.
The decision to open the Burma road, following Japan’s military alliance with Germany and Italy, was reported to have been made after a thorough exchange of views with Washington.
AGREEMENT EXPIRING
A three-month Anglo-Japanese agreement under which the Burma road was closed to all military supplies to China will expire on Oct. 17. The agreement was made on the understanding that during the three months Japan would seek a peace with China. Instead, Japan formed an alliance with Britain’s enemies, and her armed forces penetrated French Indo-China to cut off supplies to the Chinese through Yunnan Province.
Now, as a gesture of friendship and to compensate China for the oil of which she was deprived while the Burma road has been closed, it was believed that the British Government intended to supply oil to China from Burma on credit.
Yesterday it was forecast here that as a consequence of the Axis-Japanese alliance, Britain henceforth would treat China more as an ally and provide Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek with war supplies over the Burma road with much-needed credits.