The New York Times Book of World War II, 1939-1945
Page 42
JANUARY 2, 1941
BRITISH CENSOR EXPLAINS
Says Aim Is Simply To Bar Useful Data From Nation’s Foes
Special Cable to The New York Times
LONDON, Jan. 1—The man who watches over British cables, telephones, mails and the radio stepped before the microphones last night and told why and how he did it.
He is C.J. Radcliffe, Acting Controller of the Press.
He described the censorship as “the rationing of news.” Rationing is unpopular in this country where food is affected and even less popular as far as news is concerned.
Mr. Radcliffe’s major point was that there was no intention of hiding ugly facts from the people.
He said the censorship’s only aim was to bar information that might help the Nazis. He asserted that if the government permitted the announcement of town names after every bombing “it would enable the enemy to correct errors in navigation and be more accurate the next time.”
JANUARY 6, 1941
20-DAY SIEGE ENDS
Commander of Garrison Is Among The Italians Captured at Port
Special Cable to The New York Times.
CAIRO, Egypt, Jan. 5—Bardia, the first big Italian stronghold in Libya, has fallen after the greatest British onslaught of the war thus far—an onslaught in which Australian forces played a conspicuous part and in which the British Army, Navy and Air Force cooperated in simultaneous bombardment of Italian ports, batteries, ammunition depots and air bases.
Within thirty-six hours Australian infantry, fighting in perfect cooperation with the British mechanized units, warships and bombers, smashed the iron defense ring of the strategically important seaport base constructed by the Italians near the Libyan-Egyptian border. The port fell at 1:30 o’clock this afternoon after twenty days of siege.
Earlier in the day it was reported that more than 15,000 prisoners had been captured and that the northern sector of the Bardia defenses had been forced to surrender. The Italian defenders were pushed to a southeastern zone, where mopping-up operations went on. What remained of the Italian garrison of more than 25,000 men surrendered later in the day and the Italian flag was hauled down from the staff over Government House in Bardia. The British were unable to make a complete count of the number of prisoners, saying only that it exceeded 25,000.
BARDIA COMMANDER SEIZED
The British communiqué announcing the capture of Bardia said that the prisoners included General Annibale Bergonzoli, in command of the garrison; another corps commander and four senior generals. All the Italian stores and equipment were seized, it was stated. The British captured or destroyed forty-five light Fascist tanks and five medium tanks.
The Australians were in high spirits as they surged into Bardia, some of them shouting “Boy, what do you think of us now?” and “What time do the pubs shut in Bardia? We mean to get in this evening.”
The full force of the British attack was launched against the Bardia garrison at dawn on Friday. A correspondent at the scene wrote that the “decisiveness of the British victory was due to the meticulous preparations made during the preceding weeks.”
“Australian patrols had penetrated the defense perimeter night after night and obtained exact details of all anti-tank traps, pillboxes and other defense positions,” the correspondent said. “At the zero hour on Friday Australian sappers advanced to cut barbed wire. The Australian infantry followed and kept the Italian first line busy while the sappers coolly blew up the sides of the tank traps, filled them in with earth and smashed a double apron of fencing.
RESISTANCE WAS DESPERATE
“In the initial stage of the offensive the Italians put up a desperate resistance and it was at this stage that the British casualties, slight throughout, occurred. By the end of the first evening the Australian brigades had penetrated the outer ring of defenses to a distance of 3,000 yards on a 12,000-yard front.
“Meanwhile, to the north British mechanized forces had infiltrated the positions for a considerable distance.”
Before darkness fell yesterday the Italian troops occupying the northern sector of the Bardia defenses were forced to surrender.
British take port in desert ‘Blitzkrieg’: Less than a month after the start of the Egyptian-Libyan offensive Australian troops have smashed into Bardia. Shown on the map are the successive stages in the campaign.
JANUARY 11, 1941
Text of Lease-Lend Bill
By The Associated Press.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 10—The text of the measure introduced in Congress today to effect President Roosevelt’s plan of lending or leasing military equipment to “democracies” was as follows:
A BILL
To further promote the defense of the United States, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that this act may be cited as “an act to promote the defense of the United States.”
SECTION II
As used in this act:
The term “defense article” means: Any weapon, munition, aircraft, vessel, or boat;
Any machinery, facility, tool, material, or supply necessary for the manufacture, production, processing, repair, servicing, or operation of any article described in this subsection:
Any component material or part of or equipment for any article described in this subsection:
DEFENSE ARTICLES DESCRIBED
Any other commodity or article for defense. Such term “defense article” includes any article described in this subsection: Manufactured or procured pursuant to Section 3 or to which the United States or any foreign government has or hereafter acquires title, possession or control.
The term “defense information” means any plan, specification, design, prototype, or information pertaining to any defense article.
SECTION III
Notwithstanding the provisions of any other law, the President may, from time to time, when he deems it in the interest of national defense, authorize the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, or the head of any other department or agency of the government:
To manufacture in arsenals, factories and shipyards under their jurisdiction, or otherwise procure, any defense article for the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States.
To sell, transfer, exchange, lease, lend, or otherwise dispose of, to any such government any defense article.
To test, inspect, prove, repair, outfit, recondition, or otherwise to place in good working order any defense article for any such government under Paragraph 2 of this subsection.
To communicate to any such government information pertaining to any defense article furnished to such government under the proposed bill.
To release for export any defense article to any such government.
The terms and conditions upon which any such foreign government receives any aid authorized under subsection (A) shall be those which the President deems satisfactory, and the benefit to the United States may be payment or repayment in kind or property, or any other direct or indirect benefit which the President deems satisfactory.
SECTION IV
All contracts or agreements made for the disposition of any defense article or defense information pursuant to Section III shall contain a clause by which the foreign government undertakes that it will not, without the consent of the President, transfer title to or possession of such defense article or defense information by gift, sale, or otherwise, or permit its use by anyone not an officer, employee, or agent of such foreign government.
SECTION V
The Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, or the head of any other department or agency of the government involved shall, when any such defense article or defense information is exported, immediately inform the department or agency designated by the President to administer Section VI of the Act of July 2, 1940 (54 Stat. 714), of the quantities, character, value, terms of disposition and de
stination of the article and information so exported.
SECTION VI
There is hereby authorized to be appropriated from time to time, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, such amounts as may be necessary to carry out the provisions and accomplish the purpose of this act.
All money and all property which is converted into money received under Section III from any government shall, with the approval of the Director of the Budget, revert to the respective appropriation or appropriations out of which funds were expended with respect to the defense article or defense information for which such consideration is received, and shall be available for expenditure for the purpose for which such expended funds were appropriated by law, during the fiscal year in which such funds are received and the ensuing fiscal year.
SECTION VII
The Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, and the head of the department or agency shall in all contracts or agreements for the disposition of any defense article or defense information fully protect the rights of all citizens of the United States who shall have patent rights in and to any such article or information which is hereby authorized to be disposed of and the payments collected for royalties on such patents shall be paid to the owners and holders of such patents.
SECTION VIII
The Secretaries of War and of the Navy are hereby authorized to purchase or otherwise acquire arms, ammunition and implements of war produced within the jurisdiction of any country to which Section III is applicable, whenever the President deems such purchase or acquisition to be necessary in the interests of the defense of the United States.
SECTION IX
The President may, from time to time, promulgate such rules and regulations as may be necessary and proper to carry out any of the proposals of this act; and he may exercise any power or authority conferred on him by this act through such department, agency or officer as he shall direct.
JANUARY 12, 1941
BEHIND THE SCENES IN EUROPE
William L. Shirer, Correspondent for Radio, Discloses the Obstacles Met in Following the History-Makers
By GEORGE A. MOONEY
“We take you now to Berlin. Come in, Berlin….” Until recently those words were the set patter by which WABC’s announcer in New York introduced William L. Shirer, Columbia’s correspondent in the German capital. Mr. Shirer, tall, scholarly and somewhat grayer than is usual for one of 30-odd years, recently returned here after having “covered” Berlin and Eastern Europe since 1937. The job was not easy.
To listeners, relaxed comfortably in their easy chairs at home, his voice from a nation at war has been but another taken-for-granted bit of radio magic. For them the broadcasts from sources of world events involved only the snapping of a switch. For Mr. Shirer the programs meant working at all hours of the day and night under the combined hardships of censorship, blackouts, air-raids, limited rations and other wartime restrictions. Interviewed here soon after his arrival, he told how it was done.
A CORRESPONDENT’S SCHEDULE
While he was in Berlin his working “day” was patterned on the following schedule, he disclosed. The comments are his own.
10 A.M. Rise. (“Pretty tough if an air raid has kept you up to 6 or 7.”)
10:20 A.M. Breakfast.
11 A.M. Read papers, magazines, etc.
12 P.M. Visit persons passing through, from occupied areas and elsewhere; diplomats and government officials.
1 P.M. Attend Foreign Office press conference. (“The information is read out and questions are permitted.”)
1:30 P.M. Go to short-wave station about five miles from the center of Berlin. Read German news agency [D. N. B.’s] ticker radio reports. Write script. (“The censors, most of whom learned their English in England or America as professors or business men, are right there in the station and usually I submitted my script page by page. After it was found acceptable an English-speaking checker stood next to me in the studio during the broadcast. Until the occupation of Scandinavia the censors were fairly liberal. It’s funny: some days an item would get by, other times it was killed. You had to keep trying.”)
3 P.M. Broadcast. (“On German Summer time that was 8 A.M. in New York. When the broadcast was finished it was too late to get lunch. Berlin restaurants are required to close at 3 on account of limited help and fuel. I would go back to my hotel, where I had a supply of cheese I got from Denmark each week. Then I’d send out for hot water and have tea and a cheese sandwich.”)
5 P.M. Attend Propaganda Ministry’s press conference in the Theater Salle; prepare for late broadcast, etc.
The Theater Salle, an auditorium decorated in the modernistic manner, was constructed especially for the accommodation of such conferences, Mr. Shirer explained.
VISITS BY GOEBBELS
“It seats about 200 people in very comfortable upholstered chairs, facing the stage where the officials sit. On the stage, as a sort of backdrop, there is a huge illuminated map where the High Command boys used to try to tell us what it was all about. Goebbels himself occasionally dropped in.”
Other, lesser officials and military men figuring in the news, Mr. Shirer said, would occupy the stage from time to time, and interviews were often conducted more or less “over the footlights.” Occasionally, uncensored newsreels and “nonpolitical” American movies were shown for the enjoyment of the correspondents, he said, for “the Germans did everything possible to keep the correspondents in the best possible humor.”
Foreign correspondents in Berlin are classified as “heavy laborers,” a device which doubles their food allotment, he continued. At the time he left, he said, the double ration consisted of two pounds of meat each week, a half pound of butter and four pounds of bread. In addition the Germans established a club for the correspondents where they could get “better food and real, honest-to-goodness coffee.”
“The chance to get a cup of real coffee and a juicy steak there WAS a temptation,” he added.
For all the official “cooperation,” however, Berlin life was scarcely pleasant in any normal sense, and in general the correspondents were required to observe the regulations. During November, December and January it is dark in Berlin by 6 P.M., Mr. Shirer recalled, “and the raiders could be over by 8, which meant you had to stay where you were caught by the sirens.”
“It was strictly verboten to circulate in the city during an alarm,” he said. “All transportation stopped and if you were in a car you had to leave it at the curb and take shelter. So, although my second broadcast was not until 1:45 A.M.—6:45 P.M. here—I had to be at the station by 8 in the evening and then just sit.”
Greater than the inconvenience of time differences were the difficulties encountered in “filing a story” from battle areas. In covering the Battle of Gdynia, in the Polish campaign, Mr. Shirer had his observation post on a hill about two miles from the front.
“But to get on the air,” he explained, “I had to go to Danzig, twelve miles away. There a time had to be arranged with New York. I telephoned the people in our office in Berlin and got from them the list of times available. After I’d picked one they reported it to New York over the two-way hook-up. At the appointed minute Berlin got its cue from New York and I started talking when I got the signal from Berlin by phone.”
COVERING THE WESTERN FRONT
Covering the campaign in the west was even more difficult, Mr. Shirer said. The only outlet then was a station in Cologne, nearly 200 miles from the front; so “it meant plenty of night driving to make a 4:30 A.M. broadcast.”
About the war in general and its effect on the German public Mr. Shirer said the chief effect of the Royal Air Force raids so far has been to cut down the number of hours Berliners may sleep.
“They seem convinced that they will win the war,” he said, “and food restrictions have not been severe enough yet to affect morale seriously.”
Mr. Shirer said that while it was impossible to know how many Germans listened to foreign radio broad
casts, “certainly some do.”
American foreign correspondent William L. Shirer (center) with other reporters in France, June 1940.
JANUARY 29, 1941
NO DOLLARS LEFT
Secretary Says Fate of Democracies Is Now Up to Congress
By HAROLD B. HINTON
Special to The New York Times.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 28—Secretary Morgenthau told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today that Great Britain, Greece and China could not continue to fight unless Congress passed the pending lease-lend bill. The Secretary made the statement at the morning hearing and amplified it when the committee reconvened after luncheon.