The New York Times Book of World War II, 1939-1945
Page 58
All the papers also insist that Japan has tried to conduct these conversations with patience and sincerity, and Soho Tokutomi declares in Nichi Nichi:
“Japan’s friendship for the United States has been complete. Japan has done everything in her power to seek a compromise with the United States. The Konoye message [to President Roosevelt] represented the maximum limit of Japanese concessions.”
The author of that assertion admits that he does not know the details of former Premier Prince Konoye’s message and, therefore, is unable to suggest just what concessions Japan made. The only concession suggested in the press is an increasing reference to the “East Asia co-prosperity sphere,” instead of a “greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere,” though the significance of the difference remains obscure.
U.S. AS ENCIRCLER
Nichi Nichi further proclaims in a banner headline, “U.S.A. inspired encirclement designed to destroy Nippon empire in East Asia at sacrifice of Chungking and Netherlands East Indies.” But Hochi reiterates: “Japan’s objective is to eradicate unjust rights and interests in East Asia of various countries of the world which are intent upon treating East Asian peoples as slaves.”
Or, as Teiichi Muto, a Hochi writer, declared recently, “Drive out the foreign barbarian.”
In Nichi Nichi Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek is represented as merely a tool of the United States, which is gradually taking the place of Britain in attempting to dominate Asia.
Whatever their arguments, however, all the papers constantly emphasize Japan’s determination to cope with the situation and warn that the time limit of Japan’s patience is about up. Nichi Nichi says it is a mistake to expect much from American and Japanese negotiations alone because all problems are now international in scale and peace can be constructed only on an international conception, but it also warns against the idea that Japan will remain motionless while being strangled economically.
“That is a completely Jewish theory,” says this champion of the Axis alliance.
Japanese General and Prime Minister Hideki Tojo in 1941.
NOVEMBER 7, 1941
GERMANS REPORT CAPTURE OF TULA
SEVASTOPOL SIEGE LOOMS
By GEORGE AXELSSON
By Telephone to The New York Times.
BERLIN, Nov. 6—The city of Tula, to which the southern end of the Moscow defenses has been anchored for almost a month, is in German hands, according to what are considered reliable reports from the front received in private quarters here today.
Bitter fighting continues in Crimea, according to the High Command, with the Germans claiming to have widened the breach on the Yaila Mountain front, pouring troops down to the shallow Black Sea coast between Theodosia and Yalta. If this is true, Yalta may already have been captured.
If the Germans have captured Tula, which lies in the low and marshy Upa Valley, some 100 airline miles south of Moscow, it is the result of some major action about which the German High Command has chosen to be silent.
ENCIRCLEMENT PLAN INDICATED
Indeed, military spokesmen in Berlin say even tonight that they do not know anything about the capture of Tula and refer to the communiqués, which have refrained from mentioning any actions of consequence along the Moscow front for many days.
The taking of Tula, where Czar Boris Godunoff built the first Russian gun factory in 1595 and whose main industry is rifle-making, might mean that the Germans are in the process of throwing a ring around Moscow similar to that around Leningrad.
If the Germans need not halt to consolidate their gains, as they are interpreted by neutral military experts here, they may be pushing straight on to Zaraisk and Ryazan Province and the Oka River, whence they would try to strike north and west to join the German units in the Kalinin sector, northwest of Moscow.
The passage through the Yaila Mountains is reported to have been forced at the Alushta Pass on the road from Simferopol to the town of Alushta. This road is at the bottom of a fairly broad valley, suitable for main traffic, and is the best if not the only road by which mechanized units could have reached the Black Sea coast.
SEVASTOPOL SIEGE EXPECTED
The Russians, however, are not abandoning Crimea without further fighting, for the Germans admit serious attempts by Soviet units to break out of their trap and fight their way through the German lines. These attempts, of course, are said to have failed.
The Germans expect that they must lay siege to Sevastopol before they can hope to capture this important Soviet naval base. But they are confident that they can rid the rest of Crimea of Soviet troops in short order.
Leningrad, which rounds out its second month of siege tomorrow on the twenty-fourth anniversary of the October revolution, has been particularly tried in the last few days by aerial and artillery bombardment, according to German reports, but these attacks evidently register no progress in the long-drawn-out effort to induce the city to surrender.
As the front line before Leningrad remains largely where it has been since the Germans marched into Schluesselburg on Sept. 8, and in view of German reports of local activity and repeated attempts of the beleaguered defenders to break the iron ring around the city, it does not appear that the Germans are much nearer their objectives than they were two months ago.
NOVEMBER 9, 1941
FABLED RUSSIAN WINTER CLOSING IN ON INVADERS
Months of Bitter Cold and Deep Snow Will Test German Fighting Spirit
By C. L. SULZBERGER
Wireless to The New York Times.
KUIBISHEV, Nov. 8—Russia’s traditional ally, General Winter, is slowly moving into action. The Russian Winter is one of the favorite subjects of this country’s songs, poetry and painting—and well it might be. For at least five months every year the major part of the country is blanketed in snow and the peasants’ activity is limited to feeding the livestock, talking, singing, drinking, hunting and protecting their cattle from foraging wolves. The women and children sit about the samovar brewing endless cups of tea, while the menfolk sit smoking long, half-filled cigarettes, exchanging yarns or singing mournful folksongs to the accompaniment of the triangular balalaika or the accordion.
Traditional are the peasant legends of the cold. Tales of the ravages of wolves are manifold. There are countless versions of the story Willa Cather tells of a peasant’s bridal party drunkenly swinging home across snow-filled roads in troikas and being chased by voracious wolf packs. First one sled overturned and occupants and horses were eaten. Then another and another piled into the drifts as the lead wolves slashed at the terrified steeds. Eventually only one sled was left and the driver of it hurled out bride and groom to lighten the load and escape.
FOUNDED IN TRUTH
How many of these tales have a foundation in truth is hard to know. But wolves are plentiful and when the Winter blanket covers everything they frequently are driven to the outskirts of villages, hunting anything in order to exist.
A wolf, a belled horse-drawn troika, and a forest loaded with snow are traditional subjects in Russian art. Two hundred miles from Moscow, in little villages, peasant craftsmen still paint lacquered boxes that are famous the world over, laboring with squirrel’s-tail brushes, egg-yolk kvas and colored pictures, depicting these scenes on small surfaces which have been transported by tourists throughout the world. Ancient folksongs, legends of Prince Igor and peasant fairy tales are all steeped in the lore of Winter.
The stamp of Winter has always marked the traditional picture of Russia since traders from Moscow first began to circulate among the capitals of Europe in medieval times. Muscovites are thought of as bearded, befurred and dressed in heavy coats. The earliest international commerce with Russia was for the purpose of securing products from its cold clime—furs, timber, pitch and gum.
A COLD WORLD
An old peasant used to say: “Russia is not a country; it is a world.” To this peasant it is a cold world. Living in his wooden house, over which sweeps the Winter wind, he has learned how to protect himsel
f by warm clothes and strong drinks against his greatest natural enemy—Winter. It is only in times of war that this enemy becomes an ally. How effective this aid has been can be realized by anyone who has seen some of Meissonier’s paintings of Napoleon’s catastrophic retreat.
To strangers unaccustomed to this climate and unaided by the local population, desolation can prove disastrous. The Russian says about his enemy: “A German will thrash wheat out of the head of an axe.” That’s about what he will have to do this Winter. Major crop stores have been removed or burned in the evacuated territories. Village after village and town after town have been destroyed in battle or by rear-guard units.
As cold sets in, salient after salient on the vast front becomes inactive. All along the Karelian and Kola peninsulas, it is reported that the Germans are digging in, not against the Russians but against the cold.
What actual effect Winter can have on military operations is hard to predict. There is no doubt that armies can fight in Winter and fight hard, discomfort or not. That was proved in the last war. It was proved in Finland more recently.
PAST EXPERIENCE
But, undoubtedly, continued fighting under Russian Winter conditions will not improve the morale of the invader. During the period of Allied intervention after the last war, General Sokolovsky told the writer, the Japanese could not stand the Siberian climate, despite the fact that they brought electric heating pads with them. If the Russians can continue to hold Leningrad and Moscow the Germans will not have any bases where warm housing can be afforded behind the lines on two fronts.
Up around Murmansk it is reported that Col. Gen. Dittel, the German commander, is calling for Finnish reinforcements who are better able to stand the Winter cold. One of the chief reasons that the Germans are trying so hard now to take the Crimea is that they may acquire warm hospitals and sanitaria on the Soviet Riviera to house their wounded.
Hitler is making desperate efforts to attain the major goals of his latest offensive before Winter sets in. Speed is essential to his task. Every day now that the Red Army holds its lines can be counted as a day’s gain.
Russia has been invaded many times and many times these invasions have been finally checked by resistance aided by cold. Who knows whether this will make a great difference against modern mechanized tactics. Can the Luftwaffe continue to operate effectively in an icy sky? Will Hitler’s troops easily face another Winter—the third of a slowed down Blitzkrieg? These things are imponderables at present. But there is one certainty—Winter comes early here; and it stays long.
German infantry unit advances toward Rostov, November, 1941.
NOVEMBER 12, 1941
PRESIDENT WARNS NATION IS FACING WORLD WAR AGAIN
FOR LIBERTY AND DECENCY
By FRANK L. KLUCKHORN
Special to The New York Times.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 11—As the United States celebrated today the signing of the World War armistice, President Roosevelt declared in his address that this country may be forced by Germany into another war. Other speakers emphasized the same theme of the Nazi peril.
Standing bare-headed on a wind-swept hill in Arlington National Cemetery, near the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where solemn and impressive rites had just taken place, the President told a nationwide radio audience and a large crowd gathered in the amphitheatre, that the United States fought in the World War to protect liberty and democracy. The people of America, he remarked, believe liberty to be worth fighting for. And of liberty, he said:
“If they are obliged to fight they will fight eternally to hold it. This is the duty we owe, not to ourselves alone, but to the many dead who died to gain freedom for us—to make the world a place where freedom can live and grow into the ages.”
SOLEMN SCENE AT ARLINGTON
It was with solemn mien that the President heard the ceremony at Arlington, the playing of the national anthem, the bugle’s Taps and the two twenty-onegun salutes. The hour was 11, just twenty-three years after the end of the World War. He spoke to the distinguished gathering assembled under the banners of the American Legion. He spoke with a calm determination.
Those who died in 1917–18, he said, had indeed died to make the world safe for decency and self-respect.
“We know,” he went on, “that these men died to save their country from a terrible danger of the day. We know, because we face that danger once again on this day.”
Recalling that those who gave their lives on the battlefields of Europe had sacrificed themselves for democracy, “to prevent then the very thing that now, a quarter of a century later, has happened from one end of Europe to another,” the President of the United States declared that now, in their memory and so that they may not have perished in vain, the obligation and the duty are ours.
“Whatever we knew or thought we knew a few years or months ago, we know now that the danger of brutality, the danger of tyranny and slavery to freedom-loving people can be real and terrible.”
The President stood at attention as the band played The Star-Spangled Banner. Then flanked by his military and naval aides, Maj. Gen. Edwin M. Watson and Captain John Beardall, he moved forward. There was a minute of silence, and Captain Beardall took a wreath of white chrysanthemums from an Army sergeant in full-dress blue and, acting for the President, placed it at the foot of the Tomb.
NOVEMBER 15, 1941
ARK ROYAL SUNK NEAR GIBRALTAR BY AXIS TORPEDO
By CRAIG THOMPSON
Special Cable to The New York Times.
LONDON, Nov. 14—The airplane carrier Ark Royal—so often reported sunk by the Germans and Italians that she became a sort of phantom ship ranging the seas from the Arctic Circle to the Equator and in the Mediterranean—has finally gone to the bottom. Torpedoed by an Italian submarine yesterday she sank today about twenty-five miles east of Gibraltar while being towed to that port.
A. V. Alexander, First Lord of the Admiralty, announced that the casualties were “very light.” It appears at present that it was impossible to get off her aircraft, which means that about seventy planes, mostly Swordfish torpedo-carriers, Skua dive-bombers and reconnaissance craft, went down with her. The Ark Royal is the third British carrier lost in this war, the others being the Courageous and the Glorious.
The Ark Royal, the ‘phantom’ British carrier.
OFTEN REPORTED SUNK
From the time only a few days after the war began, when the German radio inquired nightly “Where is the Ark Royal?” and coupled this question with the assertion that she was sunk on Sept. 26, 1939, until recent months there have been repeated claims that the carrier, the third bearer of its illustrious naval name, had been destroyed. All during that time she was actively in service, searching the Atlantic for the pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee, participating in naval action off Norway, fighting Italians in the Mediterranean, playing a major role in the destruction of the battleship Bismarck and finally performing invaluable service spotting Axis convoys in the Mediterranean.
In the whole term of her service, which began in midsummer 1938, the planes of the Ark Royal brought down more than 100 German or Italian aircraft, sixty-nine of these within recent months in Mediterranean operations. Her loss will be a serious blow to British naval forces there and at a critical time, when the Germans and Italians are making a determined effort to add men and supplies to the garrison in Libya.
ACTION IN “MARE NOSTRUM”
In patrolling Premier Mussolini’s “Mare Nostrum” the Ark Royal performed a major service. Her normal complement of seventy planes flew off her 800-foot deck for several purposes. There were some that ranged over a long stretch of water locating Africa-bound Axis convoys and bringing to them ships of the British Fleet, which has been busy cutting off Italy and Germany from Africa.
Then there were the Swordfish planes, which flashed low on the water and loosed torpedoes. A year ago while taking part in the pursuit of the Italian Fleet southwest of Sardinia a Swordfish torpedoed a Littorio-class battleship and hit cr
uisers and destroyers, while Skua bombers, also from the Ark Royal, attacked them from above.
This was only one of her performances during the time when the German radio claimed she was on the ocean’s bottom. After having sunk her numbers of times in the past, radio stations and official pronouncements from Axis capitals were strangely silent today. It was assumed here that their claimed performance was awkwardly late.
DECEMBER 1, 1941
U.S. Principles Rejected By Japanese as ‘Fantastic’
Foreign Minister Togo Makes First Official Comment on Washington Note—General Threatens Fresh Aggression
By OTTO D. TOLISCHUS
Wireless to The New York Times.
TOKYO, Dec. 1—In the first official statement on the American proposals for a settlement of the issues in the Pacific submitted to Japan, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo today rejected the principles underlying them as “fantastic,” and characterized the American attitude as unrealistic and regrettable. He reiterated Japan’s determination to proceed with the construction of a “New Order in East Asia.”
Following the lines of a strong message from Premier General Hideki Tojo, the reading of which was the highlight of yesterday’s mass meetings, the Foreign Minister declared: